This weekend on Velshi with MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) anchor Ali Velshi, Kathy Spillar—executive editor of Ms. and executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.)—joined to discuss a sweeping new policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that lays out a vision for reshaping American family life and rolling back women’s independence.
The same movement behind Project 2025 is now advancing a related social agenda targeting women’s autonomy, warned Velshi. “If you thought the Heritage Foundation … was finished dismantling American democracy, think again. Now they’re turning their sights even more keenly on America’s women.”
The Heritage Foundation’s new document, “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” frames falling birth rates as a national crisis, and blames feminism, women’s education and women’s economic independence. It criticizes contraception, discourages higher education for women, and proposes tax incentives designed to reward large married families while reducing support for single mothers.
Velshi summarized the underlying logic of the proposal starkly: “You cut off opportunities outside the home. You make the public sphere hostile to women’s independence. You create a system where the only viable path left for women is dependence on a man for survival. In other words, you drag the country back to a time when women had fewer choices.
“Women today have opportunities their grandmothers could only dream of. From the perspective of the new right, that’s the crisis.”
“The Game Plan of an Authoritarian Regime”
Velshi asked Spillar how people should interpret the scope of the plan.
She said the report spells out a broader political strategy. “They are determined to use whatever levers of power they have under the Trump administration—to change tax laws, to provide incentives for women to have more children, to get married younger and to stay married, even in bad relationships,” and added the proposed policies primarily target heterosexual, middle- and upper-income families.
“This is the game plan of an authoritarian regime,” she said. “It’s designed to support an authoritarian government that has control over its women—and therefore over its men as well, making men more compliant because they now have larger families who depend on them economically.”
She pointed to ongoing efforts to restrict abortion access, limit contraception and undermine voting rights as part of the same broader agenda.
“They’re doing everything they can to reduce our power—restrict our access to contraception, to abortion, to the workplace,” Spillar said. “Now they want to restrict access to education.”
“They’re Trying to Put the Genie Back in the Bottle”
Velshi also asked how advocates can help the public understand that proposals like these—often dismissed as fringe—are serious.
Spillar said awareness itself is already changing the response. “The more people find out about this—especially women—they are rejecting it. They’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and they can’t.”
The feminist movement has repeatedly adapted to attempts to roll back reproductive rights.
“At every step that they try to push us back, there is a tremendous effort by women to resist,” she said, pointing to the growing use of medication abortion, telemedicine and other ways advocates have worked to maintain access to care.
Spillar emphasized that the current moment fits into a long history of backlash against women’s rights movements. “The United States has faced coordinated backlash against women’s rights before. And every time, women have organized, resisted and reshaped the nation.”
She invoked earlier movements like the fight for suffrage and the passage of Title IX as examples of how sustained organizing has expanded women’s rights despite fierce opposition.
“The women who fought for suffrage did not stop when they were dismissed as unreasonable,” Spillar said. “The women who pushed Title IX into law did not stop when they were told girls didn’t need equal opportunities. The women who built the modern reproductive rights movement did not stop when the courts narrowed their freedoms. We will not stop now.”
The feminist movement did not create women’s desire for independence, says Spillar. It reflected it.
“They can blame feminism,” Spillar told Velshi. “But feminism and the feminist movement reflected where women were as they gained more opportunities for education and for employment, paid employment and for freedom—and they demanded more and more.”
As women gained access to education, jobs and economic independence, she explained, they organized politically to defend those opportunities. “As women gained more opportunities for education and for employment and for freedom, they demanded more and more.”
And the stakes extend far beyond women alone.
“Everybody’s rights are connected,” she said. “Men are better off today because of the feminist movement and because women have financial independence.”
At the same time, she said resistance to the current political agenda is already visible across the country.
“The resistance to this administration and the authoritarianism they are pushing is massive,” Spillar said. “We see it in the streets, in the courts and in elections.”
What Comes Next: The Equal Rights Amendment
Spillar said one of the most important protections against future rollbacks would be recognizing the Equal Rights Amendment as part of the Constitution.
“We don’t have constitutional equality for women. Without the Equal Rights Amendment, we remain vulnerable to these kinds of fits and starts by authoritarians.”
