Under a second Donald Trump presidency, The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 would provide a blueprint for carrying out extreme policies. But in many parts of the country, these restrictive policies are already in effect and Project 2025 would simply expand these threats to multiple facets of American life. In this first episode of How to Win’s series, “The Threat of Project 2025,” Ali Velshi unpacks the alarming agenda for reproductive rights, including the criminalization of mailing abortion pills and eliminating the Department of Health and Human Services. Ali speaks with Amanda Zurawski, who nearly lost her life when she was denied an emergency abortion in Texas, and Georgetown law professor Dr. Michele Goodwin highlights the history of policing women’s reproductive rights, underscoring the broader threat to American democracy.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Ali Velshi: Hi, I’m Ali Velshi. By this point, I am sure you have heard a lot about Project 2025, the now-infamous policy document published by The Heritage Foundation. Taraji P. Henson sounded the alarm on the BET Awards.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Taraji P. Henson: The Project 2025 plan is not a game, look it up.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: Kenan Thompson derided it at the Democratic National Convention.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Kenan Thompson: You ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: And Democrats are beating the drum on the campaign trail.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Tim Walz: They spend a lot of time pretending they know nothing about this. But look, I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this. when somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re going to use it.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: Under a second Donald Trump presidency, Project 2025 would provide a blueprint for governing, giving Trump a toolkit to implement extreme and draconian policies with startling efficiency.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Melissa Murray: Trump acolytes have an entire plan called Project 2025 that outlines priorities for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: But what’s important to remember is that in many parts of the country, Project 2025 is already here.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Lester Holt, NBC: In this historic decision, the Supreme Court has now overturned Roe v. Wade in which the abortion right was made nationwide.
Blayne Alexander, NBC: The court’s decision means effectively ending abortion not just in Mississippi but across a wide section of the south.
Morgan Chesky, NBC: Governor Greg Abbot signing a bill, Wednesday, banning abortions in most cases where fetal heartbeat is detected, potentially as early as six weeks into pregnancy before many women even know they’re pregnant.
Vicky Nguyen, NBC: The state Supreme Court ruled that a 15-week abortion ban is not legal and cannot go into effect. Arizona will now revert back to a near total ban that has roots in the Civil War era.
Felicia Lawrence, NBC: The Human Rights Campaign is declaring a national state of emergency for LGBTQ Americans. The move comes after a wave of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed this year around the country —
Joe Fryer, NBC: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed four bills that took aim at the transgender community, drag performances and discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom.
Joe Fryer, NBC: Families and doctors are now suing the state of Alabama after the governor signed a bill criminalizing transgender health care for minors.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: Civil rights are being rolled back, environmental protections are coming undone, and vulnerable groups are feeling the crush of restrictive policies. And Project 2025 would expand the threat even further. MSNBC journalists have spent weeks, even months digging into Project 2025 on air and online.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Chris Hayes: If you’ve been closely watching this show and this network and even on social media, you have probably heard of Project 2025.
Jen Psaki: We have spent a lot of time on the show warning you about the dangers of Project 2025.
Joy Reid: Over the next hour, I will lay out the greatest threat to the American democratic experiment in modern times and it’s called Project 2025.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: And in this series,” The Threat of Project 2025”, presented by the How to Win 2024 podcast, we’re looking at how anti-democratic policies have already jeopardized Americans and we will lay out how Project 2025 could put even more of us at risk.
Michele Goodwin: This is why we have to connect the dots and see this as a project about dismantling democracy.
Marvin Dunn: They would kill the Department of Education. The ramifications of that are extraordinary. I cannot even imagine.
Chase Strangio: With respect to LGBTQ people, it is catastrophic as it is for so many communities.
Vernon Morris: You are monetizing potential disaster. You might be placing people at undue risk who can’t pay. That’s a recipe for disaster and it’s only a recipe for disaster.
Ali Velshi: Throughout this podcast series, you will hear from Joy Reid on the risks of Project 2025 to education and on the lives of students and parents. Jen Psaki on how minority rights and LGBTQ rights in particular could continue to be rolled back. Chris Hayes will sound the alarm about climate change and the risk to our warming planet. And I will be taking on reproductive rights. These are some of the key issues that could shape the election this November. So as early voting kicks off this month, we want you to understand what’s at stake. Let’s get started.
When people talk about project 2025, what they’re actually referring to is a 922-page document called Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise. There are 30 chapters in Mandate for Leadership 2025, most focused on their recommendations for specific agencies, such as the Department of Education or the Department of the Treasury. On the issue of abortion, there’s no specific chapter dedicated to the issue, instead it’s mentioned throughout the entirety of this massive document.
In fact, the word abortion appears 199 times, including criminalizing the mailing of abortion pills such as mifepristone, eliminating the Department of Health and Human Services and replacing it with the Department of Life, changing the aim of the agency to focus on pro-life objectives or using the CDC to create a massive surveillance apparatus around reproductive health, to potentially criminalize anyone seeking an abortion, and those who would aid them, including medical professionals.
To help us better understand this, I will be speaking with one of the foremost experts in the country on abortion and the law Dr. Michele Goodwin. And I will talk with someone who’s already lived the reality that Project 2025 wants to impose on all Americans, a woman named Amanda Zurawski who has become an unwitting spokesperson for what she’s had to endure in the state of Texas. That’s all coming up.
(ADVERTISEMENT)
Ali Velshi: In the fight for reproductive rights, you may have heard the name, Amanda Zurawski.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Stephanie Rhule, MSNBC: Amanda Zurawski, she is one of the five women suing the state of Texas over their six week abortion ban. She was denied an abortion despite dangerous pregnancy complications she was experiencing.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: She’s the lead plaintiff in Zurawski versus state of Texas. The first lawsuit on behalf of women who were denied abortions since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. When the Supreme Court struck down Roe, this triggered a Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks. Shortly after that law went into effect, Amanda began experiencing a serious health complication 18 weeks into her pregnancy. She learned that her unborn fetus was at risk as was her own life, and she needed an abortion. Under Texas law, doctors denied her and she almost died. The next year she filed her lawsuit. She also wound up testifying before Congress.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Amanda Zurawski: I may have been one of the first who was affected by the overturning of Roe in Texas, but I am certainly not the last. More people have been and will continue to be harmed until we do something about it.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: And that wouldn’t be the last time she shared her story. She’s become an impassioned advocate for reproductive rights, especially as it’s become a key issue this election. At least 10 states will feature abortion measures on their ballots. And a recent survey shows that one in eight voters list abortion as the most important issue in this presidential election. And at the DNC last month, women took to the stage to highlight why abortion matters.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Hadley Duvall: At age 12, I took my first pregnancy test after years of sexual abuse, and it was positive. That was the first time I was ever told you have options. I can’t imagine not having a choice.
Kaitlyn Joshua: Because of Louisiana’s abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much, my husband feared for my life. No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: And Amanda was one of them.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Amanda Zurawski: Every time I share our story, my heart breaks for the baby girl we wanted desperately, for the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver her safely. But I was lucky. I lived. So, I will continue sharing our story, standing with women and families across the country.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: I sat down with Amanda to hear why, as she puts it, we should all be terrified of Project 2025.
Tell me about where you grew up and your life before you came to Texas.
Amanda Zurawski: Well, thank you for asking me that. I don’t get to talk about my hometown very often. I am originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is also where my husband is from. We met when we were 4 in preschool and he moved to Austin right after college. And I was actually a teacher in Indiana for about five years.
And then just decided, I think I want to experience something different. So, got a job in Austin and moved down here. At that point, I hadn’t talked to Josh since college. So, it had been maybe eight years and we reconnected and, you know, started dating right away and got married five years later and here we are.
Ali Velshi: Had you thought about abortion much before you got pregnant in 2022?
Amanda Zurawski: You know, I grew up in a really conservative area in the Midwest, conservative family. My family has always been progressive socially. And we have always believed that those decisions should be up to a woman and her doctor, but it wasn’t something we really talked about. So even though we implicitly kind of agreed that we were all pro-choice, we didn’t really talk about it. And when Roe fell, I was furious just because I am a woman and think that I should have equal rights and rights to make decisions for my own body, but I was also actively undergoing fertility treatment.
So, I didn’t see it from the perspective of possibly needing an abortion for a pregnancy, because I was trying to get pregnant. However, with fertility treatment, there is a higher likelihood for multiples and my body can’t physically carry multiples. And so we said to my doctor, you know, what does this mean? What if I get pregnant with multiples? And he said, you had have to leave the state to have what’s called a selective reduction because otherwise it would be considered an illegal abortion. So, it was swirling around in my head for a number of different reasons.
Ali Velshi: But probably closer to the back of your brain than the front. It wasn’t something that was sort of governing your thinking about this pregnancy.
Amanda Zurawski: Absolutely not. And I was not thinking in any capacity, in any reality, would I need or want an abortion?
Ali Velshi: You said you met with some complications during your pregnancy. Can you tell us a bit about this? Because so many of us have first learned about how complicated pregnancies can be. Tell me what happened to you?
Amanda Zurawski: Yeah, that’s a good call out because every pregnancy is different and getting pregnant is complicated, being pregnant is complicated. And you know, there’s this feeling with a lot of women I think that once you make it to 12 weeks, you are safe. You are in your second trimester, You’ve made it, you’re good to go. We can start being excited.
Ali Velshi: Right, many people don’t tell people they’re pregnant until that point.
Amanda Zurawski: Yes, and I was in that space. I thought I had made it and I could tell something was wrong. But this was my first pregnancy, so I did not know what it was. I described it to my doctor as just feeling like I was wider than I should be. My body was physically wider. Well, come to find out that was my body dilating. So, my cervix dilated prematurely. It’s a condition called grotesquely incompetent cervix. And basically, it just means that I was dilating way too early. And at 18 weeks, a baby’s not viable and so there was no way to reverse course. So, there’s nothing they could do to save the pregnancy.
Ali Velshi: So from the moment you started feeling something was abnormal, at what point did you first realize that Texas’ abortion restrictions were going to coincide with your pregnancy?
Amanda Zurawski: So, immediately after my doctor said, you’re going to lose the baby, I said, what do we do now? And she had to essentially ask because the law was so new. And I just couldn’t believe that we were living in this reality that we didn’t know what we could or couldn’t do. And it became very clear that there was nothing she could do. And she said, look, either you’re going to deliver naturally, you’ll go into labor naturally, or you’ll get so sick that then we can treat you.
Ali Velshi: There was nowhere to turn. There was nothing you could actually do in the state of Texas. You could not go to an emergency room or go to another doctor and say, hey, I know this is happening. This is what has to happen. This is the medical treatment for what’s happening to me. You didn’t have that option.
Amanda Zurawski: That’s exactly right. And my doctor, after consulting with her ethics board at her hospital, even called other hospitals around Austin, around the state of Texas and said, can I send her to you? And they all said, no, our hands are tied. No one can do anything except wait.
Ali Velshi: What were the alternatives that were presented to you at that point when you realized you couldn’t get treatment for a medical condition, possibly life threatening medical condition, what were options that were presented to you?
Amanda Zurawski: I could wait at the hospital or I could wait at home, and that was it. You hear some stories similar to mine of women who have to flee their states to go to a state where they can get care. My doctors explicitly told me don’t be farther than 15 minutes from a hospital because —
Ali Velshi: Wow.
Amanda Zurawski: — I had lost all of my amniotic fluid, which is what protects a pregnant woman from infections. So, they knew that I was at a high risk of infection and yet still could do nothing. Three days later, I was shaking uncontrollably because I was freezing cold, even though it was 110 degrees. My teeth were chattering so violently, I couldn’t get a sentence out and —
Ali Velshi: Wow.
Amanda Zurawski: — my husband, Jos, is calling our doctor saying, is she sick enough yet? If I bring her in, will you treat her yet? Because we had been to the hospital three times in between, thinking that I have met the criteria and we were turned away every time. So finally, my fever was 103, he just said, I am bringing her in. I don’t care. I’m bringing her in.
Ali Velshi: Was everybody satisfied that you were sick enough?
Amanda Zurawski: Well, it took them 45 minutes to decide that I was, but finally they decided, oh, she’s in septic shock and she’s literally dying. So, I guess we should give her an IV now. The only thing I remember is sitting in the waiting room for 45 minutes across from a woman who is starting to have contractions and was seemingly about to deliver a healthy baby while I knew I was about to lose mine.
Ali Velshi: Tell me about you now, because you did not leave this without scars.
Amanda Zurawski: No literal, physical scars. Obviously, we still really want children. And so as soon as we were able to start trying again, once I had recovered enough physically, my doctor said, okay, let’s get some imaging. Let’s see what we are working with here because your body has been through a lot. The scarring was so severe, Ali, that they could not even get imaging because it was so dense that the x-ray machine literally could not get pictures.
So, my doctor had to go in and surgically clear out all of the scarring. He was able to get most of it. One of my fallopian tubes remains permanently closed. He had to surgically rebuild my uterus because it had collapsed in the process. And now the extent of the damage is so severe that we have been advised to go straight to IVF, if we would like to have children again and to also use a surrogate because my body has been damaged so poorly. They don’t recommend that I try to carry again.
Ali Velshi: So for the context of this discussion, I just wanted to be clear, a woman who wanted to have a baby nearly died and lost a baby that she wanted to have and now is going to have more trouble than she would have otherwise had conceiving and having a baby.
Amanda Zurawski: Yes.
Ali Velshi: Doesn’t sound like what the goal is of Project 2025 and those who would like to stop abortions. Let’s talk about what happened next. You got involved in some fashion in a lawsuit. Tell me about that.
Amanda Zurawski: Yes, so I was actually still in the hospital when Josh and I decided we got to do something about this because I am so early on, just from a timeline perspective of when the law went into place in Texas, that people probably don’t know what these laws really mean and what they really say.
And I knew that I was the best case scenario in terms of opportunity and privilege to get healthcare and get to the hospital before I died, have a spouse that could take me. And we were talking about all of the people who don’t have access to those things. And we said, people are going to die.
And so we decided right away, we got to fight back. And we had no idea what that was going to look like. How on earth do you sue a state? You can’t sue a state. Well, it turns out you can. And so we were connected with the Center for Reproductive Rights. And after an initial phone call with them, it just clicked.
And we were like, yep, we’re doing this. And I think, you know, for us, it started out as we just wanted to educate people.
We want people to know what the laws are doing to people. We want them to understand. And then it became, okay, how do we get people to change their hearts and minds on this issue that’s become so politicized, so stigmatized? How do we get them to change their hearts and their minds?
Ali Velshi: What did the state decide and what would be different today, if you were in exactly the same position that you were when you were pregnant?
Amanda Zurawski: Initially, there was a temporary injunction, which was thrilling for about 12 hours until the state unsurprisingly appealed it. We appealed directly to the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court after about six months, after hearing oral arguments from our lawyers cited against us, said that most of us were not harmed, said that we didn’t have standing. And what that means effectively is that nothing has changed. So if I, by some miracle of miracle got pregnant in Texas today, nothing would be different. And next time I might not be so lucky because nothing has changed for doctors.
Ali Velshi: I want to talk to you a little bit more about Project 2025. I will read you two quotes from Project 2025. The first one appears on page 450. It says abortion and euthanasia are not healthcare. The second one appears on page 472. Abortion is not healthcare and states should be free to devise and implement programs that prioritize qualified providers that are not entangled with the abortion industry. Your physician was not a provider who was entangled with the abortion industry am I right?
Amanda Zurawski: Not to my knowledge.
Ali Velshi: Abortion is not healthcare. What were you going to do? Where did this issue come up? When you found out you had a non-viable pregnancy, other than healthcare, what were your other options?
Amanda Zurawski: To die, literally. If I —
Ali Velshi: Yes.
Amanda Zurawski: — hadn’t been able to get the healthcare that I needed, if I wouldn’t have been able to leave my home to get somewhere, to get healthcare, I would have died. And that’s one of the things that I think a lot of people don’t think about is, you know, the folks that can’t leave their states, I could not have left Texas. If I had left or tried to leave and gotten stranded on an airplane or in the middle of the desert in west Texas, I didn’t have days or hours, I had minutes.
Ali Velshi: One of the reasons we are having this conversation is because a lot of people are not going to read this 922-page document. But if Donald Trump gets elected, this is a 180-day implementation, from Inauguration Day until six months thereafter, they will put these things into place. And I think people need to understand that that is a choice they are making. So when you’re surprised, six months after January 20 that all of this has happened, part of this discussion is to explain, that’s a choice. You can make that choice on November 5 and you are getting that message out right now.
Amanda Zurawski: There is nothing more terrifying to me than a second Trump administration. I mean when you were talking just now and you said, you know, 180 days, I had a physical, visceral reaction. I got sick to my stomach. It’s absolutely terrifying. And you and I right now are just barely scratching the surface of all of the —
Ali Velshi: Yes.
Amanda Zurawski: — horrific, barbaric plans that they have very clearly laid out for us. And yes, I agree with you, that’s why I’m going out on the road. I am telling my story, I am trying to distill it for people. So they know, look, this is the reality, if he’s reelected. This is real. And if you can get through to people just on a personal level, once they see a real person who’s been affected, it’s really hard, I think, to hold up that frame of mind of, oh, nope, that should be what exactly what’s happening.
Ali Velshi: Have you seen that personally? Have you had people tell you that you taking this out of the abstract and making it real has allowed them to see this differently?
Amanda Zurawski: Oh yes, over and over again. And you know, where I live is pretty liberal but I am on the road in a lot of places that are not so liberal. And I have heard so many people, whether it’s in their church communities or just in their conservative neighborhoods say, you know, I have never thought about it like this before and I am really changing the way that I think about all of this.
Ali Velshi: Do you think that this has been a real motivator for people who may not have A, otherwise gone to the polls or B, were making their decisions based on other things that they thought about, but are now realizing this is about fundamental freedom?
Amanda Zurawski: Absolutely. So, I think as you continue to peel back those layers and you help people understand, look, this is not just about abortion. This is not just about women’s rights. This is about a government that wants to take away our rights, rights that we have fought for, and they won’t stop there. If they are going to take human rights from one group who’s to say that they won’t take human rights from other folks.
These are our basic freedoms guaranteed to us as Americans. And you know, it doesn’t matter who you are. If you are a human being in the United States of America and Trump is reelected, you should be scared for your basic human rights. You should be scared for your freedom because he’s already told us how he is going to take them away
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Ali Velshi: Up next how Project 2025 is trying to take these freedoms away and what this means for democracy. Back in a moment.
(ADVERTISEMENT)
Ali Velshi: As we heard from Amanda Zurawski before the break, the real threat of Project 2025 on reproductive rights is that it lays the groundwork for cutting back all freedoms. I want to bring Dr. Michele Goodwin into this conversation. She teaches health policy and law at Georgetown University, and she wrote the book “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.” The book is about the surveillance and persecution of women and their pregnancies throughout history, especially poor women and women of color. Dr. Goodwin and I spoke on my TV show earlier this summer, where we discussed Project 2025 and what she called the dismantling of the autonomy of women.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
Michele Goodwin: The first thing to understand is that Project 2025 is about dismantling democracy. This is all about personhood. This is all about dismantling the autonomy of women and their constitutional liberties.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Ali Velshi: We reconnected to discuss the many ways these policies have been years in the making long before the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Michele Goodwin: Let me surface a case that I think helps us to understand beyond Roe v. Wade. For so many, Roe v. Wade is really the guiding star of reproductive freedom. But it’s not actually that case that should be our sole guide. Actually, a case that was 30 years before Roe v. Wade, 31 to be precise, Skinner v. Oklahoma really tells us about both liberty and the threat. It’s a case in which the state of Oklahoma wants to sterilize men who’ve committed petty crimes, like stealing chickens to take care of their families. And in a nine to zero opinion, a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court uses the terms human rights, civil rights, civil liberties to describe reproductive freedom. That states may not take away an individual’s reproductive autonomy and freedom.
Ali Velshi: And that was about men, interestingly enough.
Michele Goodwin: You are right, that was a case about men. The author of that decision was Justice Douglas. And it’s Justice Douglas who, again, in Griswold v. Connecticut, case that strikes down criminalizing contraceptive access for couples. He writes that opinion. So, it is to say that there is a legacy that is before Roe v. Wade of looking at reproductive freedom and autonomy, and now onto Project 2025 or whatever it is being called now.
Ali Velshi: You know, I come from Canada where Pierre Trudeau famously said the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. And it established an underpinning for the idea that you can like abortion or not like abortion. It’s not relevant to the discussion as to whether or not abortion or reproductive rights should be criminalized. That is what we are getting away from here. We are asking the wrong questions. We are asking people whether they like abortion or they don’t like abortion. It’s not a relevant question. The question is whether or not the state has any role in the decision that you make, either on your own, with your family or with your doctor.
Michele Goodwin: That’s exactly right. It’s something that has become so distorted. It’s been part of a playbook, a campaign. And with that campaign, it is worth noting that in recent years we have Supreme Court Justices Kagan and Sotomayer, before the Dobbs decision, articulating that the court was weaponizing religion, weaponizing the First Amendment. This idea of leaning into certain kinds of narratives that are really irrelevant to the project of democracy, to the project of constitutional rights and civil liberties.
And that is something to keep at the forefront.
And I think we’ll begin to see more of that and we have been in state houses that have adopted in this anti-abortion platform, which is broad, right. It reaches to matters of your ability to be able to travel, the ability for you to actually get healthcare, the ability to actually live and survive a pregnancy. What you see connected with that is this weaponization of religion, which has no place in thinking about our constitutional freedoms.
And that was something that was very clear to the founders of this country and the drafters of the constitution. They wanted to protect people from any kind of tyranny of the state because of what their religion happens to be. But it was not drafted to weaponize religion, such that it would be used to truncate other civil liberties and rights.
Ali Velshi: And ultimately it did. The Constitution had its flaws, but it does not have the language of religious supremacy and Christian supremacy that Project 2025 does. I will go back to another Canadian reference, “Handmaid’s Tale”, written in 1985 after the world had all wondered about whether the book, “1984”, would come to pass. And literally Margaret Atwood was talking about America. She calls it Gilead, but it’s America.
And it talks about the weaponization of religion. And it talks about punishing women or disallowing them from having reproductive freedom, in fact, controlling their reproductive output. And at the same time, executing doctors who performed abortions back when it was legal, making it retroactive. It’s wild to imagine that this book, this dystopian book, is being played out in places like Oklahoma and Texas and Alabama and Idaho. It’s happening. And Project 2025 is suggesting that it should or can happen across this country.
Michele Goodwin: It’s interesting that you should mention that and important that you have because in the introduction of my book, “Policing the Womb”, I mentioned that this is not about the Handmaid’s Tale or Gilead. And that that was fiction, but fiction has been made reality. That these are the present concerns in the United States. And that book was published in 2020. It was 2022 that we have the Dobbs decision, which is to say that this playbook has been something that’s been exercised, which is important for people to understand, right.
So if they think that it’s just about let’s defeat 2025, right, let’s make sure that the former president, let’s make sure he’s not elected. What they need to understand is that it’s already in the water. It is already been infected in the soil. We already see its roots growing deeper and its flowers budding. And to your point quite specifically, you have lawmakers in both South Carolina and as well in Louisiana who have called for the death penalty for those who perform abortions and those who obtain abortions.
And if anything, what lawmakers certainly know in the space between 2022 and today is just the chaos that has now been exposed, brought to light, that’s been created in the wake of Dobbs in their states. Now, we have little girls going to elementary and middle school as mothers now.
Ali Velshi: Yes.
Michele Goodwin: We have teenagers who’ve now become parents saddled with children that they didn’t want to have, but they didn’t have access to being able to manage their own reproductive destinies. We have seen a mother and daughter be criminally punished because a mother communicated to her daughter via Facebook about obtaining an abortion and how. We have seen in Ohio, a black woman, Brittany Watts, who had gone to see medical providers several times, complaining about her condition.
They knew she was having a miscarriage. They knew it needed to be managed. She had that miscarriage at her home, in her toilet. And only later upon reporting, this police came to her house, busted open her toilet, searching for fetal remains to criminally punish her. It is not just chaos, It’s inhumane.
Ali Velshi: You brought up a lot of things that I want to touch on. First of all, America, wealthiest country in the world has a higher infant mortality rate and a higher maternal mortality rate than pretty much anybody in the entire developed world.
Now, some of that’s got to do not with abortion policy, but with the way we distribute healthcare in this country, but Project 2025 would worsen that. There are statistical relationships between causing women to not get the reproductive care that they need or the maternity care that they need and the death of those women, or the lack of viability of the pregnancies.
Michele Goodwin: Let me just say that across the United States, there are widowers, there are husbands whose wives have died. I have met —
Ali Velshi: Yes.
Michele Goodwin: — with a number of them, a room full of men crying because their wives and the girlfriends have died or because their daughters have died in labor, immediately after labor or a couple weeks after labor. And as you know, part of this is because of how we organize our healthcare system in the United States. But there is a link to the way in which we regulate, manage, police reproductive options and freedom for people in the United States. Texas became known as the deadliest place in all of the industrialized world before the Dobbs decision.
Ali Velshi: All of the industrialized world, let’s just be clear about that.
Michele Goodwin: That is right, that is right, all the industrialized world, right. Texas had become the deadliest place, all. And the reason why one could say is because Texas had already instituted before Dobbs these targeted regulations of abortion providers, otherwise known as TRAP laws. And these laws imposed conditions on health clinics that it long had great records of providing health care for women who wanted birth control, who needed abortions, who wanted STD testing, who needed breast cancer screenings.
That’s what these clinics did. Many of them received federal dollars through Title 10. Although, those federal dollars couldn’t be used for abortion, they could be used for these other services. Texas began targeting those clinics, targeting them that they needed to restructure their cabinets, needed to be higher, their hallways needed to be wider.
Ali Velshi: Just to draw the picture, they —
Michele Goodwin: Yes.
Ali Velshi: — decided that a clinic that provided reproductive care needed to have hallways that were wide enough for a gurney or a structure to go, you know, two of them like, like a grocery store needed to be able to go both ways, not a necessity if you’re not an emergency room.
Michele Goodwin: That’s exactly right. And so even before we got to the Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt decision case in 2016, which challenged two Texas TRAP laws, by that time, there had already been so many healthcare centers that had shuttered.
Ali Velshi: Right
Michele Goodwin: And those were the same clinics that provided prenatal care.
Ali Velshi: Right.
Michele Goodwin: That provided postnatal care. It wasn’t just abortion.
Ali Velshi: It provided care for women who may not have known they were pregnant.
Michele Goodwin: That’s right.
Ali Velshi: You talked about a woman who was talking to her mother on Facebook about getting an abortion. One of the things Project 2025 does talk about is surveillance. Now, this is fascinating because in the same document, it discusses not tracking affluent and pollutants that are put into rivers, not tracking things that the fossil fuel industry does. We already know that we have difficulty in government tracking police shootings.
Michele Goodwin: We can’t track the rape kits and actually —
Ali Velshi: Right.
Michele Goodwin: — get them processed.
Ali Velshi: Right. But a lot of women use tracking apps to determine their periods, when they can get pregnant. It’s an important thing for people who are trying to get pregnant to do. I am a man but if I had to do one of those things, I’d feel very, very concerned right now that the government is going to decide they’re going to track that. And then they are in my business in a way that cannot be conceivable to an American citizen who thinks they live in a free country.
Michele Goodwin: That’s right. It’s incredibly dangerous. Many people use healthcare apps and there are apps that help individuals track their periods. Well, one of the challenges that has emerged and you saw this emerging during the Trump administration was this greater attention and mindfulness about girls in their periods, about women who visited clinics and this desire to get that information. And what this document calls for and what was even preceding this document itself is further surveillance and policing.
And the surveillance and policing also has its dangerous effect. And the danger of course happens to be our privacy or civil liberties, et cetera. But there is also, connected to this, in the rise of white supremacy, Christian white nationalism, all of that, we have to look at another form of policing and surveillance that’s been quite dangerous that doesn’t get air time and that is there is violence in that movement.
And it’s just not talked about. Since Roe v. Wade, there have been nearly 50 bombings of clinics that provide reproductive healthcare for women. There have been arsons. There have been doctors that have been murdered. There have been nurses that have suffered severe physical trauma because of shootings. And that threat continues to persist.
Ali Velshi: Yes.
Michele Goodwin: So, when we’re talking about surveillance, part of it is what the government does. But then we have to be concerned about those who are adjacent to government, where government officials have said, well, I’m ready for those people to stand by. Stand by with what information? And we have to really be concerned about that.
This is why we have to connect the dots and see this as a project about dismantling democracy and that reproductive freedom, abortion rights are the blood stain on the tip of the arrow, right, that is what this is about. When we see fundamental civil liberties, such as our ability to be able to associate, our ability to be able to speak, our ability to even be able to protest these things, all being attacked and all being undermined.
So, you were referencing the Texas SB 8 law, which allows individuals, citizens to go after individuals that they believe have aided and abetted others who have terminated a pregnancy. It is straight out of a page of the fugitive slave laws, which of course, we have seen the revitalization of. I mean when SB 8 became law, I said this, like we need to pay attention to history.
And at the time, there were people who were saying, well, no, no, no, this is just modern. And I said, no, this reeks, it has the stench of this pre-civil rights era. And of course, this is what we’ve now seen, right, with the revival of so much, you know, that was olds, and so here it is.
Ali Velshi: So, let’s talk about women who want to have their children. The net effect is the same. One of the things you have told me many times that this is why exceptions don’t work. Because, take the example of Amanda Zurawski, wanted to have her child, but the same restrictions applied to her as would apply to someone who these legislators say should not be having a so-called elective abortion. There’s a reason why none of this works because someone who’s a legislator, not a doctor is now making a determination of as to whether a woman, who’s got complications in her pregnancy might live or die.
And a point you make, which most men don’t understand, is that in America pregnancy is unusually high risk. Women can die from things that happen. And there are doctors who are under threat of treating somebody because they believe they could lose their license or go to jail or be fined for treating a woman who’s not sick enough to be treated because she may not be dying just yet.
Michele Goodwin: It’s even traumatic hearing the stories. And I feel that and I’m sure you do too, as you described that. That we are a country now that says, well, okay, well, in some of these states, we will enact exceptions, but we know those exceptions don’t work. We know that Amanda Zurawski and other women in Texas who have wanted to be able to stay in Texas and get the healthcare that they need nearby without risking being on the road or in a plane, have not been able to get it.
We know that there have been such tremendous hurdles that have been put in place with exceptions for let’s say, rape and incest. You know, how much you have to document to oftentimes men at police stations. And then what does this mean for a girl who’s been raped, who’s 10 or 11 years old, who now has to navigate the state’s —
Ali Velshi: Can’t drive, doesn’t have money.
Michele Goodwin: No.
Ali Velshi: Has no control over what happens in her life (ph).
Michele Goodwin: No. Most Americans wouldn’t know where their local police precinct happens to be. And look, the cruelty of this we saw right after the Dobbs decision where a 10-year-old girl had to flee one state to get to the other in order to be able to terminate the pregnancy, from Ohio to Indiana. And there were lawmakers that scoffed at that. They said, oh, that’s not true. That doesn’t happen, 10 year olds don’t become pregnant. Oh, well, they do. We have an exception in the stat, only to find that, no, you don’t have an exception, at least they didn’t at that time in Ohio.
But what you see is this failure to care, a lack of empathy and compassion for the lives of women and girls. We see more language about unborn child. Now conflicting what we understand as a child and now making it seem that it’s this child that’s in the uterus, it just simply hasn’t gone through this process to come out, right. And this has been part of a very sophisticated project of messaging.
And it makes all of this very complicated because we love children. We want to protect children. But the conflict that has emerged in terms of how this kind of framing has been, women’s lives really don’t matter. Women’s lives are incidental, you know, to all of this. That women are not the constitutional citizens. The women are not the persons. The person happens to be the embryo.
Ali Velshi: I want to ask you, when you look at not just what’s been going on in the legal landscape, but specifically this Project 2025, what does America to you look like under Project 2025?
Michele Goodwin: It looks like Gilead. That’s not hyperbole. It looks like a place where there are people who suffer, whose toilets are busted open in the search for fetal remains. It looks like a place where women are threatened with arrest and threatened with death penalty for terminating a pregnancy. It looks like women having to flee the state in the cover of night in order to get the healthcare that they need.
It looks like death. It looks like girls going into elementary school as mothers. These things that we’ve talked about, but only ramped up. But it also looks like a place where hope has been lost, where people feel defeated, where they feel as if there’s no place to appeal to because the United States has been considered as the beacon of equality, civil rights and civil liberties. And it feels, I think for many people, like where else to go and how do you leave?
It’s a place of immense trauma and it makes me think about a new Jane Crow as I’ve talked about before, because it resonates with me, this migration. The largest in the world that black people had leaving the American south after a period of slavery, after this period of Jim Crow, that wasn’t just about Rosa Parks refusing to give up a seat in the bus. But instead, a society where you can’t vote, your vote is suppressed. It’s not counted, where you can’t play checkers in the park, chess, where your kids can’t swim in the pool in the park. All of those things where it is just so egregious that you just have to flee and leave. And the question is, where will people go?
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Ali Velshi: Thank you for tuning in to this first episode of our special series, “The Threat of Project 2025”, presented by the How to Win 2024 podcast. We will continue to discuss the many ways these policies put Americans at risk with our next episode looking at the threat to education and the lives of students, led by our own Joy Reid. Episode 2 is out now, so be sure to keep listening. And next week, Jen Psaki and Chris Hayes will walk you through the risks to LGBTQ rights and climate change.
This series, “The Threat of Project 2025 is produced by max Jacobs. Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez. Catherine Anderson is our sound engineer. Bryon Barnes is the head of audio production. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC audio. And Rebecca Kutler is the senior vice president of content strategy at MSNBC. And I’m Ali Velshi.
Special thanks also to members of my team, Oscar Bauman, Jared Blake, Lily Corvo, Rebekah Dryden and Dina Moss. Search for “How to Win 2024”, wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series. And remember, you can listen to all these podcasts and more ad-free plus exclusive bonus content when you subscribe to MSNBC premium on Apple podcasts.