The NPR Politics Podcast - Looking At Reproductive Rights In 2024

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

The effects of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion continue to be felt across the United States. We look at the state of reproductive rights in 2024, and what may change when President-elect Trump starts his second term in January. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and reproductive rights correspondent Elissa Nadworny.The podcast is produced by Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You care about what's happening in the world. Let State of the World from NPR keep you informed. Each day we transport you to a different point on the globe and introduce you to the people living world events. We don't just tell you world news, we take you there. And you can make this journey while you're doing the dishes or driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR. Vital international stories every day. Hello, this is Mateo. I'm watching the sunrise from the summit of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States. This podcast was recorded at 1 0 5 PM Eastern time on Tuesday, December 17th, 2024.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will hopefully be down the mountain after five days in the back country. Here's the show. but I will hopefully be down the mountain after five days in the backcountry. Here's the show. Wow, congratulations. Sounds beautiful. Get home safe. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent. And Alyssa Nadwarni is with us. She covers reproductive rights for NPR. Welcome back, Alyssa. Happy to be here. On today's show, we're talking about reproductive rights, what happened in 2024, and what could be coming in 2025. Alyssa, I want to start with President-elect Donald Trump.

One of the things we've reported on a lot this year was his mixed messages on abortion. Remind us, what has he said he wants to do? Well, I mean, I think a lot of people in the abortion space are kind of looking at what Trump did last presidency and kind of less about what he's actually said he's gonna do in this next one. Yeah, and you know, Mara, on the campaign trail, Trump, he said he wants to leave abortion to the states, but he also bragged about being the person who got Roe v. Wade overturned by appointing those conservative

Supreme Court justices. He also, in his first administration, enacted policies that reduced funding for reproductive health care for groups like Planned Parenthood who perform abortions. What can we learn so far from Trump's cabinet nominations for his second term about how he might handle abortion this time? Well, I actually think that his cabinet is much less important than him because everything in a Trump administration is very Trump-centric. But yes, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services nominee, supports abortion rights.

But I think that the policy on abortion will be coming from the president himself and the political trick for anybody dealing with a difficult issue is to convince two groups holding diametrically opposite views that you're with both of them and Trump has actually accomplished that by as you said boasting about appointing the conservative Supreme Court justices that overturned row But he's also spent the entire campaign saying, it's now up to the states. He wouldn't sign a national abortion ban. And you don't have anything to worry about. All of the changes on abortion have basically been completed.

If that will hold, we don't know. It seems like such a strange and interesting time for the anti-abortion rights movement. On the one hand, in the last few years, they've seen these enormous victories, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. At the same time, I mean, Alyssa, the number of abortions in the U.S. is actually higher, right? That's right.

Since Dobbs, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions has grown, and that's mostly due to the rise of telehealth. So you can now access doctors on the internet over text message to get abortion pills sent to your home. I think the rise in the number of abortions has really made anti-abortion groups kind of stand up and put together plans and roadmaps for President Trump on kind of like what to do next. You know, this fight isn't over.

Like Dobbs wasn't the end for the anti-abortion movement. Well, Alyssa, how much of the rise in abortion is not just telehealth and mailing things through the mail, but the prevalence of chemical abortions or medical abortions overall? In other words, abortions are more and more performed by taking a pill or a set of pills than they are with some kind of a procedure in a doctor's office, is that correct? So yeah, the majority of abortions happen

through medication, but I would say that the rise from DOBS is probably some in part due to the expansion of medication, but mostly just due to the way that you can get medication. I mean, the experts that I've talked to who are tracking this stuff say say really telehealth is huge because that was expanded during the pandemic. That's kind of how we're seeing this number tick up even with, you know, places like Florida, where the number of abortions in state has

gone way, way down. I mean, this is a place where the new administration could take some action. Is it not Alyssa? Yes, absolutely Sarah. I think this is really gonna be kind of the next frontier for the anti-abortion movement. This is where the administration could come in with kind of rolling back some of the FDA guidelines that expanded sending medication through the mail. But it's also a place where states are starting to like pass telehealth bans or pass restrictions

against the medication. And Alyssa, remind us, I mean, there was that high profile litigation that started in Texas that I know I covered and I think you and some of our other colleagues have covered different pieces of it that worked its way to the Supreme Court. This was the anti-abortion group that was trying to essentially reverse the approval of the abortion pill, Mifopristone. They didn't succeed, but as you said, many of these groups still have their eye on this medication

because it is such a dominant method for abortion in this country. What are some of the levers that the new administration could pull? What are some of the ways they could restrict access in theory? Well, the big one of course is through Health and Human Services and the FDA. The FDA could essentially roll back some of their expanded access to medication. The other way that they

could do that is through something called the Comstock Act, which is an 1800s anti-obscenity law that essentially could stop the flow of things used in an abortion. So that would include things like medication, that would include things like medical supplies for even a surgical abortion. The main thing that the administration can do is interpret kind of current laws and current regulations on the books. The Biden administration basically chose not to enforce those laws and a new Trump administration could change their stance. And Mara, I'm curious, it seems that President-elect Trump will have pressure from a variety of opposing directions on this issue. On the one hand, anti-abortion activists are well

aware that they have been crucial to both of his elections. At the same time, he seems to be well aware that this is not a popular issue for Republicans at this point after the overturning of Roe v. Wade No, not at all. As a matter of fact, he's blamed the anti-abortion movement for losses in the midterms He considered it a big political headache and that's why he sent the message to the anti-abortion forces stand down stop Advocating publicly for a national ban He had to go so far as to say he wouldn't sign one if it came to his desk. So I think that they're going to have to step aside.

Trump controls the Republican Party, lock, stock and barrel. They can focus their attentions on the states. But I can't imagine that some kind of a federal law or regulation that would in effect ban abortion will be able to happen during the Trump administration It's time for a break. We'll have more in just a moment You care about what's happening in the world? Let's state of the world from NPR keep you informed each day We transport you to a different point on the globe and introduce you to the people living world events

We don't just tell you world news We take you there and you can news, we take you there. And you can make this journey while you're doing the dishes or driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR, vital international stories every day. Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. And before we get back to the show, we want to say a big thank you to our listeners. Everything we've been able to do this past year is because of your support. But our work continues. A new administration is preparing to take office with huge consequences for the country. You can count on the NPR Politics Podcast to be here with reporting and analysis

to tell you what's happening and explain what it all means. With your help, we can keep doing this work. If you already give to your local station or have been enjoying NPR+, we appreciate it. If you haven't heard of NPR+, it's an easy way for podcast listeners like you to support us. For a small recurring donation, NPR Plus listeners get to hear this and over 25 other NPR shows sponsor free. And you get other perks too, like bonus episodes, even discounts at the NPR shop. You get all that with Plus. And you'll know you're supporting our mission

of creating a more informed public. Go to plus.npr.org to learn more. And thank you. And we're back. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly, as we've said, tried to avoid the abortion issue by stressing that he would leave it to the states. And that is where a lot of regulation of abortion happens. You know, Republicans will control Congress, but likely not by a large enough margin to pass a national abortion ban. And as we said, Trump

has said he wouldn't sign one. Alyssa, voters in several states in the 2024 election did have a chance to weigh in directly on the abortion issue. There were multiple ballot measures on the subject this year. Remind us if you could just how did those turn out? Well, you know, most states that considered abortion rights amendments approved them. Seven either expanded or cemented abortion access into their state constitutions. It failed in three places.

First was Florida, that was one a lot of folks were watching because they had to reach a 60% threshold in order to pass. They had a big majority, 57%, but not quite that 60%, and so that failed there. In South Dakota, which has a near total abortion ban, their proposed amendment would have allowed abortions in the first trimester, about 12 weeks. And, you know, abortion rights groups said that it didn't go far enough, they didn't really fund it,

it failed there. And then in Nebraska, there was an initiative to essentially expand access up to viability, and that failed. Nebraska's kind of a little weird. There were two competing initiatives there. So voters actually did approve an amendment that prohibited abortion after the first trimester and then the one that failed was the one that protected it up to viability. So a little confusing for voters to have two. But still big picture. Most of them passed and that was a continuation really of the pattern we've been seeing since the Dubs decision. In one of the most interesting results of this election on that note, I thought was the gap between Vice President Kamala Harris's performance in many of these states in the performance of the abortion rights measures. So in other words, in a lot of cases,

voters were voting for abortion rights while also voting for Trump. Mara, what does that suggest about how voters are thinking about all of these issues, you know, that they have to think about when they cast a ballot for the president? Well, they're compartmentalizing them. The theory of the case of the Harris campaign was that these pro-choice referenda would bring out voters who would vote for Kamala Harris. Well, guess what? Most of them won, some of them won by curvature of the earth. So they won almost everywhere and helped Kamala Harris almost nowhere.

They just didn't turn around and vote for her. Trump convinced them that voters, including many suburban women, could have it both ways. They could vote for him and they could vote for abortion rights. Yeah, but Democrats banked on this issue in a way that, as you said, clearly didn't pan out for them in the election. No, the referenda won. They were right that these were popular initiatives, but it didn't carry over. It didn't bring out voters that otherwise would vote for Kamala Harris. They

thought that all those suburban pro-choice women would come out and they would understand that Kamala Harris was the pro-choice candidate. But Trump convinced them that they could have it both ways. They could vote for him and they didn't have to worry about abortion rights being endangered because then they could turn around and vote for the referenda in their state. I mean, we've talked about how this issue has shifted for Republicans, putting them on the defensive in many cases, but it seems like Democrats can't bank on this the way that they have been. How might this shift the way that they navigate the politics around abortion going forward?

Well, they were right about one thing, that a majority of voters support abortion rights. And the thing they were wrong about was that getting voters out who support abortion rights would help their candidate. It just didn't carry over to Kamala Harris. But they certainly are on the winning side of abortion rights. Almost everywhere it was on the ballot, it won. And I don't think that they shift their stance on abortion rights at all going forward, but they have to figure out why it didn't help her. As we continue to talk about the states and the role the states play in this issue,

what else will you be watching for as many states reconvene their legislative sessions in the new year? Well, one of the things I'm going to be watching is whether state lawmakers try and ask this question of abortion rights on the ballot again. So Missouri is a great example. I was just there.

They passed a constitutional amendment expanding abortion access. You know, they're still waiting to see if that's going to actually translate to clinics. There's several laws on the books there that include a near total abortion ban plus waiting periods and other restrictions. So they actually haven't been able to even implement that amendment in the sense that abortions aren't really happening in the state until a judge says, hey, you can't enforce those laws currently on the books. And Republican lawmakers I talked to there are actually already proposing a vote for

next year. So they want to ask that question to voters again and see if they can get that amendment overturned. So I'm gonna be watching that. The other thing I'm gonna be watching is how states are restricting things like travel. So Idaho, Tennessee, they passed laws prohibiting minors from crossing state lines to access abortion care. I'm gonna be watching the personhood movement,

you know, in Alabama, a judge there, essentially said an embryo should be treated as a person and that kind of really deregulated and kind of messed up IVF and had a big backlash in that state. So I'm going to be watching for specific things like that, Sarah. Alissa, are we seeing what people were predicting when Roe was overturned, that you're going to have two different Americas. You're gonna have states where abortion

is effectively banned completely and states where it's not. Absolutely, that's what abortion access is like in America right now. It's a patchwork. One state is near total ban. 15 minutes across the state border has access up to 24 weeks.

We are gonna leave it there for today. Alyssa Nadworni, thanks for being here. You bet. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen to this podcast, sponsor free on Amazon Music with a Prime membership or any podcast app by subscribing to NPR Politics Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.