‘A Whopper of a Lie’: Project 2025 Contributor Calls Out Tim Walz’s ‘Pregnancy Registry’ Debate Claim

Minnesota governor Tim Walz claimed during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate that a second Trump administration would implement a “registry of pregnancies” to track women and prevent them from getting abortions, a policy proposal Walz falsely attributed to the Heritage Foundation’s much-maligned Project 2025.

Roger Severino, the author of the section that Walz referenced to denounce the conservative playbook, said the claim is “a whopper of a lie.” Project 2025 advocates for anonymous reporting of all abortions and miscarriages in the U.S., but not pregnancies — and, contrary to Walz’s dire implication, the data could not be used to identify any individual women.

“Walz is desperate to change the subject from the issues to try to scare people,” Severino told National Review. “It’s ludicrous for him to have suggested that it be a pregnancy registry when HIPAA prevents any personally identifiable health information from being disclosed without a court order.”

Severino served as the director of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 to 2021. The former Trump administration official, now the vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, has since contributed to fleshing out Project 2025’s health policies.

In the “General Welfare” section of the 922-page document, Severino recommends that 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 emphasized in a post on social media that the collected data would be anonymous, which is what the majority of states already do.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention currently compiles abortion and miscarriage statistics from 47 states without participation from California, Maryland, and New Hampshire. States voluntarily submit such data to the CDC and are not required to do so.

It’s unclear why California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not compile abortion and miscarriage data, but Severino thinks at least two of those states “want to hide the number because it’s embarrassing to have such high abortion rates.”

California racked up 178,420 abortions in 2023, the highest total of abortions in the U.S. last year, according to the Guttmacher’s Institute’s estimates. Maryland had 38,420 abortions, and New Hampshire had 2,450. The national abortion rate increased by 11 percent since 2020, even after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

Severino says the CDC should require the data from all 50 states to determine the abortion death rate in addition to tracking complications during the procedures and cases of children being born alive after abortions.

HHS is also advised under Project 2025’s guidelines to distinguish between abortion and miscarriage statistics, separating the data into four separate categories: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally lead to a child’s death, such as chemotherapy; stillbirths; and medically induced abortion.

“Abortion should be clearly defined as only those procedures that intentionally end an unborn child’s life,” Severino writes. “Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.”

During the CBS News debate, Walz tried to tie his opponents, Senator J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) and former president Donald Trump, to Project 2025 — which Trump himself has disavowed even though several officials from his administration have worked on the policy agenda. Contrary to Walz’s “pregnancy registry” point, there is no evidence the Republican ticket wants to register pregnancies across the country.

Walz previously spread the inaccurate claim at his rallies last month. “Think about what they’re saying in Project 2025. You’re going to have to register with a new federal agency when you get pregnant? This is personal, people,” he said in Superior, Wis. Walz made a similar statement three days later in Asheville, N.C.

Vice President Kamala Harris also mentioned the Project 2025 section about collecting abortion and miscarriage data in her Democratic National Convention speech on August 22. Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions,” Harris said. She added that Republicans “are out of their minds.”

Severino pointed out that Walz is “hypocritical” and “dishonest” when talking about registering pregnancies because Minnesota collects data on miscarriages, which the state’s health department labeled “spontaneous abortions” in a 2022 report. “So it runs a ‘miscarriage registry’ according to his logic,” Severino posted on X.

Multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, fact-checked Walz’s claim. Severino said he felt vindicated when the Times called the governor’s statement “false.”

Project 2025 has become a point of attack for the Harris-Walz campaign and elected Democrats in recent weeks. In September, the Democratic presidential campaign released an ad that claims the Heritage-backed initiative would “require states to monitor women’s pregnancies.” Harris then repeated that lie during the ABC News presidential debate on September 10, saying Trump will mandate the monitoring of pregnancies and miscarriages.

Democrats launched attack ads against Project 2025 as far back as July. At the time, the Democratic National Committee funded a billboard campaign in ten cities within battleground states across the U.S. The move came after Trump tried to distance himself from the high-profile plan.

Since then, the leadership of Project 2025 has experienced fallout with Heritage after Paul Dans stepped down from overseeing the project in July. His departure appeared amicable at first, but it resurfaced in the media on Friday when RealClearPolitics reported that Dans was fired over professional misconduct and mistreatment of colleagues. Heritage confirmed the news.

Dans claims he’s being “scapegoated” for the public-relations failures around Project 2025. In an interview with the Times last month, he criticized top campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles for their handling of Trump’s campaign in the close race against Harris.

When asked by National Review about the controversies and fallout surrounding Project 2025, Severino said the policy initiative is not affiliated with any campaign and that it is merely committed to promoting common-sense recommendations.

“The radical left would, instead of debating the ideas in Project 2025, lie about them for crass political purposes,” he concluded.