The Stakes for Abortion Rights, from the Head of Planned Parenthood

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Speaker 4 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Speaker 2 Ever since the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, voters have been pushing back hard.

Speaker 2 Democrats outperformed expectations in the 2022 midterms, and every ballot measure that's been up for a vote, even in the red state of Kansas, has gone for reproductive choice.

Speaker 2 More voters than ever before call abortion their most important issue, especially women under 30. If Kamala Harris prevails in the election, it will likely be on the strength of the pro-choice vote.

Speaker 2 Donald Trump is frantically backpedaling from his success in overturning Roe. but he doesn't seem to be on the same page as his running mate, J.D.

Speaker 2 Vance, who recently called for defunding Planned Parenthood.

Speaker 2 The president and CEO of Planned Parenthood is Alexis McGill Johnson, and the group is spending upwards of $40 million in this election to try to secure abortion rights once again.

Speaker 2 Just a few days ago, just a while back, Senator J.D. Vance, the vice presidential nominee for the Republicans, said this.

Speaker 2 On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, I mean, our view is we don't think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions.

Speaker 2 That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around, and it will remain a consistent view.

Speaker 2 What do you make of the Republican ticket rolling out this idea really late in the campaign

Speaker 2 while kind of hedging on what its own history is on this issue?

Speaker 2 Well, you know.

Speaker 5 The opposition has been trying to defund Planned Parenthood for a long time. That is just one of the tactics in their book.

Speaker 5 You know, I sit and I listen to the guy who is trying to shame childless cat ladies and curry more favor with the American public by saying, let's just take away health care from the millions of Americans who come to Planned Parenthood health centers every single day for STI testing and birth control and access to life-saving breast cancer.

Speaker 5 Like, is that really your strategy?

Speaker 2 What would that mean in dollar and cents terms and what would it mean for the people that benefit from Planned Parenthood?

Speaker 5 So defunding Planned Parenthood would mean taking away

Speaker 5 access to Medicaid reimbursements. It would mean

Speaker 5 trying to continue to find ways to make us spend money through litigation. All of that is impacting the almost 2 million patients that come to Planned Parenthood every single year.

Speaker 5 It would be devastating, of course.

Speaker 2 You watched the vice presidential debate?

Speaker 5 I did.

Speaker 2 So Vance said this about abortion. We've got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people's trust back on this issue where they frankly just don't trust us.

Speaker 2 That was a very, very weird thing to say. No, it is weird.

Speaker 5 I know. I know that's like the word of the election, but it is kind of weird.

Speaker 2 What's it masking?

Speaker 5 I don't know, some kind of surprise that they think we still actually care about our fundamental freedoms.

Speaker 5 You know, I think it's probably one of the number one questions I get often from journalists is, do you think that, you know, women still care about abortion this cycle?

Speaker 5 And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like they just took it away two years ago and still we're watching the impact.

Speaker 5 So I think it is masking this just complete surprise that we are still up in arms, that we are no longer equal in the eyes of the Constitution.

Speaker 2 You've been president-CEO of Planned Parenthood now for five years.

Speaker 5 For five years. I stepped in during a transition in 2019 as acting president and I became permanent president the following year.

Speaker 2 Now, a lot's changed since then and it's been reported that Planned Parenthood is spending $40 million on this election cycle. Correct.
What's the $40 million for?

Speaker 5 The $40 million

Speaker 5 that is being spent in the action fund and our Planned Parenthood votes work is to communicate to the 19 million people who show up and take action every single week on behalf of Planned Parenthood, on behalf of fighting for reproductive freedom.

Speaker 5 It's to focus on ensuring that not only do we see a Harris walls in the White House, but that a future President Harris also has a reproductive freedom majority so that she can govern and that we can fight to get

Speaker 5 restore all of the protections for reproductive freedom.

Speaker 2 What is the, for Planned Parenthood, what's on the line this time around?

Speaker 5 This is the first presidential election since the Dobbs decision, right? And you have seen since 22, every time reproductive freedom has been on the ballot, we have won.

Speaker 5 And that is because of the outrage, the horror of what is happening to women across this country. Just a few weeks ago, we learned the names of Amber Thurman and Candy Miller.

Speaker 5 Now we know that abortion bans don't stop people from seeking access to abortion. Abortion bans have made pregnancy more dangerous.

Speaker 5 And so we are involved as deeply as we are because we believe that electing Kamala Harris and Tim Waldz is key to restoring reproductive freedom, to getting federal legislation that will allow us to end this nightmare.

Speaker 2 Your predecessor at Planned Parenthood appeared uneasy with the partisan politics that Planned Parenthood had been comfortable with and wanted to shift the focus a bit, I think this is fair, away from abortion and then was pushed out of leadership less than a year later.

Speaker 2 You're taking a very different approach.

Speaker 5 So I may disagree slightly with the characterization. I think that

Speaker 5 Planned Parenthood has always been about healthcare, right? We are the nation's largest sexual and reproductive health care provider. And the reality is healthcare is politicized.

Speaker 5 You don't ask United Healthcare to end its lobbying arm, right? In Washington, D.C.

Speaker 5 You don't ask that of any major, you know, Walgreens or CVS because they understand how important it is to engage in policy and politics in order to protect the care that they provide.

Speaker 5 And I think that my position, particularly in this moment, is that politics got us into this situation. Abortion is not a partisan issue.

Speaker 5 There is no way we would have won in Kansas and Kentucky and Montana and Ohio and Michigan, all of those ballot initiatives, if you were not bringing along Republican and Independents into the conversation, right, and uniting them, because it is across the board.

Speaker 5 That's what all the polling indicates. So I don't see this as a partisan issue.

Speaker 2 Now, the Dobbs decision undid Roe versus Wade.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 even if the Democrats win, you still have the court that you have. What can a Harris administration do within the realm of the likely Congress that is probably at best split?

Speaker 5 Well, the goal is to get to a trifecta, right? A reproductive freedom majority in the, you know, in the House.

Speaker 2 And if that happens,

Speaker 2 what can happen?

Speaker 5 Federal legislation to restore reproductive freedom.

Speaker 5 It should not be the case, for example, that I go to visit my mother in Georgia and with my daughters, and all of a sudden I'm less free there than I am when we wake up here in New York City.

Speaker 5 And so the importance of having federal legislation to protect those freedoms and to restore that is going to be paramount. That's what we're working towards.

Speaker 5 And we also know that it is quite possible that federal legislation could be contested and brought up to the court, but we would be forcing the court to take away this right again and again, and we would be forcing people to bring that case when we know where the American public is.

Speaker 2 Let's say you don't win the trifecta. In fact, the likelihood is you don't, that the Democrats do not have both houses of Congress and the White House.

Speaker 2 If they do win the White House, Democrats win the White House in

Speaker 2 one House of Congress, one chamber of Congress, what's the best that can happen?

Speaker 5 Look, I think there still is a lot that we can do in, that the vice president can do in supporting and bringing more protections to things like family planning, more protections to things like maternal mortality, right?

Speaker 5 You know, the other kind of concurrent crises that are happening along with the public health crisis of losing abortion access. And so there are a lot of conversations that can be had.

Speaker 5 And at the end of the day, it will be very, very close.

Speaker 5 Whatever the margin is, we know we won't get to a 60-majority in the Senate, but it will allow us, I think, an opportunity to force some very hard votes and very hard conversations with those senators.

Speaker 2 Aaron Trevor Burrus, the stakes of this are enormous and sometimes overlooked, at least by people who are not paying attention.

Speaker 2 Stefania Taladrid, a reporter for The New Yorker, as well as ProPublica more recently, have made it quite plain

Speaker 2 that the stakes of what's happened are that people die. Yes.
Yes. Tell me a little bit more about that, our understanding of

Speaker 2 what has been the cost, the human cost of the end of Roe.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I remember right after the leak in May of 22, the leak of the Supreme Court decision about Dobbs. Lancet Medical Journal, it's a premier medical journal, the cover read, women will die.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 while we

Speaker 5 know that, while we knew that, remember we had been living a year into SB8 in Texas and we were seeing, it was the first time I was hearing stories about patients being sent to parking lots and hospitals to wait for sepsis before doctors would provide the care.

Speaker 5 you knew that

Speaker 5 that the human costs would happen soon after, whether or not we'd be able to tie the abortion bans to the actual, to the deaths that we would see, or we knew we would have to wait until the maternal morbidity data was collected to actually be able to make the argument.

Speaker 5 To now have

Speaker 5 names of

Speaker 5 women like Amber Thurman and Candy Miller to know their stories, right? Their, you know, leaving behind families, leaving behind children. The fear that they had.

Speaker 5 One was afraid to go to the hospital when she knew something was wrong because she feared criminalization,

Speaker 5 getting health care. The other went to the hospital and was essentially denied care until it was too late.
And so I do think that the

Speaker 5 devastating consequences, which I'm sure extend beyond Amber and Candy, of course they do. Those are the only ones we know about.
It really puts into perspective how horrific these bands are.

Speaker 2 I'm speaking with Alexis McGill Johnson of Planned Parenthood, and we'll continue in a moment.

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Speaker 2 I found it very interesting when you spoke at the Democratic National Convention. You said, we cannot call ourselves a free nation when women are not free.

Speaker 2 And you also chose to highlight the story of a woman who sought an abortion, not because of a life or death situation, which is what Kamala Harris did in the debate, but in your words, because she, quote, realized that she was pregnant and didn't want to be.

Speaker 2 Why was that the story you chose to highlight?

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 5 being able to elect what you want to do with your body is fundamental to freedom. And if I am free and equal,

Speaker 5 I should be able to speak about an elective abortion.

Speaker 2 I ask that not because I object to you. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 What I'm saying is that it's very interesting to watch even politicians that one knows to be pro-choice that they pick as examples

Speaker 2 when there is a life and death situation, as opposed to someone who doesn't choose to.

Speaker 5 Because the reality is the majority of people who seek access to abortion are making these decisions because they do want to have an abortion, because they have made some decision around what their life plan is, and they do not see having a child in whatever particular moment as

Speaker 5 where they would like to go. The majority of people who seek access to abortion are already parents.

Speaker 5 So they have full sense of what that means in terms of the impact to their family and to their lives and their communities.

Speaker 5 And so I think it is actually very important to normalize the circumstances of elective abortion because they are, in fact, you know, a great majority of the decisions that people are making.

Speaker 5 And quite frankly, honestly, it's no one's business. That was the other point, right?

Speaker 2 It's literally no one's business. As a policy matter,

Speaker 2 President Biden and Vice President Harris didn't differ. But as a matter of emotion and emphasis,

Speaker 2 they did.

Speaker 2 President Biden, in fact, had a reference to abortion in one major speech, and he excised it.

Speaker 2 Whereas Vice President Harris has had a long record on this issue. What do you make of her rhetoric around the issue of abortion access?

Speaker 5 Without question, the Vice President is the most kind of vocal and profound elected speaking about abortion

Speaker 5 as a surrogate on the issue, right? She is the one who took this on right after Dobbs.

Speaker 5 She is the one who traveled around the country, met with hundreds of state legislatures and providers and patients to really understand full circle what the impact was.

Speaker 5 She is the first sitting vice president or president to come to a Planned Parenthood Health Center, to come to an abortion clinic and really understand the conversations that have been happening on the ground.

Speaker 9 And please do understand that when we talk about a clinic such as this, it is absolutely about health care and reproductive health care. So everyone get ready for the language.

Speaker 2 Uterus.

Speaker 9 That part of the body needs a lot of medical care from time to time.

Speaker 5 And I think

Speaker 5 the marked difference isn't just her ability to wrap her arms around it. It's the fact that she brings so much of her lived experience, her professional lived experience, into the conversation.

Speaker 5 So you'll hear her talk about prosecuting sexual assault cases and her own personal experiences growing up.

Speaker 5 You'll hear her talking about what it took to pull together the momnibus bill to focus focus on maternal mortality and the wide range of abortion circumstances and pregnancy-related circumstances.

Speaker 5 You heard her grilling Justice Kavanaugh, right,

Speaker 5 to say,

Speaker 5 what other procedure for men, right, is as heavily regulated and legislated? Like, can we name one, right? No, because there aren't any.

Speaker 5 And we've seen her, I think, as a vice president, really sit strongly with movement leaders and with other party leaders and corporate leaders to talk about the broad impact.

Speaker 2 That's her best issue. She's not elected.
100%.

Speaker 2 But it's her best issue, and then her ability to move the dial legislatively, if and when she's elected,

Speaker 2 is at best contingent.

Speaker 2 Is there a possibility that could lead to a great deal of disappointment?

Speaker 5 Look, I think that's our job. Our job is to get her a governing majority and ensure that we get the federal legislation that she can sign.

Speaker 5 And I think we have to continue to explain to Americans that she is the best on this issue. We know she will fight and we know she will sign legislation.
And look,

Speaker 5 we are very sober around the long-term plan, right? That we didn't get here overnight. We didn't get here, you know, simply because of the Trump administration issued in these abortion bans.

Speaker 5 This was a long-term strategy of taking over state houses, taking over federal judiciary, and got expedited literally in four years under the Trump Trump administration. And so we know who to blame.

Speaker 5 And we also know that to do the work, it will require us to stay vigilant state by state, living room by living room.

Speaker 2 What would happen with the new Trump administration?

Speaker 5 Well, you know.

Speaker 2 For the record, your eyebrows are soaring.

Speaker 2 Your hands are now shaking.

Speaker 5 My head's on fire.

Speaker 5 Just definitely chalk that up to post-traumatic stress.

Speaker 2 Or pre-traumatic stress.

Speaker 5 Pre-traumatic Pre-traumatic stress, exactly. Look, I mean, they've laid it out in Project 2025, right?

Speaker 5 How confident do you have to be to lay out a 900-page playbook on what you would do on so many issues, but particularly on issues of reproductive freedom we're talking about?

Speaker 2 For the record, he's disingenuously or not disavowed.

Speaker 2 Project 2025.

Speaker 5 Again, he does two things, right? He says he's disavowing it.

Speaker 2 Are you saying he's lying?

Speaker 5 But right before that, he also says, you know, this is really bad for us. So now I'm going going to disavow it.

Speaker 5 So like we're watching him have these mechanations in public, which is exactly why I might say, yes, he's being disingenuous at best.

Speaker 2 What do you think he would do? Or what do you think he could do with control of Congress?

Speaker 5 Well, what Project 2025 would do would be you couldn't affect

Speaker 5 a nationwide ban, not just through federal legislation, right? But by enforcing the Comstock Law. And I think that

Speaker 5 the Comstock Law, which is a 1800s law against pornography, prohibiting the

Speaker 5 kind of distribution through the mail of pornographic products.

Speaker 5 He would likely direct the DOJ to

Speaker 2 abortion. To

Speaker 2 include

Speaker 5 to include something like Mifopristone in that broad sweeping, yes, in the suite of things that

Speaker 5 would be considered obscene. Yes, exactly.
Mifopristone. So, again, effectively a nationwide abortion ban given that more than half of abortions are done through Mifopristone.

Speaker 5 The pregnancies are

Speaker 5 right, like a database of pregnant people

Speaker 5 where they could live.

Speaker 2 Sorry, a pregnancy czar?

Speaker 5 Pregnancies are, yes.

Speaker 5 That would live in, instead of Health and Human Services, which we know is HHS, I believe the new designation would be the Agency for Human Life or some sort, which could could include a pregnancy czar that would monitor pregnant people's pregnancies.

Speaker 5 Like, I say that as if that's like some dystopian

Speaker 5 nightmare, but the reality is Planned Parenthood in Missouri, there was the state health commissioner was actually tracking patient menstrual cycles.

Speaker 5 So this kind of level of surveillance and invasion of privacy into private healthcare medical decisions

Speaker 5 is work they have been testing in order to essentially codify that inequality in government agencies.

Speaker 5 Is that scary enough for you?

Speaker 2 It is, yes, it is

Speaker 2 sufficiently.

Speaker 5 Explain my eyebrows.

Speaker 2 Alexis McGill Johnson, thank you so much.

Speaker 5 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 Alexis McGill Johnson is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, the healthcare provider, as well as the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Fund, the group's lobbying arm.

Speaker 2 That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. I'm David Remnick.
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