Chris Charbonneau: Hi friends! Welcome to the Fall of Roe podcast. This is an unapologetically pro-choice look at the events swirling around us today.
My name is Chris Charbonneau. I’m your host for this podcast, and with me is Cecile Richards, originally a Texan, I think still a Texan. Once, the first daughter of Texas, Ann Richards was the governor, who is Cecile’s mother. And always, Cecile, a community organizer her entire life. She was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America for well over a decade and now is working non-stop on this election cycle, especially helping candidate Beto O’Rourke in his bid.
So I would like to quickly get to Cecile because you all want to hear her talk. Welcome, Cecile! Well here we are on the eve of the fall of Roe. Tell me what you’re thinking about today.
Cecile Richards: Oh Chris, god, I thought about you so many times. I feel like, yeah, a few weeks ago the world just changed and even though you and I have been discussing this possibility for many, many years, and through all our work at Planned Parenthood, always tried to prepare for this moment, I think there is a part of us that inside thought, “they really will not go this far.” And I think this is, if it’s just dawning on us, as I know we are seeing around the country, it is really now just dawning on people who are only now joining our program, figuring out that, in fact, when the Republicans say, “We’re for overturning the right to safe and legal abortion, we’re for ending Roe,” they actually meant it.
Chris Charbonneau: Yeah, they meant it and they’re actually OK with hurting people with it.
This morning, there’s a Marist Poll out with PBS, Marist, and a few others that are saying 64% of Americans don’t think Roe should be overturned and making it clear that more Democrats are inspired to come to the polls to make sure that this doesn’t wreak havoc, than Republicans.
And it’s significant. It creates a big gap in the voter intention. And that is really unusual in the mid-term election with whoever’s in the White House being of the opposite party. Usually in the case of a Democrat like Joe Biden being in the White House, that would give Republicans a big bump. Maybe they won’t see it. Is that what you’re hearing through your circles?
Cecile Richards: Well, again, it’s interesting. I’ve been on a lot of tv shows with frankly, a lot of men, who say, “Oh, we always knew this was coming,” which I think is sort of a ridiculous thing to say because no one could have really known this was coming. And two, we’ve actually never lived—millions of people have never lived in a country—where abortion was illegal completely. You know, period. Stop. And so I think the dynamic we’re looking at here is people who really never thought about this issue, because they didn’t have to, are now grappling with what this means for themselves, their community, their students, their daughters, their sons, their… you name it. And that is an unpredictable element in these mid-term elections.
I’ll also say, though, and I think our experience together over many years at Planned Parenthood will confirm this, is, you can’t expect that people will figure out what’s going on unless we actually tell them. And so we’re seeing now, I come from Texas, as you said. A state that literally banned abortion after six weeks back in September. I’ve been recently on the phone with abortion providers in that state, and the stories are heartbreaking, but then they are also infuriating and motivating. And so I believe that one of the things that we need to do is actually try to spell out for people what it looks like to be in a country that no longer allows people to make their own decisions about their pregnancy, because it’s really bleak.
Chris Charbonneau: Spell it out for us. Tell us what you’re hearing on the ground. That’s what this show is for.
Cecile Richards: Well, I had gone down to Texas for the rally, and I took an afternoon to talk to abortion providers, patient navigators, clinicians from everywhere—from El Paso to Waco to Dallas to Austin to Lubbock. And look, you were in this work for so many, many years, none of these stories would surprise you, and yet they're still a gut-punch.
Talking to an abortion provider in El Paso, which, for your viewers who haven’t been to Texas, is right on the border with Mexico and on the border of New Mexico - very underserved community already. And you know, women calling who have been denied miscarriage management at the local hospital so have to show up and find someone else who can actually take care of them. Women who need a surgical abortion. One woman needed a surgical abortion… you can’t get those now in Texas, after six weeks. And she needed to go to Albuquerque, but she couldn’t because there was a border checkpoint between El Paso and Albuquerque. So there is no way that there was any possible way for her to drive and get abortion services.
Of course, you hear all the stories about people going across the border to Juarez, to buy what they call ulcer medication over the counter. But the complications of that… they mainly sell it only to men. And so women have to find someone that they trust that will not turn them in to the authorities.
And of course, we heard the story that made national news of the young woman in Starr County, which is quite nearby—just down, also in south Texas. Twenty-six-year-old young woman was literally put in jail, held with half a million dollars bond, for trying to allegedly terminate her own pregnancy. And even though she was eventually released because it was an illegal arrest, the trauma of that, …and what that, I think what that illustrates, Chris, and I could tell you all the stories I’ve heard, but the overwhelming theme of every doctor and clinician and person I talk to emphasize the enormous fear and isolation for women who have an unintended pregnancy, and in the state of Texas, have no one they can turn to.
Of course, you talk to your pastor, you talk to your teacher, you talk to your sister, your brother, your mother… any of those people, if they help you, could be turned in under the bounty-hunter system that Governor Greg Abbott has put in place.
So I think it’s a really horrible, painful, inhumane, cruel situation for people in Texas.
Chris Charbonneau: Absolutely. And it means that the Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to put away what they had suggested themselves was an entirely illegal approach to how to get something over the finish line. They sort of suggested that they weren’t sure they approved of that, but they didn’t say that people couldn’t do it.
And so here we are, in Texas, and our people in Idaho have joined them. But in Idaho, they upped the bounty, Cecile, to $20,000, in case 10 grand wasn’t enough.
I don’t think there’s any part of an American values system that lets people snitch on their neighbors for cash, and that that’s how our justice works.
I feel like the woman who was smeared in Texas, for something that’s not even illegal in the state, has been done irreparable damage. I said on my first show, I thought that this was an ideal place for the Biden administration to come in with a massive HIPAA fine for the people involved in that healthcare system. After all, this is not a person releasing her information; this is a healthcare system. And that’s when HIPAA applies.
I’d also say that I think it’s become apparent that the Supreme Court justices that are prepared to vote to allow this travesty to stand, all lied to the American public in their confirmation hearings. Because they all said that this kind of thing would be entirely unacceptable, under precedent. And yet, here we are, as a part of a 20-plus year project to get us exactly to this point.
I couldn’t agree more, Cecile. It is cruel and unusual, designed to isolate women.
And for folks that weren’t sure what Cecile was talking about in terms of ulcer medication: one of the two drugs involved in the Mifepristone/misoprostol combination that makes up the abortion regimen is misoprostol. And that is often used by a bunch of old white men for their arthritis. So not only white men; it would also work for women. But a lot more men, for whatever reason, access this drug. And therefore, it is available in all 50 states. And it is available in Mexico. And it actually, with a look at some of the research, can work alone, without the other drug, in the appropriate dosage, to affect end of a pregnancy. And therefore, is gonna be highly sought after on the gray market, let’s say, as this goes forward.
And so, I would also imagine that having all kinds of people run over the state line toward Mexico would be undermining the healthcare of the women or people who need pregnancy-related care in Mexico.
How do they handle something like the numbers of Americans that are going to fall out, over the borders, both on the Canadian side and the Mexican side?
Cecile Richards: Well, one other thing, too, Chris, that came up last week when I was talking to the providers in El Paso is, of course, medication abortion is such an important, early option to terminate a pregnancy. Safe, available. Although, the states like Texas are trying to make it unavailable completely, to be sent to people in Texas. But it doesn’t always work.
And so, of course, the stories that we’re hearing—and I’m sure you used to hear them at Planned Parenthood—are people are coming in who, it didn’t work. They now need a surgical abortion. And of course, your options in Texas right now are driving out of the state, driving to Colorado, driving to Mississippi, driving to New Mexico, Arizona… this, though, just to add a complexity to this… if, in fact, the Supreme Court decision comes down as the draft sort of suggests, a new law will go into effect in Texas, which outlaws all abortions. End of story. No six weeks, no nothing. And of course, it will also end abortions in many surrounding states. So the average drive time for someone who needs to… or distance that someone would have to go, is a minimum of 1000 miles, round trip.
And a lot of the women that we’re talking about have never been out of the state of Texas. They’ve certainly never been on an airplane.
A woman in Waco was telling me about women piling all their family into a car and driving to Colorado to access safe and legal abortion. So the challenge is, as someone said the other day—I thought this was really poignant; she’s a navigator for patients in Austin, and she says, “it’s not just that travel is a challenge. For many people, it’s an impossibility.”
Chris Charbonneau: Yeah. We saw that over and over again in Alaska, when I was running the affiliate that ran Alaska. And people would come from the coastal communities into Anchorage for the first time in their lives. And then we would find out that they were over date because they hadn’t had pregnancies diagnosed before they were able to get it together to make that huge trip.
And we’d say, “now you have to go to Seattle”, and they could not fathom that. They already had an airplane ride behind them, and once a session we would find ourselves in a situation where someone would say, “I’m stuck having a baby I don’t want because I can’t bring myself to go—what they called—outside”. Outside of the state.
And, you know, it was the signal about the end of Roe for practical reasons, for many people.
And, as you said, there are barriers in Texas that prevent people without certain kinds of papers from getting from one part of the state to the other. I didn’t realize that until I was birding in Texas, once, and the immigration service was a good hundred and some miles into the state, checking papers on the freeway. And, you know, they looked into a car with me and two Asian male birders, and we had all been down at the river looking for birds. And waved us through. But if you had been a woman in Texas, and maybe a woman of color, you might have needed a whole lot more paperwork than that. And people weren’t able to get to the main cities in Texas, which were the only clinics left at that point, to get services. And so, they have just made this worse and worse and worse.
And when John Roberts alludes to, you know, well maybe trying to get together some people on a more moderate opinion, that would embrace the 15 weeks standard—yeah, in Mississippi—you know, who does that cut out? That cuts out anyone in need of genetic counseling. You aren’t gonna get that done and get those tests back in time. Fifteen weeks is not a ton of time for people who have health problems.
So my colleagues in Texas have begun to tell me how, just people pregnant with planned pregnancies in Texas, are running into snags. Because if they start bleeding, doctors are deciding whether or not they can afford to help them. It has a chilling effect on people who never thought they would encounter one-on-one, this abortion question, and who are finding themselves in the thick of it, even when having a healthy pregnancy was totally their goal. And so it creates a dangerous situation for every woman.
And now we’re seeing American corporations beginning to talk about how they’re going to exfiltrate their key employees into safe states for healthcare! It’s like, really, America? Are we gonna have this conversation about exfiltrating people without having the conversation about how this should not become policy?
Cecile Richards: Well, a couple of things: one is, actually, you’re right: we haven’t even begun to really dig into the complexities of pregnancies, which we know are many.
And I was just visiting with a high-risk OB/GYN in Dallas, who said in the most apolitical way possible, she said, “I actually don’t think folks understand what this means now, for doctors to be dealing with complex pregnancies and literally have the state telling you, ‘You can’t do anything to help your patient’.” So I think that’s one element.
I also want to emphasize that we know about this. We’re following the news. But although even, Chris, I’ll say, I’m following the news but when you’ve got 50 states and all these efforts to, you know, pass this restriction, you know, it’s impossible even for the most dedicated person to follow…
Chris Charbonneau: I’m losing track! I’m losing track!
Cecile Richards: Right.
Chris Charbonneau: They’re doing something so bizarre every day that it’s unfathomable. I, you know, we’ve got at least 25 of them trying to see who can race to the bottom faster.
Cecile Richards: Right. And this came home to me when one of the women I spoke with last weekend was from Lubbock, Texas, which, for those of you who don’t have your Texas map handy, that’s out in the middle of west Texas. And Texas Tech—big university there, great university… and she said, “You know, a student comes in the other day for a pregnancy test, finds out she’s pregnant, and then learns that you can’t get an abortion in Lubbock, Texas, because it is a… literally, they have passed a local ordinance that no abortions can happen in Lubbock, Texas.” And the clinician has to tell her, “You’re gonna have to drive a minimum of five hours to get to New Mexico, to terminate your pregnancy.” This is a young person who had no idea this is happening until she needed the services. And so we have to do a better job, Chris, of helping people understand, to me, three things:
One. What’s happened and what’s happening? Particularly as these states… you know, we sort of see this cascading series of states ban abortion post-Supreme Court decision.
Second. What are the implications? What does it look like for folks who live in these states? And soon to be coming to a theater near you…
And number three, and most importantly perhaps, is who did it to you? Because as long as we’re focused on the Supreme Court—and we could talk about that, and look, I agree with you, they lied to the American people, they lied to the United States Senate—but those people are there for a reason and the legislation that they’re all looking at was passed by the Republican party. This was not something that just, sort of, like dropped out of the sky. This has been the mission of the Republican party for decades. And now they’re the dog that caught the bus. And we have to make sure that anyone in the Republican party—in leadership, in office, running for office—is held accountable for the harm that is taking place now and will take place in the future as a result of their actions.
Chris Charbonneau: Absolutely, we do. Absolutely we do and one of the things this podcast plans is a state-by-state overview, naming names, and talking about candidates. And who we can vote for. And so I think the message I have said on my last couple of shows, and will say again: you can no longer afford to vote Republican, for any office, from dog catcher to president, if you don’t want to see the horrors that we are talking about play out, in a community near you. Or for people you love, or for people who live across the country that you’re worried about. And, you know, that’s where we are.
And we need, obviously, to hold Democrats accountable to make sure they do everything in their power—if we vote them in—to change this. And unfortunately, we didn’t get quite enough Democrats elected in times past, in order to make sure that this horror isn’t visited on us. They have attempted to overturn this outcome, in advance, in the Senate, by passing a protective act that would, sort of, codify Roe into the law, and weren’t able to overcome either the filibuster or the numbers needed.
And so, here we are. This is going to be real. And this is going to be horrible. And there will be people who die. And people need to be held accountable for that.
I’m grateful that we’re not of the mindset of our grandmothers, Cecile, who were, sort of, begging for every little right on a platter. We are actually fully fledged, empowered, a voting majority. And we have people telling us that our lives need to be risked for their smug satisfaction, that they were able to pull off this travesty.
Talk to us about what’s going on in the political environment right now, about this.
Cecile Richards: One thing I just want to go back to, because we see it thrown around, which is that now we’re going to leave this matter to the states. So there’s gonna be states where you can get an abortion safely and legally, and there are states where you can’t.
Well, news flash: if the Republican party takes control of Congress this November, which is very possible, I can guarantee… I will almost lay money on this, Chris, that House Bill One will be an abortion ban, nationwide.
And Mitch McConnell has already said, of course, he would entertain that. Other people are already planning it. The Republican party has now become, I don’t even want to say they’re captive to the far right, I think they have just become the far right.
Chris Charbonneau: Mmm-hmm.
Cecile Richards: And so, even though you talked about the most recent Marist Poll, I don’t care where you look, people in this country do not want abortion to be illegal. They do not want to go back 50 years to the days when this was not… the right to make a decision about pregnancy was not held by folks who were pregnant. That, to me, is… so we are, kind of coming up against this Titanic sort of like, mash-up where the American people are having something happen to them that they don’t want.
Now the question is, in the political… there are both short-term political implications: what will happen in the mid-terms? Um, we can talk about that. But there, I mean, this is going to be a long-haul fight, Chris. Even if we were able to like, hold onto the Senate, which is really what I’m focused on right now, is holding the United States Senate. Maybe even picking up a vote or two. That, at least, would prevent us from immediately facing a national abortion ban.
But it’s only a matter of time because the Republican party has not yet, I believe, felt the wrath of the American voters, and until they do, they will operate with impunity.
And as you said, many of these states, because they are trying to outdo each other, it is a race to the bottom, frankly, on women. And you know, this desire to put government in charge of such a personal decision.
Chris Charbonneau: It’s not unbelievable because, as you said, we have been preparing for this for decades. But that we are actually here and that are people are dumb enough to take this hit for our country, knowing—many of them—what the outcomes will be, is unforgiveable.
None of those people deserve public office.
There can’t be any compromised voting anymore. Like, “Oh, but I like them so much on name ‘tax benefit A’.” You know, we’re talking about whether America, the experiment, continues or not. And whether we believe in the whole personhood of women and people of color. And the whole “justice idea” of what America could be at its greatest form, goes right out the window if we go back on this.
So this is not a single issue. This is a whole set of issues, all together, that need to be taken care of, once and for all. And you know, I point to the example of Republican, make no mistake: Republican, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who, no sooner did this come out, cast doubt on the right to use birth control, for women. We are not at the end of this fight. This is sort of the middle… You know, if you can’t control a woman’s reproductive health through her entire life, or anyone with a uterus, let’s say, girls, and anyone who has the capability of reproducing… if you can’t control that, then you don’t control them. And this has been a project about controlling us. All along.
And if anyone thinks that Mitch McConnell wouldn’t find a carve-out to the filibuster if he had 51 or 52 Senate votes in order to pass this bill, then you haven’t been paying any attention. And so, you know, he would dump the filibuster in 20 seconds—either in part or in whole—in order to pass a nationwide abortion ban. That means no abortions in California. No abortions in New York. No abortions in Washington State, any of the places where we think of ourselves as blue, and a little bit safe, give it up! This is a long siege. They have been at it for 40 years. If you think they’re gonna quit on the eve of their victory, I think, think again, my friends.
Cecile Richards: Well, can I say something about that? So I actually think this is… I mean, I’ve seen this play out in Texas over the last few decades, where, it was interesting, back in the day, folks like Carl Rove in Texas thought, “We’re just gonna kind of invite these folks in. We’re gonna throw ‘em some red meat, and that way they’ll come out and vote”. And, you know, here we are years later, now they’ve taken over the party.
And, as you know, once they’re inside, you gotta feed the beast. And so, as we saw in Texas, it wasn’t that we just, “Oh. Ok. We’ll ban all abortion, and now we can move on to the energy grid, or improving our public schools”. No! Now what they’re going after is transgender children in the state of Texas, and as I’m sure you’ve seen, now they are talking about all kinds of birth control that the Republicans don’t like, that they also want to ban.
So as you’re saying, this is the tip of the iceberg. I look at all the other important work that needs to happen in this country, you know, this ending of voting rights, which we’re seeing painfully play out in Texas… all kinds of civil rights, LGBTQ rights, as you said, birth control. We’re just the first up in the barrel. And if people don’t understand that this is part of an overall assault on our democracy, for one, which is, of course, what the entire Donald Trump—stolen election fabrication is about… But it is really about, are we going to become a country, an autocratic country, where no one can make their own decisions, and in fact, you are essentially beholden to the state?
Because you look at, this is, I don’t know, Chris… Just one other thing I just feel like I have to get in here, because it really… the question to me that I think the press and the polling and the pundits get this wrong… the question isn’t how you feel about abortion, for the American people. ‘Cause people have, as you and I know, deeply personal feelings… that is everyone’s right. The question is not that. The question is, do you want government to make decisions about everyone’s pregnancy.
Chris Charbonneau: Mmm-hmm.
Cecile Richards: That, to me, is what’s up. And that’s what the Republicans have said. Is, “We’re gonna take this right away from you, your family, your doctor, and we are gonna say this is the state’s right now, to control your pregnancy.” And if we let them do that, as you said, this is just the beginning.
Chris Charbonneau: Absolutely the beginning! And if anyone thinks a lack of respect for a 50-year precedent—called often a super-precedent in various places—is any protection… Obergefell, that allows marriage equality, which was so wonderful and so many people were able to build their families in a different way after that, …you know, that’s totally on the block.
If you make the argument that you have to go back to the 1700s in order to find real undergirding for rights, like keep in mind everybody, women are not mentioned in the Constitution. Nothing that we need is in the Constitution. That wasn’t who was writing the Constitution at the time. And so, this is dangerous on so many levels that it’s really difficult to even wrap our arms around how much attention we all need to be paying now.
I mean, I think if Cecile and I can illustrate anything, it’s like be afraid right now and do everything in your power to prevent where we are.
So you do a whole lot of traveling around the country. And you’re not only hearing about Texas. You’re hearing about these stories from everywhere. Getting besieged from all over the place. What do you think is important for this audience—who are probably very deeply into this issue—to know? And what do you think we can all be doing to help spread the word to other people?
Cecile Richards: Well, yeah, I have my “List of 5 Things”… It’s like, “things you’re supposed to do”, but I guess, first, obviously, we have to take care of people.
And I think a lot about the folks who are on the front lines right now, of… you know, again, many of my friends in Texas trying to navigate the world for a person who’s just trying to figure out how she can go get a legal abortion in this country. And so, I think, supporting organizations that are doing that work, supporting abortion funds that are helping people pay for things they never imagined they were gonna have to pay for… Many of these folks are having to fly on an airplane for the first time in their lives, and so I do think it’s really important to take care of people.
I also think it’s important, as you know, Chris, to tell your story. And, you know, I had an abortion. I try to talk about it as much as I can because when one in four women in this country have had an abortion, that’s a lot of people. And I just think anything we can do to make people understand that this is part of our lives. And there is not anyone who doesn’t have some relationship or experience with someone who has had an abortion. And I think it’s important that we say that so that it’s not this, sort of, you know, behind—you know, back in the alley kind of conversation.
Third, do more than you’ve ever done. And do stuff that makes you scared. I don’t care whether that’s going to a march. I don’t care if that’s chaining yourself to, you know, a legislator’s desk, writing someone, calling your elected officials. We have to turn the volume up and that requires also being knowledgeable about what’s happening. So your podcast and other news sources are really important for people.
And then, obviously, voting. Critical. And we’ve got a big mid-term coming up. But we can’t wait until the vote happens, right? We can’t… you know, I saw someone tweeted the other day. A friend of mine, but she tweeted, “Don’t be angry. Vote.” But I was like, “Well don’t just vote. Be angry!”, right? We can do more than one thing.
Chris Charbonneau: Sure! Vote when the time comes up. In the meantime…
Cecile Richards: In the meantime…
Chris Charbonneau: Candidates begin…. You gotta be screaming everywhere you go.
Cecile Richards: Right.
Chris Charbonneau: Yeah. Yeah.
Cecile Richards: I mean, last weekend I went down to Austin, which is my hometown and really, with very little notice, 10,000 people showed up at the Austin capital. And that, to me, that matters. These justices. These folks that are candidates, folks that are on the Supreme Court or anywhere, they need to see that this is not something that people are gonna just take and move on.
But the other thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot, Chris, and I know that, you know, from all your years of work and one thing we really kind of valued, and I think loved, and animated a lot of our energy, was young people. I know in Washington State, I mean, I remember young people I met there, with you. I remember people in Hawaii, and in Alaska.
But I was just down in, I’ve been in the south a lot, and there are young women that are, like I think of this one woman, her name is Tyler Hardin, she lives in Jackson, Mississippi. And she’s literally, in the face of all this, she’s running a canvass, a door-to-door canvass, with volunteers and some paid organizers, talking to people in Mississippi about what’s happening. People who have no idea there’s a Supreme Court case coming, right? And she’s organizing folks in Mississippi who are appalled to find out that the Republican governor and the Republican legislature has done this.
Another woman, I was just actually at a retirement party for a mutual friend of ours in Florida. And this young woman, Creshelle Bailey, gets up, who had course, turned out was an early — she was a, I think, went to a pizza party on her campus that Planned Parenthood had sponsored, and she said, “I came for the free pizza, and I stayed for the sex education.” And now, of course, she’s graduated and Creshelle is doing community fairs around the state of Florida, giving people vital information about sex, about reproductive healthcare access, and also going to Tallahassee and organizing people to fight against what’s happening in her state.
So, I guess, part of this is, I think for older women, like myself, go, “This is an issue that I’ve fought on my whole life”, but where the energy and where the leadership is going to come as well, is from young people who just lost a right that they never even knew could be taken from them. And I really believe, always have believed in investing in a whole new generation of young leaders, to let them lead us. Because I feel like, so I’m hoping, actually by this fall, we need an organizer on every college campus, community college, in this nation. Because this was just done to them. And they’re going to be the ones, I think, who are going to help provide a lot of the energy to get this undone.
Chris Charbonneau: I could not agree more. I think that it isn’t that people who are younger don’t care about this. It’s that they need context for why it is their turn now. You and I worked for a lot of years to make sure that people had what they needed, and all the while there was this campaign going on that was unrelenting to put these folks on the Supreme Court, that would make this decision for these reasons. And it was difficult to persuade people that the Supreme Court was going to be important, so as we were thinking about this, young people could not be more important. They are the ones whose rights are being taken away.
Cecile and I were lucky enough—we’re about the same age—to have our whole, sort of, reproductive health time covered by protections afforded by the Supreme Court. But now this Supreme Court that has been put in place, step by step over the last 50 years, has done what they’ve done. This movement moves out into every single state. Which means every single voice is important, and, frankly, critical to save the lives of the people who are now being risked by people who don’t have those, you know, I mean… we’re going to have a mostly male Supreme Court tell every woman in American what they can and can’t do with their bodies, by virtue of sort of throwing that to the states where they know that trigger bans are in place. And this is not gonna sneak up on people. This is going to nuclear bomb detonate on people, who could find themselves in this position.
And one of the ways that I have experienced young people coming to this is pregnancy scares and a variety of other personal experiences, needing their own abortion care, where they say, “What? Are you kidding? This is the nature of things?”. We don’t have the luxury to wait until it happens to everyone, to move folks into the activist part of this. We need people to be activated now, because your state legislatures need to know that they don’t get to do this where you live, without hearing from you and that if they do this, that there will be a price to be paid for them.
And then we have to make it true, that there’s a price to be paid for them.
Because, you know, Democrats never, um, organize themselves around the Supreme Court. We had a hard time understanding how that could directly impact the lives of so many people. And we are now gonna get treated to what happens when we leave that up to the tender mercies of the Susan Collinses of the world, who decide that patently unqualified people are, in fact, qualified for whatever she thinks she got out of that.
And once again, we don’t get to vote Republican anymore, for any reason, for any way, for any issue. They are people who prove themselves unable to look out for America and I think that this and many other examples. Gun control. A lot of environmental causes. These are all things that unqualify an entire party from any kind of leadership. And I say that unapologetically on this podcast. We now have… we’re now down to cases. Do we believe in America or don’t we?
Do we believe everyone has the right to vote or don’t we? And, you know, this is where we find ourselves in this day and, to your point, Cecile, it is gonna be up to a younger generation to get us moving again in the correct direction.
Cecile Richards: I agree. I mean, I think we all have to… we all gotta be on the field. Sometimes, though, it can be so overwhelming. And to be honest, I think the Supreme Court is, it feels like, particularly now… like this body, unelected body, out there in the ether somewhere that is doing things. And that can be extremely disempowering. So I like to remember that an average of four million people turn 18 every single year in the United States.
Chris Charbonneau: Right. Right.
Cecile Richards: And that’s a lot of people. And they are all potentially eligible to vote. And just that alone, could make the difference in, you know, Raphael Warnock’s re-election race in Georgia. Or Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election in Nevada. And so I do think it’s important for young people to lean into their power and recognize their power. And I think it’s important for, as you know, women of a certain age and men of a certain age to not just wring our hands. Because, look, this is, in some ways, it was our failing, right? We didn’t get this job done, and so I’m not saying to anybody, “we can like, somehow, now exit stage left”. But I do think we can take energy and we can support young people who are leading, who don’t know any better, right? They just, they haven’t had their heart pulled out and stomped on 18 million times, as you have, Chris. They’re, they’ve got energy and they believe in their rights. And we’ve gotta be there with them.
Chris Charbonneau: Absolutely. So time for people who have the resources to get up off those checkbooks.
You know, what kind of country do you want to live in? And what are you prepared to do to make the United States a place that we can all be proud to live in and know that our friends and neighbors are well-cared for?
And, I would reiterate, that people have one view of abortion and abortion legislation when it’s talked about in terms that are distant from any kind of real story. So I think it’s time for people to get up off their checkbooks and let’s make the people that we need to have get into office, let’s make their path there smoother. But I also think that we need to double down on support for, especially young energetic people who are working toward the America that we all want the country to be. We need to be sure that they get the support we need.
I know there are a lot of candidates that are running in all the states, that are energetic, and they bring ah, new ideas into the fold. And it’s time for this group of people to shine a little bit. And one of the things we can do is help them do that. And we can put in leadership that has credibility.
I know, Cecile, now you are working with the Beto O’Rourke campaign, to get Beto elected. Talk to me a little bit about the importance of that in a state like Texas as we try to affect a turnaround.
Cecile Richards: Sure. Well I just signed on to be the national finance chair for Beto. And, which, I don’t think it really means anything other than just volunteering to help get the resources and shine a light on what’s happening in Texas.
You know, Texas is a state that, of course we did have a Democratic governor—it’s been a long time, so we’re overdue to change direction.
Chris Charbonneau: Boy, do we miss her, don’t we?
Cecile Richards: Yeah. No. I mean, it’s like… but it’s interesting, I’ve been spending a lot of time with the campaign and they’re really running the kind of campaign that we ran when Mom won. And that was one when you just sort of open the doors and let everybody be part of it.
Beto not only, you know, goes all around the state, but he’s really talking about the issues that matter to people in Texas. He is talking about how do we build an energy grid where people, you don’t have your, like, my father, what happened to him during the failure, literally had to leave his home. And he’s in his late-80s.
Chris Charbonneau: Nooo…
Cecile Richards: I mean, it’s horrifying what Greg Abbott has allowed happen in this state. Our public schools need more support, including our teachers, who have needed a pay raise forever. We need voting rights so that can people actually can participate in our democracy. And Beto has been 100 per cent in the forefront of talking about the fact that reproductive access, healthcare access for people in this state is essential.
And really illustrating how far to the extreme Greg Abbott and the Republican party in Texas has gone. Making us, really, the poster child of everything bad that can happen when the wrong people are in government. So, look, it’s a competitive race. It’s a grassroots race. It’s one where I believe Beto has a vision for the future. Greg Abbott does not. All he’s spending his time doing is trying to take away abortion rights, basically ban books in schools, go after transgender children and their families, and make politics about our border. He has no idea how to build the kind of future that we need.
Chris Charbonneau: The cruelty toward trans kids, I will admit, really caught me by surprise. And the absolute hypocrisy of people who never, for one moment, supported women’s athletics, going after children who want to just be a part of a team in a school, I found astounding! It isn’t like there’s that much real money in professional women’s athletics, that what we need to do is make sure that the handful of trans kids that want to compete at any kind of level don’t get a chance to do it. And we think that’s what? Some sort of feminist justice? Let’s just call that what it is.
Cecile Richards: Yeah, I mean look, this is a classic sort of Republican party distraction technique. Which is, “If I start talking about extreme, wild things, then no one will pay attention to the fact that our public schools are failing, that our healthcare system is one of the most unaffordable, more uninsured people, some of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the country”, and on and on and on. It is a classic, sort of, bait and switch, and that is what is happening.
But I’ll tell you, I was on a call the other night with folks from Texas and this mother was on the call and she said, “You know, I moved here from Florida”, she said. “I love my job. I’m so happy here. I feel like this state is really just what I needed.” She said, “My son’s in high school and he’s gay. And I just worry that we’re going to have to move. And I don’t want to move because I really love living here and so does my son.”
But to hear a story like that, in 2022, in the state of Texas, just makes me want to weep. And then, of course, it makes me want to just go out and knock some heads and get people to vote. Because that is not the Texas I grew up in. That is not the Texas that people move to. And we cannot allow this extreme right wing Republican party leadership to take this state down.
And so, again, I guess getting back to why… There’s a lot of things we can do in Texas around abortion. We could support people who are providing help, helping folks navigate the system, get them the care we need, but ultimately, this is about politics and political power. And we’ve gotta re-assert our right as a majority of this country, to say, “We are not gonna go back 50 years when it comes to abortion rights”.
Chris Charbonneau: Absolutely. These culture warrior issues that they lean on over and over again. I mean, they obviously have real impact in terms of the lives of anyone with a uterus or the kid who wants to play on the team, that doesn’t fit the traditional mold. But it is distraction from the fact that Governor Abbott oversees a grid that’s failing. That he took the state out of the organization that the rest of the states all have together about power sharing. It’s sort of like, when do we punish that kind of incompetence?
Cecile Richards: Right. I mean I think one thing, and it’s interesting, I was on the phone earlier today with a colleague who has been really working with the corporate world. And Texas is a fascinating place, particularly Austin and its enormous job growth. You know, so many national, international, companies locating there. And so I do think this is also a time, Chris, where we have an opportunity for corporations to actually take responsibility along with the rest of us, for saying, “We want to both do business in and support our employees in states where they are taken care of, and where they can live the lives they want to live.” And that is their responsibility as a good business partner, to say, “When politics and right-wing politics is keeping us from operating and being a successful business because people don’t want to come and work here. They don’t want to move to the state of Texas because of whether it’s the own situation or the kids’… That’s where I also feel like we have a point of leverage that’s really, really important. Particularly in a state like Texas where the economy and job growth is on the rise.
Chris Charbonneau: I feel like that’s an absolutely key point, Cecile. I mean, when you have company after company on the front page of the paper announcing that they will travel people out of the states where they do business in order to get basic healthcare, what does that mean? And wouldn’t that have a chilling effect on companies that want to set up their headquarters in these states? Be it for other reasons—economic, or they have the resources that are needed in one way or the other? You know, these are wonderful and beautiful states with leadership that are failing the basic test of competent governance, which is you make your state better and better and better for the people who live there. You don’t create hurdle after hurdle after hurdle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that we have people deliberately inflicting this pain on their state, it can’t go unanswered.
Cecile Richards: Again, I think to your point earlier in this podcast: it’s like why should someone have to leave the state to get access to legal healthcare? That’s what’s incredible.
And whether it’s a student on a college campus. Whether it’s someone who’s got a job that they can’t put at risk. Or whether it’s a mother, who, as we know, the majority of people who seek access to abortion, they’re already parents. And the thought that you’re going to leave your kids at home with someone else, or try to manage that, because you have to leave the state. And I don’t care whether you work at a minimum-wage job or you’re a corporate executive. This is not right. And again, we haven’t talked about this, but maybe for another podcast: the people, of course, that are bearing the brunt of this right now in the state of Texas are women with low incomes, women who live in rural, small-town Texas, who don’t have the resources and the access to even patient navigators. Black women. Brown women. Women who have the least access to healthcare in the state of Texas. And of course, young people who, as we’ve talked about, are just waking up to the fact that the state, the government, the Republican party, has now taken away a right that they thought they had.
Chris Charbonneau: Yeah. Shocking. Shocking realities. And even though you and I have prepared for decades about it, I still wake up with a pit in my stomach about what this means.
We wrote plans about what to do about this. And they were all inadequate. Because…
Cecile Richards: Right.
Chris Charbonneau: They were all incredibly difficult to implement. And they cost a fortune to implement. And, you know, I was thinking about, “How am I going to live with it?” I can’t think of something that makes sure that nobody dies. And there was no plan we could invent where we could ensure that nobody died.
And all of this is a voluntary decision by people who are deciding that that’s what they want to do. And I think it’s unforgiveable. And we need to be very consequential with folks that make those decisions. And we need to count up the injury of this so that we can turn this around with due dispatch. Because, we know, like all prohibition, it fails. This will also fail. The only question is, who will be hurt in between now and the time that it fails and it’s acknowledged that it fails and we put the country back on its right tracks?
Cecile Richards: One thing you did say, which I think is so important, I mean, again, repletion is our friend here because I think we can’t say it enough… it is not that abortion doesn’t exist after it’s made illegal. Abortion has always existed. It’s just before Roe, it was unsafe, women died. So that’s what’s going to happen again. And that is why the rhetoric of the right, the rhetoric of the Republican party just makes me wanna throw a brick sometimes. Because all this talk that we’re going to end abortion in our time is just not true. What we can do, as a people, is make sure that everybody has the healthcare they need to get good sex education, counseling about how you get pregnant, what you can do, what kind of birth control, making sure it’s affordable or making sure it’s free, right? These are the things that we can do as a country and then making sure that people have access to safe and legal abortion. That, regardless of income and geography. And that is something I believe the majority of American people support. Including Texans. And we have got to hold folks to account.
Chris Charbonneau: Mmm-hmm. Anyone who talks the anti-choice line and then segues right into all the birth control methods don’t work - this is not a person interested in solutions.
Those people who talk about the anti-choice line and don’t want you to teach anyone any sex ed… Sex ed is the way the country changes. If people are against that, they’re not really in favor of life.
And let’s remember that a good many of the people who are trying to undo your right to choose and your contraceptive methods, and all the other things that go with it, were perfectly fine with a million Americans dying from COVID so that they wouldn’t, you know… They didn’t want to mask. They didn’t want to vaccinate. They didn’t want to do any of the normal public health measures that we all know, scientifically, to be effective.
And so, I look a little bit… not a little bit—a lot actually, cynically at the entire verbiage around this movement. It’s like, you don’t have to believe it just because they say it. This is just another line for them. And we can’t just vote for people who hand us lines.
Cecile Richards: Yeah. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do. And that’s how you really know where people are.
And maybe I could just end with this: the state of Mississippi, which, of course, is the Supreme Court case that will be decided, that the leaked opinion was about… the state of Mississippi is the poorest state in the country. It is… their maternal mortality rate is twice the national average. Child poverty, lack of healthcare access, is enormous. And, of course, during this same legislative session in which they passed the abortion ban, those same legislators refused to expand Medicaid coverage for new moms from what it is now, which is, you get two months, two months of healthcare if you deliver a child in Mississippi. And the proposal had been to extend that for a year and they voted that down.
So don’t tell me these folks care about babies, care about women. They don’t. They care about politics and that’s all this is about. We have to do more to point out that the same people who are voting to ban abortion have done everything in their power to keep people from having affordable healthcare access, to addressing maternal mortality rates, to addressing programs that help alleviate poverty among children and families. So they just can’t have it both ways.
Chris Charbonneau: Absolutely! Too right, Cecile Richards. Thank you so much for being on the Fall of Roe today. And hopefully not the last time. Hopefully we can continue this conversation as we learn more about what’s unfolding in the various states.
Cecile Richards, thank you very much for being on. Thank you all, friends, for listening. Wonderful to catch up! And we need to make sure that this isn’t the world we all live in, and let’s all do it together.
Thank you all so much for listening today.