“From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.” (Project 2025, Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services, Roger Severino, page 482, paragraph 2.) 

Severino isn’t explicitly calling for a federal abortion ban, here (more for distancing the federal government from supporting abortion in any form), so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt (ish) for now. (Spoiler: He calls for the equivalent of a federal abortion ban later in this section.) Let’s talk about the facts.

Abortion IS health care.

“Pregnancy imposes significant physiological changes on a person’s body. These changes can exacerbate underlying or preexisting conditions, like renal or cardiac disease, and can severely compromise health or even cause death. Determining the appropriate medical intervention depends on a patient’s specific condition. There are situations where pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient’s health or save their life.

“As physicians, we are focused on protecting the health and lives of the patients for whom we provide care. Without question, abortion can be medically necessary.” [Source]¹

In other words, when it’s time to choose between a living, breathing woman and an unborn fetus’s life? THE WOMAN TAKES PRECEDENCE. Always. If you save a woman’s life, you’re enabling her to potentially have healthy children in the future if she so chooses. You’re enabling her to continue to be a mother her existing children, if she has them. Most importantly, you’re allowing her to LIVE.

The word “abortion” is politically charged, but it is medical terminology that refers to any fetus not carried to full term². This means that miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and more, are medically coded as abortions. Ectopic pregnancies, if not treated in a timely fashion, threaten the mother’s life, and the fetus at that stage is nearly never viable.

“If the embryo or fetus dies and the body naturally expels all the products of conception, it is termed “complete abortion.” If some of the products pass, but some parts of the fetus, placenta, or membranes are retained, it is called an “incomplete abortion.” An “inevitable abortion” is the scenario when the cervix has dilated in preparation for expulsion, but has not yet done so.

A “missed abortion” is when a fetus has died (not proximately, usually days to weeks ago), but the body does not proceed to expel the nonviable intrauterine pregnancy. A “septic abortion” is a result of intrauterine infection following an abortion. Finally, a “threatened abortion” is vaginal bleeding in pregnancy before 20 weeks with a closed cervix (i.e., not an inevitable abortion). A total of 25 percent of pregnancies have some bleeding in early pregnancy, and approximately half of these progress to abortion.

There are other complications of pregnancy that can result in the need for removal of nonviable products of conception. These include a blighted ovum, in which an early embryo never develops or arrests, and a hydatidiform mole (AKA molar pregnancy), when a noncancerous tumor forms instead of a healthy placenta.”

There are a LOT of reasons abortion care is medically necessary. The result of not receiving this care, for women, is harm to their future fertility, infection, mental and physical trauma, and sometimes death. You can feel however you want to about elective abortion, but the fact remains that abortion in general is a necessary part of routine health care for women. Moreover, abortion being legal, safe, and sometimes necessary does not force anyone with moral objections to have elective abortions. Make decisions for yourself, not for others. I touch on why abortion bans don’t work in Section 2.6³.