RFK Jr. Conflates Abortion and Birth Control

8.28.25

Click to skip ahead: Calculated Cruelty has a sad but unsurprising update on Adriana Smith’s son. In the States, news from Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Alaska, Texas, and more. Policing Pregnancy reports that Brittany Watts—the Ohio woman arrested for her miscarriage—has named two more people in her lawsuit. In the Nation, RFK conflates abortion and birth control, and the men who sue over women’s abortions. Stats & Studies reports that there’s been a 35% increase in legislation attacking sex education. Anti-Abortion Glossary tells you about “success sequencing.” Anti-Abortion Strategy looks at how conservatives are weaponizing a dubious rumor to help seats in Virginia. Must Reads has a few links to can’t-miss pieces. And In the Courts, a Trump-appointed judge rules against low-income patients in Maine.

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Calculated Cruelty

It’s been a little over two months since doctors performed a c-section on Adriana Smith, the Georgia woman whose body was forcibly kept alive after being declared brain dead. Smith’s family says her son, who they named Chance, is not doing well: "It's not getting any better day by day.”

Because Smith was a few weeks pregnant when she suffered brain death, the hospital refused to let her body die—citing Georgia’s abortion ban. Against her family’s wishes, Smith was attached to machines for months until doctors gave her a c-section this past June.

But as you can imagine, a body being kept ‘alive’ by machines is not the healthiest place for a fetus to grow. Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, tells local news outlet 11 Alive that Chance is still fighting for his life and that “this didn’t have to happen.”

“I want them to know that the law needs to be changed. It doesn't need to be altered. It doesn't need to be in effect at all. Women have rights; it's their body."

Smith’s grandmother, Thelma Edmondson, is also speaking out against Georgia’s ban. "We have to get rid of legislation," she said.

I can’t help but wonder where all the anti-abortion groups are right now. First, they remained silent during the national backlash to Smith’s story. Then they celebrated Chance’s birth as proof that abortion bans are a good thing, actually. Now they’ve disappeared again—especially with Smith’s family speaking up. What a bunch of cowards.

To Newkirk, however, what’s happening is simple: "I would like to see young women stop dying.”

In the States

Well, this is disgusting: Michigan Rep. Josh Schriver—who just last month introduced legislation that would punish abortion patients as murderers—now wants to greenlight employer discrimination against those who’ve had abortions.

HB 4753 prohibits employers from discriminating against people based on “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition,” with one vital caveat:

“[A] medical condition related to pregnancy or childbirth does not include nontherapeutic abortion not intended to save the life of the mother.”

Incredibly, the bill has five Republican co-sponsors who believe employers should be able to fire, retaliate against, or not hire people because they accessed a legal health service. Another hit from the party of small government and personal liberty!

We have an update from Missouri, where Republicans are barreling forward with their shameless scheme to put an abortion ban on the 2026 ballot. Remember, voters passed Amendment 3 in November, which was supposed to protect abortion rights—but the state GOP has been working to repeal or defang the measure ever since. Most recently, that’s meant putting abortion back on the ballot: Republicans have proposed a ballot measure also called Amendment 3—a move to trick voters into supporting a ban.

But there’s more. In addition to drafting ballot language that sounds downright pro-choice, Republican lawmakers are also packaging the measure with a ban on gender-affirming care for minors—hoping to ride a wave of anti-trans bigotry.

The ACLU is suing to stop it, arguing that the proposal violates the state’s single-subject rule and calling the gender-affirming care language “ballot candy.” And let’s be clear: anti-abortion leaders have admitted exactly that, pointing to abysmal polling on youth access to gender-affirming care compared with strong support for abortion rights.

This week, Missouri Solicitor General Louis Capozzi tried to defend the measure by arguing that gender-affirming care is relevant to reproductive health because it impacts fertility. But none of these bullshit transphobic arguments are remotely relevant to the question of whether voters support abortion rights, which is a settled issue. Hopefully, the courts will see it that way, too.

Nevada activists are pressing for legislation that would keep doctors’ names off prescription labels for abortion pills. One doctor told a local news outlet that this is “a common-sense solution to decrease the risk of violence against a provider.” Nevada Democrats introduced Assembly Bill 411 last session to do just that—but Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed the legislation.

Several other states already allow doctors to leave their names off prescription labels, listing their practice instead. The point isn’t just to protect providers from violence and harassment—it’s also to make it harder for red-state assholes to drag them into civil suits or criminal cases. (Especially critical now, as Republicans ramp up attacks on shield laws.)

Providers and advocates in the state hope that Nevada Democrats won’t give up. Denise Lopez, director of Nevada Campaigns for Reproductive Freedom, says, “We want to make sure that we are providing lifesaving care to patients.”

Meanwhile, Alaska’s (politically-appointed) state medical board has unanimously voted to recommend restricting gender-affirming care for minors and ending access to so-called “elective late-term abortions.” Ironic that a medical board would use a decidedly non-medical term like ‘late term abortion’—but we’ll leave that aside for now.

Every member of the medical board was appointed by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. All of them male; one is a podiatrist, another is a pilot. Just so you know!

Finally, a few bits of news on the Texas bill we warned you about yesterday. The Houston Chronicle notes that the anti-abortion groups that originally opposed HB 7 are now suddenly coming around, and The Daily Yonder reports that the legislation would disproportionately impact rural communities.

Quick hits:

• Inside Higher Ed reports on the Illinois law mandating public universities carry abortion medication;

• Free & Just held a panel in Wisconsin about the impact of abortion restrictions;

• And Planned Parenthood of Maryland has unionized, while Planned Parenthood of Michigan is expanding their telehealth hours to seven days a week.

Policing Pregnancy

Brittany Watts, the Ohio woman arrested and charged with ‘abuse of a corpse’ after miscarrying, has added two more people to a lawsuit alleging gross violations of her rights.

Abortion, Every Day reported back in January that Watts had brought a suit against the city of Warren, the hospital where she was ‘treated,’ a police officer, doctor, and two nurses. Specifically, the suit alleges that the nurses conspired with a police officer to fabricate evidence against Watts, despite knowing she had done nothing wrong.

Watts’ nightmare started when a nurse called 911, claiming that there was a live baby “in a bucket” at the Ohio woman’s home.

Now, the Ohio Capital Journal reports that two more defendants have been added to her suit: yet another nurse, and a hospital police officer. Watts’ lawyers say that the pair advised the nurse who called 911 to “call the authorities and report that plaintiff had committed a crime.”

I’m really hoping something comes of this case. There’s been such a disturbing rise of arrests—we need a result that sends an unmistakable message to doctors, nurses, and police alike: stop criminalizing women for their pregnancies.

In the Nation

At a press conference today, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. conflated abortion and birth control—advancing the myth Republicans hope will make it easier for them to ban contraception.

While criticizing recently-ousted CDC director Susan Monarez, Kennedy blasted the agency for “bizarre recommendations that were not science-based.” He then went on to claim, “the CDC has on its website today among the top 10 medical innovations, the greatest medical accomplishments in history, was abortion because it keeps whole families.”

The truth? Kennedy was referring to a list of “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” published in a 1999 issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. And, as you probably guessed, abortion wasn’t even on the list—”family planning” was. Here’s what the publication said:

“Access to family planning and contraceptive services has altered social and economic roles of women. Family planning has provided health benefits such as smaller family size and longer interval between the birth of children; increased opportunities for preconceptional counseling and screening; fewer infant, child, and maternal deaths; and the use of barrier contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and transmission of human immunodeficiency virus and other STDs.”

I don’t see ‘abortion’ anywhere in there! But to the Trump administration, it’s all the same. (Kennedy even made the same argument earlier in the day on Fox News.)

Feminists have been warning for years that Republicans want to confuse Americans by conflating abortion with birth control—a tactic that allows them to restrict contraception while claiming they’re simply banning abortion. And this isn’t some future danger: they’ve already started.

And with MAHA bullshit about hormonal birth control on the rise, every anti-birth control ‘gaffe’ is worth paying attention to.

The Wall Street Journal has a new feature on “The Men Suing Over Their Partners’ Abortions.” If you’re a regular reader, you know that there’s been an uptick in men taking legal action over women’s abortions—particularly medication abortions—and teaming up with conservative organizations and activists to do so. Represented by misogynist maniacs like Jonathan Mitchell, these tend to be abusive men who are furious that their partners or exes obtained care without their ‘permission’.

For Mitchell and anti-abortion groups, though, the suits are a means to an end: challenging shield laws and banning the mailing of abortion pills.

There’s one particularly grating thing about the WSJ’s coverage: In the article’s opening line, it calls these controlling male partners “unlikely allies” to the anti-abortion movement. The reality? They are natural allies.

Abortion bans have always been a tool in the toolbox of abusers, and reproductive coercion and intimate partner violence both spiked after Dobbs. There’s nothing unlikely about controlling men seeking to harass women over their reproductive decisions.

Unfortunately, expect to see more cases like these: anti-abortion activists are leaning into the “father’s rights” narrative, and John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, stressed that his organization has “been trying to sound the alarm and recruit people to this fight.”

Quick hits:

• A Wisconsin Republican running for re-election to the U.S. House is quietly scrubbing his website of any mentions of abortion;

• The Associated Press reports on a lawsuit against the FDA’s mifepristone restrictions;

• Austin American Statesman looks at the connection between the attacks on trans rights and abortion rights;

• And The 19th covers how anti-abortion groups are trying to co-opt and weaponize ‘reproductive coercion.’ (AED has been raising the alarm about for a while, if you’re interested in learning more.)

Stats & Studies

As kids across the country head back to school, a new report warns that there’s been a 35% increase in legislation attacking sex education. SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change has identified over 115 state-level bills attacking sexual health education in schools, including legislation restricting information about STIs, contraception, abortion, and LGBTQ identity.

The impacts of legislation like this—along with abstinence-only curricula—are lifelong and dangerous. Censorship of accurate, comprehensive sex ed places young people at greater risk of experiencing everything from sexual abuse and unplanned pregnancy, to STIs or shame about their sexuality or gender identity. Unsurprisingly, supposedly “pro-life” leaders couldn’t care less about children’s well being.

SIECUS also flags an increase in legislation pushing inaccurate information about fetal development. They cite ‘Baby Olivia’ bills specifically, one of the legislative trends we’ve been tracking here at Abortion, Every Day. The group calls the bills, which force propaganda videos into public school classrooms, “an effort to indoctrinate young students with anti-abortion ideology through misleading imagery and information.”

As we’ve warned before, these videos are also a way for conservatives to build a new anti-abortion electorate.

Anti-Abortion Glossary

There’s one more thing from that SIECUS report worth keeping an eye on: “success sequencing.” Apparently that’s conservatives’ new, sanitized, term for abstinence-only until marriage curricula.

The idea is to teach kids that there’s a certain life path they should take, and that deviating from that sequence of events—say, by having sex before marriage—will irrevocably fuck them up. From SIECUS:

“Such programming shames and puts the blame on individuals by asserting that students can ‘avoid poverty’ only if they follow a specific life trajectory that includes waiting until marriage to have sex and kids.”

The term has been around for a while, but it’s the first time I’m hearing of it. So keep an eye on your kids’ sex ed curricula.

Anti-Abortion Strategy

Virginia Republicans are still breathing down the neck of a Fairfax County high school over dubious allegations that a school social worker helped two students access abortion nearly three years ago.

When Abortion, Every Day first reported on this story earlier this month, we predicted that the whole thing was a stunt by Virginia Republicans to boost their anti-abortion messaging ahead of November—especially given that Democrats are pushing to get abortion on the 2026 ballot. Every update since has proven us right.

The Virginia Mercury reports that the manufactured controversy is already poised to be a hot-button topic in the 2026 gubernatorial race: Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears—who has previously argued that women who consent to sex are consenting to pregnancy—called the story “a gift that keeps on giving.” And Reproaction published a terrific piece laying out why some of the nation’s biggest anti-abortion organizations, like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, are so obsessed with the story despite there being pretty much zero publicly-confirmed information.

It’s all because conservatives—supported by right-wing media—believe that ‘parents’ rights’ is their best way forward on abortion. It’s also worth remembering that anti-abortion organizations lost big in Virginia in 2023, flailing miserably after convincing state Republicans to run on anti-abortion messaging. So they’re eager to get back in the game.

Unfortunately, that means that some of the most noxious anti-abortion activists around are planning on making a big stink. Students for Life announced that they’re going to the Fairfax School Board Meeting today, where they’ll hold a “Stop Secret School Abortions” news conference. Concerned Women for America will be there too, “speaking out to protect parental rights.” Again: all over a years-old rumor.

It couldn’t possibly be more obvious that all of this is a political stunt meant to empower Virginia anti-abortion extremists and, they hope, elect Republicans.

Must Reads

• Irin Carmon writes at New York Magazine about conservatives’ attempts to scare American women away from abortion medication by bringing lawsuit after lawsuit—and why it’s backfiring.

• Over at Slate, Mark Joseph Stern speaks to Karen Johnson, legal director at Pregnancy Justice, about Maryland’s prosecution of a woman who had a stillbirth.

• A lawyer specializing in veterans’ issues writes at The New York Times about the Trump administration’s move to stop the VA from providing abortions to rape victims or those with life-threatening pregnancies.

• And in “Sixteen Hours, Two Flights, and a Pastor on Call,” The Texas Monthly follows one Texas woman’s hurdles to getting an abortion.

In the Courts

A Trump-appointed judge just devastated access to reproductive care for the most vulnerable communities across Maine.

Judge Lance E. Walker ruled that the defund portion of Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” means that Maine Family Planning (MFP)—one of the state’s largest reproductive health care providers—must lose federal funding. The ruling will strip thousands of low-income patients of their sole source of medical care, as well as access to contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings, and more.

The BBB prohibits healthcare providers that offer abortion from getting Medicaid reimbursements; and while Republicans’ primary target is Planned Parenthood, independent medical groups like MFP are also being stripped of federal funding.

Walker reasons that this is the natural consequence of Trump winning the presidency and Republicans holding power in Congress—and that because Roe is no longer the law of the land, abortion providers no longer have that protection. Walker also wrote that MFP could have stopped performing abortions, and that their decision to continue providing care “can only be understood as voluntarily standing its ground…despite the dramatically increased likelihood of defunding.”

It goes without saying that all of this is wildly cruel and nonsensical—just bullshit talking points to single out a health service and punish poor people.

As you’ll recall, the Trump budget bill has the potential to shutter one in four of all abortion clinics across the country, most of which would be in states where abortion remains legal. (That’s why Planned Parenthood and other advocates have called it a backdoor abortion ban.)

The “defund” portion of the law is currently paused in federal court pending a full ruling for a different case brought by Planned Parenthood. Learn more about the big bullshit bill and its impact below:

Senate Republicans’ ‘Big, Beautiful’ Backdoor Ban