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Speaker 1: Also media Welcome to it could happen here the only

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Speaker 1: podcast where anti British discrimination is a way of life? James,

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Speaker 1: are we allowed to say that? Do you remember the training?

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Speaker 1: I haven't done yet.

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Speaker 2: I was giving that training my full attention throughout the

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Speaker 2: duration of the video. Every single time I've watched It's

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Speaker 2: good various employees for the last half decade or so,

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Speaker 2: there was no there was no section on anti British discrimination.

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Speaker 2: Yet again, another example that victimized.

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Speaker 3: Last time I took that training, there was a straight

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Speaker 3: up anti Asian racism in it that they didn't address

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Speaker 3: at all. So I'm assuming if that's okay, then anti

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Speaker 3: British racism was fine.

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Speaker 2: Like some shit in those videos, which is wild.

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Speaker 1: Okay, there you go.

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Speaker 2: I think that's a lady who's literally called Karen and

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Speaker 2: they do her wrong in the in the in the video.

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Speaker 4: See I am.

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Speaker 5: I am definitely pro British discrimination. But you do get

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Speaker 5: a point for having Peter O'Toole, so at least it's

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Speaker 5: it's it's not all the way because the o'tool factor

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Speaker 5: keeps you from the full might of my wrath.

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Speaker 1: Frankly, go, yeah, I'm sure that's the case.

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Speaker 5: I'm Garson Davis and joined by Mia Wong, James Stubven,

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Speaker 5: and Robert Evans. This episode, we are talking about babies.

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Speaker 5: Should there be more?

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Speaker 6: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: M hmm.

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Speaker 1: We're on a pro natalist kick. We're going to have

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Speaker 1: that off putting couple who look like vampires but like

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Speaker 1: not any of the good kinds on the show. Very

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Speaker 1: excited to have those people on. They seem nice. But

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Speaker 1: before we do that, we all decided maybe we should

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Speaker 1: talk about other pro natalist policies in world history and

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Speaker 1: how well they've worked generally.

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Speaker 5: We're going to start by talking about what the US

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Speaker 5: policy might be, or that the people proposing US policy,

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Speaker 5: and then we will discuss how those policies went historically.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so like to start with Trumps.

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Speaker 5: Besides one executive order in February supporting IVF, the new

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Speaker 5: administration has yet to tackle pro natalist concerns on the

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Speaker 5: policy front, but a collection of lobbyists, activists, and influencers

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Speaker 5: are vying for the president's ear while proposing a multitude

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Speaker 5: of plans to grow the number of heterosexual marriages and

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Speaker 5: incentivize childbirth. The pronataists certainly think that the new administration

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Speaker 5: is at the very least ideologically sympathetic, if not in

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Speaker 5: cahoots with their agenda. The main inns on the pronatalist

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Speaker 5: front have come from the Peter Thiel tech right wing

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Speaker 5: of the White House Right. This is like JD. Vance

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Speaker 5: and previously Elon Musk. Musk has been doom posting for

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Speaker 5: years about how a drop in fertility rates could be

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Speaker 5: leading to a large scale population collapse, and at an

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Speaker 5: anti abortion rally this past January, Vance addressed the crowd

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Speaker 5: saying quote, I want more babies in the United States

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Speaker 5: of America, more happy children in our country. And I

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Speaker 5: want beautiful young men and women who are eager to

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Speaker 5: welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.

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Speaker 6: Uh huh. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And you got to like whatever you're listening to one

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Speaker 3: of these things, you got to like have a little

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Speaker 3: parenthesies anytime anytime someone says baby, there's a little parentheses

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Speaker 3: there that says white.

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Speaker 4: This is this is real Nazi shit.

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Speaker 5: Like yeah, A lot of this, a lot of the

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Speaker 5: stuff that's certainly like based on like like great replacement

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Speaker 5: rhetoric that the alt right, like Trojan Horst and like

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Speaker 5: pushed forward in like twenty eighteen, which is now so

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Speaker 5: widely normalized thanks to I mean really, Musk has done

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Speaker 5: a lot of work in normalizing great replacement stuff.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Tucker calls into Carlson of course.

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Speaker 1: Well, and Musk's family goes into this, right, like this

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Speaker 1: is the kind of thing like his grandparents were involved in.

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Speaker 1: Like it was a little bit less of like the

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Speaker 1: standard great replacement shit and a little more like focused

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Speaker 1: on like we need to be breeding high IQ white

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Speaker 1: people together. Yeah, you chant like that, that is that

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Speaker 1: is what he inherits. He comes by it honestly, I

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Speaker 1: guess you could say.

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Speaker 5: Well, and oftentimes printles rhetoric is also tied in with

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Speaker 5: like the tradwife and like loss of traditional family structure

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Speaker 5: type stuff.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 4: Vance has laid blame at childless cat ladies and.

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Speaker 5: Referred to our quote unquote broken culture that tax masculinity

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Speaker 5: and turns our nation's youth into androgynous idiots.

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Speaker 4: Hey shout out.

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Speaker 6: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I've also started referring to women with kids as catless

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Speaker 1: child ladies as a result of this.

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Speaker 4: I think he's.

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Speaker 1: Reactions action, I don't know, they very negatively.

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Speaker 2: Robot.

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Speaker 5: A declining birth rate has also been attributed to women

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Speaker 5: in the workplace who are not getting married and raising

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Speaker 5: kids at home from an early enough age, and some

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Speaker 5: of this rheteric has rubbed off on Trump right and

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Speaker 5: Trump at seapack in twenty twenty three, he said, quote,

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Speaker 5: we will support baby booms, and we will support baby

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Speaker 5: bonuses for a new baby boom.

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Speaker 4: I want a baby boom cool.

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Speaker 5: Trump has floated a five thousand dollars cash quote unquote

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Speaker 5: baby bonus to American mothers after delivering a baby, calling

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Speaker 5: this proposal a good idea.

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Speaker 1: Well, Garrison, that's almost three months at a preschool.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I'm sure that's enough.

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Speaker 1: Not quite three months at a lot of preschools, like,

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Speaker 1: not even great pre schools. It's very preschools and unbelievably expensive.

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Speaker 5: The actual cause of like of a declining birth rate

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Speaker 5: is due to skyrocketing cost of living, so people aren't

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Speaker 5: financially stable to have kids in their early twenties anymore,

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Speaker 5: so instead they're waiting until their thirties.

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Speaker 1: That's part of it at least.

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Speaker 5: Yes, if you want people to have kids more, you

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Speaker 5: should make the world more affordable. And a five thousand

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Speaker 5: dollars baby bonist doesn't actually solve the key issues that

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Speaker 5: would cause people to be worried about, you know, trying

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Speaker 5: to like get buried and have kids at a young

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Speaker 5: age in a world where that seems kind of like

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Speaker 5: unfathomably expensive. Now, luckily Trump does have a few other

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Speaker 5: ways of sorting of sorting out this problem. The new Big,

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Speaker 5: Beautiful bud bill that recently passed the House will create

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Speaker 5: quote unquote Mega savings accounts for new kids. And here

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Speaker 5: Mega stands for money accounts for growth and in for

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Speaker 5: growth and advancement.

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Speaker 2: Just fucking stop stop it.

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Speaker 5: So when parents are guardians open a new Mega savings

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Speaker 5: account for their kids, the federal government will contribute one

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Speaker 5: thousand dollars for babies born between January first, twenty twenty

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Speaker 5: four and December thirty first, twenty twenty eight.

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Speaker 1: That that'll help, great, great.

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Speaker 2: I believe California also does it. Yeah, California have something

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Speaker 2: called the California Child Saving Accounts Program, which already gives

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Speaker 2: children like up to one thousand dollars. And I think

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Speaker 2: it's like a college savings account from what I understand.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's pretty much what this is. Although specifically

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Speaker 5: in the for the Mega accounts, it also lists home ownership.

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Speaker 5: Oh cool, because this is like a big This is

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Speaker 5: a big part of this pronatalst thing is you need

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Speaker 5: to like own a home. We get in a straight marriage,

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Speaker 5: start having kids in your early twenties.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, make Instagram videos of yourself chopping would badly

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Speaker 2: like we understand.

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Speaker 6: Yeah yeah.

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Speaker 5: The big beautiful budget bill also prohibits Medicare funds. We're

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Speaker 5: going to planned parent hut great.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let me tell you, one thousand American dollars, even

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Speaker 2: with compounding interest, isn't going to do shit to buy

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Speaker 2: you a home anywhere in the United States.

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Speaker 5: Now, the Heritage Foundation's Devasit Center for Life, Religion, and

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Speaker 5: Family have pushed for a policy that exponentially increases the

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Speaker 5: child tax credit for each additional child a married couple has.

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Speaker 4: This is a little bit.

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Speaker 5: Similar to a policy proposed in twenty twenty three by

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Speaker 5: Republican Representative Brian Slaton of Texas, who proposed increasing property

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Speaker 5: tax cuts for married heterosexual couples who have never been

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Speaker 5: divorced and have four or more children starting after marriage.

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Speaker 4: So there's a lot of caveats.

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Speaker 1: There, Jesus Christy, Yeah, okay, sure, yeah, no, this sign

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Speaker 1: is are we taking issue with this?

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Speaker 2: That is some Yeah, this is part of my British

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Speaker 2: arity trade. We developed our own religion so that dudes

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Speaker 2: could get divorced. It is, it is. Yeah, it is

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Speaker 2: a bill of rights for British guys.

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Speaker 5: Obviously a lot of a lot of caveats in there

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Speaker 5: so that you can have your little like tread Christian family.

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Speaker 5: But four kids would equal a forty percent cut. Ten

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Speaker 5: kids would equal no property taxes at all.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, shit, that's hard to argue with. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: this is property taxes. You also have to own the

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Speaker 2: property to begin with to be paying property tax.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, all of these yea, all these people want you

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Speaker 5: to be like homeowners with a stay at homework.

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Speaker 2: This is like, this is what they want, but they

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Speaker 2: don't want to actually do things to meaningfully make home

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Speaker 2: ownership accessible.

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Speaker 5: No, this is just like self selecting for like well

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Speaker 5: off white Christians, right like yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah,

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Speaker 5: Slaton said in a statement quote, with this bill, Texas

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Speaker 5: will start saying to couples, get married, stay married, and

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Speaker 5: be fruitful and multiply unquote.

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Speaker 2: For Fox's sake.

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Speaker 4: It's a disaster.

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Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean and like a lot of this

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Speaker 3: stuff is too is it's this is the sort of

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Speaker 3: flailing reaction to like one of the things that actually

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Speaker 3: drives like declining birthrates, which is not having teen pregnancies

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Speaker 3: like significantly decreases birth rates because it turns out they're like, oh, yeah, right.

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Speaker 3: It turns out a huge part of like why birthrates

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Speaker 3: is so high is just direct social coercion. And if

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Speaker 3: you stop having that or like you know, the amount

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Speaker 3: of the coercion decreases, then yeah, like fucking birthrates are

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Speaker 3: gonna decline because women aren't being forced to have babies

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Speaker 3: like and you know, and so they're trying to do

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Speaker 3: all this like you know, unhinged tinkering bullshit to sort

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Speaker 3: of like deal with the fact that if you don't

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Speaker 3: force people to have children as teenagers, they won't.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because life, they quickly realize there's things in life,

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Speaker 1: like you know, drugs and stuff. Yeah, they'll go back

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Speaker 1: to the club.

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Speaker 4: In March, Trump called himself the quote unquote fertiliz.

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Speaker 5: They president, and the White House is expected to soon

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Speaker 5: release a report on how to expand access and affordability

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Speaker 5: of IVF. Now this is where things get sticky insert pun.

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Speaker 5: There is hot debate amongst advisors and think tanks on

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Speaker 5: the religious ethics of ivf Right. There's no real consensus

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Speaker 5: among the pronatalst voices who are lobbying Trump. This sort

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Speaker 5: of breaks down into the new tech right versus the

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Speaker 5: more religious Christian family sector of conservatism, and Vance is

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Speaker 5: kind of caught in the middle of this, but these

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Speaker 5: groups may end up compromising to form an alliance. Now Heritage,

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Speaker 5: the Heritage Foundation recommends a program to use government funds

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Speaker 5: for education that promotes quote unquote natural fertility, teaching women

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Speaker 5: how to track their mental cycles using charting courses to

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Speaker 5: both help get pregnant and avoid using birth control. They

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Speaker 5: propose that food, nutrition, and lifestyle chain could improve quote

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Speaker 5: unquote natural conception. Instead of using assisted reproductive technologies, Heritage

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Speaker 5: proposed to something that they call restorative reproductive medicine as

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Speaker 5: a holistic approach to treating infertility through quote unquote hoonon

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Speaker 5: balancing and dieting and nutritional adjustments, environmental changes, and surgery unquote.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you just need some fucking uh some of those

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Speaker 1: some of those baby teething pills Highlands made that kill babies.

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Speaker 1: That's that's what you get to take. It's a holistic

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Speaker 1: approach to you. Some put a bunch of random chemicals

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Speaker 1: and lead in your body from an unregulated supplement company.

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Speaker 5: Heritage itself critiques IVF as failing to address the underlying

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Speaker 5: causes of infertility as well as you know, out of

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Speaker 5: concern for embryo.

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Speaker 4: Personhood rights for fuck sake.

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Speaker 5: So they advocate for embryo adoption and have proposed legislation

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Speaker 5: to make the production of embryo spares.

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Speaker 4: Illegal embryo adoption because they believe that these are like

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Speaker 4: full like people.

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Speaker 5: Now, on the other side of the you know, pro

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Speaker 5: natalist right, you have people like the vampire couple that

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Speaker 5: Robert mentioned. Simone Collins, a pronatalist activist and failed Pennsylvania

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Speaker 5: congressional candidate.

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Speaker 1: She could still pull it off. Stay in line if

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Speaker 1: your vote hasn't been counted.

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Speaker 5: People her and her husband are self described quote unquote

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Speaker 5: techno Puritans, and she is the.

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Speaker 2: Fucking super shit. Like, put these people on a boat

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Speaker 2: and send it across the Atlantic, Like, can they get scurvy?

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Speaker 2: Have they already got? They look a little bit like

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Speaker 2: they may already have scurvy. To be fair, they do

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Speaker 2: look like they have scurvy. Constantly they deprive them of

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Speaker 2: lime juice and save the world from a fucking.

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Speaker 1: Put them on the next starship and see how far

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Speaker 1: up it gets.

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Speaker 4: No, they won't get that.

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Speaker 2: Let them try. I support the human spirit.

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Speaker 5: Collins is also the former managing director of an exclusive

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Speaker 5: Peter teal In social club called a Dialogue.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 5: She has called the new administration quote unquote inherently pronatalist

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Speaker 5: and has sent several draft pronatalist executive orders to the

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Speaker 5: White House, one of which would award a quote unquote

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Speaker 5: National Medal of Motherhood to mothers with six or more children.

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Speaker 2: This is some churchescu shit, Like, I know we're going

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Speaker 2: to talk about that, but Jesus Christ.

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Speaker 5: She herself wants at least seven kids. And she claims

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Speaker 5: to use special technology to select embryos with high IQs,

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Speaker 5: which relates back to what Robert was saying earlier. Yes,

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Speaker 5: so they use IVF to to specifically select the embryos

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Speaker 5: that they think are like naturally predisposed to have more

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Speaker 5: desirable traits, including high IQ's. They have not discussed the

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Speaker 5: exact method. That's why it's called special technology.

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Speaker 2: They're looking for one with the big head or something,

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Speaker 2: So you don't know. I guess I'm not even that

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Speaker 2: far along that they win the IVF.

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Speaker 4: So that's abways pretty fucked up.

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Speaker 5: And then I guess finally, one of the few things

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Speaker 5: that actually has happened in advancement of this ideology was

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Speaker 5: way back like in February, Trump's Transportation secretary Sean Duffy,

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Speaker 5: who is a father of nine and has ten siblings,

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Speaker 5: sent out a memo directing his staff to prioritize transportation

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Speaker 5: funds to quote give preference to communities with marriage and

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Speaker 5: birth rates higher than the national average unquote, which would,

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Speaker 5: in ef fact, mean less money for urban public transit

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Speaker 5: and instead send it towards like wealthier, rural, white conservative areas.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd imagine Latino communities have higher marriage rates at

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Speaker 2: least than like the national average.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not sure if Sean Duffy really wants his

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Speaker 4: employees to select for that, though.

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Speaker 2: No, neither of my I that's kind that's what I'm

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Speaker 2: That's what I'm that's what I'm wondering for. Yeah, Samuel

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Speaker 2: Huntington thinks they have higher birth rates, right, Like that's

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Speaker 2: his whole stick.

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Speaker 5: If you look at the full memo, I think this

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Speaker 5: is this is just like a dog whistle for like

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Speaker 5: white Christians, Like that is that is really what he's saying, sick,

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Speaker 5: that is what I have for the.

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Speaker 4: Current the current peroneals policies.

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Speaker 5: We should go on and ad break and then return

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Speaker 5: to learn the historical implications of pro natalist policies.

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Speaker 2: M h. All right, we are back and we are

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Speaker 2: spinning our globe, our big ball of pro natalism, and

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Speaker 2: it is slowing down and is landed on Japan, where

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Speaker 2: mir is going to explain pronatalist policy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess I want to open on a

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Speaker 3: kind of global thing, which is a concern over like

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Speaker 3: birth rates for like fascists is a really old thing.

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Speaker 3: I mean it predates fascism. Like this is like like

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Speaker 3: if you go to like the eighteen seventies, every single

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Speaker 3: person is complaining about like, oh my god, the birth

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Speaker 3: rate of the right, well, the white race keeps declining

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Speaker 3: and we're gonna get like overwhelmed by the Asiatic chords.

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Speaker 3: And then you go to like the Asiatic words and

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Speaker 3: it's like Japan has been having the same fucking panic

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Speaker 3: for literally so long. Like I cannot emphasize enough. You

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Speaker 3: can just go back through newspaper archives and you just

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Speaker 3: it's you're literally reading the same article over and over

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Speaker 3: and over again, going back just decades and decades and decades.

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Speaker 3: So like the first big modern freak out about birth

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Speaker 3: rates is in like nineteen eighty seven. Yeah, they have

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Speaker 3: the first big like japan birth rate declining freak out.

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Speaker 4: This has been happening longer than like most of the

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Speaker 4: people here have been a lie.

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Speaker 2: I can remember from my child. It's just been like, oh,

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Speaker 2: they're panicking about their birth rates again.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so like the running thing with Japanese politics. So

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Speaker 3: we're roughly doing these in order of like most to

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Speaker 3: least hinged in terms of like in terms of these

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Speaker 3: like natalist policies, Japan I think has an interesting series

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Speaker 3: of sort of political contradictions in their like kind of

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Speaker 3: pro natalist Paul Wall, it's if they have they have

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Speaker 3: political contradictions in their pro natalist polics and political contradictions

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Speaker 3: in their conservative faction. Because Japan is basically like a

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Speaker 3: one party liberal democratic state. Liberal Democratic Party is the

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Speaker 3: one party. This is a party established by a World

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Speaker 3: War two Nazi, but that means that they run all

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Speaker 3: of politics, so like every political factor effectively runs through them.

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Speaker 3: They're early attempts in like the nineties are focused on

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Speaker 3: the deregulation of daycare jobs. So basically their plan is

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Speaker 3: like in the ninety two thousands, they're like, Okay, we're

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Speaker 3: going to like deregulate the childcare industry so that we

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Speaker 3: can have more affordable child There'll be more childcare jobs,

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Speaker 3: so people can pay for childcare. This is how we're

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Speaker 3: going to promote this. And this is sort of one

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Speaker 3: of the first places you see this huge intra intra

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Speaker 3: class conflict between the peer social conservatives who want to

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Speaker 3: just like send every woman back to the household to

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Speaker 3: raise children, and the business people who are like, no,

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Speaker 3: you can't do that. We need to exploit these women's

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Speaker 3: labor to like make money. And so the fight that

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Speaker 3: starts to break out is this fight between like paying

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Speaker 3: for childcare leave versus like paying for daycare. So originally

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Speaker 3: that their plan is like, okay, so we're going to

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Speaker 3: do the daycare stuff. That doesn't work.

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Speaker 4: Like, none of these things they're going to do does.

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Speaker 1: Jack shit, right, Like that's going to be a through

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Speaker 1: line here, Yeah, yeah, Like no, none of this stuff works.

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Speaker 3: And so like like Shinzo Abe, I think is the

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Speaker 3: most famous person who spends much of time trying to

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Speaker 3: deal with this and like again, so they have started

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Speaker 3: worrying about this in nineteen eighty seven. It is now

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Speaker 3: twenty thirteen. The birth rate keeps declining recipitously. Shinzo wabey

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Speaker 3: rest and piss you fascist bastard is still trying to

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Speaker 3: like cook something, right, I'm I'm going to read this

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Speaker 3: quote from the Archives of Clinical Pediatrics. Shortly after the

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Speaker 3: formation of Abe's second cabinet, the quote Task Force for

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Speaker 3: Overcoming Population Decline was established in twenty thirteen, introducing three

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Speaker 3: key strategies, supporting child rearing, reforming work styles, and promoting marriage,

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Speaker 3: pregnancy and childbirth. So you can do these are going

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Speaker 3: to become sort of like the three pillars of Japanese

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Speaker 3: pro natalist policy, right. A lot of it is focused

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Speaker 3: on this sort of social push stuff to promote the

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Speaker 3: traditional family and promote marriage, and this hasn't ever really

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Speaker 3: worked for this. Supporting child rearing is one that is

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Speaker 3: going to get a lot of attention in subsequent administrations.

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Speaker 3: There's a lot of attempts to reduce, like to reduce

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Speaker 3: the cost of child rearing, where we're going to see

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Speaker 3: them try like thirty five thousand different proposals to do this.

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Speaker 3: The one that's actually interesting is reforming work style. So, like,

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Speaker 3: part of the problem here is that, you know, everyone

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Speaker 3: in Japan is working a just genuinely unhinged amount unbelievably

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Speaker 3: staggering overwork, right, I mean, it's one of these things

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Speaker 3: that's like a persistent social crisis. There's a persistent sort

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Speaker 3: of suicide crisis because of how long everyone is working

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Speaker 3: all the time. So shinto Abe's plan for this was

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Speaker 3: to put into place a soft cap of you can

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Speaker 3: only work one hundred hours a month of overtime. Now,

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Speaker 3: this doesn't do shit, right, Like one hundred hours a

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Speaker 3: month of overtime is enough to kill you, right, like,

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Speaker 3: you know, especially when like your regular hours are this long.

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Speaker 3: But this is this is again this problem that he's having,

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Speaker 3: which is that like, okay, so yes, you probably could

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Speaker 3: maybe like people maybe would have more children if you

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Speaker 3: weren't working literally all the time and you weren't just

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Speaker 3: like being worked to death. But that's really bad for

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Speaker 3: Japanese business. And and like quote unquote Abba nomics, which

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Speaker 3: is like abe sort of you know economic plan like

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Speaker 3: relies on maintaining this extremely high level of labor hours

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Speaker 3: from everyone in the entire population. And it's also based

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Speaker 3: on putting more women into the workforce to expand the

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Speaker 3: size of the workforce to you know, extract more hours

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Speaker 3: so they can all these people can make more money.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: They were also supposed to do free preschool for all children,

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Speaker 3: and this just like didn't happen, which over and over

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Speaker 3: again they're like, we're gonna do these kind of like

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Speaker 3: these these kind of like okay, we'll give we'll give

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Speaker 3: you some kind of welfare state bullshit, but only in

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Speaker 3: order to like have kids, And it just doesn't happen.

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Speaker 3: And so you know, this is one of Abe's big initiatives.

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Speaker 3: But by the time he's like assassinated in twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 3: he what he was.

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Speaker 4: Bye.

408
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Speaker 3: By the time his political coalition was finally detonated, Bye

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Speaker 3: by one by one guy with an electric blunderbuss.

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Speaker 1: My favorite politics.

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Speaker 4: Oh god, it's so good. It's so good. We have

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Speaker 4: covered this extensively on the show.

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Speaker 3: If you want to hear the happiest I've ever been

414
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:36,879
Speaker 3: during an episode, including the day after Kissinger died, go

415
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Speaker 3: find the episode I did right after shits a while

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Speaker 3: it was assassinated.

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Speaker 1: The Holy trinity of great days on the internet. Is

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Speaker 1: that big stuck boat and the submarine that killed all

419
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Speaker 1: those Oh it was amazing, people said, Biden gave us nothing.

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Speaker 1: Bang is on the timeline.

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Speaker 6: There you go.

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Speaker 3: So all right, shinzuwape a successor is a guy named

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Speaker 3: Fumio Kishita who lasts for a little bit, and Kishida

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Speaker 3: every single Japanese government announces that they're going to spend

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Speaker 3: like somewhere between twenty and like like fifteen and twenty

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Speaker 3: billion dollars on pro natalist policies and mostly doesn't happen,

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Speaker 3: but Kishita promises that he is going to spend twenty

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Speaker 3: four and a half billion dollars. A lot of this

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Speaker 3: money is going to be just straight up like child allowance.

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Speaker 3: So Japan has the system that they've been you know,

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Speaker 3: they've been sort of implementing over the course of like

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Speaker 3: all of these fucking reforms, which is just like all right,

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Speaker 3: we're just gonna like hand you cash. It's still not

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Speaker 3: enough money to like substantively change stuff. But there's a

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Speaker 3: lot of different kinds of cash policies they have. They

436
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Speaker 3: have cash transfer policies that are just straight up like okay,

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Speaker 3: here you had a baby, We're going to give you

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Speaker 3: this amount per month. I think it's like ten to

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Speaker 3: fifteen thousand yen which hold on, yeah, so it's like

440
00:22:55,280 --> 00:23:01,600
Speaker 3: like seventy dollars a month, which is like not. Yeah,

441
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:04,119
Speaker 3: they are trying to expense it research on. They're supposed

442
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:05,920
Speaker 3: to have these like counselors that like come check in

443
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:09,200
Speaker 3: on you and like give you education and stuff. They're

444
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:11,080
Speaker 3: also supposed to just like give you a whole bunch

445
00:23:11,359 --> 00:23:15,120
Speaker 3: of basically like child care equipment stuff and make sure

446
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,919
Speaker 3: you're getting medical care. And that's supposed to come out

447
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:22,159
Speaker 3: to about like seven hundred dollars ish roughly. You know,

448
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:25,480
Speaker 3: this is like the big sort of plan that they're doing.

449
00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:28,439
Speaker 3: And then in twenty twenty four, Kishita is replaced by

450
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 3: like some other dipshit who you know, if he lasts

451
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:32,639
Speaker 3: more than like two years, I guess I'll tell you

452
00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:38,120
Speaker 3: his name. But he's you know, attempting to go back

453
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 3: to the sort of childcare side of it, right, which

454
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:43,600
Speaker 3: is his plan involves a bunch of things like childcare

455
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:48,680
Speaker 3: subsidies and very importantly like tuition free high school. So

456
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 3: one of the continuous plans if you like, if you

457
00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:53,359
Speaker 3: go back to like what I was talking about with

458
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:55,679
Speaker 3: they were supposed to do free preschool for all children, right,

459
00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:01,359
Speaker 3: that never got implemented except in like the last two years,

460
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 3: like Tokyo has started doing it, just like as a city,

461
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 3: because Tokyo is one of the places where, like you know,

462
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 3: the birth rate has been like dropping the fastest or whatever.

463
00:24:10,280 --> 00:24:13,160
Speaker 2: Sure, I imagine cost to living is also really high.

464
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, cost of living is really high. And it's also

465
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 3: just like you know, if you're working in an urban

466
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 3: like an extremely urban city, you're working a just hideous

467
00:24:23,840 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 3: number of hours.

468
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 2: Right.

469
00:24:25,280 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also this there's supposed to be these massive

470
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 3: like investments in providing childcare and nursing, and you can

471
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 3: see these kind of like this this this point where

472
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 3: they've reached this desperation point where they're trying both the

473
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 3: sort of pro business like okay, fuck it will pay

474
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 3: for your childcare and also we will raise taxes to

475
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 3: like hand you money and also nursing stuff. And also

476
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 3: they're trying to there's like giant carve outs for this,

477
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:52,640
Speaker 3: but they're they're they're trying to set up a system

478
00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 3: where you can get full pay for couples who both

479
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,920
Speaker 3: take parental leave at the same time. So they're trying everything, right,

480
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 3: They're trying like paid childcare. They're trying, fuck it, we'll

481
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 3: just pay people to leave the workforce to have children.

482
00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 3: They're trying just straight up cash transfers. They're trying paying

483
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 3: for medical care, especially medical care for disabled kids. And

484
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:16,680
Speaker 3: none of this shit has done anything at all, Right,

485
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:20,399
Speaker 3: like just just absolutely jack shit, right, and if and

486
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:21,639
Speaker 3: if you want to look at like, okay, so, like

487
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 3: what what's sort of actually happening here?

488
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 5: Right?

489
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 3: A lot some of it is just like overwork. Some

490
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:29,959
Speaker 3: of it is just if people who can have children

491
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 3: have any kind of freedom and autonomy, they just decide

492
00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 3: not to. And so part of this is also just

493
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 3: like and then this has been one of the social

494
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 3: pushes that the conservatives have been dealing with, is they've

495
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 3: been trying to get people to marry younger because people

496
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 3: are marrying later, and thus they are like, you know,

497
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 3: they're having kids later because they're marrying later. So and

498
00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 3: this is not working at all, Right, But you can

499
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 3: look at the series of structure contradictions in their political collision,

500
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 3: and then you can look at the fact that like, again,

501
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 3: one of the important ideological things here is that these

502
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 3: people hate immigrants, right, and they don't. They don't want immigrants.

503
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 3: They want they want like Japanese babies, and so this

504
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 3: is kind of like if you look at like, Okay,

505
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 3: why is not of this shit working?

506
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:17,160
Speaker 1: Right?

507
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 3: They're trying all these things to just avoid having more

508
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 3: immigrants in the country, and none of it is fucking

509
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:27,880
Speaker 3: working at all. But you know, like, insofar as it's failing,

510
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:31,360
Speaker 3: it's mostly they're trying some limited welfare stuff and they're

511
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:33,159
Speaker 3: doing a bunch of weird ideological stuff, and it is

512
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,200
Speaker 3: going to get so much worse when every other country

513
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 3: tries this.

514
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: Yeah cool, Well, you know what else is going to

515
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: get worse?

516
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 2: Probably the products and services. It's simple of this show.

517
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, all right, we're back.

518
00:26:55,800 --> 00:27:00,200
Speaker 2: It's me And predictably, I suppose I am talking about

519
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:04,920
Speaker 2: Franco as Spain. So Francisco Franco attempted to rebuild Spain

520
00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:10,119
Speaker 2: after Civil War, both through explicit eugenics and through the

521
00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:14,960
Speaker 2: nationalization of women's bodies, abortion and contraceptual bands. Abortion had

522
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 2: been legal, Spain was one of the first countries to

523
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:21,200
Speaker 2: do that. Right when Feliko Monceni, anarchist minister, made that

524
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 2: legal minister of I guess public health that was made illegal.

525
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 2: I think it didn't become legally again until about twenty ten.

526
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 2: In Spain, abortion and a lessa was like a serious

527
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 2: health issue, elective abortion.

528
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 6: I guess.

529
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:35,679
Speaker 2: Franco's military in the Civil War consistently used sexual violence

530
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 2: as or weapon, and we can see this as a

531
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:44,240
Speaker 2: kind of prelude to his nationalization of birthing bodies. Right. Kibayao,

532
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 2: who is a Francoist general, right, makes his speech in

533
00:27:48,200 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 2: July nineteen thirty six, quote, our valiant legionnaires and regulas

534
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:54,720
Speaker 2: have shown the red cowards what true men are, and

535
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 2: their women as well. This is totally justified because these

536
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 2: communists and anarchists anocate free love. At least now they

537
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 2: will know what real men are, not the militia gaze.

538
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:06,639
Speaker 2: This is a translation that I'm reading to so people

539
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 2: can go to the original document. But gays is not

540
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 2: the word he used. A better translation would be a

541
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 2: word that begins with f Yeah.

542
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah.

543
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:19,400
Speaker 2: They will not escape, however much they kick their legs

544
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 2: and scream like this is a general in their army

545
00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 2: making explicit rape threats.

546
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 7: Right.

547
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 2: They weren't subtle about this. Yes, the Spanish Falange, which

548
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 2: is Spain's fascist party, also had a Cecion Feminina, a

549
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:36,160
Speaker 2: women's section. My PhD supervisor Pamela Ragliff is written extensively

550
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 2: about this. The group very much served as kind of

551
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 2: the Propaganderama state natalist policy. It taught women from a

552
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:45,239
Speaker 2: young age they were inferior and subjugate to men. They

553
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 2: had to go through the organization's programs. To do anything

554
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 2: any engagement with the state, they had to first go

555
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 2: through the women's section.

556
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: Right.

557
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 2: If they wanted to get a passport, they wanted to

558
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 2: get a driving license, if they wanted to engage with

559
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 2: the world outside of their homes in any way way,

560
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 2: they had to go through this program, which indoctrinated them

561
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 2: that their highest calling and only value was to have children.

562
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 2: Women's role in the Francoist project then was child bearing

563
00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 2: a child rearing Francoist I'm going to use intellectuals here

564
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 2: in like quotation scare quotes, right, frequently turned to phrenology

565
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:24,760
Speaker 2: to justify women's domestic role. They fucking loved a phrenology.

566
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: Right.

567
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 2: It's great to go to antique markets in Spain because

568
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 2: you could always buy like a phrenology head you can

569
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 2: acquire like an og one, you know, like I bet

570
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:37,200
Speaker 2: if you know the red place, so that you could

571
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 2: find some find the calibers.

572
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: That's the dream.

573
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 4: There is actually a lot of those secondhand stores in Portland.

574
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, shocking.

575
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 2: Hands, spasping me with francoism, and I.

576
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: Found a lot of uses for those calipers.

577
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 4: Let me tell you, no, I mean the phrenologies goals.

578
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, I've seen them all over down.

579
00:29:58,520 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I bet you, I bet you was a

580
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:02,720
Speaker 2: re because I bet they're not like og phrenology skulls.

581
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: There's a market in France enter to that just had

582
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 1: a bunch of monks skulls, like real, it seems fine.

583
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 1: There was one that had been turned into a holder

584
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: for a Bible, like they'd cut like an L shaped

585
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: cut in the skull of pretty cool.

586
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 2: It was like three grand and you make a curtsy

587
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 2: for the Quran.

588
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: But like this was a while ago, but seemed like

589
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: a good price.

590
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 5: Just skull Talk, your favorite podcast discussing cranium.

591
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 2: Using the discount code, it could happen here. You can

592
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 2: get ten percent off your skull Bible holder. Yeah that's right, Okay,

593
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:37,680
Speaker 2: so one of the things they did was to increasingly

594
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:42,479
Speaker 2: marginalize midwives and instead like have male doctors taking control

595
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 2: of the child birthing process, because midwives would advocate for

596
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 2: their patients too much, and they didn't feel that women

597
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 2: belonged to work outside the home. Right, A big part

598
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,680
Speaker 2: of Franco's pro natalism was the repudiation of an Arco

599
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 2: feminism that had been relatively important to the Spanish Revolution. Right,

600
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 2: the the anarchists believed in revolutionary marriage and free love.

601
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 2: Their follow through on those beliefs varied wildly, right, So

602
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 2: we can see that in some collectivized industries, for instance,

603
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 2: the unions took on the role they would assign women

604
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 2: I guess I was going to say mentors, but apprenticeships, right,

605
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 2: So like they wanted, in for instance, to CNT Transport Union.

606
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 2: Once the revolution had happened and the CNT Transport Union

607
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 2: had been collectivized, women who wished to be tram drivers

608
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 2: or bus drivers could apprentice to men in that position,

609
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 2: so that in order to achieve more gender equality within

610
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 2: that sphere. Right, this is something that the Franco estate hated.

611
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 2: It also had its own kind of unique take on

612
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 2: eugenics that manifested in its pro natalism. Spain couldn't really

613
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 2: do the straight racial eugenics right like that, that doesn't

614
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 2: really work with Spanish history. But instead they saw leftism

615
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 2: as being some kind of genetic defect and something of

616
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 2: a pathogen that spread within society.

617
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:09,240
Speaker 4: Welcome mine virus.

618
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, god no, it's it's boring from the

619
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 5: same type of fascist right.

620
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 2: It also practiced something called anti Semitism without Jews at

621
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 2: this time, so there was a very very small Jewish

622
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 2: population space. But nonetheless, Franco was constantly freaking out about

623
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 2: Judeo Bolshevism. He saw liberalism, Marxism, anarchism, feminism, Judaism, et

624
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 2: cetera as completely antithetical to Spanish nests, and of course

625
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:39,960
Speaker 2: they blame us for their national declient right, something little

626
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 2: fascists like to talk about. This anti leftist eugenics and

627
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 2: pro natalism extended to something called ninos robalos nenzfostats in Catalan.

628
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 2: These children were abducted from their parents. Sometimes this is

629
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 2: when their parents were in jail. Sometimes it was when

630
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 2: the parents have been killed. Some it was when the

631
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 2: mother had been forced into incarceration. By something called the

632
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:08,680
Speaker 2: Women's Protection Board. This, theoretically run by Franca's wife, was

633
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 2: a way of institutionalizing quote unquote fallen women or women

634
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 2: who were quote at risk of falling. It provides a

635
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 2: way to force any woman you want to into an institution.

636
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 2: These children who were taken from their mothers were often

637
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 2: trafficked and some cases sold to approve families by nuns

638
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 2: and priests. I'm going to quote one example from a

639
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 2: BBC article in nineteen seventy one. Manoli, who was twenty

640
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 2: three at the time and not long married, gave birth

641
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:40,520
Speaker 2: to what she was told with a healthy baby boy,

642
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 2: but he was immediately taken away for what were called

643
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 2: routine tests. Nine interminable hours passed. Then a nun who

644
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 2: was a nurse called in for me that my baby

645
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 2: had died. She said they would not let her have

646
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 2: her son's body, nor would they tell her when the

647
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,160
Speaker 2: funeral would be. Some of these clinics went as far

648
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 2: as to keep the body of a dead baby in

649
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 2: a freezer and they would bring it out to show mothers.

650
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:08,359
Speaker 2: They even dug grave for babies, but many of those

651
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 2: grave just contained stones or the remains of adults. These

652
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 2: babies were then given or sold to other families and raised,

653
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:20,840
Speaker 2: and in some cases they lived their whole lives and

654
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 2: died without ever knowing who their parents were.

655
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 4: Right.

656
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 2: I remember, like I was doing my PhD when the

657
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:28,800
Speaker 2: initial research into this was being done, And it is

658
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 2: fucking horrible for people to find this out right because

659
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 2: the people who were stolen from their families and in

660
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:39,120
Speaker 2: many cases are still alive, right and in most cases

661
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 2: their birth certificately exists with say mother unknown. And that

662
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 2: was a process that existed to protect women who have

663
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 2: had children outside of marriage, but was also used to

664
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 2: steal babies and leave no paper trail. At least in

665
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, the BBC confronted one of the doctors who

666
00:34:56,600 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 2: was doing this. It's kind of a wild BBC. I've

667
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 2: linked it an article. There was also like a I

668
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 2: guess it's like a podcast, a radio documentary where one

669
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 2: of their reporters had recently had a baby so it

670
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,400
Speaker 2: was able to make a make an appointment with the

671
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:13,359
Speaker 2: obg y N who was stealing these babies, and when

672
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:16,800
Speaker 2: she confronted him, he grasped a crucifix and started brandishing

673
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 2: it at her and Jesus first incredible country. The reason

674
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:26,600
Speaker 2: that they did this right was because their their fascism

675
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:29,440
Speaker 2: was a bit of a unique kind that was you know,

676
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:32,399
Speaker 2: Paul Preston said that Franco wasn't fascist, you was something worse.

677
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:35,960
Speaker 2: They had what's called national Catholicism right, which prevented them

678
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 2: from doing sterilization or abortion. So instead they felt that

679
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,359
Speaker 2: they could steal these children and and sort of raise

680
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:46,279
Speaker 2: them outside of this leftist kind of pathogen I.

681
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:50,359
Speaker 1: Do love just I'm working on the Salazar episodes right now.

682
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:53,279
Speaker 1: I love how often Iberians are like, we're going to

683
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 1: do fascism just but like we're gonna put some spins

684
00:35:56,400 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: on it, like how the Portuguese were like, we're going

685
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:03,280
Speaker 1: to do fashion. But with us having sex with absolutely everyone,

686
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: we're colonizing and trying to make an argument to the

687
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:08,800
Speaker 1: fact that that makes us the good colonizers because of

688
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: all the sex assaults were not racist, guys, It's fine.

689
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 2: We were communing godh Iberia Baby Spain is different, as

690
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 2: the slogan used to go m terms of Francoist tourism

691
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 2: slogan back in the day. Yeah, so the discourse of

692
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 2: quote true Catholic womanhood was essential to Francoist nationalization of women,

693
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 2: and they were raised to serve the patteria right the fatherland,

694
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 2: with their bodies not their minds. In the Republic, Spain

695
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:40,439
Speaker 2: had used secular education to fight its perceived and real

696
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,240
Speaker 2: backwardness compared to the rest of Europe. The Francoist predictively opposite.

697
00:36:44,760 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 2: It returned for its inspiration to succeed century Catholic texts,

698
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 2: and they saw intellectual development as a risk to femininity

699
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:54,879
Speaker 2: and a risk to the ultimate goal of women's lives,

700
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 2: which was motherhood. In terms of I guess birth raise

701
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:00,799
Speaker 2: that they did have. You have a post or baby boom, right,

702
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 2: you have that everywhere that is affected by a large war,

703
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,520
Speaker 2: Like you know, there are pretty obvious reasons for this,

704
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 2: and then birth rates do go up until like the

705
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies nineteen eighties, and then they start declining rapidly

706
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 2: and Spain is once again in like a sort of

707
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 2: not so much a birth rate panic. I didn't think,

708
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 2: but it is noted that Spanish birth rates have gone

709
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 2: down since the nineteen eighties, but nonetheless Spanish birth rates

710
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,279
Speaker 2: never more particularly high compared to those in the rest

711
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 2: of Europe because Franco was an absolutely wrapped up to

712
00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:35,360
Speaker 2: the economy, right, which made it harder for people to

713
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 2: have more children. But yeah, that's what I've got. If

714
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 2: you want to read more on Ninio Slovados, I think

715
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 2: there's a TV series about it now, Stolen Children. I'm

716
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 2: sure you can find it with subtitles. But someone made

717
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,280
Speaker 2: a documentary on this that was presented in academic conference

718
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 2: I did, and if I find the link, I will

719
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:50,879
Speaker 2: put it in the show notes.

720
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, well, I think it's time to talk about

721
00:37:55,760 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 1: Romania now. When it comes to who is the worse

722
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 1: to doing pro natalism, there's a lot of contenders, but

723
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 1: I feel like we got the usane bolt of natalism

724
00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: right here, and it's such a Jesco regime, so we

725
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: got to peel back a little bit here and talk

726
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: about you know, when communism first came to Romania, which

727
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: was like kind of the end of forty seven, early

728
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, and in the first years of the

729
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: communist regime, it brought the same changes that communist governments

730
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:27,320
Speaker 1: in Europe all tended to bring in the post war period,

731
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,200
Speaker 1: obviously earlier for the USSR. And a lot of these

732
00:38:30,239 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: are good, actually right, not to deny all the horrible

733
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: things that were happening, but life changes pretty dramatically in

734
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: a positive way for a lot of women. This is

735
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 1: true in Russia as well. Literacy for women rises, the

736
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: employment rate for women rises, and this happens across society, right.

737
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:48,800
Speaker 1: A lot of the poorest people in these societies experienced

738
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:53,000
Speaker 1: substantial initial lifts, right. And along with that, lifespan increases

739
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 1: pretty dramatically, rates of accidental death fall pretty dramatically, and

740
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: literacy increases. And again, it increases across the board, but

741
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: it is particularly significant for women.

742
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 2: Right.

743
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:08,600
Speaker 1: And this is all lovely, These are good things, right. However,

744
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: it comes with a problem for a lot of the

745
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 1: leaders And this is not just true in Romania, but

746
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: we're talking about Romania here. It comes with a problem

747
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: for a lot of the leadership of Romania's Communist Party,

748
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:19,560
Speaker 1: which is that one of the things we see in

749
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: every society when people have more and are doing better

750
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 1: and live longer, is that they start having less kids, because,

751
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: among other things, all their kids aren't dying.

752
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:30,880
Speaker 2: Right.

753
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:33,399
Speaker 1: One reason why birth rates are high is people are like, yeah,

754
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:35,320
Speaker 1: well like but three of them might live, right, you know,

755
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta really pump these numbers up. I'm

756
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: and have enough kids to keep this fucking farm going, right,

757
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 1: And when that stops happening happening, women are like, well,

758
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:45,040
Speaker 1: maybe I don't need to have eleven kids, yeah, right,

759
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: Like if they're all going to live to adults, I

760
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,919
Speaker 1: don't need eleven children to be adults, right, So birth

761
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:52,759
Speaker 1: rates start to fall. This freaks out though a lot

762
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: of these these communists, because the kind of communists who

763
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:59,800
Speaker 1: are like leading Romania are very traditional Marxists, right, And

764
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: Marx was what you call a physiocrat, right, which is

765
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:04,920
Speaker 1: a term that I found for the first time in

766
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 1: a Journal of Family History article, But it's a term

767
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:08,880
Speaker 1: you can find other places. And the basic idea is

768
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:10,719
Speaker 1: that and this is an idea that then it goes

769
00:40:10,760 --> 00:40:14,440
Speaker 1: back to the original Marx. More people equals better economy, right,

770
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 1: equals more productivity. So falling fertility is seen as at

771
00:40:18,520 --> 00:40:21,919
Speaker 1: potential calamity for the state. You know, obviously this isn't

772
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: how it works, Like the US has had fertility rates

773
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: falling and like economic prosperity rise in the same period

774
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 1: of time. But this is like a thing that they think,

775
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: right then that like if we don't bump up these

776
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 1: birth rates. We're going to deal with like an actual

777
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 1: economic disaster. So by the time nikolaichi Chescu takes over

778
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: as party leader on June twenty third, nineteen sixty six,

779
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 1: the problem is serious enough in his eyes that it

780
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: had become a crisis and the birth rate had declined

781
00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:51,879
Speaker 1: pretty precipitously. In nineteen fifty five, there were about twenty

782
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 1: five point six life births per thousand people in Romania,

783
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: and by the time to Chesscu takes over, there's about

784
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: fourteen live birth per thousand people. Right now, for reference,

785
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:04,560
Speaker 1: both of those are still higher than the US birth rate.

786
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: Right now, we're at about eleven a little less than

787
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: eleven live births per thousand people in the country. The

788
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 1: only reason why the US population continues to grow is immigration,

789
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: but that's a topic for another day. Cichscu stated that

790
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:18,760
Speaker 1: women needed to use their influence to rebuild the family,

791
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:21,319
Speaker 1: and per that article in the Journal of Family History,

792
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: Cichescu declared that backward attitudes and expressions of levity toward

793
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:28,320
Speaker 1: the family must be combated with determination because they result

794
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 1: in an increase in the number of divorces and the

795
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: disintegration of the family and then the neglect of the

796
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:35,919
Speaker 1: children's education and training for life. And this is something

797
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 1: that had come alongside the revolution, right that there's a

798
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 1: lot of more critical ideas about these traditional concepts like

799
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:45,800
Speaker 1: the family in the society that it existed before. And

800
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, well, but you know,

801
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 1: we're we're becoming more scientific, you know, we have like

802
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 1: women have jobs. Now, maybe a lot of these attitudes

803
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: about what the family should be are kind of outdated.

804
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:58,319
Speaker 1: And he's saying, no, no, no, no, they're not they're

805
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 1: not you need to go back to having a shitloading kids, right,

806
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 1: And he announces a new initiative to increase the population

807
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: of Romania by thirty percent by nineteen ninety so, which

808
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:10,920
Speaker 1: I don't know if the idea that would ever be

809
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 1: possible is a long shot. Right, So that's that's a

810
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: massive change in society. But Chichscu isn't a logic thinker guy, right,

811
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: He's not like running the numbers hardcore here. He's just

812
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 1: sort of throwing out some shit that sounds good. And

813
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 1: so to encourage the shift, he leashes a famous raft

814
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:33,440
Speaker 1: of new legislation aimed towards pro natalism towards massively increasing

815
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 1: the birth rate. The first step is that abortion is

816
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:38,759
Speaker 1: banned for nearly all women in the country. There are

817
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: some exceptions. For example, you can qualify for an abortion

818
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:44,839
Speaker 1: if you've had if you already have five children under

819
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:49,919
Speaker 1: eighteen in the house concurrently, which is nice, and there's

820
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 1: one or two other exceptions based on your age, but

821
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: there aren't many exceptions per an article in PubMed. In addition,

822
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: employed women under age forty five years are required to

823
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: undergo monthly gynicle logic examinations at their workplaces, and any

824
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 1: pregnancies detected are monitored to term. Unmarried persons over twenty

825
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: five years of age and childless married couples without a

826
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,240
Speaker 1: valid medical reason for infertility are assessed to thirty percent

827
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: tax on income.

828
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 4: Jesus women who refuse.

829
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 1: To have children have been termed deserters. Despite official pro

830
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: natalist policies, it has been estimated that forty percent of

831
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:25,919
Speaker 1: the seven hundred thousand Romanian women pregnant in nineteen eighty

832
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: five had illegal abortions. A special unit has been established

833
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:31,800
Speaker 1: within the State Security Police to combat this practice.

834
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:34,840
Speaker 4: So we're so close to this, we are we are not?

835
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:38,800
Speaker 4: They really want to do all of this. We're like

836
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:39,839
Speaker 4: knocking on the door.

837
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:41,839
Speaker 1: They are like, that is the thing that I really

838
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:44,360
Speaker 1: want to drive home. Is that the closest that I

839
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 1: have found in all of my rings, the closest direct

840
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: graph to what guys like Vance and Musk are suggesting

841
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: for US policy is Romanian.

842
00:43:54,080 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 4: And it's also the worst this has ever worked.

843
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 2: When I was a lot younger, when I sixteen, I've

844
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:05,280
Speaker 2: volunteered in an orphanage venere diverting kids in Romania.

845
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 1: Jesus fucking Christ.

846
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 2: Well, I mean they created a culture of child abandonment, right, Like, yes, yeah,

847
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 2: we'll be talking about that. That shit fucked me up,

848
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, you shouldn't send your sixteen year old

849
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 2: children to do that, to be clear, but like.

850
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 1: No, and you're you're encountering it after the worst of

851
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: it too, which we'll talk about here, not to minimize

852
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 1: the experience, but we'll be discussing where it was at

853
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: its worst.

854
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 6: Yeah.

855
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:29,280
Speaker 1: So it's worth noting that while women did start working

856
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,239
Speaker 1: at a higher rate after Communist takeover, that started to

857
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:35,040
Speaker 1: plateau by the time that Chicheski, because obviously, like there

858
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 1: was still a lot of communism, doesn't get rid of

859
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: men being shitty to women. Right, it does do things

860
00:44:40,719 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 1: do get a lot better.

861
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:44,399
Speaker 2: Right, sometimes it empowers shitty man.

862
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: And at the start, like kind of right around when

863
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:48,920
Speaker 1: he announces these this set of fertility laws, he does

864
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: try to institute a policy with the goal of increasing

865
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 1: the number of women working at high positions in different

866
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: state departments. Right, there is an initial like we're going

867
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 1: to break the grant glass ceiling kind of thing, but

868
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 1: that doesn't last long. He may basically cancels any sort

869
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:03,879
Speaker 1: of messaging or work on the policy. After his wife,

870
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:06,880
Speaker 1: Elena is made a member of the party executive committee.

871
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:08,440
Speaker 4: He's like, women have gone fired.

872
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: Up, look at my wife. Classic chicescu. Yes, classic guy

873
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:21,840
Speaker 1: who's going to die with his wife in a basement. So,

874
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:24,879
Speaker 1: as is always the case with shit like this, women

875
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 1: were not equally impacted by the abortion ban. Largely. The

876
00:45:28,719 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: impacts were pretty widely divergent based on your level of

877
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: wealth and social class. And I'm going to quote from

878
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:37,719
Speaker 1: an investigation by the NGO Helsinki Watch, who conducted a

879
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 1: deep investigation and do all of this immediately after the

880
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: regime fell. Women were not equally affected by the pro

881
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:46,800
Speaker 1: natalist policies, members of the urban middle class managed somehow

882
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 1: or another to get contraceptives on the black market. Oh

883
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 1: I should also know contraceptives were basically made illegal, with

884
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 1: the exception of like condoms. They could also obtain medical abortions.

885
00:45:55,680 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: A Bucharest student candidly informed Helsinki Watch that several years ago,

886
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: when his girlfriend became pregnant, the abortion had cost him

887
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:04,320
Speaker 1: five thousand lay or about fifty dollars on the black market,

888
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 1: and several women with professional degrees reported matter of factly

889
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:10,399
Speaker 1: that they had simply refused to cooperate with government gynecological

890
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 1: inspectors who came to their institutes without suffering any reprisals.

891
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: Nor were the most rural segments of the population deeply affected.

892
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 1: The Orthodox Christians had long shunned birth control and abortion,

893
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 1: and others like the ROMA had not practiced it. The

894
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: brunt of the policy fell on the lower middle class,

895
00:46:25,680 --> 00:46:29,359
Speaker 1: particularly factory workers, single women, urban ROMA, and those from

896
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 1: disorganized or troubled families, none of whom had the money

897
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: or connections to circumvent the regulations. Their options were as

898
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:38,280
Speaker 1: limited as they were life threatening. Some used a variety

899
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:40,800
Speaker 1: of would be aborti fascians, others availed themselves of the

900
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:43,840
Speaker 1: services of a back alley abortionist. Still others carried to

901
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: term and the number of deaths, the mortality rate for

902
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: women as a result of this did like there's a

903
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 1: lot of hideous stuff. There were kind of doing the

904
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 1: shortest version of this, But I don't mean to paper

905
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: over that a lot of women died and suffered lasting

906
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,760
Speaker 1: injury in fertility and a number of other things because

907
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: of different back alley abortions and weird drugs that they

908
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,279
Speaker 1: were given. But it's important to note that women who

909
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:08,919
Speaker 1: had money and opposition in the social class could still

910
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 1: gain access to this shit. And that's how it will

911
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: work here too, right, Like these Republican congressmen will not

912
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 1: be restricting their family members from having access to this stuff.

913
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: They'll be restricting poor people. Right Yeah, Now, the first

914
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:24,480
Speaker 1: thing I should know about this whole raft of policies

915
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,360
Speaker 1: Toichesscu introduced is that they did not work. That Journal

916
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: of Family History article that I've quoted from a couple

917
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:32,120
Speaker 1: of times. Here ran the numbers to try to analyze

918
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: how well did this, like, how did these policies correspond

919
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:38,000
Speaker 1: to birth rates in Romania and It is true that

920
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 1: after the first major laws were pushed in sixty seven

921
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: and sixty eight, there was a brief surge in birth rates,

922
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:46,799
Speaker 1: but that fell very quickly and had completely disappeared. By

923
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, things were back to baseline. So in

924
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,760
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four to Chesscu launches another push to increase

925
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 1: birth rates, and again they briefly increase and then fall

926
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: a year or two later. This process plays out a

927
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:01,120
Speaker 1: couple times throughout the administry, and one of the things

928
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: that's important to note is that the increase that happens

929
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:06,439
Speaker 1: after every new sort of like focus on birth rates

930
00:48:07,080 --> 00:48:11,359
Speaker 1: is less each time, Right, it gets less effective every time. Now,

931
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: the analysis in that paper concluded the birth rate would

932
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: only rise when the state applied direct pressures on the population.

933
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:22,600
Speaker 1: Otherwise it dropped, right, because this just doesn't work, Like,

934
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,560
Speaker 1: you're not fundamentally changing anything, and none of these incentives

935
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:28,319
Speaker 1: because they're expensive, and in Romania's case, the country literally

936
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 1: didn't have money to provide much of the way of incentives, right,

937
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: but they never are going to work. Like, as we

938
00:48:34,200 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 1: went over earlier, the ones being proposed here are wildly

939
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,239
Speaker 1: insufficient to deal with the cost of having kids, let

940
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 1: alone a bunch of fucking kids, and none of the

941
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 1: people in charge of the Republican Party have any interest

942
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:47,600
Speaker 1: in making life affordable for people who are not rich.

943
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:48,440
Speaker 6: Now.

944
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:50,800
Speaker 1: The situation that this led to by the time that

945
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: Chicheskei regime fell in eighty nine was also pretty catastrophic

946
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:57,280
Speaker 1: because there had been surges in births, right, in births

947
00:48:57,360 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 1: of kids to parents who, because the people can't get

948
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:02,960
Speaker 1: away from this, tend to be the poor, could not

949
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,200
Speaker 1: take care of these kids, right. And there was also

950
00:49:06,239 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: a surge in kids as a result of the general

951
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: surge in birth rate, but also as a result of

952
00:49:10,120 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 1: different sort of issues with nutrition and whatnot. In Romania,

953
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: a lot of kids who had different physical and mental

954
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 1: disabilities right who were just abandoned straight away because their

955
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 1: parents could not take care of them. By nineteen ninety

956
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,480
Speaker 1: there were an estimated one hundred and thirty thousand children

957
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: in orphanages and homes for the handicapped, these institutions that

958
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:31,239
Speaker 1: had been set up in Romania. And there were like

959
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:33,719
Speaker 1: posters that were going around that were part of the

960
00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: pro natalist campaign that basically said, hey, if you have

961
00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:38,080
Speaker 1: a kid, you can't take care of or that's not

962
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 1: like working out for you. The Romanian government can handle

963
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:43,640
Speaker 1: it better than you, So like who cares have another

964
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: kid and we'll just drop it off with us if

965
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 1: you can't take care of them, right, Like that was

966
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 1: literally a part of the propaganda campaign that led you

967
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 1: again like one hundred and thirty thousand kids in orphanages.

968
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,400
Speaker 4: Oh fucking Christ.

969
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:58,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, that hell sinky article I found quoted from a

970
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:01,239
Speaker 1: different piece of western news media, like a team of

971
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:03,080
Speaker 1: journalists that went to a town called the dell Lefter

972
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:06,360
Speaker 1: Chichesco Fell And this is how that article opens. On

973
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: the second floor of the state run institution. Here, dazed

974
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:12,360
Speaker 1: toddlers liars sit in iron cribs and close stuffy rooms.

975
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 1: Their foreheads are speckled with flies and with scabs and

976
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 1: bruises that come from banging their heads and mouths on

977
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:19,960
Speaker 1: crib rails. Some cry, but most are silent and appear

978
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: bewildered behind their bars, with the doomed air of laboratory

979
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:27,400
Speaker 1: animals down the hall. Other cribs hold smaller children, pale skeletons,

980
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 1: suffering from malnutrition and disease. Despite the heat of the day,

981
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 1: several of the children are wrapped in dirty blankets. From

982
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: one still bundle, only a bluish patch of scalp is visible.

983
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,359
Speaker 1: Ask if the child inside is alive and orderly, says,

984
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: of course and pulls back the covers. The tiny skeleton

985
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:45,520
Speaker 1: stirves turned onto its side and groans.

986
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's worse.

987
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:53,040
Speaker 1: This is not the worst like Helsinki article goes into

988
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: like how in the homes for the handicapped, the children

989
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 1: are just ignored. They can go months without any real

990
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 1: human contact of the the bare minim of being fed.

991
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 1: There's no one watching these kids like this is some

992
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: of the most cruelest and most hideous systematic abuse of

993
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:13,120
Speaker 1: children I've ever heard of. A lot of children die.

994
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 1: AIDS spreads through some of these facilities like wildfire. I

995
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: really cannot exaggerate like the horror of these institutions. If

996
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: you do want to read more, there's two articles I'll

997
00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:27,880
Speaker 1: recommend for you that I'm not going to quote up

998
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: from now because we're already going long enough. But there's

999
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:33,080
Speaker 1: the Romanian Orphans are Adults Now, an article in the Atlantic,

1000
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 1: that's the title. You should check that out. And then

1001
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:40,040
Speaker 1: Chichescu's Children and The Guardian, both of those articles do

1002
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 1: a good job of providing additional context and horror on this,

1003
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:46,240
Speaker 1: but I think it's important to note that what happened

1004
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:48,800
Speaker 1: in Romania is what sounds most familiar to the programs

1005
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 1: being pushed today and also easily the worst this has

1006
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:51,879
Speaker 1: ever got.

1007
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:56,479
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, especially combined with like RFK Junior's policies. Yeah,

1008
00:51:56,840 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 5: that is like, yeah, yeah, it takes a lot for

1009
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:03,399
Speaker 5: me to be like kind of shocked and horrified these days.

1010
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that stuff is grim. It's some of the

1011
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:06,959
Speaker 4: worst shit.

1012
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Oh boy, I remember that the time, there

1013
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 2: was like concern if the kids were really nonverbal, yeah,

1014
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 2: like or they just had never been talked to. Oh

1015
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 2: my god, because right, they've been institutionalized from such a

1016
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,160
Speaker 2: young like I was there probably about twelve years after

1017
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 2: the end of the regimes, so that these kids were

1018
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 2: in their teens, I guess, Oh my god. Yeah, I

1019
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 2: remember teaching little kids to ride bikes who like had

1020
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 2: never really been able to play outside very much, and

1021
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 2: it was fucking yeah, that shit will fuck you up.

1022
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 2: That's a good museum. I'll see if I can find radios,

1023
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 2: because if they've maintained one of the old orphanages as

1024
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 2: it was like with the iron cribs and shit, and

1025
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 2: they have like projections on the walls the kids rocking

1026
00:52:48,719 --> 00:52:52,359
Speaker 2: and banging their heads someone had filmed. Yeah, that shit

1027
00:52:52,680 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 2: is disturbing. Like I I wouldn't read any of those

1028
00:52:56,160 --> 00:52:57,200
Speaker 2: articles before going to bed.

1029
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:02,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, this has been It could happen here all

1030
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:03,279
Speaker 1: right bye?

1031
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:10,040
Speaker 7: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

1032
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:13,240
Speaker 7: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

1033
00:53:13,360 --> 00:53:16,879
Speaker 7: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1034
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 7: Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

1035
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 4: You listen to podcasts.

1036
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 7: You can now find sources for it could Happen Here

1037
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,240
Speaker 7: listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.