Speaker 1: Hi, We're on vacation, but we have an amazing special
Speaker 1: episode for you. In the last year, we set out
Speaker 1: to ask some questions to the smartest people in their
Speaker 1: fields about what Democrats should do when they regain power.
Speaker 1: We hope you'll enjoy this special episode of Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine, a Reimagining. Hello and welcome to Part three
Speaker 1: of our new docu series, Project twenty twenty nine of Reimagining.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly john Fast, a columnist, podcaster, are and person
Speaker 1: you occasionally see on Gable News. In this series, we're
Speaker 1: trying to start a conversation about where the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: goes when it regains power. The hope is that there
Speaker 1: will be an agenda that puts people first and creates
Speaker 1: incentives for many of the voters Democrats have lost to
Speaker 1: come back to the party. In this episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss reproductive rights and how when Democrats regain power,
Speaker 1: we can work to make sure those rights are codified.
Speaker 1: We've assembled some of the smartest people we know to
Speaker 1: explain to us how we can begin to protect, to codify,
Speaker 1: and help change our legislation so we never have to
Speaker 1: fight for these rights again. But first, it's easy to
Speaker 1: forget just all the ways these rights are being attacked.
Speaker 1: So let's walk through where we are at this very
Speaker 1: moment in America today. First, we'll hear from Mary Ziegler
Speaker 1: about the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Speaker 2: Probably the most significant thing that's happened in recent years
Speaker 2: is that the Supreme Court overturned Rob Wade, which opened
Speaker 2: the door to a bunch of other legal changes that
Speaker 2: are really unprecedented. Right, So, we've seen criminal abortion laws
Speaker 2: that are much more stringent than anything that was on
Speaker 2: the books in the nineteenth century. We've seen those laws
Speaker 2: interpreted in ways that preclude physicians from intervening in miscarriages
Speaker 2: and stillbirths, not just in situations where people are seeking abortions.
Speaker 2: And we've seen that those laws can have unintended consequences
Speaker 2: for people at the end end of life too, people
Speaker 2: who whose advanced directives don't address pregnancy, or who don't
Speaker 2: have an advanced directives at all. So I think one
Speaker 2: of the things we've seen is that what seems to
Speaker 2: be changes just about abortion, which are significant enough in
Speaker 2: their own right, are spilling over into lots of areas
Speaker 2: involving people's lives, whether that's birth control or IVF on
Speaker 2: the one hand, or certainly people with wanted pregnancies having
Speaker 2: pregnancy complications on the other.
Speaker 1: Now we'll hear from Nancy north Up about Texas's impact
Speaker 1: on abortion laws.
Speaker 3: So you both have the flat out criminal laws that
Speaker 3: make abortion of crime, aiding a betting abortion of crime.
Speaker 3: You know, Texas has been the innovator on this, for
Speaker 3: lack of a better word, that allows these bounty hunting
Speaker 3: lawsuits where or dary individuals can sue someone because they
Speaker 3: have provided an abortion aided and bed providing an abortion.
Speaker 3: They've just passed a law about going after the manufacturers
Speaker 3: and the shippers of medication abortion, which has been a
Speaker 3: lifeline in post row America. So it's everything from the
Speaker 3: state prosecuting to giving individuals the power to become sort
Speaker 3: of their own vigilante attorneys general to go after people
Speaker 3: who again might be a friend helping someone go out
Speaker 3: of state. I mean, we have represented individuals in the
Speaker 3: state of Texas where an abusive boyfriend has sued the
Speaker 3: friends and family of a woman in one case who
Speaker 3: left the state of Texas to have an abortion another
Speaker 3: state that's perfectly legal to do, but he brought this
Speaker 3: lawsuit against them. We represent another woman. She found out
Speaker 3: when she was driving around that a million dollar lawsuit
Speaker 3: had been followed against her for allegedly helping a friend
Speaker 3: secure medication abortion in the state of Texas.
Speaker 1: And all of this madness started with SB eight. Mary
Speaker 1: Ziegler will explain what SB eight was designed to do.
Speaker 2: So SBA was passed in twenty twenty one, and at
Speaker 2: the time, it was mostly designed to circumvent row. So
Speaker 2: the idea was that instead of the government enforcing criminal
Speaker 2: abortion laws, that enforcement would be outsourced to private citizens
Speaker 2: who could sue anyone who performed an abortion for at
Speaker 2: least ten thousand dollars, regardless of whether that person had
Speaker 2: any connection to the abortion. So this was designed to
Speaker 2: scare abortion providers to stop offering services. It was designed
Speaker 2: to kind of incentivize a group of bounty hunters to
Speaker 2: go after them, and it legally meant that some of
Speaker 2: the constitutional roadblocks that could be in place if the
Speaker 2: government was enforcing these laws would go away. And of
Speaker 2: course SBA stopped mattering as much when Roe came down
Speaker 2: because Texas could enforce lots of other criminal bands, but
Speaker 2: it still mattered in lots of other ways, because we've
Speaker 2: seen that sometimes politicians hesitate to enforce the most stringent
Speaker 2: bands because they know that doing so will be politically unpopular.
Speaker 1: Here's Nancy northup on how medication abortion could be banned.
Speaker 3: Medication abortion, which is a two pill regime that has
Speaker 3: been on the market, approved by the FDA for twenty
Speaker 3: five years as safe and effective determinative pregnancy in the
Speaker 3: early period of pregnancy. This has been the case is
Speaker 3: ten thousand women are getting abortion pills in states where
Speaker 3: there's a ban. So of course it's in the sight
Speaker 3: line of those who want to ban abortion entirely, and
Speaker 3: they're different ways that they're going about this. Texas just
Speaker 3: passed a law that goes into effect December fourth, h
Speaker 3: House Bill seven, which says that vigilantes can come and
Speaker 3: sue manufacturers people who are mailing medication abortion to try
Speaker 3: to stop it. Second, you know, the Trump administration has
Speaker 3: asked the FDA to take another look at the approval
Speaker 3: of medication abortion. Now, this is something that should be
Speaker 3: a determination on the science, on the facts, as it
Speaker 3: has been for twenty five years, but they are seeking
Speaker 3: to get a reversal from the Agency of the approval
Speaker 3: of medication abode because then it would not only cut
Speaker 3: off medication abortion states where it's band, but it would
Speaker 3: cut off medication abortion. It stays where it's legal across
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 1: And this, of course means every woman, whether seeking an
Speaker 1: abortion or not, can feel the implications of these overreaching laws.
Speaker 1: Kelly Badden explains how this puts women at risk.
Speaker 4: What this means is that every woman's pregnancy is suspect
Speaker 4: and every woman's reproductive health is at risk. We are
Speaker 4: seeing that with people who are pregnant and want to
Speaker 4: continue their pregnancies but face a healthcare issue or healthcare crisis,
Speaker 4: who can't get the care that they need. We've seen
Speaker 4: that in Texas and Florida and Georgia. We've unfortunately seen
Speaker 4: the tragic deaths of several women, some of whom were
Speaker 4: not seeking abortion care. They were seeking help with their
Speaker 4: pregnancies that they wanted. And I think that is the
Speaker 4: unfortunate reality of abortion bands, is that doctors and hospital
Speaker 4: systems feel scared to provide necessary care because the state
Speaker 4: law could essentially criminalize them for doing so. It puts
Speaker 4: every woman in every person's health at risk.
Speaker 1: This is Jessica Vlendi, who writes the definitive sub stack
Speaker 1: on women's health abortion every day. She has tirelessly chronicled
Speaker 1: these attacks on women's health.
Speaker 5: Women are dying, women are going septic, The maternal mortality
Speaker 5: rate is going up, the infant mortality rate is going up,
Speaker 5: the sepsis rate is going up. Right, like all of
Speaker 5: these things that we could sort of expect. Then there
Speaker 5: are the ripple effects of bands where you have obgins
Speaker 5: leaving anti abortion states. As a result of that, maternity
Speaker 5: wards are shuttering. As a result of maternity wards shuttering,
Speaker 5: there are these huge maternal health deserts across the country, right,
Speaker 5: and so there's sort of like the medical piece that's happening.
Speaker 5: What is pos I will say, and this is the
Speaker 5: thing that they're trying to attack the most. It should
Speaker 5: go without saying, But it doesn't that there isn't a
Speaker 5: fetal heartbeat when these bands are our limiting abortion, right,
Speaker 5: when Republicans pass a heartbeat law, it's generally at around
Speaker 5: six weeks of pregnancy. There is no heartbeat then, because
Speaker 5: there is no heart formed yet. And so this it
Speaker 5: really is just again a fake science thing to try
Speaker 5: to ban abortion as early as possible. Most people are
Speaker 5: not going to know that they're pregnant at six weeks.
Speaker 5: And I think it's part of this broader effort by
Speaker 5: Republicans to seem medically credible, to seem scientifically credible, because
Speaker 5: they can't just say, oh, we just don't want you
Speaker 5: having a but right, or this is religious or this
Speaker 5: is ideological, because they know how incredibly incredibly unpopular it is.
Speaker 5: That's the same reason they're doing We're just concerned about
Speaker 5: women's health, We're just concerned about coercion, we're just concerned
Speaker 5: about clean water. They can't say they actually want because
Speaker 5: no one agrees with them, and I mean no one,
Speaker 5: not even in red states, even in the reddest states
Speaker 5: and the states that are considered the most anti abortion,
Speaker 5: people still don't want these laws, right like they still
Speaker 5: want to repeal abortion bands. Republicans still want to repeal
Speaker 5: abortion bands. There's no overseating how unpopular these laws are.
Speaker 5: I think they may be the most unpopular laws on
Speaker 5: the books in America. And again, this is part of
Speaker 5: why I do the newsletter too, because there is this
Speaker 5: real issue with a lot of lefty mail pundits and
Speaker 5: you know, experts who want to say that we need
Speaker 5: to compromise on abortion, and that's how we're going to
Speaker 5: win red states, and that's where we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 5: meet in the middle somehow. And it's so far removed
Speaker 5: from the reality of this issue that I'm just I'm
Speaker 5: desperate to be like constantly reiterated this so that people
Speaker 5: understand how popular this issue is for Democrats. I think
Speaker 5: one of the best examples of that is the rise
Speaker 5: of what conservatives call equal protection bills, which basically claim
Speaker 5: they're a fetal personhood push, basically claim that fetus' embryos,
Speaker 5: fertilized eggs have equal protection rights under the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 5: of the Constitution. And we've seen over a dozen states
Speaker 5: introduced bills that would state that and would make having
Speaker 5: an abortion would punish the abortion patient as a murderer,
Speaker 5: and in a lot of these states that could mean
Speaker 5: the death penalty. A couple of years ago, Republicans would say,
Speaker 5: you know, the legislators said, oh, these are just a
Speaker 5: couple of outliers, These are a couple of extremists. No
Speaker 5: one is taking these bills seriously. Guess what we're seeing
Speaker 5: more of the bills introduced. We're seeing the bills get
Speaker 5: more co sponsors. Just a couple of weeks ago, South
Speaker 5: Carolina had multiple hearings on one of these bills. This
Speaker 5: is a real thing, and it really concerns me that
Speaker 5: the mainstream media in particular, because they know that these
Speaker 5: bills are not going to pass right now, they sort
Speaker 5: of tend to ignore them, right or they treat them
Speaker 5: as if, well, you know, again, these are extreme, this
Speaker 5: is radical, This is not going to go anywhere. That's
Speaker 5: not true. We see it increasing. I think it was
Speaker 5: a few months ago after Kentucky introduced one of these bills,
Speaker 5: the Courier Journal in Kentucky, like the largest most circulated
Speaker 5: newspaper in Kentucky, ran an op ed by one of
Speaker 5: these guys who pushes equal protection bills. They call themselves
Speaker 5: abortion abolitionists. They ran an op ed by him where
Speaker 5: he's defending this, and it's like, how is it possible
Speaker 5: that we've gotten to the point where a state's you know,
Speaker 5: paper of record is seriously talking about whether or not
Speaker 5: to give them in the death penalty for abortion. The
Speaker 5: other thing, in addition to the equal protection is the
Speaker 5: attacks on travel right we've seen multiple states, and attacks
Speaker 5: on speech. We've seen multiple states like Idaho and Tennessee
Speaker 5: pass what they call anti trafficking anti abortion trafficking laws
Speaker 5: that they claim are to help miners who might being abused.
Speaker 5: It says you can't take a minor out of state
Speaker 5: without a parental permission for an abortion, which on its
Speaker 5: face sounds like okay, like that sounds reasonable. The laws
Speaker 5: are written, and they, I should say, they are in
Speaker 5: court in some sections of this have been blocked. But
Speaker 5: the way that they're written, it basically says helping a
Speaker 5: teenager get an abortion in any way, not just helping
Speaker 5: them leave the state, driving them to the post office
Speaker 5: to pick up abortion pills, texting them the URL to
Speaker 5: a clinic could be a felony, right, And then you
Speaker 5: have I forget how many counties it is, but it's
Speaker 5: like over a dozen counties in Texas that have passed
Speaker 5: anti trafficking ordinances not just directed at miners, but of
Speaker 5: women of all ages, so that it's illegal to help
Speaker 5: someone leave the state in these counties. And so you're
Speaker 5: talking about literally restricting adult women's right to travel. We're
Speaker 5: not hearing about it, right, Like if there were dozens
Speaker 5: of counties doing this, dementsing men can't leave the state,
Speaker 5: or you can be sued if you help a woman
Speaker 5: leave the state. You would hear about it every day.
Speaker 1: And while many anti choice activists believe that you can
Speaker 1: ban abortion and still protect pregnant women from the downstream
Speaker 1: effects of banning abortion, we know that in reality that
Speaker 1: doesn't work. Nancy Northope points out the difficulty in having
Speaker 1: exceptions when it comes to abortion bands.
Speaker 3: What people aren't seeing because although it gets coverage to
Speaker 3: some extent in the press, it doesn't get covered a lot.
Speaker 3: Is how impossible it is to craft exceptions to abortion
Speaker 3: bands for health risks. It is impossible. You cannot list
Speaker 3: the conditions, and part of it's impossible because the way
Speaker 3: healthcare is normally practice, you make a decision for yourself
Speaker 3: about benefits and risks.
Speaker 1: Mary Ziegler discusses the unintended consequences of criminalizing abortions.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that one of the things we've
Speaker 2: seen since Rose overturned is that movements to criminalize abortion
Speaker 2: are having a lot of unintended consequences. So we've seen
Speaker 2: that doctors and hospitals and lawmakers don't know what abortion means, right.
Speaker 2: So if you have someone coming in suffering from pre eclemsia,
Speaker 2: or someone who's had a miscarriage, and there may still
Speaker 2: be fetal cardiac activity, but a pregnancy is fundamentally ended.
Speaker 2: We've seen doctors saying, sorry, you know, your wife may die,
Speaker 2: but we can't intervene yet because if we intervene, that'll
Speaker 2: be an abortion, and that will be committing a felony
Speaker 2: and we'll go to jail for a decade or more.
Speaker 2: And so we've seen a lot of people who are
Speaker 2: not a worshion seekers right, people who are just have
Speaker 2: wanted pregnancies, who are having medical emergencies be turned away.
Speaker 2: We've seen hospitals, sometimes the Associated Press reporting that some
Speaker 2: emergency rooms don't want to treat pregnant patients at all
Speaker 2: because they're afraid of the legal complications. We've seen patients
Speaker 2: and end of life scenarios who are diagnosed with essentially
Speaker 2: brain death have their families be unable to decide whether
Speaker 2: they should remain on life support during a pregnancy because
Speaker 2: doctors and lawmakers interpret the law to say that that
Speaker 2: would be an abortion. And we've seen IVF families, some
Speaker 2: of whom view their own embryos as their children, be
Speaker 2: told that as an unintended consequence of some of these changes,
Speaker 2: they no longer have access to IVF.
Speaker 1: It's not just that the right refuses to carve out
Speaker 1: protections for pregnant women. It's more than that they have
Speaker 1: declared war on birth control. And this war on birth
Speaker 1: control has spilled out into one of the greatest technological
Speaker 1: achievements for having more children IVF.
Speaker 2: IVF wasn't a culture were issue until recently, if you
Speaker 2: think about it, and it's become one. I think because
Speaker 2: of the overruling of Row. That was pretty obvious in
Speaker 2: February twenty twenty four when the Alabama Supreme Court held
Speaker 2: that the state's wrongful death law, which allows you to
Speaker 2: bring certain lawsuits, applied to IVF embryos, and that had
Speaker 2: the effect of basically entirely stopping IVF in the state
Speaker 2: until lawmakers passed a statute essentially not denying that IVF
Speaker 2: embryos were people, but allowing IVF to go forward. But
Speaker 2: that wasn't the end of it. We've seen people in
Speaker 2: the anti abortion movement continuing to push to limit IVF
Speaker 2: and promoting what they call a more effective alternative to IVF.
Speaker 2: They call restorative reproductive medicine. So we've started to see
Speaker 2: states in the South promoting this idea as an alternative
Speaker 2: to IVF. And what restorative reproductive medicine is, just for context,
Speaker 2: is essentially a lot of the treatments that you would
Speaker 2: get for infertility that stopped short of IVF. They focus
Speaker 2: almost entirely on female infertility, and they often end up
Speaker 2: being ineffective for people who would need IVF, for people
Speaker 2: dealing with male factor infertility, and they can be used
Speaker 2: by people whose clock is running out as far as
Speaker 2: the efficacy of IVF is concerned. So we're seeing an
Speaker 2: ongoing effort to restrict IVF and also to fund and
Speaker 2: promote an alternative that may not work as well for
Speaker 2: people experiencing infertility.
Speaker 1: And what you see over and over again is these
Speaker 1: laws sweep up people who aren't even having abortions. This
Speaker 1: case is a prime example. Jessica Valenti explains how the
Speaker 1: right wants to control women's pregnancies and how they're failing
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 5: Should a miscarriage and like most people, do you put
Speaker 5: your miscarriage remains in the trash? What else are you
Speaker 5: supposed to do with them? And so she was arrested
Speaker 5: for that. There was a woman in Texas who spent
Speaker 5: five months in jail after she miscarried in a public
Speaker 5: bathroom because they didn't like that she flushed it. I
Speaker 5: have taken, like internally to calling them like ick laws,
Speaker 5: because all of these it's like the ick factor. All
Speaker 5: of these mostly male cops and prosecutors have no idea
Speaker 5: what pregnancy laws really looks like. They get icked out
Speaker 5: when they see blood, right, and they're desperate to punish people,
Speaker 5: and so it really is this like loophole. It's this
Speaker 5: way around the prohibition on arresting abortion patients. They figure
Speaker 5: out different seemingly unrelated charges to bring against women.
Speaker 1: And crisis pregnancy centers are the right answer to much
Speaker 1: of this, and we all know those do nothing but
Speaker 1: fail women's health needs.
Speaker 5: That like crisis pregnancy centers really are central to Republicans
Speaker 5: plan for all of this. That you know, CPCs are
Speaker 5: their enforcement arm. They are trying to sort of give
Speaker 5: CPCs this super immunity from state regulation, so that trying
Speaker 5: to regulate them at all, trying to say hey, you
Speaker 5: can't lide away, you can't put out this nonsense is
Speaker 5: considered a First Amendment violation and so they're really it's
Speaker 5: not just that they're using these groups to funnel, you know,
Speaker 5: millions of taxpayer dollars into into religious organizations, but they
Speaker 5: are emboldening and empowering these organizations, which they say are
Speaker 5: good to replace all the planned parenthood clinics that their
Speaker 5: policies are shuddering, right, So they are saying, yeah, they're
Speaker 5: they're the they're the opposite, and they don't they're not
Speaker 5: real healthcare clinics. Like that's how little they think about
Speaker 5: our health. They're saying, we're going to give million dollars,
Speaker 5: like millions and millions of dollars to these groups that
Speaker 5: don't have doctors on staff for the most part. Sometimes
Speaker 5: they have like a medical director that'll come in once
Speaker 5: or twice a month, and usually they're like a retired urologist.
Speaker 5: It's just absurd. They're not real. But they're trying to
Speaker 5: paint this picture of CPCs as a reasonable replacement for
Speaker 5: planned parenthood clinics. And one of the primary reasons they're
Speaker 5: doing that is to enact in informal ban on birth
Speaker 5: control right. They don't want to come out and say
Speaker 5: birth control is illegal. They don't want to. They don't
Speaker 5: want that heat. They don't want that backlash. But if
Speaker 5: they can get rid of every single credible reproductive health
Speaker 5: clinic in a state and replace it with a crisis
Speaker 5: pregnancy center that one can't prescribe birth control because there's
Speaker 5: no doctors there, and two won't and the only way
Speaker 5: that they'll talk about it is to say that it'll
Speaker 5: give you cancer or it'll kill you. There, you have
Speaker 5: like a ban on birth control without ever having to
Speaker 5: write it in the books.
Speaker 1: And what is very striking is that the abortion rate
Speaker 1: has actually not gone down despite all the obstacles and
Speaker 1: work the right wing has put into trying to make
Speaker 1: it harder to get an abortion.
Speaker 5: So what is positive is that the abortion rate hasn't
Speaker 5: gone down. Right, These laws have been shockingly ineffective at
Speaker 5: reducing the abortion rate. The only thing that they have
Speaker 5: done is increased suffering, increased death. Right Like, they're not
Speaker 5: reducing the abortion rate, and that's in large part because
Speaker 5: of abortion medication and telehealth. Right now, I think it's
Speaker 5: about one and four. The last study showed one in
Speaker 5: four abortions in America are provided via telehealth. And so
Speaker 5: you have all of these women in red states getting
Speaker 5: abortion pills shipped to them from doctors and shield states.
Speaker 5: Anti abortion people are really really pissed about that, and
Speaker 5: so the vast majority of attacks that we're seeing right now,
Speaker 5: the attacks that we're seeing this year especially are on
Speaker 5: abortion pills. That is what they are most desperate to
Speaker 5: do away with with telehealth specifically, and some.
Speaker 1: Blue states have already enacted shield laws. Let's hear from
Speaker 1: Kelly Badden about what these shield laws do.
Speaker 4: Abortion shield laws are policies that states enact that aim
Speaker 4: to in some way protect abortion providers in that state
Speaker 4: from being able to provide care to those who live
Speaker 4: in other states. So essentially protecting an abortion provider in
Speaker 4: your state from any charges from a state that bands
Speaker 4: abortion and might want to go after you. About twenty
Speaker 4: two states have some kind of shield law on the
Speaker 4: books in some way, but eight states have a really
Speaker 4: important component, which is this extension of the shield law
Speaker 4: protections to telehealth provision. So that's what really allows a
Speaker 4: provider in a protective state to treat a patient in
Speaker 4: another state via telehealth and get them the medication that
Speaker 4: they need to have the abortion care that they need.
Speaker 4: So incredibly important, huge innovation lots for states to continue
Speaker 4: enacting them and also continue strengthening them, because the legal
Speaker 4: developments on these change almost every week, week to week,
Speaker 4: month to month, and so it's really important for states
Speaker 4: to know that none of these laws are one and done.
Speaker 4: You can't just pass one shield law or pass the
Speaker 4: right to abortion and call it a day. You have
Speaker 4: to keep abreast of what the attacks are and keep
Speaker 4: finding ways in your state to respond to them and
Speaker 4: to protect abortion in provision.
Speaker 1: But the goal here is to protect women's reproductive rights
Speaker 1: so that there isn't a cycle of losing and gaining right.
Speaker 1: Mary Ziegler points out that voters don't want things like
Speaker 1: fetal personhood.
Speaker 2: The kind of endgame for the anti abortion movement is
Speaker 2: fetal personhood, the idea that you know from the moment
Speaker 2: of fertilization their constitutional rights, and they think that would
Speaker 2: be a path to a national abortion band through the
Speaker 2: judiciary that would also apply to things like IVF. It
Speaker 2: turns out, unsurprisingly that strong majorities of voters don't want this,
Speaker 2: and that they could put some effective pressure on state
Speaker 2: judges and even federal judges and Republican politicians not to
Speaker 2: embrace this. But normal people don't know that that's what
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like the life begins at conception thing. If you
Speaker 2: say to an average voter, when do you think life begins?
Speaker 2: Some of them who are not opposed to may well
Speaker 2: say conception, right. I mean it doesn't follow. All this
Speaker 2: other stuff doesn't follow from that. So I think if
Speaker 2: people want to make a difference sun reproductive rights, in
Speaker 2: addition to voting, in addition to campaigning, in addition to
Speaker 2: donating to organizations that are either litigating this or helping
Speaker 2: people access services, there's also just telling your neighbors what
Speaker 2: this actually is and is not right to say to people.
Speaker 2: The issue here is not that when you see an
Speaker 2: ultrasound from your friend who's excited to be pregnant, that
Speaker 2: you think that's a baby. The issue is do you
Speaker 2: want people who do these things to go to jail?
Speaker 2: Because that's what we're talking about. It's not about do
Speaker 2: you value life or do you not value life? Or
Speaker 2: do you value this life more than the pregnant person's life.
Speaker 2: It's essentially putting women and pregnant people back in the
Speaker 2: picture and seeing what we're doing is criminalizing some of
Speaker 2: these people. We're not actually helping anyone by doing that,
Speaker 2: we're just creating a bigger carcial state.
Speaker 1: Nancy Northup emphasizes the importance of passing comprehensive legislation when
Speaker 1: it comes to reproductive rights.
Speaker 3: When there is a majority in the Congress that supports
Speaker 3: abortion rights and a president who will sign that legislation,
Speaker 3: that Congress needs to pass comprehensive legislation to protect access
Speaker 3: to abortion. And it cannot be about going back to,
Speaker 3: you know, the shreds that were left a row. It
Speaker 3: has to be comprehensive. It has to be stronger. And
Speaker 3: here's the thing, because of Roe versus Way, for many years,
Speaker 3: people did not understand that Congress has the power to
Speaker 3: do this. But they do. And let me just say
Speaker 3: about this, the American public is already way ahead of
Speaker 3: Congress on this. In every state where they've been given
Speaker 3: the opportunity, a majority has voted for access to abortion.
Speaker 3: So we think about people have to realize this is
Speaker 3: within grasp of being able to have, you know, Congress
Speaker 3: address the national nightmare of the criminalization of abortion. Congress
Speaker 3: can do it. The movement has been working on some
Speaker 3: very strong legislation that when there is a majority supporting
Speaker 3: abortion rights, I would fully expect to be introduced. It
Speaker 3: would be legislation that covers the two big proms, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, the legal right to access abortion care, and
Speaker 3: the second would be the addressing the financial issues, the
Speaker 3: insurance issues that I just talked about, you know, as
Speaker 3: well as issues of you know, not excluding immigrants from healthcare.
Speaker 1: And here's Mary Ziegeler on repealing outdated laws.
Speaker 2: One thing I think a kind of bare minimum idea
Speaker 2: Democrats would explore would probably be repealing bad old laws
Speaker 2: like the Comstock Act, which is sort of hanging fires
Speaker 2: of possibility for a Republican administration to use to mail
Speaker 2: van the mailing of any item related to abortion, which
Speaker 2: could be a backdoor national ban on abortion. So I
Speaker 2: think a first step for Democrats would be to take
Speaker 2: that off the table. Democrats have also been focusing on
Speaker 2: some kind of federal guarantee for access to reproductive rights.
Speaker 2: The model that was receiving the most attention the Biden
Speaker 2: years was the Women's Health Protection Act, and we may
Speaker 2: see a kind of updated, you know, Women's Health Protection
Speaker 2: Act two point zero that will recognize some of the
Speaker 2: changes we've seen since that bill was drafted. Because that
Speaker 2: bill was drafted of course, you know in an era
Speaker 2: where a lot of the kinds of state laws were
Speaker 2: seeing from conservatives just weren't on the books. So and
Speaker 2: the reason that's important is because Republicans are not very
Speaker 2: likely to pass a sweeping bill criminalizing abortion, an IVF,
Speaker 2: and contraception, because then they're going to have to have
Speaker 2: that be on their voting record. The danger about something
Speaker 2: like the Comstock Act is that Republicans can say, hey,
Speaker 2: it's not me, it's just existing federal law. I'm just
Speaker 2: enforcing existing federal law. So removing the Comstock Act would
Speaker 2: mean essentially that to get to the same results, Republicans
Speaker 2: would actually have to be accountable for what they were
Speaker 2: voting for, and I think that would be a much
Speaker 2: much heavier lift for people opposed to abortion.
Speaker 1: Kelly Badden explains that Roe was not the end all,
Speaker 1: be all of reproductive rights and what we can do
Speaker 1: to approve on it. I know Roe v.
Speaker 4: WAD was the floor, not the ceiling, and I think
Speaker 4: that's an important reminder for what we think about now
Speaker 4: when we think about, Okay, Roe is gone, we have
Speaker 4: to build back something better and stronger and something that
Speaker 4: really allows for true reproductive health care access. For all
Speaker 4: and not the limitations that we had even under the
Speaker 4: ROW framework that.
Speaker 5: There's no one fixed.
Speaker 4: This is an effort that needs to happen at every
Speaker 4: level of government, the state legislature's, the courts, Congress, and
Speaker 4: federal administration. Nothing short of an all out national right
Speaker 4: to abortion for anyone at any time, without barriers is
Speaker 4: acceptable from a values judgment, right, from a values point
Speaker 4: of view, from our human rights point of view. But
Speaker 4: what that means practice is we have to be responding
Speaker 4: to all of the attacks that we are seeing. There
Speaker 4: are city councils who are passing laws saying you can't
Speaker 4: use the roads in that city or county to leave
Speaker 4: to go get an abortion. There are states that are
Speaker 4: trying to ban people from helping someone leave the state
Speaker 4: to get abortion care that is legal in another state. Right, like,
Speaker 4: they are really finding any lever they can to criminalize
Speaker 4: patients and providers and really limit your ability as a
Speaker 4: human being to move around the country with ease, which
Speaker 4: is your constitutional right to travel. And so I say
Speaker 4: that because we can't just say, hey, there's one silver
Speaker 4: bullet here. It's not ballot measures. That's part of the toolbox, right,
Speaker 4: that's one tool in the toolbox. The wins that we've
Speaker 4: had in state ballot measures are an incredible display of
Speaker 4: clear articulation that the public wants to see abortion rights
Speaker 4: protected even in what we would consider kind of traditionally
Speaker 4: hostile or red so called bread states. Right, that's not
Speaker 4: universally true, but it's by and large true, And I
Speaker 4: think that I would start with a state by state strategy,
Speaker 4: leave no state untested. When you can win in Missouri,
Speaker 4: when you can win in Kansas, it means you can
Speaker 4: win in other places. To build the ground game, build
Speaker 4: the state policy muscle, to remove abortion bands, to overturn
Speaker 4: abortion bands, and to start focusing on access right, not
Speaker 4: just legality, but access, and then use that momentum at
Speaker 4: the federal level to enact in a national right to abortion,
Speaker 4: and to do things like protecting your ability to travel
Speaker 4: across state lines for healthcare of any kind, protecting your
Speaker 4: ability to access a full range of information about how
Speaker 4: to use mifipristone, or how to use medicaids in abortion,
Speaker 4: to enact levers, and create abortion funds that are publicly funded.
Speaker 4: Make sure Medicaid and other public insurance programs cover abortion care.
Speaker 4: Make sure there are not limitations for private insurance. We
Speaker 4: know that the High Amendment has been a horrific policy
Speaker 4: for also nearly fifty years that even while Roe stood,
Speaker 4: really stopped people from getting the care that they need
Speaker 4: that they otherwise would have gotten.
Speaker 1: We need to think big. This new era of politics
Speaker 1: shouldn't be about Democrats taking half measures the way they
Speaker 1: might have in previous administrations. Jessica Valenti doesn't think the
Speaker 1: government should be involved in women's pregnancies at all.
Speaker 5: The ideal scenario is national protections for abortion by just
Speaker 5: saying the government has no place intervening in pregnancy. Ever,
Speaker 5: pregnancy is too complicated to legislate at any point, and
Speaker 5: we are like, I don't want to hear about like
Speaker 5: row or storing row. I don't want to hear about
Speaker 5: twenty four weeks. I don't want to hear about viability,
Speaker 5: which is a made up term that's not a medical term.
Speaker 5: Just there is no place for the government in pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Another thing we must do is protect women from frivolous
Speaker 1: lawsuits filed to strip away their reproductive rights.
Speaker 5: From civil suits. Right, Like, That's the other thing that
Speaker 5: we're seeing. Texas, which is always leading the way in
Speaker 5: these sort of like nightmare bills. They passed a law
Speaker 5: that just went into effect this month that allows people
Speaker 5: to sue pretty much anyone who touches abortion pills on
Speaker 5: their way to a woman in Texas for one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars. And so again it's a way to get
Speaker 5: around this idea that like there's a prohibition on actually
Speaker 5: criminalizing or actually suing the pregnant person who's had an abortion.
Speaker 5: Instead of doing that will ruin everyone's life around you, Right,
Speaker 5: We'll make it so you have no support system. We'll
Speaker 5: make it so that your friends and family are too
Speaker 5: afraid to help you get abortion pills, too afraid to
Speaker 5: lend you money to get out of town, too afraid
Speaker 5: to give you advice. They want to create isolation and
Speaker 5: fear and this chilling effect.
Speaker 1: Lastly, Mary Ziegler thinks Democrats need to take better action
Speaker 1: to protect reproductive rights.
Speaker 2: So I think there's definitely a question of Democrats getting
Speaker 2: their stuff together about it, because we've had plenty of
Speaker 2: scenarios where Democrats had majorities that could pass federal protections
Speaker 2: for reproductive rights, and they've literally never done it. They
Speaker 2: didn't do it in the nineties, they didn't do it
Speaker 2: in the oughts, and so I think an important thing
Speaker 2: to happen if Democrats are able to do this again
Speaker 2: is to finally say this time it's a priority.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There was always this sort of either Democrats worrying with
Speaker 2: one another about how progressive or practical to be to
Speaker 2: the point where they didn't do anything, or it was
Speaker 2: Democrats saying, well, we can deal with reproductive rights later
Speaker 2: because we have bigger problems. And I think if Democrats
Speaker 2: get into power again, there would have to be a
Speaker 2: moment where they say, you know, the time is really now,
Speaker 2: this is a priority. It's this is going to take
Speaker 2: back seat again to whatever other issue of the day
Speaker 2: happens to be there. And I'm not that pessimistic about that,
Speaker 2: because I think we've seen since Roe was overturned that
Speaker 2: this is an issue on which democrats principles and kind
Speaker 2: of selfish priorities dovetail. Right, A lot of democrats political
Speaker 2: self interest aligns with their ability to enact their principles.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: This isn't a situation where Democrats are out on a
Speaker 2: limb doing something that's likely to cost them electorally. When
Speaker 2: they're acting on their principles, because one of the lessons
Speaker 2: we've seen since the overruling of Dobbs is that reproductive
Speaker 2: rights are not a democratic issue. They're an issue everybody,
Speaker 2: not everybody, but that a majority of Americans agree on.
Speaker 2: It's a winning issue in deep red states like Missouri,
Speaker 2: it's a winning issue in purple states like Arizona and Michigan.
Speaker 2: Polling in places like Louisiana suggests that a majority of
Speaker 2: voters there think their abortion laws are too harsh. So
Speaker 2: the ballot an issue of campaign's been a really powerful
Speaker 2: way to take advantage of that, where it's possible to
Speaker 2: say essentially that where the Republican Party is on this
Speaker 2: is not where the American people are on this anywhere,
Speaker 2: including in some of the red estates in America.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for watching this episode. We made
Speaker 1: this series to get the conversation going about what happens
Speaker 1: after trump Ism. Democrats need to be more than just
Speaker 1: anti Trump, and part of this includes a bold vision
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