Episode Details

Hey fam, welcome back to the Gilead Gazette, where the men running this country have decided my body is a group project, and somehow I’m the only one who doesn’t get a vote.

This week: Trump’s pick to run the FDA won’t say an IUD isn’t an abortion, chatbots quietly make women sound dumber at work, anti-abortion groups throw a fiftieth birthday party for the law that took abortion away from poor women, Tennessee makes a mom carry a baby with no brain until her own life is in danger, and the religious belief that God put men in charge of women. Let’s get into it.

FDA Pick Doesn’t Understand Birth Control & IUDs

Dr. Heidi Overton, Trump’s pick to run the agency that approves birth control, won’t say whether an IUD causes abortions. So let me say it for her. It doesn’t. An IUD is a tiny T-shaped device a doctor places in your uterus, and it stops sperm from ever reaching an egg. Copper IUDs mess with how sperm move, and hormonal ones thicken the mucus at your cervix so they can’t get through. No fertilized egg, nothing to abort. I’ve had one since 2004, and it has been the most reliable relationship of my adult life.

At her confirmation hearing, Senator Patty Murray asked Overton whether an IUD is an “abortifacient.” Overton answered, “I commit to working with you on the food safety pillars.” She was asked about a device that lives in your uterus and she pivoted to lettuce. Murray asked again, and Overton said:

“If I’m confirmed as FDA Commissioner, I’ll be briefed on all their prior decisions, and I will make determinations according to the standards of safety and efficacy.”

So the woman who wants to approve our birth control needs a briefing to find out whether it causes abortions. I just explained it in four sentences, and I don’t have a medical degree.

And they’re running the same lie on Plan B. The FDA itself fixed the Plan B label in 2022 to make clear it works by delaying ovulation and doesn’t block implantation, so it can’t end a pregnancy. A new KFF survey still found about a third of women 18 to 49 have heard it causes abortions. Here’s why that should scare you. If they can get you to believe your birth control is abortion, then every abortion ban in America becomes a birth control ban.

Sexist AI Chatbots Make Women Sound Dumber

Researchers at Johns Hopkins just found that the AI chatbots millions of people use to write cover letters, job applications and emails to their boss shortchange women. They took real work requests, added language women tend to use, like “maybe,” “our team,” and “lovely,” and ran them through GPT-4, Llama, Gemma and Mistral. The requests that sounded like women got back drafts that were less sophisticated and more long-winded, and the ones that sounded like men got the complex, formal, assertive version. So you ask the robot to help you go for a promotion, it hears “lovely,” pats you on the head, and hands you the rambling draft. And this keeps happening. Last year a Stanford study had ChatGPT write tens of thousands of resumes, and when the name was a woman’s, it made her younger with less work experience than the men. The tech industry is selling these tools as the great equalizer, and they came preloaded with the guy who talks over you in meetings, except you’ll never know it happened, because the robot doesn’t tell you it downgraded you.

Alt Right Celebrate 50 Years of Denying Poor Women Abortions

On Wednesday, the Hyde Amendment turns fifty, and anti-abortion groups are throwing a birthday party for the law that took abortion away from poor women. Hyde is why Medicaid can’t pay for most abortions, and Henry Hyde was honest about who he was aiming at. He told the House he’d love to stop “a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman” from getting an abortion, but “the only vehicle available is the Medicaid bill.” So he went after the only women he could reach, the poor ones.

The Charlot