EXPLANATORY

Kamala Harris frequently claims that the Trump administration will interfere with pregnancies. So is this really true?

Vice President Kamala Harris told voters multiple times in her closing remarks that her opponent, former President Donald Trump, would interfere with women’s pregnancies.

While condemning Trump’s record on reproductive rights, he said on October 29 that he would “force states to track women’s pregnancies.” He appealed to the audience to “Read about Google Project 2025 and the plans for yourself,” referring to the conservative policy plan drawn up by some of Trump’s supporters.

Harris repeated the phrase the next night at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin.

Harris’ statement echoed a similar statement from her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who said the 2025 Project would require women to “register with a new federal agency when they become pregnant.”

The Harris campaign again pointed to Project 2025 when asked for evidence of Harris’ claim.

Project 2025 is a policy plan for the next Republican administration developed by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and Trump’s allies, including at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration. This is not a Trump campaign document.

Project 2025 does not call on states or the federal government to monitor pregnancies from the moment they are discovered. The plan calls for more comprehensive monitoring of pregnancies that result in fetal death, such as abortions, miscarriages, and stillbirths, than the U.S. government currently requires.

The guidance recommends stronger state-based abortion data as part of a broader effort to reshape the Department of Health and Human Services as a “Department of Life.”

Project 2025 proposes that the federal government withhold money from states that do not report more detailed abortion data to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The document calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to “use every available tool, including defunding,” to ensure states report:

• Number of abortions within its borders.
• Weeks of pregnancy at which the abortion occurred.
• Reason for abortion.
• Residence status of the pregnant woman.
• Abortion method.

These statistics, he says, should be broken down by categories, including spontaneous abortion, treatments that incidentally result in fetal death (such as chemotherapy), stillbirths, and induced abortion.

States are not currently required to submit abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the majority do, except for California, Maryland and New Hampshire. To collect individual status data, most state vital statistics agencies have designed a form that abortion providers use for reporting purposes.

Harris’ statements in recent days have become less specific and even less accurate than her speech at the Democratic National Convention. He later said Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.” This is not true.

Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025 in recent months and has not called for widespread monitoring of pregnancy outcomes or pregnancies.

When Trump was asked in April whether states should monitor or penalize women who perform illegal abortions, he argued that some states “may choose” to do so, but that it’s up to them.

Our decision

Harris said Trump would “force states to track women’s pregnancies.”

The claim is wrong in two respects. Trump did not propose forcing states to track pregnancies. It is also not an accurate depiction of the Project 2025 policy proposal.

Project 2025 proposes that the federal government require states to report all data on pregnancies that end in fetal death and use federal funding as a lever to ensure compliance.

This data will reflect certain pregnancy outcomes, including abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth. It would not require the government to track the progress of all pregnancies from beginning to end.

The description is incorrect. We consider it wrong.