What will another Trump term mean for reproductive rights and the planet?

The U.S. election outcome is a disaster for people and planet. Based on Trump’s record during his previous administration and pledges he’s made, we are once again facing ruthless attacks on reproductive health and rights, which will endanger the lives of women and girls around the world. In addition, we can expect more rollbacks of vital environmental policies, leading to catastrophic climate change, accelerated biodiversity loss, and worse pollution.

What is Project 2025?

While the Trump campaign’s “official” policy plan is named Agenda47, a proposal called Project 2025 has been gaining a lot more media attention. Project 2025 is a much more detailed plan produced by far-right thinktank the Heritage Foundation, intended as a presidential agenda for when Trump retakes office in January 2025. On the campaign trail, Trump had tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but it was created with help from more than 100 people who served in his 2017-2021 administration, and Trump has praised the Heritage Foundation’s policy work in the past. Another far-right think tank with links to Trump, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), has developed its own extremist agenda.

All three plans propose rollbacks of civil and human rights as well as radical conservative changes to federal departments and agencies. Project 2025 and AFPI’s plan are particularly extreme regarding gender and reproductive rights issues.

It remains to be seen which of the proposed measures the Trump-Vance administration will be able to implement, but a look at policies enacted under Trump’s last stint in office gives us a good idea of what to expect.

What will Trump 2.0 mean for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)?

Reinstating the Global Gag Rule

During his first administration, Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy aka Global Gag Rule, a policy that prohibits U.S. global health assistance from going to any non-U.S. organization that provides abortion care, information, or referrals, even if it uses its own non-U.S. funds to do so. Trump also expanded the policy to apply to the entirety of U.S. health assistance, not just global family planning funding, as was previously the case. This had devastating impacts on vital reproductive health services in developing countries, causing many programs to shut down, limiting access to contraceptives, and causing preventable deaths and suffering. It is expected that the incoming Trump administration will immediately reinstate the policy in its expanded form, and abortion rights groups fear the president-elect might expand it even further so that it applies to all U.S. foreign assistance.

Withdrawing funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

The last Trump administration also blocked funding to the UNFPA, the biggest provider of family planning and reproductive health services in developing countries. It is likely that the new Trump-Vance administration will do the same. As one of the UNFPA’s biggest donors, the U.S. government has been key to enabling the UN agency’s life-saving programs on the ground. The loss of funding will be even worse this time, as the Biden administration had significantly increased UNFPA contributions.

Attacking national abortion rights

Trump’s previous presidency was a disaster for national abortion rights. His appointment of three anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which he has openly gloated about. Fourteen states have since enacted total abortion bans, but Ohio’s was struck down in October, bringing the count to 13.

During his first term, Trump also implemented a Domestic Gag Rule, which blocked clinics that received grants from Title X, the domestic family planning program for low-income Americans, from providing patients with abortion services, referrals, information, or counseling. As a result, many clinics were forced to leave the Title X program, resulting in financial losses and severe consequences for low-income patients. Trump is expected to reinstate the Domestic Gag Rule when he takes office in January.

It gets worse — Project 2025 is aggressively anti-choice, calling for the federal Health and Human Services Department to be turned into a “Department of Life” and laying out a plan to ban medication abortion by reversing the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and reviving a 19th century law, the Comstock Act, to block postal delivery of abortion medications, equipment, or materials. A state-level effort towards this aspect of Project 2025 is already underway, with the attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri filing a lawsuit in October in an attempt to block mifepristone distribution.

There are many other ways Trump will likely try to undermine SRHR domestically and abroad. The Guttmacher Institute has prepared a useful fact sheet on this topic.

What will Trump 2.0 mean for the environment?

When Trump was last president, he rolled back more than 100 measures to protect the environment. The President-elect has called climate change “a hoax” and has vowed to expand fossil fuel production, undo pollution regulations, and eliminate federal support for clean energy.

Trump said he will scrap the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, a major win for the Biden administration representing the largest investment in climate action in U.S. history. Trump will also most likely withdraw from the Paris Agreement again (as he did during his first term). An analysis by Carbon Brief found that another Trump term could result in an additional four billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2030 (relative to Biden’s climate plans), equating to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan.

The United States’ role as the world’s richest nation and second biggest national emitter after China means these regressions will obliterate our already small chance of meeting the 1.5°C target laid out in the Paris Agreement, setting up vulnerable countries for devastation and suffering.

Trump also went after nature and biodiversity during his first stint in office, opening up protected areas to drilling (including the Bears Ears Monument and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), pushing forward controversial pipeline projects against Indigenous opposition (Keystone XL and Dakota Access), and stripping endangered species of their protections (including gray wolves). Many of these measures were reversed or halted by the Biden administration.

Project 2025 proposes more environmental destruction to cater to lobbyist groups, including weakening the Clean Air Act, ending the national monument protected area designation, and removing grizzly bears, gray wolves, and the greater sage grouse from the endangered species list. Project 2025 also calls for censoring climate and environmental science and redesigning the federal agencies that advance it.

How do we move on from here?

It is clear that another Trump term will cause major setbacks for SRHR and the environment across the entire world. Activist groups need to gear up for adversity and prepare to challenge destructive policies in every way that is legally possible. If you care about people and nature, now is a good time to join one or more of the many organizations fighting for a better world.