New Mexico Political Report: Project 2025: How a consolidation of federal power could ban abortion

September 18. 2024

Executive Director Noreen Farrell was featured in a New Mexico Political Report article about Project 2025.

Noreen Farrell, executive director of the California-based Equal Rights Advocates, told NM Political Report that “many of the proposals in Project 2025 are all the more insidious because they contemplate action by federal agencies” instead of laws that must pass through the U.S. Congress.

“Even if they are unlawful, it starts the process of so many resources being used to fight unlawful action,” Farrell said.

Farrell said Project 2025’s impact would be especially harmful to women of color in various ways. It would harm immigrant girls who cross the border  to the U.S. without an adult by banning their ability to receive an abortion. Project 2025 explicitly calls for that ban.

Farrell said another way it would harm communities of color is through the banning of abortion in general. She said research shows that if abortion is banned, Black women’s deaths will rise in the U.S. by 39 percent. Black women already suffer higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality due to systemic racism in the healthcare system.

Farrell said there would likely be increases in maternal and infant mortality rates, for other communities of color as well.

“The existential crisis really can’t be overstated,” Farrell said.

Farrell said that this tracking requirement is an “incredibly disturbing component.”

“This is big brother. This is lacking privacy that has implications not only for reproductive healthcare but all kinds of healthcare. It’s a slippery slope,” she said.

Farrell said that under the plan, the CDC “would be drastically reduced.”

“We’re looking at dismantling and defunding core agencies that make the case for all kinds of care, collect data and track data outcomes. It’s an incredibly broad attack on long-standing agencies seen as objective and medically based,” Farrell said.

Read the article here.