Activists are critical players in the reproductive justice movement. The titles and roles of activists may differ, but a good activist can be spotted by their passion and dedication to their work. This blog series highlights some of our movement’s key changemakers, fighting for reproductive liberation in their work and in their lives. The series seeks to build on our past Act and Learn Webinars, featuring activists who have joined us as panelists.

This installment is an interview with Amy Friedrich-Karnik, Director of Federal Policy at The Guttmacher Institute and panelist on our “Trump IS Anti-Abortion: His Second-term Agenda” Act and Learn Webinar. Responses were provided during a one-on-one call, and this transcription was reviewed and approved by the interviewee prior to publication.

Can you describe yourself and your role?

I’ve been at Guttmacher for two and a half years. The federal policy team is small and mighty. We track what’s going on in Congress and the Administration. We share that with our colleagues internally. We’re always forward-thinking about what are the policies that are coming down the pike, what’s happening right now, and how can research be used to impact those policies and/or what research should we be thinking about that might be useful to impact future policies. At the end of the day, our goal is to make sure that the public policies that we have in place, both at the federal level and at the state and local levels, are doing what they’re intended to do and supporting people’s access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. As an organization, we focus on the evidence-base and the research to inform that. The second piece is to then do the advocacy work. We engage proactively with policymakers to inform policy and legislation and make sure that those policies are impactful.

What led you to your work at Guttmacher, and what has been your experience working on the federal policy level?

I’ve been doing policy work for my entire career. Right out of the gate from college, I came to DC. I was able to work on the Hill for a couple of years for Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and was extremely lucky to be able to work on many different issues, including her repro portfolio. Early on, I was exposed to kind of what the landscape looks like at the federal level, and how policy is impacted from the nonprofit advocacy side. Right away, I knew this is the path I want to take. I was able to go on and get my master’s degree and then have been in and out of the repro space for two decades. I was at the Center for Reproductive Rights for over five years, and I’ve been on the board of Repro Rising Virginia for several years. In that capacity, I am able to engage at the state level. In other roles I’ve had, my federal policy work has been consistent, and the repro space has been a passion since early on. It’s been a perfect culmination to Guttmacher today.

What issues have been top priority in your department since Trump took office, and can you talk about the work Guttmacher is doing to combat Trump’s anti-abortion agenda?

We did quite a bit of scenario planning to try to do our best to anticipate what was going to be coming with this administration. A big piece of what we do, as I said, is track what’s happening at the federal policy level, interpret that, understand that (what do those policies really mean, what’s moving, what’s being implemented), and then apply it to our research. In doing that, we kind of have a twofold goal. One is to debunk misinformation — especially in the era we’re living in, whether it’s through policy or social media. As a science-based research organization, we see it as one of our big goals to take what we know empirically from research and debunk misinformation in policy and for the public where that would be harmful; and then also to advocate for the policies that actually help people get access to sexual and reproductive health. We’re doing a lot of work to track how attacks on medication abortion are playing out in federal policy. We’ve also been tracking attacks on our publicly funded safety net. Of course, this last year with the so-called “big, beautiful bill”, there were a lot of attacks in there on people’s access to Medicaid, which is incredibly important for people to get access to reproductive healthcare, as well as attacks on defunding Planned Parenthood. Another big area we’re looking at is global, because we also do global research. The administration just put out an extended new rule and what we’re calling a “supercharged” global gag rule. We’re knee deep in analyzing that, understanding that, talking with partners and starting to think about how we’re going to track the impact of that globally.

In what ways has the Trump administration adhered to the goals of Project 2025, and what have they already accomplished?

When we talk about Project 2025 being a roadmap, it was a very specific, very detailed roadmap. In January, we released a report, Year One of Project 2025, on how they’ve accomplished that. One place where they’ve been unfortunately very successful is going after many of the policies and guidance related to abortion access and data privacy that the Biden administration put into place and systematically undoing those one by one — which is exactly what Project 2025 laid out and advocated for. There was also a lot in Project 2025 around Medicaid, and they accomplished a lot of that through the “big, beautiful bill.” On the global side, Project 2025 called for reinstating the Global Gag Rule, which of course they’ve done. It called for blocking funding to UNFPA, which is the UN body that helps fund reproductive healthcare services globally. They blocked funding for that. Project 2025 called for “scaling back the footprint of USAID,” and within the first half of last year, they completely dismantled our foreign aid apparatus of USAID. Then there’s also a lot of attacks on gender equity throughout Project 2025. It specifically calls, for example, removing all terms related to gender, gender equality, reproductive health, reproductive rights, abortion, sexual orientation, and gender identity from federal language. We saw so much data and research being pulled off of government websites in the first couple of months of this administration, demanding that researchers pull those terms out of grant applications for health research, medical research, all of these things.

How do you see the Trump administration impacting abortion policy within the next year and beyond?

We are still watching what this administration is going to do when it comes to access to medication abortion. As I mentioned, a big push by the anti-abortion movement and anti-abortion policy makers has been to restrict telemedicine access to Mifepristone. There are lawsuits that are trying to completely take away approval for the medication even though it’s been approved since 2000. The FDA says that it is reviewing the safety of Mifepristone and that it will wait until after the midterm elections to tell us what they’re going to do. That is a calculated move. Abortion is incredibly popular in this country. People want those who need it to have access to abortion care. There is a part of the administration that understands that and knows, politically, that they can’t just completely ban access to abortion care tomorrow without major repercussions. People, voters, and the repro movement absolutely need to keep up that pressure and keep making abundantly clear that we support this access. There’s also attacks on the publicly funded healthcare system, specifically Title X, which is federal funding that goes to reproductive health clinics. They froze that funding last year for a lot of clinics. They eventually restored it, and Congress just passed legislation that would approve another year of funding for Title X. We’ll be watching closely to make sure that those dollars actually go out the door to the places that need them.

In your experience, how must state and federal policy teams work together to see progress?

So much of the policies related to people’s access to abortion care come down to what’s happening at the state level. If you’re doing this type of work, especially in my capacity where I am focused at the federal level, having a hand on the pulse of what’s happening in the states is critically important. At Guttmacher, we’re very lucky to have an amazing robust state policy team that I work with hand in hand every single day. We prioritize information sharing and tracking together. Understanding what’s brewing at the state level, how that’s impacting folks, all that kind of information-sharing is so critical to understanding what’s happening in Washington. There are so many things that the anti-abortion movement throws at us, such as their latest claims that Mifepristone is getting into our drinking water. There are policies popping up at the state level around that issue, and we also are now seeing it at the federal level where there’s advocacy towards FDA and EPA to start analyzing our drinking water. I would say that whether it’s within your own organization or other places to get that information, understanding what’s happening at the state level not only tells you a lot about how people are accessing care or able to access care, but about what we might anticipate.

As a policy expert working within an anti-abortion policy landscape, how do you and your team stay grounded in your goals and within the movement at large?

For me personally, it is a tremendous privilege to be able to do this work. When you’re working on policy, especially at the federal level, it moves slow. But there’s a responsibility that you feel when you do this work, folks are relying on us to get their rights back and to give them access. While it can feel helpless, I’ve taken hope from feeling able to contribute and do something. For all the horribleness, there are small wins that happen every now and then and it’s a privilege to feel like you’re doing something to support those wins. When we talk about this work, we do talk about it as a movement. That means community and being together. So, the times that we can throw a happy hour or have receptions or do things where we come together in person — not just always on Zoom — and find some joy and camaraderie with each other and colleagues who do this work, it keeps us resilient.

Is there anything that you haven’t shared already that you feel is important for people to know, and how can people best support your work?

Everything I’ve shared during this interview about what’s happening in this space is so important in people’s lives, and everything that’s happening in this country right now feels so immediate. Take ICE raids, for example. This policy stuff can start to feel wonky when you think about what is happening to people every day – like people not even being able to leave their homes because they’re being terrorized in their communities. Seeing these issues as being intertwined and understanding that these attacks are not in silos in really important – the anti-abortion movement is not all that different from the anti-immigration movement, and these attacks are intended to all come at once. We stand in solidarity with those intertwined movements, even when we’re getting into that wonky policy details of some of these things. Bottom line is that it does impact people’s everyday lives, and it’s really hard to watch – we really see these attacks on the ground, and we pay attention to what we need to engage in with urgency.

To support us, people can go to Guttmacher.org, read our reports, stay informed, and in the face of mis- and disinformation, follow trusted sources and influencers and uplift that important content. The more we get folks talking about evidence-based care and what is true about our sexual and reproductive health, the more we can combat misinformation from the anti-abortion movement.

Amy joined Guttmacher in 2023, where she leads a team focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights policy in the United States at the federal level, advocating with Congress and the Administration for policies informed by facts and evidence in support of a progressive SRHR vision. Previously, she was the Vice President of Advocacy and Communications at WomenHeart where she oversaw the organization’s policy, advocacy, and communications efforts to advance support and access to care for women living with and at risk for heart disease. Prior to that, she was the Senior Federal Policy Advisor at the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she focused on developing and implementing strategies to ensure protection for reproductive rights and access to reproductive healthcare in the U.S, including overseeing the Act for Women campaign. Prior to that, Ms. Friedrich-Karnik used her skills as a consultant advising non-profit clients and spent time on the Hill working for U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky. She received a Master of Public Policy degree from UCLA. She is on the Board of Directors for REPRO Rising Virginia Foundation.