Listen Closely to the Men Crafting the GOP’s Anti-Abortion Policy
Under Trump, Severino ran the civil rights office in the Department of Health and Human Services. Most recently, he authored the section on HHS in the Heritage Foundation–led Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership,” a guide for the possible future Trump administration. In it, the groups behind Project 2025 call for rolling back the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion. (The recent Supreme Court decisions in Loper Bright and Corner Post, which take power away from federal agencies, could make those rollbacks easier.) They also push the arguably baseless theory that the 150-year-old Comstock Act could be revived as a day-one national prohibition on all abortions, requiring no new ban be passed. Why get into a difficult fight over rewriting the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to embryos and fetuses, when you can just dust off a law already on the books?
The comments about criminal punishment for abortion made by Ed Martin, given his role as the deputy policy director for the GOP platform committee, are disturbing enough. But the background of committee policy director Russ Vought puts them in a more alarming context. Vought was the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, whose administration he celebrated as ushering in “a golden chapter” for the anti-abortion movement. Students for Life of America has called Vought “the man behind the plan to defund Planned Parenthood,” owing to his success in forcing the group out of Title X, the federal family planning program. (Vought, like Martin, believes that “the 2020 election was stolen,” and has referred to those charged with criminal offenses related to January 6 as “political prisoners.”)
Vought currently heads the Center for Renewing America, now a lead part of the Project 2025 effort. More than hair-splitting about gestational bans, Vought has a much broader scale of conflict in mind. His group is working on its own plans for Trump, a bullet point list that includes “Christian nationalism.” He’s said he would hand the president more power over the Department of Justice, which he regards as “not an independent agency.” Getting DOJ on board, whether by influence or by taking overt control, would be important should a new administration wish to revive a law from 1873 banning abortion, or start criminally punishing people for abortion. Vought has the experience and the plans that could back up the kinds of things Martin has dreamt about on his podcast.
