Pantsuits and Lawsuits with Attorneys General Kris Mayes and Dana Nessel

Reproductive Review: Bodily Autonomy and Your Right to Healthcare

• Attorneys General Kris Mayes & Dana Nessel • Season 1 • Episode 7

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The foundation of reproductive freedom in America continues to crumble beneath our feet, leaving millions without access to essential healthcare. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sits down with Alexis McGill Johnson, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, for a sobering exploration of the post-Dobbs landscape.

McGill Johnson reveals the coordinated, multi-pronged attack against reproductive healthcare access happening right now. From Title X funding cuts targeting Planned Parenthood to Supreme Court challenges that could strip Medicaid patients of their provider choices, we're witnessing a systematic dismantling of the healthcare infrastructure that millions rely upon. With 22 states now operating under abortion bans, one in three American women of reproductive age lives without access to complete healthcare.

The consequences are both immediate and far-reaching. Doctors are fleeing states with abortion bans, creating dangerous healthcare deserts. Women with pregnancy complications face delayed care until they develop life-threatening sepsis. Young families are making permanent reproductive decisions out of fear. 

Join us for this critical conversation about what's at stake and how you can fight back through ballot initiatives, community organizing, and supporting Planned Parenthood's frontline work. Because as McGill Johnson powerfully reminds us: abortion is healthcare, bodily autonomy is essential to freedom, and none of us are truly free until all of us are free.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits, your one-stop shop to learn about the latest legal battles impacting American communities, from sea to shining sea. So thanks for tuning in.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So thanks for tuning in. Now, unfortunately, Arizona are General Kris Mayes arizona Attorney General Chris Mays this week, but not to worry, we're going to take a break from the ongoing discussion of lawless executive orders and morally bankrupt billionaires to talk about something else home: that hits very close to home your right to bodily autonomy. And in just a little bit I'm going to be talking to Alexis McGill Johnson. She's the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and we're going

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

to break some things down.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

But first a little bit of background. You probably remember that the debate over reproductive freedom was really catapulted to the forefront of public discourse back in May of 2022, when the United States Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v Wade, health organization overturned Roe v Wade, and that As of chaos and utter confusion. Doctors, patients and their families were scrambling all across the country to decipher what the erasure of half a century's precedent protecting reproductive freedom would mean for their health and livelihood. And here in Michigan, immediately following the Dobbs decision, my department was able to secure a preliminary injunction against the state's archaic 1931 abortion ban that prevented AG physicians Mayes and their patients from being prosecuted for engaging in what is often a life-saving medical procedure. That abortion ban would have sprang back into effect immediately as soon as Dobbs officially had been rendered by the Supreme Court. So meanwhile, the residents of our state were busy gathering signatures for the Reproductive Freedom for All ballot petition, in anticipation that Roe might be overturned. So what we did is we gathered over 750,000 signatures for this ballot proposal. It was the most that we've ever seen for any ballot proposal in Michigan history. And then Michiganders showed up on election day to make their voices heard. And all of America was watching as we codified the protections of Roe into our Michigan State Constitution, impacting over 2.2 million women of reproductive age in Michigan and, of course, their loved ones, their families. So the Michigan state legislature, since that time, has repealed the ban and enshrined new rights to legalize surrogacy, safeguard our health data and also to protect IVF.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

But rather than respecting the choices made by individual states, anti-choice groups have continued to mount targeted legal challenges with the express purpose of chipping away at Americans' remaining rights to bodily autonomy, and that's all the way from abortion to IVF, birth control and even the ability for a person to manage their own miscarriage. Birth control and even the ability for a person to manage their own miscarriage as of right now, Alexis one welcome, so American much, women of childbearing age lives in a state with an abortion ban still on the books. That's 22 states, and some of the ongoing litigation at the federal level could make it even more difficult for the remaining two-thirds of the country to access the health care that they need for their future. So myself, ag Mays and many other leaders across the nation have made our stance clear. Everyone, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, how much money they make, everyone deserves access to supportive, high-quality, affordable health care to live full, healthy lives.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Well, and we welcome to the podcast today Alexis McGill-Johnson, the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the country's most trusted name in sexual and reproductive health and education. As a lot of people know, planned Parenthood health centers provide vital health care to more than 2 million people each year at nearly 600 health care centers around the country. We could go on for quite a while. But, alexis, welcome. So much to the podcast. Thank you so much for talking to us today about so many critical issues that you are facing. What a challenging time for you to be in this job.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

You know you don't come to Planned Parenthood by accident. You come here because you love the mission and you love the fight and you believe in the fight, and so it's been an incredibly challenging time, but you know all about that and all the fighting that you're doing in the great state of Michigan. So I'm happy to be on the podcast and happy to be here with you. in Peninsual in

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah Well, so tell us a little bit about some of the most recent events that have been going on, I think I mean, obviously it's been one thing after the next, after the next, but I know that you know there's been a case that was just argued recently before the United States Supreme Court We'd like to hear more about. And I will say anecdotally here in Michigan we just found out that we're losing four to, you Parenthood centers all the way from the Upper Peninsula and Marquette down to Ann Arbor. And you know if you could talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you're facing, not just legally but financially as well? X

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Yeah, I mean, look. So Planned Parenthood is under attack from all sides. Right now we have. And administration Parenthood, has again through Medicaid executive action, withheld funding for Title X for several Planned Parenthood affiliates under the premise that we are violating their DEI action nothing to do with reproductive health care, but violating DEI and related to the provision of services for undocumented patients. And the reality is this is, you know, again a political agenda to. You know, to find ways Governor to, you know, basic health care, sti testing. You know, access to birth control, access to breast exams, and I can't think of anything more outrageous than that. But, yes, the Title 10 impact, which is the nation's largest family planning grant program. You know, not having access to those resources for affiliates who rely on them and for the communities means that it will impact the number of health centers that will be able to stay open in those communities and provide that. You know, planned Parenthood is a critical part of the public health infrastructure, literally a health system that strengthens the public health infrastructure. And, you know, without the public dollars to reimburse for those services provided by our Planned Parenthood health centers, it makes it hard to gauge.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

We also have a congressional fight, as you know, related to Medicaid and attempts to gut that program and Planned Parenthood. Again, medicaid, as the largest insurer for low-income communities, could lose upwards of $700 million and related to the Medicaid is in the Supreme Court. The case that you referenced, that is the case that's called Medina v Planned Parenthood of South Atlantic, and this is another example of a politician trying to weaponize the judicial system to shut Planned Parenthood down. To weaponize the judicial system to shut Planned Parenthood down, governor McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, wants to challenge whether or not deny patients in South Carolina from choosing Planned Parenthood as their provider if they are on Medicaid. So we went to the Supreme Court just last week for those oral arguments and, as you know, we also have 3,000 people on the steps fighting back because they see that this is just yet another attack to shut down Planned Parenthood because we provide abortion and the people are also not standing with that.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

But with that, can you tell us a little bit about? You know we had some really significant cases that went up to the court in the last term and ultimately, whether it was decided that they were improvidently granted or whether there were standing issues, we didn't get a final resolution on some really important cases. So what kind of felt like a temporary win isn't necessarily going to be a win in the long run on some of these issues, and I wonder if you could speak about some of those cases and what concerns you have moving forward on cases we're likely the limitations reemerge. mifepristone

Alexis McGill Johnson:

It does feel like I think to your point that some of the cases that you're thinking about, like the EMTALA case, right, kind of being pushed back down, you know, and the impact of that on patients who now have to be again airlifted out of states like Idaho in order to get access to life-saving care literally life-saving care, I think is a good example of how this court is going to be in partnership with the administration, as opposed to an independent reviewer having real independent judicial review. We are looking to the Comstock Act, right, we're looking that for the limitations of myth of Pristone that we expect to see with this administration and of course we'll be, you know, fighting against that, whether or not you know you were allowed to get abortion medication through the mail or any other things that are required to provide an abortion service, and that, again, I think, is going to be the kind of thing that we are going to be seeing.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I think one of the things that people in my state didn't appreciate right, I mean, here we have a state overwhelmingly that voted in favor of Proposition 3 in 2022, reproductive freedom for all. So that had to do, of course, not with just abortion rights states: in Roe, but also with birth control and fertility treatments and the ability to manage one's miscarriage. I think that people in my state honestly, like did not appreciate that you can't vote for Prop 3 and just think you're in the clear and now we're fine in states like ours, because once you start to delve into issues like you know abortion medication, for instance that's what over half of all abortions in the state of Michigan, and so if you start to outlaw, say, abortion medication through various different means, that's going to affect us too, because it's not really reproductive freedom for all, you know, if you can't get access to the medication that you're utilizing for, again, not just abortions but also miscarriages.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Absolutely, and I you know, look, I think, if they're coming at every, every lever and they know where the people are right, I think, to your point on the proposition in Michigan, which is, as you saw, you know, in each of these states and purple states and red states and, of course, blue states, you see that this is a actually nonpartisan issue.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

You know, in the same way, that Planned Parenthood is nonpartisan because we see everybody in rural areas, as you talked about, in urban areas, across party, across demographic and geography, right, and so I do think that they know it is unpopular.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

So they're trying to identify all of these other ways to restrict access and I think that we're going to continue to see fetal more like new and novel ways to approach their political project, which is essentially to shut down access to reproductive care and not just abortion right, access to contraception, access to gender affirming treatment.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

We will see, I'm sure, fights going up through these courts and through this kind of weaponized judicial system around personhood, feel personhood, and it will come both from IVF and access to abortion. We are going to see, and have seen, attempts to try to restrict access to patients crossing state lines, starting with minors, right, because that's the strategy to starting with, like, we want to protect our children from crossing state lines to get access to abortion or to gender affirming care, and then using that to build up a case law around restricting access. Overall, we are going to see more criminalization, right, I mean, and I'm curious how you and your colleagues are feeling in this moment about the kind of criminalization of providers right, we have a state trying to extradite a doctor from another state for providing...

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

My colleague, Letitia James from New York has been very vocal about that of course you know, and it's very scary, you know, but I mean that's why you know the importance not just, of course, of having Democratic AGs but also Democratic governors.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Yes

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Because ultimately they have the final say as to whether or not they're going to allow a person to be extradited for prosecution from one state to another state. Is what we're seeing here with a physician from New York, right?

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I mean, look, I totally agree, and I think our governors are a backstop in a lot of ways, particularly with supporting and resourcing in a moment when we are so desperately fighting for every dollar to care for patients, and I think this is really critically important. But I also do want to just shout out the AGs, though, because you know you are such a much needed backstop. You don't have the same constraints as other bodies and you know you're. You can help explain the law or enforce the law, and and I think those levers are really important in in what feels like a really lawless time.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So, Alexis, I have a question and I know nobody probably has a certain answer for this, but one of the things, I think, during the presidential campaign that Kamala Harris tried to accentuate and she highlighted the stories from the states that had abortion bans of women and sometimes girls who either had been impregnated through rape or incest.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

What we saw a lot and we're continuing to see or are women who are not able to properly manage a miscarriage and being put in this situation where they're literally have to get sepsis and be on the brink of death before they are permitted to abort a pregnancy that you know, frankly, is is never going to come to term.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

So, you're, it's not going to result in a live birth to begin with, but you're, you're risking the life of the woman who's pregnant, who's carrying the child, and we know statistically that women are dying or coming to the cusp of dying or losing, sometimes the ability to be fertile at all after that. And we've heard these stories over and over again and I know that now that they're sort of trying to bury a lot of scientific information through DHHS and everything, it's harder and harder to get those numbers. But the numbers of women that were suffering from sepsis in Texas was so alarming to me and I guess the question that I have and I don't know if you have an answer for it or not, but this affects Republican women just as much as it affects women who are Democrats or independents or third party or what have you. It doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, it literally is health care, and I know that that Republican women go through this too. So can you explain it? Do you have any understanding of this?

Alexis McGill Johnson:

I mean you're absolutely right.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

And first of all, women have died right, we know some names of women who've lost their lives because they could not get critical, life-saving, time-sensitive care, because they were sent home or told to wait until it got worse, or because the hospital administrators and lawyers had to debate what time was the right time to intervene. And I think that is incredibly alarming and it does obviously impact people on both sides. Right, it does impact Republican women and, as I said, the majority of people actually support reproductive freedom. Making it make sense is about understanding how the opposition has literally weaponized the kind of rules change and gerrymandered themselves into power so that they can stay in office and engage in these horrific abortion bans without any accountability to their constituents. So, majority of people in Texas, they do not like these bans right, we know that.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

And we know that they're also being harmed across the board because OBGYNs don't want to move into Texas and practice high risk maternal care. We are seeing a decline of doctors wanting to move and practice in banned states and in reverse migration out because they don't want to be criminalized for the care that they've been trained to provide and questioned about their medical decisions to provide patients with the best care. That is going to have a ripple effect in a state, in a community, an economy, when you don't have enough medical providers to provide basic pregnancy and miscarriage care. And I think that was one of the shifts right during the election, when we had these stories around how abortion bans have made pregnancy more dangerous, and I think that really did bring a lot of people together and it's how we won many ballot initiatives because that happened.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Yeah, and anecdotally, I just know so many couples of childbearing age where, whether it's the man or the woman in the relationship, they're just deciding to not have children at all because they're so afraid of literally dying during pregnancy, and so, of course, they're having medical procedures to ensure that they can't get pregnant and they can't impregnate their partners, procedures to ensure that they can't get pregnant and they can't impregnate their partners, and so, you know, it's kind of having the I would say the opposite impact that I think some people thought that we would have, not to mention, of course, the increased rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality that we're seeing as a result of this as well.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Yeah, yeah, you know, at Planned Parenthood we saw a 1200% increase in vasectomies. Like right after that are people are making decisions. They are worried about becoming pregnant in a banned state and getting that care. Those who are pregnant are worried about traveling to those states to get care. And you know, I had a board member who was traveling in Texas and was experiencing some symptoms and called her doctor and doctors to get on a plane. I would rather see you here than than have you see a provider in Texas. So it is going to affect all kinds of choices in this regard.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

What can people do? You know, I know this is the question that I get all the time and you must get this constantly. You know, in order to protect our health care and in order to protect our rights, is there one or more particular things that you recommend to people that they do to be able to fight back during this critical time period?

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Yeah, I mean, first of all, continue to get involved, as we have seen. I think that we are in some dark times, but I have seen a lot of light around people continuing to protest and we have everywhere where we've been able to put reproductive freedom on the ballot, as you know, we have been able to drive out some significant majorities. We have won so many of those races, even when they did not translate into the actual win, because they use some kind of democratic maneuvering, like in, like in Florida, to deny the majority the the right to, to expand abortion access there. It still has energized people and I feel like that fight is there. So I'm glad, I'm glad that you are asking that. So we will continue to see those ballot initiatives.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

We're also, in this moment, standing up a campaign called "I'm for Planned Parenthood as a kind of symbol of a lot of the reproductive freedom attacks that are coming directly into Planned Parenthood but will have a longstanding impact across the reproductive health care space. Fighting against these Medicaid defunds, fighting against a lot of the insanity that is coming out of this administration and will be coming right. Like we're only maybe 30% or so through project 2025 was the last estimate that I heard Like we're not even at the reproductive freedom section of that playbook, and so like getting engaged, and getting involved now and speaking to your leaders, like showing up in the town halls putting calls into Congress, putting calls into your local leadership to ensure that people are fighting. That's what people need to do right now, in this moment.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

You know, at a time period where I think so many people are talking about right to privacy issues, whether it has to do with reproductive health care or many other things, you know just the thought of the government monitoring things like personal apps that people have on their phones or other ways to track women's periods or pregnancies or what have you.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I mean it really does seem to have almost like a "Black Mirror sort of to it, and I remember very vividly with it was my senior year in college, I don't know, in the 1800s I guess, and reading about, you know, "he Handmaid's Tale and this dystopian future that was pure fiction at the time and it's just seems as though as time goes by, we get closer and closer to many of the things that we worried about actually coming to fruition. And when I think about the fact that Clarence Thomas in particular, speaking openly about, about Griswold v Connecticut and what it would mean to ban birth control of all things, I mean, do you see cases on the horizon coming where we really could be looking at overturning things like Griswold and Eisenstadt and other seminal cases involving again not just abortion rights but the right to even prevent a pregnancy?

Alexis McGill Johnson:

I mean the very idea of having to ask my husband whether or not I can get on birth control like that should alarm every single woman, young woman in America right now. That is taking us so far back and, yes, I believe that is possible. Right, that's the alarm and the outrage that I think we need to ensure that people understand that. You know we've been screaming about, you know Roe being in danger for many, many years and there was a even after the oral arguments in Dobbs we still saw a 70 percent kind of believability gap in people believing that it would actually happen. We'd seen obviously draconian laws like SB8 in Texas come into play. We'd seen all of these other restrictive measures on abortion access and people still didn't believe. So one, I think we got to burst that bubble now and say that that is exactly what the strategy is. That is exactly what this kind of patchwork of testing these laws in these states to see how far they can push the power and control that they have and then get that into a judicial system with a very favorable court that will help them rubber stamp their plan to control our bodies. I think we have to be 100% laser clear on that. And that's why I'd say like it is access to contraception, it's things like the SAVE Act, right, like women who've changed their names because they've married or divorced, needing their original decrees right In order to register to vote, so that their name matches their birth certificate, or what have you right? And I, and I think that that those are the, those are the, the ways in which they are trying to take us to "he handmaid's tale, to take us to the black mirror, whatever other, probably darker thing that Hollywood hasn't imagined. And that's where I think, you know, we have to be incredibly alarmed, incredibly vigilant.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

You know, this is just sort of a personal side note, but my son is a senior at Michigan State University. He's got a health care class where the actual assignment is for young men to have to learn about women's young men to on social media, having a sit down explaining things like menstruation and menopause and and just basically how a woman's body operates to his frat brothers.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And what was so interesting to me, even though these are college students is the number of young men who seemingly like, didn't even appreciate, really like, what a tampon was. And I know that that sounds ridiculous and I can't help. I keep on going back to "he Handmaid's Tale, but the thing about it that always struck me more than anything else is that in Gilead nobody was happy. I mean, the men weren't happy either.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

You know, yes, it was terrible. Terrible for the women to be controlled that way. But even the men who were in control, they weren't super happy with their lives either. So I don't know what we're moving forward on this for. Like nobody wins in that kind of a society and we always say that none of us are really free if some of us aren't free. But in that situation I mean again, not good for anyone.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

You are so right, right, but the oppressors aren't free either.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Right, doing the work of oppression is hard and dirty work, and there is, you know, which is why we are aligned around movements of freedom, right, actually finding the inclusive ways to to liberate everyone, because there is a a goal, and a joyful goal in trying to find that liberation, and it and it starts with fighting against these horrible restrictions of our bodies, right, our bodily autonomy.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

It's a part of our self-determination, it's part of how we build our futures. And so, first of all, I love the story about your, your son and his friends and being able to have this conversation. You know, so much of sexual education has been stigmatized, right, like part of what we have to fight here as well, and stories and information, just basic information to fight against the misinformation is so important because it helps us destigmatize, it helps us normalize the conversation so that people can use the right terms for the right parts of our body and also be able to advocate for themselves with a provider or in a relationship, and I think that that is so incredible, it's so healthy. And because these are not just sons, they one day will be husbands, you know, they may have daughters. They have co-workers, and I do think that this isn't just a gendered issue, right.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I have these conversations sometimes with women I know where, and I remember talking to one woman in particular who had had a couple ectopic pregnancies and I mean thank God, obviously, that she was able to get medical treatment for those. But when I said, you know, I knew that her husband was a Trump supporter and I said how, I mean, these procedures saved your life. He would be a widower had you not been able to have those procedures. And she said I don't really think he understands that. I mean, I technically had two abortions, you know, and I said this is why women have to have these conversations with the men in their lives and not just yeah, he knows I went to the hospital, but he knows, you know, something happened, but he's not sure what it was. Well, we have to be a part of explaining to them exactly what it is.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

And what is that procedure that you just had, that saved your life, because if men don't know about it, then maybe they feel free to ignore it. They're just ignorant of, again, how women's bodies operate and work and why it is so important that we be permitted to have the health care that we need, and how abortion is actually health care.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Say it again Abortion is healthcare. And you know there are also women who did not make the connection, that I've heard from over the years that the first time they realized they actually had an abortion was when they saw it on their paperwork for having a miscarriage. And, of course, you know the same procedure, you know. I do think that we need to be speaking more about what abortion is, how it saves lives, how it allows people to make the right decisions for their families, that the majority of people who seek access to abortion are already mothers, so they know exactly what's entailed and are fighting to protect the family that they have and the life that they've designed for them. And I think that all of these kind of attempts to deny us freedom really don't speak to the reality of how people navigate and build their lives. I think the stories actually help us build the freedom

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

I agree

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Well, preach on Sister!

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Thank you, Alexis for all your incredible work, again during possibly one of the most challenging times one could possibly imagine, but we appreciate you and your good work. Thank you for coming on the podcast and hope to have further discussions about this again soon. So, thank you, thank you.

Alexis McGill Johnson:

Thank you for having me.

Attorney General Dana Nessel:

Well, that's this week's episode of Pantsuits and Lawsuits, and we look forward to having you back next time and learn more about the work that both of our departments continue to do. So see you next time.