Project 2025 partner applauds JD Vance on abortion, saying he “opens the door” for even more restrictive anti-abortion legislation
Family Research Council's Washington Stand blog applauds JD Vance’s support for an extreme 15-week national abortion ban
Written by Sophie Lawton
Published
Family Research Council’s blog, The Washington Stand, published an article praising vice presidential nominee JD Vance for discussing the “entirely reasonable, and too-modest, pro-life protection” of a 15-week minimum national ban for abortion and laying the groundwork for a future Republican president to sign such legislation.
Family Research Center is on the advisory board of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-led transition plan for the next GOP presidential administration. The effort involves more than 100 partner organizations, and the staffing and policy recommendations in its nearly 900-page policy book represent a major threat to democracy.
During the October 1 debate, Vance argued that a GOP-proposed 15-week nationwide abortion ban is really a “federal minimum standard,” though it is entirely a distinction without a difference. Writing in Vanity Fair, Bess Levin notes this is part of “the very sneaky way” that some on the right have adopted to discuss rolling back reproductive rights:
As abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti has written, “Republicans know abortion bans are deeply unpopular, so they’ve come up with this cheap rhetorical trick to fool voters,” wherein they claim not to support bans but “minimum standards.“ In this context, “ban” means no abortions at any time for any reason, whereas the latter could mean something like no abortions after six weeks—which, of course, would effectively be a ban on abortion.
The Washington Stand applauded Vance for disingenuously separating the terms “minimum standard” and “ban,” arguing that a national minimum standard cannot be considered a ban because it would only affect a “minuscule number” of the total abortions done in the United States. “Americans of all stripes should thank Vance for asserting that words have meaning,” the piece claims, adding (emphasis added):
Vance’s distinction is pivotal for a second reason: It walks the current Republican Party leadership back from its hostility to all federal pro-life protections, ratchets down the GOP’s demoralization of its voter base, and opens the door to a President Vance signing incremental pro-life legislation in 2029. Or, if he were wise enough to listen to his veep, President Trump could sign such a bill in three months’ time. Trump has vociferously promised to veto a “national abortion ban,” but he could adopt Vance’s differentiation between a “ban” and a “minimum standard.” Pro-life advocates should make every effort to assure that he does so.
The Washington Stand also quotes anti-abortion activist Ryan Bomberger, who said that GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham’s “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions” Act that would ban abortion after 15 weeks, “may be a starting point, but it’s not an end point.”
Minimum standards for legal abortions have historically been referred to as ban, and anti-abortion activists have promoted an incremental approach to eventually make abortion “unthinkable.”
The Family Research Council has previously taken a hardline stance, with FRC President Tony Perkins calling on Republicans to commit to an “inflexible” anti-abortion position. Family Research Council and Project 2025 have both pushed extreme anti-abortion agendas and have supported limiting other reproductive rights such as contraception and in vitro fertilization.