Welcome to the show.
Thank you. I'm so glad to be on.
-Huge fan. -And congratulations on your new position.
You have now been leading Planned Parenthood...
I-Is it six months now?
-How long has it been? -Four months.
Four months. Straight into the job.
And, honestly, you have one of the most impressive résumés
-of any human being I have ever read. -(chuckles)
No, genuine. Because I read it,
and I was like, "This-this has to be wrong.
The numbers are the other way around."
Is it true that you attended college
-at the age of 13? -It is.
(laughter and cheering)
And you passed?
And somehow I'm here today as a doctor.
No, I mean, you-you went to college at 13.
You-you graduated.
You flew, you know, at the top of your class.
You went on to work in health care,
and you worked in health care in, um, in Baltimore.
And you look at the programs that you enforce there.
I mean, you are someone who has been a badass from day one.
I mean, you-you implemented programs
where you helped kids get reading glasses,
and this improved test scores.
Which means the kids weren't dumb.
-They just couldn't see, right? -That's right.
And-and then you worked
on improving general health care of the community.
Has this always been your focus in life,
-improving other people's lives through health? -It is.
I've always wanted to be a doctor
for as long as I could remember.
And it's also, though, in working in the ER
that I saw that what's making people sick
isn't just the illness that they have
-if it's also systemic issues. -Right.
And that's why I truly believe that health care has to be
a human right that's guaranteed to all
and not just a privilege available to some.
(cheering and applause)
When you...
When you take over Planned Parenthood, though,
you are taking over an institution
that is easily one of the most divisive in America.
You have an institution that works to support
so many women and their reproductive rights,
and you have an institution
that has become the single enemy of the right.
What is your idea of what Planned Parenthood
is supposed to be doing in this country?
Planned Parenthood is a health care organization.
That's how I got to know Planned Parenthood.
My mother was a patient at Planned Parenthood.
So was my sister, and so was I,
-just like one in five women in America. -Right.
Look, we're not the ones that made health care political.
I mean, getting medications for your children,
getting breast and cervical cancer screenings,
-STI tests... -Right.
These are not political issues.
But when other people have made health care political,
it's our duty to fight back with everything we have,
because it's about people's lives.
And when you... when you...
(cheering and applause)
When you fight back, you are fighting back against people
who believe in their convictions as-as hard as you do.
And, you know, I-I've realized that this topic is-is one
that is, honestly, you know,
one of the most entrenched in America.
The topic of abortion in and around Planned Parenthood
has been one of the biggest reasons
that Republicans want to defund your organization.
But you argue that reducing Planned Parenthood
to only abortions doesn't take into account
what the organization's really about.
What do you mean by that?
Abortion is a standard medical procedure
that one in four American women will have in our lifetimes.
It's part of the full spectrum of reproductive health care,
which is health care.
And it's important for us
-to speak about abortion in that context. -Right.
In Planned Parenthood, we provide care
to nearly 2.5 million people every year.
We provide care to women-- the full spectrum of services.
Some of our health centers even provide mental health services,
-prenatal care, postnatal care. -Yes.
We're proud also to serve men and non-binary people.
Actually, we are really proud
that we now provide hormone therapy for trans people,
and we are looking to expand gender-affirming care
to all of our health centers around the country.
-Wh-When you... -(cheering and applause)
As a-- as a doctor,
you are in a unique position,
because you are a physician, you know?
Most of us speak about this topic,
and it's an opinion based on what we've read.
But you are actually someone who is qualified,
and you have studied this.
Take us through the arguments
against what many Republicans are proposing
in the heartbeat laws.
Just today, the governor of Mississippi
signed into law a bill
that would prohibit abortions after six weeks,
when most women don't even know that they're pregnant.
And this is-- Similar types of legislation
have been introduced in 15 states
-just in 2019 alone. -Right.
And this is terrifying.
I mean, with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court,
we face a real situation
where one in three women of reproductive age,
which is 25 million women,
could be living in states where abortion is criminalized
and banned altogether.
And I know what that means.
I-I have a mentor who practiced medicine in the 1960s,
-working in the ERs. -Yeah.
And he talked about how there was an entire area
of the hospital called the sepsis ward,
and it was filled with young women
who were dying from infections and kidney failure
because they had to go have unsafe abortion care.
And that's what could happen now.
Thousands of women died before Roe v. Wade,
and that could happen now.
And this is what we need to call out.
We need to call out that reproductive health care
is health care and that we are fighting for people's lives.
Wh-When you look at the arguments
that Republicans pose from the other side, they say,
"We're here to protect the unborn child."
Um, President Trump has been seen on the campaign trail
saying this is about late-term abortions.
You know, you hear the stories now where--
I mean, President Trump actually said
it's gotten to the point where, um,
a baby can be aborted after it is born.
-Now... -(audience chuckling)
I don't know what that means,
but you're a doctor.
Wha-What do they mean by "late-term abortions,"
like, "after birth" or "at birth"?
(laughter)
Good response from the audience.
(laughter)
We have to call out President Trump for what he's doing,
which is lying.
I mean, what he's saying has no basis...
(cheering, applause)
What President Trump is saying has no basis
in medicine or reality.
(laughter)
A-And here are the facts.
About 99% of abortions occur before 21 weeks,
-Mm-hmm. -and those that occur later
in pregnancy are because something in the pregnancy
has gone very wrong.
And I treated a woman who found out at 21 weeks
that she was carrying twins that would never develop
their diaphragms or their lungs.
And if she'd carried them to term,
they would have suffocated upon birth.
These are extremely difficult, hugely personal
and challenging circumstances
that women and families find themselves in.
-Right. -And they deserve our compassion.
And President Trump is exploiting their pain
for political gain, and I say to him:
Shame on you, President Trump.
(cheering, applause, whistling)
You're at the beginning of a journey.
You're also, um,
at the beginning of a new Supreme Court.
You're also at, um, I mean, the beginning
of Donald Trump's, you know,
I guess, effect on the conversation.
You look at what Republicans are doing now
in and around the country with abortion laws.
One of the biggest things that concerns many women,
and many of the people at Planned Parenthood, I've read,
is, um, what the government is saying
in and around what doctors can recommend
or how you can have conversations around abortion.
What are those issues, specifically?
A month ago, the Trump-Pence administration
came out with a gag rule around the Title X program.
So, Title X is a program
that provides four million low-income women and families
with affordable birth control,
-Mm-hmm. -um, cancer screenings,
STI tests,
and the Trump administration came out with a gag rule
saying that doctors now cannot provide referrals
for women for abortion care
even if women are asking for abortion referral,
and it's not even clear what we would do as doctors
if it's medically necessary.
I mean, this is direct censorship.
It's putting a gag on doctors
and forcing us to withhold information from our patients.
And this is why over 100 medical and nursing
and public health organizations are opposing this rule,
including the American Medical Association.
You know, we at Planned Parenthood
would never gag our doctors, we would never force our doctors
to lie to our patients, and that's why we are fighting
this gag rule with everything we have,
including we just recently filed a lawsuit
to sue the Trump-Pence administration
against this illegal and unethical rule.
(cheering, applause)
Look, I, uh...
...tell you this much, you are a...
a doctor who is a woman who is running Planned Parenthood
who finished college and is an immigrant.
You are literally Trump's nightmare.
(laughter)
So, uh, good luck on your journey.
-Welcome... -Thanks, Trevor.
-(cheering, applause) -welcome to your new job.
Dr. Leana Wen, everybody.