ICYMI: Ken Paxton Pursues Trump’s Project 2025 Plan to Surveil Women Seeking Out of State Reproductive Care Arrow

On Wednesday, Texas MAGA extremist Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the federal government in an effort to implement one of the most radical policies of Trump's Project 2025 agenda - surveilling women's reproductive health care. In response, DNC Spokesperson Maddy Mundy released the following statement:

"Ken Paxton is pursuing one of the most disturbing policies of Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda - surveilling women's reproductive care. Paxton's attempted weaponization of the government against women comes straight out of Donald Trump and JD Vance's Project 2025 playbook. If Trump wins, his plan for a second term would direct the federal government to track every single abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth in America. Extremists like Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Ken Paxton don't care about freedom. They want to seize power to control women. The only way to stop them is to elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz, who trust women to make decisions about their own bodies and will sign legislation to restore reproductive freedom nationwide."

Ken Paxton is the latest MAGA crony following Donald Trump's Project 2025 plan to surveil women's reproductive medical records.

AP: Texas sues to stop a rule that shields the medical records of women who seek abortions elsewhere

New York Times: Texas Sues for Access to Records of Women Seeking Out-of-State Abortions

CBS News: Texas sues to block federal rule protecting health records of women crossing state lines for abortions

Trump's running mate JD Vance said he would like abortion to be "illegal nationally" to stop women from traveling across states to access reproductive health care.

CNN: "JD Vance said in 2022 he 'would like abortion to be illegal nationally'"

"'I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,' Vance said in January 2022 on a podcast when running for Senate.

"During a podcast interview in January 2022, then-candidate JD Vance said he 'certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally' and was 'sympathetic' to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion.

"Vance once supported a 'national minimum standard' for abortion restrictions and signaled support for a 15-week federal abortion ban to CNN before determining there was no appetite for it in the current climate.

"Yet in January 2022, Vance argued that while lawmakers couldn't ban abortion in the current climate, he was sympathetic to the view that a national ban was necessary."

Trump's extreme MAGA Project 2025 wants to make it easier for law enforcement to procure private reproductive health information; both Trump and Vance have suggested they're open to allowing states to surveil women's pregnancies.

MSNBC: "On Page 455, Project 2025 lays out a plan to curb what it calls 'abortion tourism,' or instances in which women must travel to other states to seek medical care that is banned in their home state. It recommends the CDC implement mandatory data collection for all abortions nationwide - literally tracking and surveilling women who choose to get abortions. The plan also threatens to cut funding to any state that resists such surveillance."

HuffPost: "There is evidence that, if elected, Trump and his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), would permit or even encourage the type of Orwellian surveillance described in Project 2025. For one, Trump has already expressed clear disinterest in preventing conservative states from enacting draconian policies on abortion and pregnancy."

Rolling Stone: "Elsewhere, Severino complains that the CDC's 'abortion surveillance' system is 'woefully inadequate,' and proposes turning the agency into a kind of snitch network that would collect data about who had abortions and where - and punish any states that refuse to share that information. "Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother's state of residence, and by what method," Severino writes."

The Independent: "He has also endorsed any conservative state government push to monitor womens' pregnancies in past interviews. In two separate instances this year, Trump implied that he would not oppose any Republican push to level such surveillance against pregnant women."

Mother Jones: "Add to that his recent support for the use of patients' medical records by the police to investigate people who travel out of state for abortions. In a letter sent in June 2023 to the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Vance and 29 other Republican lawmakersurged HHS to reverse course on its recently finalized rule that protected patients' reproductive healthcare information from law enforcement, particularly when patients travel to access lawful abortion care."

Rolling Stone: "Trump and his vice presidential pick are now both saying abortion should be left up to the states, even though they both previously signaled support for national bans. They have also, alarmingly, both suggested they would be OK with states moving to surveil women's pregnancies. […] Vance, an Ohio senator, has gone further. Last summer, he [Vance] signed onto a congressional letter calling on the Biden administration to withdraw a draft rule designed to prevent police in states with abortion bans from using personal health information to track and potentially charge people who travel to other states for abortion care."

Trump and Republicans want to punish women. Following Trump's anti-freedom playbook, Texas Republicans recently approved a dangerous, party platform that would deem abortion "homicide," open the door to the death penalty for women seeking abortion, and end IVF treatments if enacted into law.

Trump: "There has to be some form of punishment [for women who have an abortion]."

Washington Post: "Asked whether doctors who provide abortions should be punished, Trump allowed that certain states could do that."

HuffPost:"The Republican Party of Texas is considering a platform that appears to endorse the death penalty for abortion providers and patients.

"The GOP platform calls for an 'equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization,' and later states that 'abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide.' The phrase 'equal protection of the law' is used in the anti-choice movement to define abortion as homicide, and criminalizes abortion physicians and patients as murderers."

Houston Chronicle: "The GOP platform also calls for the state to ban abortion medication and enforce criminal penalties against companies selling them online. And it supports prohibitions on government funding and transportation for women to leave the state to get abortions."

Austin American Statesman: "Here's what the Texas party's platform says: 'We urge lawmakers to enact legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization, because abortion violates the United States Constitution by denying such persons the equal protection of the law.'

"Another section declares, 'Abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide.'"

Texas Public Radio: "Calls for even stricter abortion laws in first Texas GOP convention since Roe's overturn"

Rolling Stone: "In Texas, the state GOP ratified a new platform that promises 'equal protection for the preborn,' and asserts fertilized eggs are entitled to 'the right to life … from the moment of fertilization.'

"As the writer and activist Jessica Valenti has pointed out, that language equates the destruction of embryos with murder. If enacted into policy, it would effectively criminalize anyone who seeks an abortion, in addition to ending IVF access in one the most populous states in the country."

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