Gen Z Wants Abortion Legal In Any Circumstance

6.22.26

Click to skip ahead: Planned Parenthood Will Likely Have Their Funding Restored; Young Americans Want Abortion Legal Under Any Circumstance; Anti-Abortion Polling Gives the Game Away; In the States: South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri & More; Republicans Are Using ‘Abolitionists’ To Seem Reasonable; Abortion Is An Election Issue Everywhere; Olivia Rodrigo is Hosting a Repro Rights Music Festival

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Planned Parenthood Will Likely Have Their Funding Restored

Good news is always nice, but it’s especially fantastic (and rare!) on a Monday: all signs point to Planned Parenthood having its federal funding restored on July 4th. Angela Vasquez-Giroux, VP of communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, tells me that health centers will once again be able to bill Medicaid for essential care like cancer screenings, wellness exams, and birth control.

That’s because the defund provision in Trump’s “big beautiful bill” expires after one year—and as NOTUS reported today, Republicans say they don’t have the votes to extend it. “I think at this point, it’d be unlikely,” Republican Sen. Steve Daines told the publication.

Still, that doesn’t mean Planned Parenthood and other reproductive healthcare clinics impacted by the law are totally in the clear. After all, Republicans’ attacks on low-income patients over the past year have caused “irreparable harm,” Vasquez-Giroux tells me. “And the Trump administration and its backers in Congress still want to permanently ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood.”

On top of that, multiple Republican-led states have already passed laws barring Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs—something the Supreme Court’s Medina decision last year cleared the way for. So what funding actually looks like on the ground in those states remains an open question.

I’ll keep you updated as things develop. But for right now, I think we’ve earned the right to feel a bit of relief and breathe. (Especially once you realize how furious and upset the anti-abortion movement is! 😜)

Young Americans Want Abortion Legal Under Any Circumstance

Want to know why the anti-abortion movement is hyper-focused on young people—young women, in particular? New polling from Gallup shows that 48% of young Americans believe abortion should be legal in any circumstance, with young women leading the charge.

Those numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, Gallup’s 2023 polling showed that 33% of voters 18-34 years old believe abortion should be legal throughout pregnancy (up from 14% in 2018)—a shift driven largely by women.

That’s why conservatives are pushing so hard on the tradwife bullshit, why they’re stripping schools of sex education, and why they’re passing ‘Baby Olivia’ laws requiring anti-abortion propaganda videos in elementary schools. The anti-abortion movement knows that young women are their most dangerous voting bloc.

All that said: most of you know that I take real issue with standard polling questions around abortion, and Gallup is no exception. I hate that most major pollsters adopt a conservative framework that asks voters when or under what circumstances they want the government involved in abortion, as opposed to if they want the government involved at all. After all, when asked the latter, over 80% of Americans say they don’t want pregnancy legislated.

I wish major pollsters would change things up and ask the questions that actually get at the heart of how Americans feel about abortion. I’m also struck that after four years without Roe, these groups are still largely asking the same questions. After everything that’s happened—all the bans, the arrests, the deaths, and horror stories—surely there’s a way to dig deeper?

Anti-Abortion Polling Gives the Game Away

It’s not just mainstream pollsters putting out new abortion numbers—Students for Life (SFL) released polling a few months ago, and the questions they asked were more revealing than anything the respondents said.

The most telling: SFL asked voters how they feel about jailing women:

We all know why they’re asking: back in April, SFL became the first major anti-abortion organization to endorse legislation that would criminally punish abortion patients—a South Carolina bill that would put women in prison for two years. This poll is them testing the water for what to do next.

It’s not a coincidence that the question comes at the same time that abortion ‘abolitionists’—extremists who want abortion patients to face the death penalty—are gaining mainstream traction. But SFL wants to seem more reasonable than that, describing the question of prosecuting patients as “a shift in the conversation.” As if jailing and executing women is just a little dinner table spat!

That’s not the only talking point they’re taking out for a test drive; SFL also polled voters on their ‘abortion in the water’ claim—and they asked about “catch kits,” which would require miscarriage and abortion patients to collect their own blood and tissue and return it to a doctor as medical waste. Please note just how expert they are at sanitizing anti-abortion cruelty:

As awful as this all is, this is why I love polls from anti-abortion organizations: they can’t help but show you exactly who they are.

“The patients we serve aren’t statistics. They move mountains in their own lives to get to us. They drive for hours. They take time off work or miss a paycheck. They find someone to watch their kids or borrow money to pay for gas.

We see how much effort it takes for patients to reach us. We see how they arrive carrying the weight of travel, stigma, cost and confusion. We see their relief to be met by someone who will tell them the truth, explain their options and treat them with respect.”

- Abortion providers Amy Hagstrom Miller, Paulina Briggs & Tammi Kromenaker, in a must-read op-ed at the Minnesota Star Tribune

In the States: South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri & More

Baby Olivia may be making an appearance in South Dakota classrooms this September. Sorry, kids!

Thanks to a slew of Republican laws mandating “fetal development” lessons, the anti-abortion propaganda video has already been assigned in schools across the country. Some of those state laws explicitly require the video be Baby Olivia—which was produced by the extremist group, Live Action. Others don’t namecheck Baby Olivia, but write the requirements so narrowly that only the anti-abortion video would fit the bill.

In South Dakota, the school board just approved three videos that schools can choose from—including the one from Live Action. The board also approved a video from Encyclopedia Britannica, and a 42-minute video from 2006. School districts will not only have to confirm that they’ve followed the law, but must report which video they chose.

I’m going to be really curious to see how many schools pick Baby Olivia. If you’re in South Dakota or know anyone who is, now is the time to start making your wishes known at your kids’ schools!

Iowa’s new law banning telemedicine abortion takes effect July 1—meaning women in a state where abortion is already illegal after six weeks will now also have to get abortion pills in person from a healthcare provider.

That’s not all: doctors will be required to screen for “coercion” before prescribing, and will be legally obligated to tell patients that women who take abortion pills have “suffered trauma from seeing the remains of the unborn child in the process of a chemical abortion.” (Remember the lawyer who said women will have flashbacks in their bathrooms? I do!)

As the Des Moines Register points out, the law probably won’t stop the flow of abortion pills into the state. What it will do is generate a lot of fear and confusion—which, let’s be real, is the point.

In other Iowa news, a few hundred anti-abortion activists gathered for the state’s annual March for Life, demanding lawmakers pass a total abortion ban. Given most Iowans oppose the state’s six-week ban, the low turnout is no shocker.

What is a surprise? Some of the language used by Maggie DeWitte, march organizer and executive director of Pulse Life Advocates: “We will continue to advocate for equal protection in the law for all Iowa citizens, born and unborn.”

Regular readers know that “equal protection” is the movement’s preferred euphemism for charging abortion patients with murder. That’s notable, since it wasn’t so long ago that DeWitte pulled her group’s support from an ‘abolitionist’ bill in Iowa, explicitly saying "we will not support any legislation that would criminalize women."

So did she change her mind? Or is she just laying the groundwork for a future ‘shift in conversation’?

Let’s turn to Missouri, where a judge struck down a slate of abortion restrictions last week—ruling that they run afoul of the pro-choice amendment voters adopted in 2024. In the wake of that decision, Missouri Planned Parenthood clinics have begun dispensing abortion pills this week. Which is fantastic!

In less terrific but totally predictable news, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe called the ruling “disappointing, dangerous,” and said it “puts the safety of Missouri women in jeopardy.” Kehoe also reiterated his support for an anti-abortion amendment that will be on November’s ballot, framing it as a way to ensure safety protections for patients:

“Now more than ever, it’s critical for Missourians to vote YES on Amendment 3 in November and make it abundantly clear that our state stands for life and the protection of mothers.”

It makes me furious that Republicans just invoke the protection of women as if their laws aren’t literally killing us. For more on the fight over Amendment 3, check out the Kansas City Star, and keep an eye on our coverage here.

Quick hits:

• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek visited a Planned Parenthood clinic this weekend to talk about the importance of access as we near the anniversary of Dobbs;

• Our friends at the West Alabama Women’s Center got a nice shout out from Melinda French Gates;

• And Wyoming’s former Speaker of the House blasts Republicans for continuing to pass unconstitutional abortion bans.

Republicans Are Using ‘Abolitionists’ To Seem Reasonable

Earlier this year, I warned that there were multiple downsides to the rise of ‘abolitionist’ bills seeking to punish abortion patients with jail time: not only does the legislation normalize what would once be unthinkable, it also gives Republicans who oppose such bills the chance to seem tame by comparison.

I predicted we’d see a wave of GOP candidates positioning themselves as reasonable centrists in the lead up to the midterms—simply because they didn’t want to send women to jail.

What I didn’t predict was the press doing it for them.

This week, The State ran a piece detailing where South Carolina’s two Republican gubernatorial candidates stand on the issues. On abortion, readers only learned one thing: that both would veto SB 1095, a total abortion ban that would jail patients. Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette said the bill “has gone too far,” and Attorney General Alan Wilson called for “compassion.”

That’s the whole abortion section. Apparently, the only thing voters need to know about the two Republicans running for governor and abortion is that they don’t want to see women in prison. That’s how quickly conservative extremism has become commonplace: so long as they don’t want jail or execute women, they’re in the middle?!

Abortion Is An Election Issue Everywhere

I’m keeping count of how many different national publications insist that Democrats aren’t running on abortion, that voters don’t care about abortion, or that the party needs to reach the “middle” this election year. Because I’m tired, I’m angry, and I love making a shit list.

Today’s entry: Bloomberg Government, which declares, “Democrats Emphasize Affordability Over Abortion in Midterms.” As if those two things aren’t very much related?!

Here’s what really cracks me up: at the same time mainstream publications keep declaring abortion dead as a campaign issue, I keep seeing race after race being defined by it.

The New York Times published a piece today on a Utah House race that’s become, in part, a referendum on abortion. Then there’s Wisconsin Attorney General candidate Eric Toney, who is being dragged for his anti-abortion extremism. And Republicans in Washington are blasting each other over the issue.

And then there’s Maine, where you literally cannot talk about the Senate race without talking about abortion. Two big developments today: Planned Parenthood endorsed Graham Platner, citing Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. And Collins responded by claiming Roe would have been overturned regardless of whether Kavanaugh was confirmed. I can’t imagine that’s going to go over well.

We’re not done yet! POLITICO reports that Democrats are banking on abortion driving races in states where the issue is on the ballot—like Virginia, Nevada, and potentially Idaho. But I appreciated that Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju warned that ballot measure support doesn’t automatically translate into candidate support. (Remember: Arizona and Florida voters backed pro-choice measures in 2024 and still voted for Trump.)

“They think: ‘Okay, I’ve protected abortion access, and now I can vote for these candidates based on other issues,’” Timmaraju said.

Reproductive Freedom for All also told POLITICO they plan to spend $23.5 million this year to reach “independents, soft Republicans, and split-ticket voters” in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and California. It’s the most the group has ever spent in a midterm election.

Olivia Rodrigo is Hosting a Repro Rights Music Festival

We could all use a little joy these days, and this news brings a whole lot of it: singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo announced today that she’s hosting a music festival to raise money for reproductive rights organizations like Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Institute for Reproductive Health, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, and more.

And the slate of performers? You’re gonna die: Bikini Kill, Chappell Roan, Die Spitz, Katseye, Doechii, Mitski, Stevie Nicks, Sarah McLachlan, and—of course—Rodrigo herself. She says:

“The lineup is truly insane and full of my heroes and friends. I firmly believe that joy, community, and music can be the drivers of meaningful change and I’m hopeful this festival will be just that.”

Tickets for Daisy Chain Fields will go on sale on the Dobbs anniversary; find out more info here. Hope I see some AED readers there!