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WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Abortion clinics have been concerned about what actually they can do. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Abortion clinics have been concerned about what actually they can do.

I mean, the amendment is in place, but these legal challenges to specifics are still moving forward.

Missourians voted last year to amend their state constitution, adding a fundamental right to reproductive freedom,

including abortion.

Voters in Ohio did something similar the year before that, but now Republicans in both of those states want a do-over of sorts.

Music It's Wednesday, August 20th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBR.

I'm Chris Bentley.

Today on the show, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to find the environmental causes of autism.

But his department recently ended funding for scientists studying environmental factors with proven links to autism, like workplace exposure to chemicals. There is clearly, very clearly a genetic component to autism, but we also know other things

can play a role too.

Also, the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics explains why her group of doctors

is breaking with the federal government over its advice on COVID vaccines and kids.

Before we get to that, though, Republicans in Ohio and Missouri want to undo voter-approved

protections for reproductive health care. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed decades of

abortion rights precedent three years ago,

several states floated ballot measures to enshrine those rights in state law.

Ohio and Missouri were two of them, but now lawmakers in both states are trying to undermine those

...