Republicans Are Fighting Over 'Catch Kits'

12.11.25

Click to skip ahead: The Power of Naming It has some advice for how to embarrass Republican lawmakers. Attacks on Abortion Pills provides updates on the FDA’s bogus ‘review’ of mifepristone, and details on the suit brought by Florida and Texas. Censoring Abortion warns that free speech attacks are ramping up. In Catholic Care Crisis, a California hospital argues that a hemorrhaging woman isn’t really an emergency. And The Daily Debunk takes on the lie that mifepristone is killing women.

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The Power of Naming It

Remember the Wisconsin bill that would mandate women use “catch kits” during a miscarriage or abortion? I bet you do. Under this so-called “clean water” legislation, patients who use mifepristone would be forced to bag up their pregnancy tissue and hand it over as medical waste. Well, a Republican lawmaker just stripped that provision from the bill—and it’s largely thanks to Abortion, Every Day and this community.

What’s happening in Wisconsin is a perfect example of how we can absolutely beat back shitty anti-abortion bills and expose extremist lawmakers, so let’s get into it…

As you probably know, Students for Life has been drafting “clean water” bills for lawmakers across the country—legislation that claims abortion pills and pregnancy tissue are poisoning groundwater. Read some background here and here, but the short version is this: the anti-abortion movement thinks they have a better chance at restricting abortion pills if they can convince people the medication is harming the environment or seeping into our drinking water.

Despite being downright creepy, the tactic has mostly flown under the radar. In state after state, Republicans have sidestepped outrage by dressing their bills up as environmental protections or mundane wastewater-testing requirements. That’s where AED comes in.

We flagged the Wisconsin bill in the newsletter and on video before it was even formally introduced. Just as important, we deliberately zeroed in on the “catch kit” requirement—in part because of the cruelty of the mandate, but also because we knew the phrase itself would grab people’s attention.

We were right. Our video racked up over half a million views, and the newsletter’s framing ensured that any future media coverage would focus squarely on the “catch kit.” Within a week of AED breaking the news, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran its first story about the bill with “catch kit” right in the lede. Other local media quickly followed suit.

Now Republicans are furious and embarrassed: instead of looking like environmental protectors, they seem like creeps who want to sift through women’s bloody miscarriages. The backlash also has conservative lawmakers at each other’s throats: after Rep. Nate Gustafson introduced an amendment to do away with the “catch kit” requirement, bill sponsor Rep. Lindee Brill and Students for Life released statements defending the mandate and blaming the blowback on an “intense and deceitful media campaign.” (That’s us!)

In other words, we forced Republican legislators to double down on the horror of requiring miscarriage and abortion patients to bag up their pregnancy tissue. And all it took was surfacing the right phrase. That’s a strategy we can replicate in any state flirting with “clean water” bills—or in response to similar national efforts.

And there’s no better time for it, given that the EPA says it’s considering testing the country’s water for mifepristone. 🫠

Attacks on Abortion Pills

It’s a great day to talk about conservative infighting! Anti-abortion groups are still furious over reports that FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is slow-rolling the agency’s bogus ‘safety study’ of mifepristone—and they’re still calling for him to be fired.

HuffPost reports that even Mike Pence wants Makary gone. The former vice president wrote on X, “for women’s safety, for the unborn and for the right to life, it’s time to fire FDA’s Makary.” U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley also weighed in, calling the delay “unacceptable” and accusing the FDA chief of “playing politics with women’s health.” (Which is…ironic.)

The White House is standing by Makary, who did some quick damage in an interview to the ultra-conservative Daily Signal: he promised that the agency is engaged in a “robust” review of mifepristone’s safety, and said they’re “doing the study the right way.”

Makary also said, “we need to be open to the fact that maybe there’s a new drug interaction that was not appreciated”—which is an awfully specific example. It’s something we’ll be keeping an eye on.

While I’m on about mifepristone, let’s swing back to the newest lawsuit seeking to restrict the drug. As Kylie reported yesterday, Florida and Texas have filed a suit against the FDA over mifepristone—one quite similar to the suit brought by Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho.

Just like the attorneys general in the previous suit, the AGs of Florida and Texas rely on junk science and inflammatory misinformation to paint mifepristone as dangerous and unstudied. A few similarities:

• Both suits cite the Comstock Act, the zombie federal law they say makes it illegal to mail abortion pills (or any other ‘obscene’ materials).

• Both quote anti-abortion activist Ingrid Skop, one of only a handful of American OBGYNs interested in slamming a life-saving medication.

• Both suits get creepy about teen girls, claiming that abortion pills could ‘disrupt’ their developing bodies.

• And both suits repeat the anti-abortion talking point that “pregnancy is not a disease”—an attempt to divorce abortion from healthcare. (The suit says straight out—“pregnancy is neither ‘serious’ nor ‘life-threatening’”—which is news to those of us who’ve nearly died during pregnancy!)

There’s one more important thing to note from the suit, but it’s part of a much bigger strategy. Which leads us into the next section…

Censoring Abortion

When reading through the Florida/Texas lawsuit, something in particular stuck out: in addition to the routine attacks on telehealth abortion providers, this new filing also targets “online directories”—websites that tell people where they can get abortion pills.

The state attorneys general specifically name Plan C, Abortion Finder, and I Need an A, identifying them as part of the “telehealth and mail-order abortion marketplace.” The suit claims these sites and telehealth providers are “a boon for sex traffickers” and “help rapists hide their actions and avoid criminal laws.”

In other words, Republicans aren’t just going after abortion providers—but abortion information.

This aligns with a broader anti-abortion censorship trend that AED has been warning about all year—from bills seeking to ban pro-choice websites to social media platforms shadowbanning or deleting abortion rights content. Just today, The Guardian reported that more than 50 reproductive rights groups have had their accounts removed or restricted by Meta, in what advocates are calling one of the companies’ “biggest waves of censorship.”

This comes at the same time that U.S. lawmakers are advancing KOSA, the so-called Kids Online Safety Act that Kylie wrote about in yesterday’s newsletter. (This legislation would let the government restrict online speech under the guise of protecting children.)

And remember what else AED covered this week: South Dakota’s governor and attorney general are threatening Mayday Health with legal action over gas-station ads that simply inform people they can get abortion pills by mail. In a cease-and-desist letter sent yesterday, AG Marty Jackley claims the ads violate a consumer-protection law—and warns that Mayday could face felony charges.

All of which is to say: Republicans are coming for free speech, and they’re barely bothering to hide it.

Catholic Care Crisis

If you’re not already pissed off, this next one will do it. (Maybe take a minute to lower your blood pressure by watching this dog who is inexplicably beefing with a slice of apple.)

Last year, I told you about Anna Nusslock, whose water broke just 15 weeks into her pregnancy. There was zero chance her twin fetuses would survive, and every hour she stayed pregnant put her at greater risk. But Providence St. Joseph Hospital—a Catholic institution—still refused to give her an emergency abortion. Even as she hemorrhaged.

Instead, the California hospital handed her a bucket and towels for the drive to another facility, “in case something happens in the car.”

Here’s the kicker: in court yesterday, the hospital’s attorney argued that Nusslock wasn’t experiencing an emergency at all—and pointed to the fact that she made it to the second hospital alive as proof. I wish I were kidding. Defense attorney Harvey Rochman said that because Nusslock’s abortion was performed several hours after she arrived at the second hospital, “this whole series of events actually is a vindication for St. Joseph.”

Watching this case unfold has been a real eye-opener: California Attorney General Rob Bonta is suing the hospital on behalf of Nusslock and another woman denied emergency abortion care. In response, St. Joseph has claimed the state doesn’t have the right to direct them to provide emergency abortions because they’re beholden to a “higher power.”

And now here we are.

There’s some excellent local reporting on the case here and here—and it’s well worth a read to get a sense of what we can expect from religious hospitals moving forward. Because with Catholic hospitals expanding across the country, this isn’t a one-off. It’s a preview of what pregnant patients (and pro-choice states) can expect going forward.

For more about the impact of religious hospitals, read AED’s past coverage below:

The Catholic Hospital System Killing Women

The Daily Debunk

Anti-abortion activists love pulling random ‘facts’ out of their asses—and at this point, we’ve heard them all. So let AED help you clap back.

One of their favorite lines even showed up in the Florida/Texas lawsuit against mifepristone: “Abortion drugs claim the life of at least one woman each year.”

Here’s what you need to know: that claim comes from an FDA report tracking adverse events related to mifepristone between 2000 and 2022. During that time, 5.6 million women used the medication, and 28 deaths were reported after someone had taken mifepristone—but the FDA does not tie those deaths to the drug.

In fact, 19 of the 28 deaths were attributed to homicide, suspected homicide, suicide, drug intoxication, drug overdoses and a natural death. The remaining cases involved sepsis that the FDA explicitly said could not be “causally attributed to mifepristone.”

In other words: over 22 years, the FDA didn’t directly link a single death to mifepristone.

The more you know! 💫