Interviewer: Ever since the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, voters have been pushing back hard. 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. 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. 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, JD Vance, who recently called for defunding Planned Parenthood.

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. Just a few days ago, just a while back, Senator JD Vance, the vice presidential nominee for the Republicans said this, "On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, our view is we don't think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions. That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around, and it will remain a consistent view." What do you make of the republican ticket rolling out this idea really late in the campaign while hedging on what its own history is on this issue?

Alexis McGill Johnson: The opposition has been trying to defund Planned Parenthood for a long time. That is just one of the tactics in their book. 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 healthcare from the millions of American who come to Planned Parenthood health centers every single day for STI testing and birth control and access to life-saving breast cancer." Is that really your strategy?

Interviewer: What would that mean in dollar and cents terms and what would it mean for people that benefit from Planned Parenthood?

Alexis McGill Johnson: So defunding Planned Parenthood would mean taking away access to Medicaid reimbursements. It would mean trying to continue to find ways to make us spend money through litigation. All of that is impacting the two million patients that come to Planned Parenthood every single year. It would be devastating, of course.

Interviewer: You watched the vice presidential debate?

Alexis McGill Johnson: I did.

Interviewer: 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." That was a very, very weird thing to say.

Alexis McGill Johnson: It is weird. I know. That's like the word of the election, but it is kind of weird.

Interviewer: What's it masking?

Alexis McGill Johnson: I don't know. Some kind of surprise that they think we still actually care about our fundamental freedoms. I think it's probably one of the number one questions I get often from journalists is, "Do you think that women still care about abortion this cycle?" I'm like, "Are you kidding me? They just took it away two years ago and still, we're watching the impact." 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.

Interviewer: You've been president, CEO of Planned Parenthood now for five years.

Alexis McGill Johnson: For five years. I stepped in during a transition in 2019 as acting president, and I became permanent president the following year.

Interviewer: Now, a lot's changed since then, and it's been reported that Planned Parenthood is spending $40 million on this election cycle.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Correct.

Interviewer: What's the $40 million for?

Alexis McGill Johnson: The $40 Million that is being spent on the action fund in 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. It's to focus on ensuring that not only do we see a Harris-Walz 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 restore all of the protections for reproductive freedom.

Interviewer: For Planned Parenthood, what's on the line this time around?

Alexis McGill Johnson: This is the first presidential election since the Dobbs decision. You have seen since '22, every time reproductive freedom has been on the ballot, we have won. 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 Candi Miller. Now we know that abortion bans don't stop people from seeking access to abortion. Abortion bans have made pregnancy more dangerous.

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

Interviewer: 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. You're taking a very different approach.

Alexis McGill Johnson: I may disagree slightly with the characterization. I think that Planned Parenthood has always been about healthcare. We are the nation's largest sexual reproductive healthcare provider. The reality is, healthcare is politicized. You don't ask UnitedHealthcare to end its lobbying arm in Washington, DC. You don't ask that of any major 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.

I think that my position, particularly in this moment, is that politics got us into this situation. Abortion is not a partisan issue. 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 and uniting them because it is across the board. That's what all the polling indicates. So I don't see this as a partisan issue.

Interviewer: Now, the Dobbs decision undid Roe v. Wade, and even if the Democrats win, you still have the court that you have. What can a Harris administration do within the realm of a likely Congress that is probably at best split?

Alexis McGill Johnson: The goal is to get to a trifecta, a reproductive freedom majority in the House the Senate.

Interviewer: If that happens, what can happen?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Federal legislation to restore reproductive freedom. It should not be the case, for example, that I go to visit my mother in Georgia 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. 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. We also know that it is quite possible that federal legislation could be contested and brought up to the court. 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.

Interviewer: Let's say you don't win the trifecta. In fact, the likelihood is you don't, and that the Democrats do not have both houses of Congress and the White House. If they do win the White House, Democrats win the White House and one chamber of Congress, what's the best that can happen?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Look, I think there still is a lot that we can do that the vice president can do in supporting and bringing more protections to things like family planning, more protections to things like maternal mortality. The other kind of concurrent crisis that are happening along with the public health crisis of losing abortion access. There are a lot of conversations that can be had. At the end of the day, it will be very, very close, 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.

Interviewer: The stakes of this are enormous and sometimes overlooked, at least by people not paying attention. Stefania Taladrid, a reporter for the New Yorker, as well as ProPublica more recently, have made it quite plain that the stakes of what's happened are that people die. Tell me a little bit more about that. Our understanding of what has been the human cost of the end of Roe.

Alexis McGill Johnson: 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." While we 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.

You knew that the human costs would happen soon after, whether or not we'd be able to tie the abortion bans 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. To now have names of women like Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, to know their stories. They're leaving behind families, leaving behind children. The fear that they had. One was afraid to go to the hospital when she knew something was wrong because she feared criminalization, getting healthcare. The other went to the hospital and was essentially denied care until it was too late.

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

Interviewer: 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." 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, "realized that she was pregnant and didn't want to be". Why was that the story you chose to highlight?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Because being able to elect what you want to do with your body is fundamental to freedom. If I am free and equal, I should be able to speak about an elective abortion.

Interviewer: I ask that not because I object to what you say. 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 when there is a life and death situation as opposed to someone who doesn't choose to be pregnant.

Alexis McGill Johnson: 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. They do not see having a child in whatever particular moment as where they would like to go. The majority of people who seek access to abortion are already parents, so they have full sense of what that means in terms of the impact to their family and to their lives and their communities.

I think it is actually very important to normalize the circumstances of elective abortion because they are, in fact, a great majority of the decisions that people are making. Quite frankly, honestly, it's no one's business. That was the other point. It's literally no one's business.

Interviewer: As a policy matter, President Biden and Vice President Harris didn't differ, but as a matter of emotion and emphasis, they did. President Biden, in fact, had a reference to abortion in one major speech and he excised it. 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?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Without question, the vice president is the most vocal and profound elected speaking about abortion as a surrogate on the issue. She is the one who took this on right after Dobbs. 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. 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.

Vice President Harris: Please do understand that when we talk about a clinic such as this, it is absolutely about healthcare and reproductive healthcare. So everyone get ready for the language, uterus.

[laughter]

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

[laughter]

Alexis McGill Johnson: I think 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. You'll hear her talk about prosecuting sexual assault cases and her own personal experiences growing up, you'll hear her talking about what it took to pull together the Momnibus bill to focus on maternal mortality and the wide range of abortion circumstances and pregnancy-related circumstances.

You heard her grilling Justice Kavanaugh to say, "What other procedure for men is as heavily regulated and legislated? Can we name one?" No, because there aren't any. 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.

Interviewer: It's her best issue, is it not?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes, 100%.

Interviewer: It's her best issue, and then her ability to move the dial legislatively if and when she's elected is, at best contingent. Is there a possibility that could lead to a great deal of disappointment?

Alexis McGill Johnson: 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. 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. Look, we are very sober around the long-term plan, that we didn't get here overnight. We didn't get here simply because of the Trump administration issued in these abortion bans. 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 administration.

We know who to blame and we also know that to do the work, it will require us to stay vigilant, state by state, living room by living room.

Interviewer: What would happen with the new Trump administration? For the record, your eyebrows are soaring.

[laughter]

Your hands are now shaking.

Alexis McGill Johnson: My head's on fire. Just definitely chalk that up to post-traumatic stress.

Interviewer: Pre-traumatic stress.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Pre-traumatic stress, exactly. Look, they've laid it out in Project 2025. 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?

Interviewer: For the record, he's disingenuously or not disavowed Project 2025.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Again, he does two things. He says he's disavowing it-

Interviewer: Are you saying he's lying?

Alexis McGill Johnson: -but right before that, he also says, "This is really bad for us, so now I'm going to disavow it." We're watching him have these machinations in public, which is exactly why I might say, yes, he's being disingenuous. At best.

Interviewer: What do you think he would do or what do you think he could do with control of Congress?

Alexis McGill Johnson: What Project 2025 would do would be, you couldn't effect-

Interviewer: Nationwide ban.

Alexis McGill Johnson: -nationwide ban. Not just through federal legislation, but by enforcing the Comstock law, and I think that--

Interviewer: Explain that.

Alexis McGill Johnson: The Comstock law, which is a 1800s law against pornography, prohibiting the distribution through the mail of pornographic products. He would likely direct the DOJ to enforce that law.

Interviewer: How does that relate to abortion? He's not sending Penthouse Magazine through the mail.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes, exactly. To include something like mifepristone in that broad sweeping--

Interviewer: The abortion pill?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes. In the suite of things that-

Interviewer: That's the next big target.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Would be considered obscene. Yes, exactly. Mifepristone. Again, effectively, a nationwide abortion ban, given that more than half of abortions are done through mifepristone. The pregnant [unintelligible 00:18:27] A database of pregnant people where they could--

Interviewer: Sorry, a pregnant [unintelligible 00:18:35]

Alexis McGill Johnson: Pregnant [unintelligible 00:18:36] yes. That would live in, instead of Health and Human Services, which we know as HHS, I believe the new designation would be the Agency for Human Life or some sort, which could include a pregnant [unintelligible 00:18:49] that would monitor pregnant people's pregnancies. I say that as if that's some dystopian nightmare, but the reality is, Planned Parenthood in Missouri, the state health commissioner was actually tracking patient menstrual cycles.

This level of surveillance and invasion of privacy into private healthcare or medical decisions is work they have been testing in order to essentially codify that inequality in government agencies. Is that scary enough for you?

Interviewer: It is. Yes, it is sufficiently scary.

[laughter]

Alexis McGill Johnson: Does that explain my eyebrows?

[laughter]

Interviewer: Alexis McGill Johnson. Thank you so much.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Thank you for having me.

[music]

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

 

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