What A Day - Abortion Access In Trump's America 2.0

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has long been a pusher of junk science, especially when it comes to research around vaccines and autism. So it should come as no surprise that he appears open to revisiting the decades-old FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, at least in part based on a report from a conservative think tank that was neither peer-reviewed, nor published in a medical journal. What the report in question conveniently contradicts more than 100 peer-reviewed studies that show mifepristone is safe to use and effective. Jessica Valenti, author of book ‘Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lives, And The Truths We Use To Win,’ joins us to talk about the state of reproductive rights in the U.S. with President Donald Trump is back in power.And in headlines: Trump again walked back his threats for steep tariffs on the European Union, Russia unleashed another massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine, and Republican Senators throw cold water on the House version of Trump’s spending and tax plan — a.k.a. the Big Beautiful Bill.Show Notes:Check out Jessica's book –https://tinyurl.com/2zs7jfszSubscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Tuesday, May 27th. I'm Jane Coaston and this is What It Ate, the show that helps you enjoy your holiday weekend and didn't spend any time online so you don't know about anything involving the wife of the president of France because life is just better that way. On today's show, President Donald Trump threatens more tariffs than backtracks. Again! And Russia unleashes another massive drone and missile strike on Ukraine. But let's start with reproductive rights in America and the creative ways the Republican Party has sought to undermine them. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked the Food and Drug Administration

earlier this month to review its decades-old approval of Mifepristone, a drug that can end early-stage pregnancies. He did so in light of a report from the Ethics and Public Policy Center or EPPC, a conservative think tank that creatively entitled its report, The Abortion Pill Harms Women. The report argues that adverse events caused by Mephypristone are 22 times more likely than the FDA currently recognizes. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley asked RFK Jr. about the report in a Senate health hearing earlier this month. Don't you think that this new data shows that the need to do a review is in fact very pressing. And it's alarming and clearly it indicates that at very least the label should be changed. I've asked Marty McCary, who's the director of FDA,

to do a complete review and to report back. Good. It's important to mention that the report was neither peer-reviewed nor published in an academic or scientific journal. It also contradicts over 100 peer-reviewed nor published in an academic or scientific journal. It also contradicts over 100 peer-reviewed studies that have shown the abortion pill to be safe. In fact, some research shows that the pill is safer than Tylenol and Viagra.

And let's be real here. Even if Mipha Pristone made women's hair grow faster and also, I don't know, eliminated carbon from the atmosphere, I'm guessing that the EPPC, whose stated goal is to quote, apply the riches of the Christian and Jewish traditions to contemporary problems, might still have a problem with it. But late last year, three red states, Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri, brought a lawsuit against the FDA, arguing that it should prohibit telehealth access to Mipha Pristone. The pill has accounted for more than 60% of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The states brought their case to a United States District Court in Texas, a venue the Trump administration says is inappropriate for their complaint. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kozmarek to drop the case. By taking issue with the suit's venue, the Trump administration was able to weigh in on the case without making a judgment on abortion itself. President Trump has consistently sidestepped the issue of reproductive rights, repeatedly saying on the campaign trail that he would leave abortion to the states, but RFK Jr. says he thinks that any policy changes on Mifflipristoen would ultimately come from the White House. To help us make sense of Mifflipristoin and more

and the fight over abortion in the United States, I spoke to Jessica Valenti, the author of Abortion, Our Bodies, Their Lives, and the Truths We Use to Win. Jessica, welcome to What a Day! Thank you for having me. So I want to start by talking about the case in Georgia that you wrote about recently on your sub stack where a brain-dead pregnant woman is being kept alive

at Emory University Hospital to save the life of her unborn child. Can you tell us more about what's happening? That's pretty much the gist of it. Georgia has an abortion ban and Adriana Smith's family was told that because she was pregnant when she was declared brain dead

and she was just nine weeks that they wouldn't be able to let her go. So essentially this is a woman who's being forcibly kept alive against her family's wishes because of the state's abortion ban. And obviously it sparked all sort of national and international outrage because it's such a horrific case. What's been really telling though has been the response of anti-abortion groups. There are some groups that have remained just completely silent on the case. They don't want to attach their name to this at all. There are other groups who are trying to shirk responsibility and say that the state's ban is not responsible for what is happening to Adriana, but it really

shows that they understand just how incredibly unpopular something like this is and how horrified voters are. And so they're really doing a lot to try to distance themselves from what's happening in Georgia. But this is what happens when you have fetal personhood laws, right? Right. I want to get into that because are there other states that are currently fighting for their ability to do this? Pretty much every anti-abortion state has some sort of attempt to get fetal personhood on the books if they don't already. There are a lot of states who have some sort of fetal personhood law. We've seen in Alabama, for example, women who are pregnant, who have

been arrested if they are suspected of using drugs, they're putting them in jail to protect the life of the fetus preemptively. This sort of thing is happening all over the place. In Kansas, they want child support to start at conception. And this is like a very common tactic with Republicans. They'll say this is something to help women and families, but in reality, it has nothing to do with child support. It has to do with codifying that fetal personhood. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice asked a Texas judge to toss a case brought by Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas that sought to cut off access to the abortion pill Mipha

Prisstone. The DOJ said there was no reason the case should be filed in Texas. I think I can guess, but why was it filed in Texas? It was filed in Texas because there is a judge there, Matthew Kaczmarek, who is extremely, extremely anti-abortion. All of these states, all of these anti-abortion groups really love to get their cases in front of him because they know exactly what's going to happen. And so they've been putting a lot of Miffliprstone cases in front of this particular judge. But what is so interesting to me is the response to

the DOJ's request was sort of this idea that, oh, look, the Trump administration is defending Miffl-Pristone. Isn't this great? And the Trump administration, again, knowing that abortion bans are incredibly unpopular, really did try to milk that as much as possible. But in reality, what they were really trying to do was get a legal precedent that says states can't intervene in FDA Regulations so that when Trump's FDA starts to restrict myphopristone even further that pro-choice states can't sue So it's all part of this sort of like broader Anti-abortion plan one of the restrictions onfl-Prestone that these states are seeking is telehealth access to the drug.

Why does telehealth access to Miffl-Prestone matter so much? Telehealth is sort of the finger in the dam of access right now. About 20%, one in five American abortions are happening via telehealth, and that's largely because of abortion bans. So if you're in Texas, you're in Tennessee, and you want to get an abortion,

you can contact a provider who is in a shield state, a place like New York or California, and get abortion pills shipped to you. Essentially, it's been a way for abortion patients or abortion seekers to get around state bans. And so Republicans, anti-abortion groups have been really, really pissed off about this. And that's why they're putting out

all of these junk studies saying that Mifepristone is unsafe, that people are being harmed from Mifepristone when that is not true. They want to paint this picture of a dangerous abortion drug that doctors are surreptitiously like drug trafficking. They're using a lot of like really scary language for a medication that's been safely used for years. I have to add onto that very quickly, that it's funny to me because I joked somewhere that if Mifepristone were the perfect medication

and made your hair long and shiny and made you smarter, but also ensured the end of a pregnancy, I don't think that these groups would be like, oh, okay, well, carry on. They just want it safe. Oh yeah, sure. No. Amazing. It's just completely ridiculous.

I mean, it is really, they have been so afraid of this drug for so long, because when it first came around, all of a sudden people didn't have to go to clinics. They didn't have to go through this gauntlet of anti-abortion protesters. So yeah, it has nothing to do with safety. It has to do with one, it's allowing people to get abortions, and two, it's allowing people to get abortions without that right of humiliation that they like so much. Now, it's almost been three years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, declaring that Americans no longer have a constitutional right to an abortion. We've seen a lot of court filings and bans take place.

What surprises you most about this post-Roe era? I mean, I managed to be surprised every day. I always knew that we would be inundated and overwhelmed by the anti-abortion movement with anti-abortion legislation. I don't think I was fully prepared for just how big that onslaught would be. I mean, they've had 50 years to prepare for this moment and they really did prepare. They are throwing everything they can at the wall, whether it is potential travel bans or these bills that claim abortion medication and birth control are poisoning the groundwater and

therefore we need to restrict these medications to protect the environment. They are doing every single possible thing that they can on every single level, not just to make sure that their bands stay in place, but to further restrict any sort of reproductive healthcare like birth control, like IVF, they really have their eyes sort of 30 years down the line for their next goal. It's interesting you say that, because I'm not sure if we disagree exactly,

but something I've been struck by is the anti-abortion movement and the degree to which they were like the dog that caught the car on this issue. That was something that surprised me, because I think Republicans dramatically to me overestimated how much support they actually had because most Americans approve of legal abortion according

to a Pew study published last year. 63% said it should be legal in all or most cases and I'm pretty sure those numbers have gone up since Dobs. And on the campaign trail Trump kept being like abortion is an issue for the states. Now that's what he said, not what he's done. And yet Republican legislators who have supported Trump are pushing hard on this issue. Where do you think this leaves Trump and how do we see those conflicting interests manifesting right now in the fight over reproductive rights? Yeah that's a really interesting

question and this is the one thing that they were surprised by was the backlash against bans. And they really underestimated support for abortion rights and opposition to bans. And I think Trump really understands that. And so I think what we're seeing right now is very much the White House trying to sort of distance themselves. But at the same time, he's sort of letting the anti-abortion folks in his administration, all of these agencies do what they want. They're just framing it in a way that they can sell to the press, like what they're trying to do right now with this junk science report that says Mifflin Pristone is unsafe. They can say, this isn't about

abortion, this isn't about reproductive healthcare, this is just about women's safety. You wrote on your sub stock that the anti-abortion movement is more organized than ever and that Democrats need to quote, wake the fuck up. I think we've seen in many states, Democrats have recognized that this is an issue you can put on the ballot and it gets people to vote. But how else do you think Democrats should talk about this issue, be about this issue moving forward? Honestly, I think that they need to let go of the restore Roe language and this idea

that we just need to go back to the way things are. People were still being denied care under Roe. We have an opportunity, as I said, there's just tremendous, tremendous support for no government involvement in pregnancy. And every single day we're seeing stories like Adriana Smith's, like people who are being arrested for miscarriages, we're seeing stories like Adriana Smith's, like people who are being arrested for miscarriages. We're seeing stories that prove how important it is that

there is zero government involvement in pregnancy and abortion at any point. And I think Democrats have a real opportunity to talk about this proactively, to get off the defense so that when they start saying things about post-birth abortion and everything else, we can just say, no, we support families, we support medicine, we support doctors, and we think that people, pregnant people and their families are the best folks to decide what happens to them and their bodies. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you.

That was my conversation with Jessica Valenti, author of the book, Abortion, Our Bodies, Their Lives, and the Truths We Use to Win. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What A Day is brought to you by Zebiotics Pre-Alcohol. Let's face it, after a night or day with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice.

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Here's what else we're following today. I support spending cuts. I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill even with wimpy and anemic cuts if they weren't going to explode the debt. The problem is the math doesn't add up. Some Republican senators are already throwing cold water on the tax and spending plan that squeaked by in the House last week, aka President Trump's big beautiful bill. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is one of them.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, he pointed out that the tax provisions in the bill are projected to increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars over the next decade. That's according to a recent government analysis of the bill. Paul isn't a lone voice of opposition, either. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson also blasted the bill over spending worries in an interview with CNN Sunday. He said he is not afraid to buck President Trump on this. My campaign promise in 2010 and every campaign after that was to stop mortgaging our children's future. It's immoral, it's wrong, it has to stop.

And so he may not be worried about that. I am extremely worried about that. Johnson promised major changes to the bill and said there are enough Senate Republicans willing to hold it up until, quote, the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit. And I'm waiting on protein bars to rain down on me from the sky, which seems equally probable. In a party line vote, Senate Republicans can only lose three votes and still pass the measure. So all these complaints are probably not what House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to hear.

He managed to thread a proverbial needle between the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus and the more moderate blue state Republicans, but just barely. The bill passed the House early Thursday by a single vote. The House Speaker warned senators not to mess with the bill too much during an interview with CNN Sunday, because they risk losing more votes in the House.

I have a very delicate balance here, a very delicate equilibrium that we've reached over a long period of time, and it's best not to meddle with it too much. Counterpoint. Meddle. The House will have to vote on the bill again to okay any changes made in the Senate version. Congressional Republicans say they want to get the final bill to Trump by July 4th. Look, I realize Republicans will probably find some way to pass some version of this big bullshit bill that literally takes from the poor to give more to the rich. I hope it fails, but at the absolute very least, it's fun to watch them fight. Over the weekend, Russia launched one of its biggest aerial attacks on Ukraine in the three

years since the war began. On Sunday night, a bombardment featuring around 350 Russian drones hammered Ukrainian territory in the biggest such shelling of the war. That's according to the Ukrainian Air Force's Communications Department. Based on statements made by Ukrainian officials, from Friday to Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones at Ukrainian targets. On Telegram, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote, quote, "...only a sense of complete impunity can allow Russia to carry out such attacks and

continually escalate their scale." On the Russian side, the Russian Defense Ministry alleges that it intercepted more than 100 Ukrainian drones flying over Russian airspace on Sunday night. All of this made President Donald Trump, who repeatedly claimed during his campaign for the White House that he could end the war in Ukraine in quote, 24 hours, before saying in March that he was being quote, a little bit sarcastic when he said that because he is not clear on what sarcasm is, a little missed. On Sunday, the President seemed to be rather peeved

at Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to a question from a journalist about the attacks on Ukraine. I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people,

and I don't like it at all. Okay? We're in the middle of talking and he's shooting rockets into Kiev and other cities. I don't like it at all. Whoa. Vladimir Putin killing a lot of people for no reason? That doesn't sound like Vladimir Putin. What happened to that guy? She just called me, as you know, and she asked for an extension on the June 1st date.

And she said she wants to get down to serious negotiation. President Trump confirmed to reporters Sunday that he agreed to delay a 50% tariff on imports from the EU for 90 days. The truce came following a telephone call from EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, who requested the delay. Trade representatives from both parties were due to hold talks on Monday, according to a European Commission spokesperson. Trump threatened a terror hike Friday, complaining on TruSocial that trade discussions with the EU are, quote, going nowhere! Exclamation point. President Trump discussed his strategy with reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.

I just said it's time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game. You know, nobody, they've taken advantage of other people representing this country and they're not going to do that any longer. But he didn't stop there. Trump took once again to his true social account on Friday, this time to cyber bully Apple CEO Tim Cook and declare that iPhones not manufactured in the US will be subject to a 25% import tariff. On Saturday, Trump told reporters the tariffs would apply to Samsung too and would take effect at the end of June. But I had an understanding with him that he

wouldn't be doing this. He said he's going to India to build plants. I said that's okay to go to India but you're not going to sell into here without tariffs. Cook met with Trump at the White House last Tuesday, according to reporting from Politico. That same day, one of Apple's biggest suppliers announced plans to invest $1.5 billion in its India operations. President Trump has a new idea for what he wants to do with $3 billion of federal grant money previously awarded to Harvard. In a true social post Monday, Trump said he's considering taking the money away from quote a very anti-semitic Harvard and giving it to trade schools all across our land, but he didn't elaborate on the idea.

Harvard already sued the administration last month over its attempt to freeze billions in funding. Trump's new threat comes amidst an ongoing battle between the White House and university. Last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directed DHS to end Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning, quote, Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status. In another lawsuit filed by the university, Harvard called the action retaliatory and

unconstitutional. It said the termination had a devastating effect on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders. A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the government's bid to stop foreign students from enrolling at Harvard. And that's the news. Before we go, can Democrats recapture the Senate? On the newest episode of Polar Coaster, Dan spoke to the co-founder of Split Ticket about the Democrats' difficult path to doing so. They dug into whether it's strategic to run independent campaigns in deep red states like Montana and Idaho and how partisanship and polarization are shaping the political landscape.

To hear the full episode, subscribe to Friends of the Pod at cricka.com slash friends. That's all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, go see a movie this week, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about how sure, there are lots of things you could go do. But seeing a movie in a theater with other people is fun and enjoyable, even when you are convinced Tom Cruise is about to drown in a submarine, like me. What a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Coaston and movies and theaters, what a concept! Whataday is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor.

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