SUMMARY: For some of the many mothers who experience postpartum depression, therapy and standard antidepressants can alleviate symptoms. But for others, those treatments are slow to provide relief. Now the FDA has approved the first drug specifically intended to treat the illness. Amna Nawaz talks to Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, director of the University of North Carolina’s perinatal psychiatry program.
SUMMARY: Forty years ago, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act made it illegal for employers to deny a woman a job, a promotion or higher pay because she is pregnant. But a new investigation found cases when workplace conditions put pregnant women at physical risk. William Brangham speaks with Tasha Murrell who suffered a miscarriage in 2014, and Fatima Goss Graves CEO of the National Women's Law Center.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including a forthcoming rule from the Trump administration on family planning, the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the deadly protests along the Israel-Gaza border, plus what we know about the Russia investigation, one year on.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now back to political developments, both here in the United States and beyond, with the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome, gentlemen. We haven’t all three been together in a little while. It’s great to see you.
Let’s start, Mark, with the story we led off as a segment earlier, and that is the administration moving to close down, essentially, or close funding for clinics that either provide abortion services or refer women to clinics that do.
It’s the early phases of this, but it’s something the Trump administration seems determined to do.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Determined, Judy, to make a political issue out of.
I think that Donald Trump, if I’m not recalling — recalling correctly, as a candidate, made the issuing of executive orders by Barack Obama something noxious, pernicious and to be avoided.
That was when Obama did issue executive orders, obviously. We had Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. Donald Trump has both houses of Congress in his party. He tried and Republicans did unsuccessfully in their attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, to defund completely Planned Parenthood, and to achieve these objectives.
Now he’s moving — all of these occurrences, I hate to sound cynical, happened to occur in an election year, not simply with President Obama, but it did with President Clinton, with President Obama, with President Trump. It did with President Bush. And it began with President Reagan.
The one person who had clean political hands in this was Richard Nixon, who in 1971, invoked Title X, and to provide health care and to provide family planning advice to poor women who couldn’t afford it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So it’s become a political football. Is that what we’re talking about here?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Yes, I’m not sure I totally agree with that.
It has an election year — it has obvious political benefits for each party’s base, but for Ronald Reagan, I’m pretty sure it was probably a sincere belief that taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for abortions. For Bill Clinton, it was probably a completely sincere belief that this is a program should be longstanding.
I’m not sure where Donald Trump actually stands in his heart of hearts on this issue. I do know he has made a deal with social conservatives that you’re going to have put up with a lot of lies and payoffs to adult film actresses, but I’m going to give you — on policy, you will get — and he’s been very consistent on giving social conservatives policy victories.
This is something they have wanted for a long time. And Donald Trump is handing it to them. And so a lot of social conservatives who are willing to swallow his personal failures are going to feel vindicated that this was a deal worth making.
I don’t particularly agree with that, but I think social conservatives will say, yes, if we’re going to get wins like this, which are for, in their case, for the good of the country and for the good of humanity, they’re willing to swallow a lot from Donald Trump.
MARK SHIELDS: I’m not questioning the sincerity of all involved.
I do — their motives — but I think there is a strong political element to it. And it has to be noted of Planned Parenthood, while it provides cancer screening, all sorts of health care, it does provide also 330,000 abortions a year. So it’s a major element in the — in abortion-providing.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. The tradeoff here is that Planned Parenthood, which does a lot of all sorts of health stuff, also does the abortions.
JUDY WOODRUFF: An array of services.
DAVID BROOKS: And so you get — say you’re a social conservative.
You get what you want on the abortion. It’s going to be harder to get an abortion and some of them will get less funding. But in places where they have done this — and we have now seen what happens when you do this — when you take people away from Planned Parenthood, you also — you do see a sharp rise in pregnancies, because contraception isn’t prescribed as much.
You see some health — deleterious health benefits down the side. So, on the plus side, people who really find abortion morally abhorrent don’t have to pay for it. On the minus side, there are negative health effects.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: An anniversary this week. We have only got a couple of minutes left.
But, David, Robert Mueller started his Russia investigation a year ago this week. Where are we after a year of that? Of course, it’s all been behind closed doors. We have seen indictments. We have seen some pleas. Where does it stand?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, we have had a year of speculation about what is about to happen.
What we have learned is that it’s a pretty broad-ranging investigation. There’s a lot of dirty businesses, a lot of guilty pleas already, a lot of people brought under indictment. So it’s a real investigation, investigating what looks like real crimes.
As for the collusion charge, we know there were many more meetings between the Trump people and the Russians than we thought before. There was a meeting in Trump Tower. And so there’s clearly more smoke there than we knew before a year ago.
What we don’t have is actual evidence of real collusion, and particularly by an awareness of the President himself. That may be still out there, but that part, we still don’t have.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And we know he may be pursuing other charges as well.
DAVID BROOKS: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, how do you see it?
MARK SHIELDS: What we do know, Judy, is that the Senate Intelligence Committee is composed of grownups and led by Senator Burr and Senator Warner, and they deserve credit.
The House Intelligence Committee is led by just outrageous adolescents who are about as deep as a birdbath.
At the same time, I think what we learned is that the defense of Donald Trump, led by himself and Rudy Giuliani, is to savage and torment, denigrate, vilify and libel Bob Mueller.
Bob Mueller happens to be an American who turned down an eight-figure income to be a major corporate lawyer, instead became a public servant. He’s a man who volunteered and carries the wounds of battle from having been a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam. He is a public servant.
He has not said a word. He has not given an interview. He has not leaked to anybody. And he stands vilified by Trump and Giuliani and their cohorts and their outriders.
It is indefensible. And they are trying to exact the same damage upon the Justice Department of the country, the FBI and this country that Joe McCarthy did on the State Department, which has never fully recovered from his libelous attacks.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Twenty seconds.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I don’t disagree with that.
I would just say, I observe politically, I do think if Trump fired Mueller tomorrow, the Republican Party would back him.
MARK SHIELDS: Do you really?
DAVID BROOKS: Because I think FOX News has created a predicate. They have done thousands of surveys and investigations about Mueller as a political operative.
SUMMARY: Doctors and nurses have worked hard to reduce the U.S. infant mortality rate, and yet there's been a rise in maternal mortality in recent decades, a trend that is less understood. Judy Woodruff sits down with Renee Montagne of NPR and Nina Martin of ProPublica to discuss their collaboration on this topic.
SUMMARY: President Trump majorly expanded the so-called "Mexico City policy" -- or as critics call it, the "gag rule" -- in a new executive order Monday. The rule has blocked international assistance to any programs that mention or provide abortions. In the past, the policy has affected about $600 million in funding; today's expansion will affect $9 billion. Reuters' Yeganeh Torbati joins William Brangham.
SUMMARY: A new research analysis suggests the mortality rate of cervical cancer is higher than we thought, especially among African-American women. Miles O'Brien talks with Dr. Jennifer Caudle of the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine about the findings, as well as the racial disparities in health care.
MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour): Now, the toll of cervical cancer and recent findings that suggest its death rate is higher than we thought.
That's the focus of our weekly segment the Leading Edge.
Estimates had shown more than 4,000 women in the U.S. die from cervical cancer each year, and that the death rate dropped dramatically over past decades. But an analysis published in the journal “Cancer” found the mortality rate is higher than previously thought, and it is significantly higher among African-American women.
The findings were particularly concerning because cervical cancer can often be prevented through better screening, and the HPV vaccine can prevent some cases.
Dr. Jennifer Caudle is a family physician and an assistant professor at Rowan University. She has been writing about these findings and the implications for her clinical practice, and she joins us now to tell us a little bit more.
Dr. Caudle, good to have you with us.
DR. JENNIFER CAUDLE, Rowan University: Thanks so much.
MILES O'BRIEN: Tell us what's new about this study.
DR. JENNIFER CAUDLE: Well, I think it's actually quite profound.
As a family physician myself, as a woman myself, I thought that the results of the study were actually quite staggering. Basically, researchers found that we'd been underestimating the levels of cervical cancer mortality.
And not only that, but we have also been underestimating the amount of racial disparities that exist in cervical cancer mortality. So, basically, the problem is bigger and worse than we thought. And I think that it's actually quite significant.
SUMMARY: On Saturday, another crowd will gather on the National Mall -- not to celebrate, but to advocate. William Brangham talks with Bob Bland and Carmen Perez, co-chairs of the Women's March On Washington, about the organization's mission to protect women's rights, creating a safe space for difficult conversations on sensitive issues and remembering that “we're all people first.”
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): So, in addition to the protests today, there are plans for much more to come tomorrow.
Women from around the country are making their way to the nation's capital, with others preparing for events in cities around the globe. The crowds on the National Mall on Saturday are expected to be in the hundreds of thousands.
William Brangham recently sat down at the Newseum with two organizers of tomorrow's march, Bob Bland and Carmen Perez.
William began by asking what they hope to accomplish.
BOB BLAND, Co-Chair, Women's March on Washington: We are bringing together women, men and allies from all different types of communities from all over the country to say that we're standing in solidarity together to say that women's rights are human rights.
CARMEN PEREZ, Co-Chair, Women's March on Washington: We are coming here so that we could show this new administration that we're not going anywhere, right?
And there are so many more of us that are actually united than we are divided. This March on Washington is to ensure that Congress (House), our new President and the Senate know that we're going to continue to fight for our rights, that we're going to protect the most marginalized communities.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): What are you marching for, and what are you marching against?
CARMEN PEREZ: So, we are marching to continue to allow women to make decisions about their bodies and ensure we have reproductive justice rights, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, as well as indigenous rights.
So, there are so many things. We have been extremely intentional about allowing organizations to get involved, Planned Parenthood, as well as Define American.
BOB BLAND: And every woman has their own reason for marching. So, that's the really beautiful thing about this.
We have seen, through the last 18 months and everything that's happened, that we can be complacent no longer.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: There are so many specifics in your guiding principles, everything from minimum wage, to reproductive rights, to environmental concerns, to indigenous people's concerns.
Why was it important to you to be so specific in the things that you're marching for?
CARMEN PEREZ: We wanted to make sure that there was a mission, there was a vision, that we started organizing for something, not against something, right? So, this is not a march against Trump. This is a march on Washington, Congress, the Senate, our President.
SUMMARY: One day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, thousands of people joined the Women's March in Washington, D.C., and other demonstrations around the world; to advocate for reproductive, immigration, racial equality and worker's rights. The NewsHour Weekend's Ivette Feliciano reports from the main event in D.C.
SUMMARY: Florida's battle against the outbreak of Zika is intensifying as the number of cases climbs. The state currently has 940 documented instances of the virus, with 230 in Miami-Dade County alone. Efforts to contain the spread of the disease focus on mosquito control and avoidance, but many details about Zika remain a mystery. For more on the outbreak, William Brangham reports from Miami.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Beyond the famous sugar-white sands of South Beach in Miami, there's a clear sense of unease about the growing public health crisis here.
GOV. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.): This means Florida has become the first state in the nation to have local transmission of the Zika virus.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Over the last few months, officials have been waging an all-out war against mosquitoes, spraying pesticides from the air, going door to door in some neighborhoods, checking plants and standing water, and plastering the city with warning signs, telling residents how to protect themselves from Zika.
There are now over 940 documented cases of Zika in the state of Florida and over 230 in Miami-Dade County alone. But the epicenter is here in Miami, and the largest number of locally-acquired Zika infections have occurred in these two neighborhoods.
How are people in Florida doing with this?
SAMMY MACK, Health Reporter, WLRN: The pregnant women that I have talked to, and their partners, or people who know pregnant women are taking it very seriously, and there's a lot of anxiety there. There's a lot of anxiety there.
Pregnant women should avoid nonessential travel to the county.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Sammy Mack is a health reporter for WLRN, the local NPR station in Miami. While she's eager to cover this big story, Mack has ended up in the middle of in it in a way she'd rather not. She's also four months pregnant.
SAMMY MACK: It became an issue of, OK, how — how am I going to cover this thing that is happening in the middle of my beat, in a way that is not putting me at any kind of additional risk?
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Mack took one of the free Zika tests offered by the state, but the results took weeks, and those delays can limit the options for pregnant women.
SAMMY MACK: I waited five weeks to get my results back.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In the middle of a pregnancy?
SAMMY MACK: In the middle of a pregnancy.
If women don't get their test turned around quickly and are waiting four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, whatever it is, that may affect their window to decide to terminate the pregnancy. Florida restricts abortion past 24 weeks.
SUMMARY: In February, the White House issued a $1.9 billion plan for combating Zika virus in the U.S., including provisions for mosquito control, education and research into a vaccine. While GOP lawmakers opposed that plan, the Senate passed a bipartisan $1.1 billion compromise bill last week. Judy Woodruff talks to Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., for more on the funding debate.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to Capitol Hill and Washington's efforts to combat the Zika virus.
Back in February, the White House put together a $1.9 billion proposal aimed at mosquito control, education about Zika, plus boosting research into the virus and a possible vaccine. Last week, the Republican-controlled Senate moved a compromise measure for less than two-thirds that amount over the next year, $1.1 billion.
But the also-GOP-controlled House signed off on a bill for $622 million over six months.
Joining me now from opposite sides of this funding divide are Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Representative Bob Gibbs, Republican from Ohio.
And we welcome both of you to the program.
Congressman Gibbs, let me begin with you.
The administration, as we said, asking for $1.9 billion. The amount you favor is about a third that much. Why not give the administration what it's asking for?
REP. BOB GIBBS (R), Ohio: Well, what the administration did, that's just ongoing through the next — at least the next two mosquito seasons.
Our bill, at $600 million-plus, goes to the end of this fiscal year, September 30, and now we're in the appropriation process, and we will look at that, what we need to do past September 30 of this year going into the next fiscal year and the next mosquito season next summer.
So, we will be appropriating more money, I'm sure, but it's going to go through regular order and the regular appropriation process. So, we're on board to make sure to appropriate the money as needed to get through to the end of this fiscal year.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Congresswoman DeLauro, it sounds like this is a down payment on this problem. Is that going to be enough?
REP. ROSA DELAURO (D), Connecticut: Listen, no, the fact is, is the Zika virus is a public health emergency. It is a crisis.
It is going to — the mosquitoes that carry the virus will hit the mainland United States within the next few weeks. We are putting American women at risk, pregnant women who are fearful that their babies will be born with birth defects.
And we have a medical community that is telling women that maybe they shouldn't get pregnant. That is not message to the American people. The fact of the matter is, is that the $622 million is a third of what's been asked for.
You know, in this body, when we deal with appropriations for defense or going to war, my Republican colleagues will say, let us get the word from the generals, from those who are in the field, the experts. They can tell us how much money they need. And they can tell us how many troops we need.
Well, we do have experts in this war on the mosquitoes. We have the Centers for Disease Control. We have the National Institutes of Health.
