Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

8.11.25

Click to skip ahead: Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud reports on this administration’s latest, vile show of misogyny. In Criminalizing Care, the nation’s most egregious anti-abortion activist is suing one of the world’s best-known abortion rights advocates. Attacks on Privacy reports that Meta broke California privacy laws by collecting data from a period tracking app. In the Nation reminds us that yes, Trump is absolutely enacting an anti-abortion agenda. Stats and Studies has new data on the prevalence of telehealth abortion pills and young women’s birth control methods. Anti-Abortion Strategy flags that anti-abortion leaders may be distancing themselves from Republican AGs. In the Courts catches up with the cases against a New York provider.

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Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

Learning that a member of the anti-abortion extremist administration of our sexual predator president holds violently misogynistic beliefs is like finding a fork in the kitchen. But even by the standards of Trump 2.0, this latest update on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an accused rapist who repeatedly argued against women in combat roles in the military, is appalling.

Over the weekend, Hegseth shared a clip of self-identified “Christian nationalist” pastor Doug Wilson—who, it turns out, is Hegseth’s pastor—celebrating the Dobbs ruling that is actively killing women, and opposing women’s right to vote. Why?

“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” Wilson told CNN. The female CNN anchor replied, “So, you just think they’re meant to have babies?” Wilson told her:

“It doesn’t take any talent to simply reproduce biologically. The wife and mother, who is the chief executive of the home, is entrusted with three or four or five eternal souls.”

Later in the same segment, two other pastors talk about stripping women of their right to vote. They admit—proudly—that they’d support repealing the 19th Amendment.

Again, this is something that the current Defense Secretary tweeted, apparently in support! In response to the clearly-unnerving move, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told NPR that Hegseth is a "proud member” of the church, and that “the Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson's writings and teachings.”

This is entirely in line with the administration’s position: that women don’t belong in public life, and that they must be relegated to the home by force—whether through wielding state power to violently impose motherhood on them, or via cultural propaganda that convinces them that home is where they’re better off, anyway.

The tweet comes just months after Republican men melted down over Kamala Harris ads that reminded women they don’t have to vote in line with their husbands, and after Congressional Republicans advanced a sweeping bill to disproportionately disenfranchise women.

The out-and-proud nature of Wilson’s comments about repealing the 19th amendment, and Hegseth gleefully sharing this clip from his government account, present a continuation of this chilling shift: They’re no longer trying to hide this crucial, terrifying piece of their agenda.

Criminalizing Care

Just weeks after bringing a ‘wrongful death’ suit against a California abortion provider, anti-abortion attorney Jonathan Mitchell is at it again—this time, targeting telehealth abortion provider Aid Access and its founder, physician Rebecca Gomperts.

Mitchell filed a wrongful death suit today against Gomperts, her organization, and a man who allegedly slipped abortion medication into a Texas woman’s drink. Mitchell—who usually represents abusive men—is representing the woman at the center of the claim.

A few important things to note:

Just like he did in his suit against the California abortion provider, Mitchell hones in on the Comstock Act in this filing—claiming that Gomperts, Aid Access, and the man who ordered the pills violated federal law by having abortion medication shipped.

As you know, anti-abortion activists—and Mitchell, in particular—are desperate to get a Comstock case up to the Supreme Court. Because 1 in 4 American abortions are performed via telehealth, conservatives think Comstock is their best bet for a backdoor ban. (Comstock is a 19th-century zombie law that prohibits the mailing of ‘obscene’ material—including abortion medication or tools.)

It’s also not a coincidence that Mitchell chose to target Gomperts: Aid Access has been one of the nation’s most important abortion rights/telehealth organizations since Roe was overturned. Like shield state providers, Gomperts’ group has been shipping abortion pills into anti-abortion states, helping to ensure women get access regardless of where they live.

And Gomperts herself has been a public figure in the movement for years: she founded Women on Waves, a group that sails a ship to anti-abortion countries and helps women end their pregnancies in international waters. So she’s a particular target.

Finally, Autonomy News notes something chilling: Mark Lee Dickson—best known as the anti-abortion activist who goes town-to-town passing anti-abortion ordinances—wrote on social media that he learned about this case in May from the director of a Texas crisis pregnancy center (CPC).

As you likely know, CPCs—fake clinics that spy and prey on women—increasingly function as the surveillance center of the anti-abortion movement. While many claim to abide by medical privacy laws, they’re not actually beholden to HIPAA because they’re not real health providers. So while it’s awful, it should come as no surprise that a CPC is passing on client info to people like Dickson.

We’ll continue to follow this case, but let’s make something clear: Anti-abortion extremists don’t actually care about preventing reproductive coercion or protecting women from abusive men.

Mitchell, for example, has carved out a terrifying niche of partnering with aggrieved men to take legal action over their partners’ alleged abortions. And earlier this summer, we reported that Texas had charged a man with capital murder for allegedly slipping abortion pills in his girlfriend’s drink—which resulted in her losing her pregnancy. Tellingly, this man wasn’t charged with a crime against his girlfriend, just her fetus. Here’s what Abortion, Every Day noted at the time:

“Conservatives want to make broad abortion-related arrests—targeting providers, activists, patients, and their support systems. But they can’t do that without sparking massive legal and cultural backlash.

Banta’s case gives them the unsympathetic villain they need to convince Americans that fetal personhood and ‘equal protection’ laws are good things—laying the groundwork for the sweeping arrests they’re so desperate for.”

In other words, conservatives are using abuse and ‘coercion’ to further some of the most extreme anti-abortion laws imaginable. But here’s the truth: abortion bans are reproductive coercion, and can carry the greatest harm for domestic abuse victims.

Attacks on Privacy

Today in news that is objectively good, but extremely concerning that this was happening at all: A California judge just ruled that Meta violated the state’s privacy laws by illegally collecting user data from the Flo period-tracking app.

This ruling comes in response to a 2021 lawsuit against Flo, Google, Meta, and the analytics company Flurry. The suit was brought by Flo users, who accused these companies of mining their private data without permission and using this data to perform targeted advertising.

Even more alarming, the lawsuit noted that through Flo, Google and Meta could eavesdrop on users’ in-app communications and collected some of this data between November 2016 and February 2019. Flo, Google, and Flurry privately settled with the plaintiffs; until Monday, Meta was the last remaining defendant.

Now, as worrying as this all is—reproductive rights advocates have long stressed that sometimes, well-meaning warnings about period tracking apps veer into excessive fearmongering. People criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes are more often reported by health care workers and acquaintances than betrayed by period tracking apps. And some apps like Euki, designed with support and approval from reproductive rights advocates and legal experts, have built-in protections.

While our personal data is most often mined by companies like Meta for advertising—the fact that it’s being collected at all is concerning. Especially considering Meta has a history of complying with police requests for this data.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs celebrated the ruling, noting that “companies like Meta that covertly profit from users’ most intimate information must be held accountable.” Meta intends to appeal the ruling.

In the Nation

If you believed at any point that Trump would simply “leave abortion to the states”—which, FWIW, is an awful state of affairs in which women are dying—I’ve got a bridge to sell you. This weekend, the Associated Press published an in-depth look at how Trump is pushing an extreme anti-abortion agenda with nationwide implications via his judicial picks. In fact, the AP notes that of Trump’s 17 judicial nominees, about half have argued in favor of abortion restrictions.

A few of these names may sound familiar: Chad Meredith of Kentucky, for example, has argued in court for medically unnecessary, mandated ultrasounds. Bill Mercer, a Montana state lawmaker nominated for a U.S. District Court judgeship, backed a 20-week abortion ban and parental notification requirements. But our favorite is Joshua Divine, former solicitor general of Missouri who claimed abortion pills “[starve] the baby to death in the womb.”

In a smug, wildly inaccurate statement, White House spokesman Harrison Fields justified these extreme appointees by claiming this is what voters want:

“The Democrats’ extreme position on abortion was rejected in November in favor of President Trump’s commonsense approach, which allows states to decide, supports the sanctity of human life, and prevents taxpayer funding of abortion.”

Trump’s 2024 win doesn’t change the overwhelming popularity of abortion rights. It doesn’t matter how many times Republicans try to claim the ‘will of the people’ or state’s rights.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is moving full-speed ahead with its utterly foul plan to burn roughly $10 million in contraception rather than distribute it to those in need around the world. Incredibly, the plan will cost taxpayers more than $160,000. And International Planned Parenthood says it will deprive an estimated 1.4 million women and girls essential, potentially life-saving health care.

We really are in the midst of the most simultaneously infuriating and stupid time to be alive.

Stats and Studies

Yet another study shows that the U.S. abortion rate has stayed relatively consistent—even rising since Dobbs—largely thanks to abortion pills. A new study in JAMA reports that Aid Access alone (yes, the group being sued by Jonathan Mitchell) shipped almost 120,000 packs of abortion pills to U.S. residents from July 2023 to August 2024. About 100,000 of these medications were shipped to people living in abortion-banned states.

According to the study, patients from counties with higher poverty rates were more likely to order pills from Aid Access.

Earlier this year, Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount report showed a rising abortion rate comprised mostly of medication abortions—and that a quarter of all abortions were completed via telehealth.

There’s a reason Republicans are pushing out lawsuits and fake studies attacking the pills: so long as abortion medication exists and is available, their bans won’t put a major dent in the abortion rate.

Some more interesting, new data: Her Campus and First Response just published a joint survey of Gen Z women. And while 97% of respondents supported a right to birth control (yay!), just 31% said they’re using an oral contraceptive compared with 45% who rely on condoms, and 37% who rely on the so-called pull-out method. (?!!)

Everyone should be encouraged to use the right birth control method for them. That said, given increasingly popular online disinformation maligning birth control—often from right-wing, female influencers who may not even present as right-wing—I wouldn’t be surprised if that played a role in young women’s apparent hesitation to use it.

For more on the rise of anti-feminist ‘influencers’, read Jessica’s most recent column:

We Need to Talk About the Pink-Pill Pipeline

Anti-Abortion Strategy

We caught something interesting in this piece from The Hill about Republicans’ efforts to stop abortion pills from being shipped into their states—a little bit of anti-abortion in-fighting.

As we reported late last month, a group of Republican attorneys general recently sent a letter asking congressional lawmakers to repeal shield laws. But it appears that anti-abortion leaders are distancing themselves from those lobbying efforts from Republican AGs like Louisiana’s Liz Murrill or Texas’ Ken Paxton. Here’s what James Bopp Jr., general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, told The Hill:

“It’s just not realistic. There is absolutely zero prospect of it passing the Senate, and it makes no sense to waste your time on things that are completely hopeless and pointless.”

Are anti-abortion organizations trying to do damage control and minimize (accurate) perceptions of them as extremists? After all, Bopp is the same anti-abortion activist who led the charge against the word ‘ban’—worrying that voters didn’t like it. (He called the term “the big ban word.”) Bopp, like lots of antis, is also known for using language about ‘protecting’ women and teens.

They don’t like to seem like bullies—even if they are.

In the Courts

Speaking of Republican AGs, let’s check in on the cases against New York provider Dr. Maggie Carpenter. Texas AG Paxton brought a civil suit against the doctor, and Louisiana is trying to extradite Carpenter on criminal charges—and today, NOLA has a new breakdown of the latter.

As you probably remember, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she would never “under any circumstances” turn Carpenter over to Louisiana. “There's no way in hell,” she said.

Carmel Shachar, a professor of law and health policy at Harvard, compared the legal standoff to “an arms race”—noting that pro-choice states have been expanding their shield laws in response to the attacks against providers. (Most notably, by allowing providers to keep their names off prescription labels.)

Shachar predicts that these massive disparities between state laws will likely drive the cases all the way to SCOTUS:

“Really, the only way to resolve it is to take it out of New York and Louisiana and bring it to the Supreme Court. That’s part of what the Supreme Court was designed to do, is resolve conflicts between the states.”

Louisiana AG Murrill, however, may have something else up her sleeve in the meantime. She told NOLA that her quest to punish Carpenter “is far from over.” And here’s what Tony Clayton, the local district attorney who brought the charges against the provider, said:

“We will take all legal measures afforded to us to extradite Dr. Carpenter back here, and you will see something along those lines in the not-so-distant future.”

I don’t love the sound of that! Hopefully it’s all bluster, but we’ll keep you updated with each spine-chilling development.