The End of Abortion Rights in America?

overturning of Roe v. Wade. Turn on the television or check social media today and you'll hear an abundance of outrage over the perceived betrayal of our current Supreme Court Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all professed to respect the president of Roe v. Wade during their confirmation hearings, and yet we are on the cusp of the Supreme Court overturning the nineteen seventy three landmark case that found abortion to be a constitutional rights. My guests today are

in the trenches on this issue. Annarupani is the executive direct of Fund Texas Choice. Her organization helps Texans access abortions out of state following the passage of SP eight, which banned abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat at around six weeks. But first, I'm talking to one of the world's leading authorities on the legal history of

the abortion debate. Mary Ziegler is a professor at Florida State University College of Law, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and as a frequent guest on CNN, ABC News, and NPR. She's also written opinion pieces for The New York Times The Atlantic, as well as four books on abortion law in America. Considering her extensive background and exhaustive research on the subject, I wanted to know if Mary Ziegler was surprised to learn the likely fate of Roe v. Wade.

I think when Trump was elected, I thought this was going to happen. But I still find myself being some rise by I guess how it's happening by there's a sort of um. I don't know that the if cruelty is the right word, or indifference, but just the people on the court don't seem to think this is even

a big deal. And I think that's surprising me. I mean, the fact that it's happening doesn't surprise me as someone who studied this, because I think for the past fifty years there's been a really concerted movement to do it. The movement required lots of luck. Right, So if Hillary Clinton is elected in twenty six or Ruth pader Ginsburg dies a year later or retires several years earlier. We're not where we are now, But there have been plans, you know, very sophisticated plans of foot for a long

time that make this less than surprising. But I guess I still find myself feeling surprised emotionally, even if kind of rationally I knew this was coming. I'm assuming with the work you do, you watch these confirmation hearings carefully correct they did. Yeah, And did you feel that they were lying at the time that they were testifying. Did you feel that it was like a trojan horse thing where they were going to say whatever it took to get on the court. It's like a game they were playing.

They were going to it better than everybody else. I mean, I think unfortunately Supreme Court confirmations like no one answers questions, So I mean, there was nothing particularly revolutionary about the fact that they weren't answering questions. No one does. I was more surprised by politicians like Susan Collins who seemed to believe that that was not what was going on. I mean, everybody knows the game and the rules of

the game, which is that people don't answer questions. Antonin Scalia said a bunch of similar things about Row and then voted to overturn Row in the first case he heard on the court, which is what amy Cony Barrett is going to do. So it's not as if we haven't seen this movie before. I don't know if it was wishful thinking or just naive tay or dishonesty on the part of those politicians, but the nominees, for better worse,

I think it's like a process defect. In other words, it's not just that these are people who are liars. The process is that you go and say a bunch of vague things that could be reassuring to people who want to hear them, and you don't really answer any questions, and then you get confirmed, and everyone knows what you're going to do when you get confirmed because of who you are and the reasons that you were nominated, and that that's been how it is, unfortunately since probably at

least two thousand eight. One of the things about this issue, which is always of concern to me, is that if you focus on the viability issue, when we say that it's not a life until a certain point what the role has been or may have been of the American Medical Association and helping to define this debate, which is, if if the pro life people are correct, then the American Medical Association as a body is standing by watching while all these people are killed that are life conception

m Well, the American Medical Association in the early years was absolutely crucial. So if you're trying to sort of imagine where did the idea of criminalizing abortionately came from, it came from the American Medical Associations, and that came from a variety of desires. There were people in the early anti abortion movement in the American Medical Association who believed that life began at conception. There were people who wanted a competitive edge over midwives and other alternate at

medical practitioners. And there were people who were doing this for sort of nativist eugenic reasons right, who believed that women from and other people who could get pregnant from places like Ireland and Germany immigrants were having too many babies, and people from Anglo Saxon countries were not having enough babies, and that abortion was the reason right, that wealthy people were having abortions, and so if you had no more abortions,

the quote unquote genetic stock of the United States would be better. Um, And so all of that sort of went into this mix. But the A m A for a long time was the sort of authority for the idea that abortion should be illegal. If you fast forward in the nineteen seventies, even the nineteen sixties, doctors and the American Medical Association were baby movers in the campaign

to legalize abortion. And then for a long time, I think in the years in between, the American Medical Association was largely on the sidelines right, sort of didn't really take a position one way or another about abortion. And now we've come full circle where you see the American Medical Association again beginning to take a position. But I mean that that sort of feels as if it's I mean, not too little, too late, exactly, but but it's waited a good long time until we ought to a point

where things are changing pretty rapidly. Before the organization renewed its involvement in this issue. And what's their recent renewed involvement. Um, they've been getting involved in particular with laws that are

just scientifically wrong. So, for example, some states have had laws saying you need to hear information that medication and worships can be reversed, and there's no reason to think that that's true or that it's safe for people to try to take the drug regime that conservatives in these states have recommended, and the a m A Has been involved in lawsuits essentially saying we as doctors, think this violate it's our First Amendment rights to be forced to

say things that are not true that are going to endanger our patients. I believe that this law now will because of the narrowing of the time allowed, it is going to push for more abortions. I think people when you give them a shorter time to think about it.

If you discover if the average woman discovers she's pregnant so many weeks into the term, and it's three or four weeks before you even find that, what if you miss a period, all those things that in terms of women's bodies, and let's say you find out you're pregnant and you've only got two weeks left to decide. I think an increasing number people are gonna go, I'm gonna have an abortion. They're not going to have time to really consider it. As much as they want to. Do

you agree that there's going to increase, Yeah, totally. There's some evidence that that's already happening in speed where Texas has functionally banned abortion, that there are more people having early abortions in the way you describe, and there are some people who are actually reporting to abortion clinics that they're not sure they made the right decision because they

feel that it's sort of now or never. And I think that in a world where overweight is gone, we're going to see a lot of states just straight up criminalizing all abortions, which is going to make people desperate to get to other states, and that feeling of sort of it's now or never is going to be intensified. And it's also worth saying we know that in countries where abortion is criminal across the word, the abortion rate

doesn't go down. For example, in places like Ecuador and Kenya, where most are all abortions are criminal, the abortion rate is much higher than it is in the United States. So the reasons people have abortions have more to do with whether they feel in their lives that they're able to have the children they want and raise those children in a healthy way. And it has almost not much

to do with criminal laws. Like people will will often try to find a way if they think that it's the right decision for them to have an aborshion, they'll often try to find a way to do it anyway, and sometimes theyll face criminal consequences for doing that. I was told that the United States is going in the opposite direction of other countries like Ireland, where they're relaxing their national abortion laws. That's correct, That is correct. Yeah,

And it's not just Ireland. It's Mexico, it's Columbia, it's Thailand, it's South Korea. It's really across a variety of continents. And so you often hear people say the US is an outlier because it allows abortion relatively late into pregnancy. That's true, and part because the United States doesn't have health insurance for people who want to have abortion early in pregnancy. But if the US is going to um criminalize, allow states to criminalize abortion, there are other countries doing

that too. They're a handful of them, like Poland, but they tend to be places that are increasingly illiberal, and a lot of other countries have been moving in the other directions. So the US will be an outlier again just in or I think in somewhat and more meaningful way, I feel like this is all part of this march towards this like super right wing agenda taking over so many areas of the country, critical race theory. Don't say gay in Florida. And now you add this to the mix.

Do you see it that way? Do you see that abortion is linked to a bunch of other things that this extreme right wing agenda wants to cultivate. Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I think that there's some direct connections. So, for example, there's obviously a connection between abortion and birth control because many abortion opponents define common contraceptives as abortion right.

So you may remember during the debate about the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act that people described drugs like Morning after Pill and i E. D s as abortion inducing drugs. There's a legal connection between overruling Row and overruling cases on things like same sex marriage, because

the legal foundation is the same. And there are political connections because quite clearly, the effort to transform the Supreme Court to create a court that is not responsive to popular opinion in any way, shape or form, was done in large part to secure a decision overruling Row. Really, the effort to have an unlimited amount of dark money and politics was connected to view. The book I have

coming out in June is about that. It's about the fact that there are people in the anti abortion movement who led the litigation of Citizens United and are now leading litigation to allow for more anonymous big donations and politics. Um. And that was because I think the was an awareness

that a lot of big donors in blue areas. Right conservatives living in blue states did not want to sign their name to donations for things that would undercut policies people favored, so they wanted anonymity, and abortion opponents were the first people recognize that because they had that experience with donors. So a lot of this is connected even

voting rights. The gentleman who's the attorney for True to Vote, one of the groups that was trying to overturn the election, who's been the attorney for Marjorie Taylor Green and other members of Congress whom accused of leading an insurrection, was is again that the General Council of the National Right to Life Committee and the guy who led the litigation of Citizens United right and that's because from the standpoint of people who are opposed to abortion, you know, banning

abortion is more important than all of these other things. It's a human rights issue. It comes before any fidelity you have to any kind of other principle in the democracy. And so it's all connected in ways that I think are pretty transport parent and easy to document. I mean, for me, for practical purpose, is because I feel like the pro choice people, many of them, ade all of them, seem to be playing this game with one hand get

tied behind their back. And is there anything wrong in your mind with the president of the United States who goes to Ginsburg when she was alive and says, you

really need to retire. Why don't we cut the bullshit and just say that both sides have their opinions as there is there anything wrong with Obama Sacer it's time no. I mean, there's a fancy term lawyers and law professors used for this, which is asymmetric polarization, meaning there's been polarization, but one side has been doing it more than the other side, and the gloves have already come off for conservatives.

Progressives are sort of catching up to this that sometimes being the kind of moral authority, being above it all party when it comes to the Supreme Court lands you in this position right where you're just waiting several weeks to watch the cord over worlde wade without feeling like there's anything you can do about it in the short term. Legal historian Mary Ziegler. If you enjoy conversations about hot button political topics, check out my episode with former California

assemblywoman and labor advocate Lorrena Gonzalez. Income inequality has become a real threat. So as we continue to build billionaires in California, in Silicon Valley continues to create new billionaires, we've got to figure out how we take care of people who just work for a living, right, the people who service the tourism industry, the people who serve people

fast food. You have folks who are on their feet, working forty sixty hours a week, multiple jobs, especially in immigrant communities like mine, and and the fact that they cannot afford housing or to put a little money away from retirement or to send their kid to college is is something we've got to address. To hear more of my conversation with Lorena Gonzalez, go to here's the thing

dot Org. After the break, Mary Ziegler speculates on the implications of overt arning Roe v. Wade, including the potential consequences of crossing state lines for abortion care. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Mary Ziegler is a legal historian, professor of law, and leading expert on the history of Roe v. Wade. After fifty years of conflict between the pro life and pro choice communities, I wanted to know what Ziegler thinks the future holds for

abortion rights in America. I think in the short term it's pretty obvious that the court is going to overrule Row, but I think it's worth emphasizing that that is not going to be where the story ends. I like to

tell this story because I think it's really revealing. Um, Harry Blackman had, the author of Roe v. Wade, had a news clipping in file that said, you know, seventy something percent of Americans think that the abortion decision should be between a woman and her doctor, right, and their little notes were pretty clearly black And was thinking, like, we've got this thing right, Like we're going to decide this case. We're doing it in exactly the way most

Americans want us to. You know, it's going to be settled, right, and we all know how that turned out. Right Here we are fifty years later, still talking about this, and so I think if this Supreme Court thinks that it's going to just settle this and Americans are just gonna go home and forget about it, they're equally wrong. So I think what will happen in the short term will be a pretty intense state by state conflict. There will be battles within states like Florida and Michigan to see

how far they're going to go in criminalizing abortion. They'll be battles and red states like Alabama about whether they're going to ban contraception or treatment for infertility. There will be national battles in terms of who controls Congress in the White House about whether there's going to be protections

for bands of abortion. And they're gonna be interstate conflicts because we've already seen blue states like California and Connecticut saying either one, we're going to help you pay for an abortion if you want to travel from out of state, or two, we're going to shield our doctors and our nurses from legal consequences if they perform abortions on people

from other states. And you've begun to see red states say actually, we're going to prosecute you, the doctor or the abortion fund if you help someone from our state who comes to your state. So there's gonna be a whole round of conflicts about whose law flies in those settings, who gets to decide that is it unconstitutional to tell people they can't travel to get at abortion like a lot of So the idea is also going to just

get messier from here. So you think that's a possibility that some states could make it illegal for the residents of their states to go to another state and have an abortion, they are probably going to try. I mean, we've seen Missouri kind of float this proposal. Whether they can legally do that, right, I have no idea because when was the last time you even heard of a state doing that. I mean, they wouldn't make it illegal

to travel. What they would do is say you can travel as much as you want, but when you get home, we're going to put you in jail. Right because they can't tell you not to do the travel. That's clearly unconstitutional because there is a right to travel and the right to travel is one of the most like, it has one of the best pedigrees in constitutional law. It's more like, if you say we can criminalize the reason for the travel right, maybe the Supreme Court would sign

off on that. And the reason we don't know is because the Supreme Court has decided a grand total of one case about the right to travel in nineties something and has never you know, so who knows what they would do with that, other than you could just make the educated guests that these folks are extremely conservative and that probably they'll just side with the conservative state. But you know, that's about all we know. We don't have

a lot of specific guidance. So how do we explain to people legally that you can't force people to get vaccinated when you can force them to carry a baby to term. Yeah, I don't know if there's a good legal explanation to that. I think the Court's explanation in this draft is that abortion is different because it's a taking of a life, and that that's not true of

a vac scene. Obviously, pregnancy is different from vaccine and lots of other ways, in the sense that if you say you take a COVID vaccine, and you have a really bad reaction, like maybe that lasts for a couple of days. Um, if you've ever been pregnant, you can have some negative consequences that last for more than a couple of days. You could die, for example. But the

court doesn't seem plugged into that. I think there's probably more the political point, which is that the people who are on the Supreme Court now are not just conservative, they're sort of siloed from people who are not conservative. They are clearly not having conversations with people who have had abortions, They're clearly not having conversations with people who

are pro choice. And so this feels sort of like an opinion written by people who really genuinely don't get it right, who are so isolated and so plugged in only to their own legal communities that they don't even understand that what they're doing is going to upset people. I mean, that's how this reads to me. I want to get back to when you said about other things that this might embolden once Roe v. Wade is struck down.

I've never been a big fan of court packing per se, but I wonder if when you realize that there's a good chance we could quantify that a minority of people in this country want word v way to end. And this is all the very highly skilled gamesmanship of these right wingers. Do you think that court packing is an option and it's right. I think it's an option. I think it's not a great idea, only in so far

as I don't see where it stops. I think I've been more a proponent of term limits because I think it's disturbing that someone who's been on the court, I mean, Clarence Thomas has been on the Court since nineteen ninety one, right, and if you think about when the Anita Hill incident went down, our norms around a whole bunch of stuff have changed since in ninety one, and that you could have someone who's views maybe reflect what voters wanted in

probably not even because there was probably not what a majority of voters wanted even then. That's weird to me because the Court is a political animal. But that's set with court packing. I think then just whoever's in power will just add more justices to the Court, and then the Court will look more like the Senate, which may be won't be that different in terms of outcomes, given how the Court is behaving now, there may not really be that much daylight between how political this court is

and how political that court would be. But I also don't think it would really add any value to have court packing. So with the writhing where we've arrived now with this court, do you feel that this issue in terms of abortion is better decided ultimately by the Congress or by the Court? I mean probably by Congress, although

I think that that would be a political football. There seems to be an emerging international human rights consensus that some forms of abortion bands violate international human rights, not all, but some. It would be great if the US was subscribed to international human rights treaties. We don't, but that's I think another potential guide. But I think that obviously you see with this court that the Court can be a profoundly anti democratic institution in ways that are problematic.

My other inclination, having seen what happened in Ireland, would be that it would be better to have this not decided by Congress or the Court, bit directly by from some sort of plebiscite for the people, because I think what politicians are likely to give you is not likely to reflect what Americans want there's been a disconnect between polling and policy on abortion since the seventies, and so I think it would be nice to give people, as was the case in Ireland, just go directly to people

and say what do you think it should look like? Like here are some options, you know, do you want to ban at like fourteen weeks with exceptions afterwards? I think you would end up with something probably more stable than what we get from politicians or judges. What part of this do you think the pro choice community got wrong in terms of their messaging? What did they get wrong?

I think part of it was that the pro choice communities prioritized messaging and strategies that help people they know, which tends to be for people who are privileged, like white people who don't really need abortion very much. And that's had the effect of making it less comfortable for people of color to be pro choice or be active in the movement because they feel that people who are

running the pro choice movement don't get it right. They don't get it they don't care about themselves and the plant parenthood right and they and they also don't see

plan parent in talking about all their issues. There's a famous incident in when Mississippi was going to ban abortion and also was doing a voter ide law that was going to make it hard for some people of color to vote, and there were activists of color in Mississippi begging Plan Parenthood to campaign on the voting rights issue too, and they just wouldn't do it because they said, it's not our issue. Our issue is abortion. There are a

lot of missed opportunities I think like that. I think there were things that were done wrong in terms of underestimating conservatives. Like often when people would interview me historically, the press would say there's always what of progressives done wrong?

And it was never what of conservatives done right? Because conservatives have been really smart and savvy about this for fifty years, and the general attitude I think progressives have had as conservatives are kind of like a little defcye, not super sharp, and you know, if we just got our stuff together, this would be no problem. And that's not clear that that's true. There are a lot of very sophisticated strategists on the right who've done a lot of,

you know, things that progressive strategically could learn from. And then there are things I think specific blind spots progressives have had Progressives tend to gravitate to glamour races like senate races, presidential races, gubinatorial races, and conservatives have been down there in the muck focusing on things like racist for sheriff races, for school board races, for prosecutor attorney general, state legislative races, and have then had these laboratories for

policies in the states where they pretty much can have untrammeled access to really out their policies with no political consequences.

Progressives have been really outcompeted that way, and I think progressives have been out competed in how they deal with the courts, because if you look at how you know, democrat at presidents approached the courts, it feels very much like things have not changed since Ruth Bader Ginsberg was nominated in the nineties, and if you look at how Republicans approached Supreme Court nominations, it's a completely different story. And so I think there needs to be kind of

an updating of strategy around the federal courts. And at least I think Biden has done a good job of putting a lot of people on the courts right like getting the nominations through Congress, but you still don't see

I think. I think progressives have historically not cared as much about the court or gotten people to care about the Court in the same way conservatives of Well, I would imagine that until things move on, if they ever due to the federal level, where you, as you said, we you have the control of both houses of Congress in the White House, god forbid, I would assume that before we get to that point, have things changed dramatically in that we're going to see a stampede of abortions,

people seeking a board persons until it's made illegal in your home state for you to travel to another stay to be discussed. And then next to that, I predict we're going to see a dramatic drop in the birth rate in this country as people have a terrible feeling about getting pregnant and being forced to make a choice that could involve some criminality on their part. Yeah, I mean,

I think that's that's definitely realistic. I think if people feel rushed into making decisions, I think, as we said before, they sometimes make the decision to end of pregnancy because it's it's a weighty decision to be a parent, right. And the other thing that's probably worth emphasizing is like,

who is it that disproportionately has abortions? So I mean a majority of people in absolute terms who have abortions are white, but the abortion rate is much higher in communities of color than it is in the white community.

And you might ask yourself, well, why is that, And it's because those are people who probably are not feeling good about how those children are going to live in the world, right, because of poverty, because of racism, because they don't have opportunities they want to have for themselves

and for the children they already have. You know, the average woman who has an abortion has a child or more than one, and so I think it's quite likely that people in that position who are already feeling that the world is not going to make it easy for them to raise a child in the way they want, are going to feel that way even more when on the other side of the equation is potentially prison time. Right.

And it's realistic too that if you're thinking about, well, how are you going to get caught having an abortion? There are a couple of different ways. One is, you know, you're in a community that gets heavily policed. Right, It's like, how do you get caught using marijuana because the police are checking out there doing all the time. Right. The other way is that you wait too long to have

the abortion. And because the later in pregnancy you have an abortion, the more complications there are, and that again is going to push you toward having the early abortion because it's going to be less likely you're gonna get caught, it's gonna be less likely you're gonna have criminal consequences, and so people who may have thought about carrying a pregnancy to term are probably going to feel that it's safer to get into the pregnancy on the earlier side.

There are women on the Supreme Court, and I was wondering which one do you think has been the greatest and spokesperson on behalf of reproductive rights for women on the courts and the group that's there now, it's definitely Sonya Sodomyer has been the most outspoken. I mean, Elena Kagan sort of m O. I think is more to

be a kind of behind the scenes dealmaker. She's a really powerful writer, though, and so I would kind of expect that to change if Row is overturned because The dynamic between those two is that sodomyor Is is sort of like the conscience of the liberals, who sort of says what everybody thinks, regardless of how that makes her colleagues feel. And Kagan only does that, I think, after

exhausting her options and coalition building. But when she's done that exhaustion, she's written some pretty scathing descents, and so I wouldn't be surprised if when come June, when the Court reverses Row, we get a pretty striking descent from her too. What do you think is the best that progressives and pro choice people can hope for now? What

should they do? What can they do? I think there's not much that can be done to convince the court now, although there may be, because I think that s P. Eight, that Texas law banning aversion was a trial balloon, and you could view this League opinion as a trial balloon. And so if people are consistently protesting and donating and kind of demonstrating that this issue is not going away, that this is not just what's in the headlines today and then people move on with their lives, that may

give the court pause. But I think mostly what people who are appro choice need to realize is that they

have to play the long game. I mean, it took fifty years to reverse Roe v. Wade, So they have to be willing to try to focus on success at the state and local level and the short term in facilitating access for people who have to travel out of state, and then I think in the long term, you know, doing the kind of political work to change the court and change politics again, right, and not look for quick fixes. Because the supreme world is going to over row in June.

I don't think there's much anybody can do to stop that. So I think it's more a question of what is the price that people have to pay when that happens, you know, whether that's politicians or the court. And I think that's something that people can determine going forward. Attorney and author Mary Ziegler. Last year, politics in the state of Texas became an ominous bell weather for the rest of America. In September, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill eight,

colloquially called the Texas Heartbeat Act. The law banned abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, around six weeks before Some women even know that they're pregnant. Anna Upani is the executive director of Fund Texas Choice, an organization whose sole purpose is to provide funding and assistance to Texas who need help traveling to their abortion appointment, both

in and out of the state of Texas. This Rupani earned a masters in social work at Florida State and a law degree from the New England School of Law before returning to the state where she was raised. I wondered what it was like growing up in Texas and if abortion was treated like a dirty secret there. It

definitely wasn't discussed really. And it's funny you say that because something that I've been talking about recently a lot of people is about language access and how if you're raised in certain parts of the country, you don't understand what sometimes you're saying because of the culture and the community you're raised around. So when I went off to college, I kept saying it was pro life because I personally may not have had an abortion, but the person next

to me could have could have. And I was like, no, that's pro choice. But in Texas you're taught your pro life, and so you keep thinking you're pro life, even though that is not at all what I was actually intending to say, And so abortion wasn't talked about. The idea of being pro choice wasn't talked about. All that was talked about is abortion is bad, pro life is good.

We have to save babies, even though what we know now is their embryos or fetuses and they're not actual children, right, And so it was something that wasn't talked about, and even in a Muslim upbringing, it wasn't talked about. I remember, you know, first when I took the job at Fund Texas Choice, it was like, how is my family going to react to this? And luckily they're very happy that I'm doing this and they say the word abortion out loud.

But it doesn't always happen that way. You're raised in Texas, you graduated from New England law school. How soon thereafter did you return to Texas? Could you live in Texas now obviously and work from there? Yep? I came back in so immediately after graduation. I took the Texas Bar Exam in Texas and have been in Texas since. And when you got down there, how quickly did you get into the work you're doing now or what other work

that preceded this, yep. So I became staff attorney doing family law with undocumented survivors of domestic violence pretty quickly, like within a year of coming back to Texas, and I stayed. I worked in immigration and family law with undocumented survivors for nearly eight years, and then I came

to fund Texas Choice. I don't know what the best words are, but people kind of sort of knew this was a possibility because while people were operating from a place of comfort that Roe v. Wade was safe, that Roe v. Wade was established law, it was president that the pro life people, the anti abortion people were in the garage doing push ups all night getting ready for this, you know, big Fandango of theirs. What do you think abortion law once Roe v. Wade is overturned? What will

become of abortion law in the state of Texas? Where will it go? The question we is heavy on me because I think about it like every night. And you know, Texas has been living in what is a postro future for the last eight months, and so if row is overturned, it just exacerbates what we have seen in the last eight months, and so of our clients have had to leave the state to access care. It's not just to Oklahoma, right, It's not just to Louisiana. It's to Colorado, it's to

Washington State, it's too d C. It's to New York. Now, if Roe v. Wade is in fact overturned like we think it is, twenty four more states are likely going to limit or ban abortion. And if that happens, the states nearby that Texans used to go to, like Oklahoma and Kansas, are also not going to have access to abortion, and so more folks are going to have to leave the states to get to care in safe haven, so to speak. And those safe states are going to be inundated.

And so if they still have the ten clinicians in the same city, ten clinicians can see a hundred patients, say, now all of those were Texans. Maybe now they're going to be from twenty four more states. So the amount of folks that are going is going to increase. So time to get an appointment is going to be longer. Folks are going to be pregnant longer. Then on top of that, yep, and if you're pregnant longer, you're dealing with all of the complications of a pregnancy but then

the further along you are, the harder. Um the appointment is on your body. So the abortion appointment takes longer than just say an hour in the office, right it's it can be. And then you have the day, the two days you have to take off of work. You know, if you go to a clinic in Dallas, for example, if it still was providing abortions beyond six weeks, then you could go just down the road come back home.

Now you're having to take off of work, you're having to find childcare, and then you're having to travel, right, and sometimes if you can't find childcare, you have to take your children with you. And what if you're a nursing parents, So all of those things are going to be further exacerbated if the opinion that we saw is in fact what ends up happening. In Texas would be

the largest state to ban abortion. It is the largest state to ban abortion um and so you're talking about fifty six thousand people around to get abortions every year, and now we're trying to move fifty six people out of the state, and that's just not possible. People have an abortion in Texas they did so in around fifty six thousand folks an abortion in Texas. I think in twenty nineteen it was like fifty three thousand, So fifty thousand plus folks get abortions in Texas. That doesn't include

all of the Texans that have left the states. That's just how many people have got an abortion in Texas. So on average, we're looking at fifty thou people trying to leave this state every year. Now your work, you're in an office with a bunch of other lawyers and staff, or how much do you interact with people who your organization is helping to facilitate them to get an abortion. You don't pay for the abortions, correct, right, We don't

pay for the abortions, but we directly talked. So our team we're made up of eight fall time staff and one part time staff. I'm the executive director, so I do not actually practice law here. But we have five programmatic staff, so three folks are doing the actual trip

planning for clients. So if you call today and we in fact can't help you, if someone will do your intake and then they'll transfer you over to a program coordinator who will work with the individuals seeking an abortion from the time they call us to the time they

come back home from the abortion appointment. So we will book their ticket, we will book their hotel, we will book their right chairs, we will provide food, will provide childcare, all of the things that are kind of the in between from booking an abortion appointment to getting there, and then we'll help you get back. And so our staff

is constantly talking to clients. Do you book the appointment for the abortion itself, No, we don't because those needs are being filled by other organizations, and so we wanted to We identified a unique need that folks were having. We're struggling to get to their abortion appointment, because if they struggle to pay for it, they likely can't pay to get to their abortion appointment, and so we focus

on that specific and unique need. Are we headed toward a reality in which the services you provide will be outlawed by the state of Texas. If you have to book air fair for you, to book hotels, for you to intercede or aid in a bet in any way this process in and of the state, they're going to

try to criminalize that too. We think so, Yeah, We've received a season to this letter about a month or so ago from a Texas House representative who basically said what we're doing is criminal, and the statutes that existed pre ROW are still the law of the land if ROW were to be overturned, and so we're criminal entities and we're going to be criminalized basically for doing the work we're doing. So that's not a far fetched reality

in our world. That is the likelihood that's coming post ROW, with the level of counseling and the level of care that is provided to women who go off and have this procedure where they want them to fully understand and and and make that choice freely and fully informed. Would you say that any significant proportion of the women that are having an abortion today are regretting that, I'd say most folks that we serve, so all of the pregnant folks we serve, have never come back to us and

said that we regret having or making this decision. We often reach back to our clients two to four weeks after their abortion appointment, and almost always clients say thank you so much for helping as you saved my life, or thank you so much for supporting me. I wouldn't have been able to have another child sixty two pers and our clients are already parenting, so they know what

it's like to parent. They know if they can and can't have this pregnancy go to term right, And so a lot of our most of our clients, in fact, say this was really important for me. I wouldn't have been able to get an abortion without your help, and so you know, you saved me. That's what we hear. We don't hear the regret. The clients often say it is the best choice they have made. It allowed them

the freedom to do what they are doing today. But otherwise they wouldn't have been able to have the freedom to pursue lives in the way that they have, either to have a child later when they were ready, or to get a master's degree, or to move any of those things, and all of those things or things our

clients have said to us. So when when Roe v. Wade viewed for so many decades now as settled law, and now we're faced with the rather likely proposition that it's going to tumble and it's going to be gone, which is just unthinkable to me. And I'm wondering if the second thing that's on that list is a federal abortion ban and that we are closer to that now than we've ever been. Do you agree, Are we closer now than we've ever been to a federal abortion law? Yeah? Probably.

I don't know if that would happen, but you know, I did read it in the news this weekend that Mitch McConnell said that that's honestly on the table now and why not? And I and I think it's it's kind of funny and almost hypocritical, Like the whole point of overturning Row is to give back the power to the states to decide, and then if you do a federal abortion band, you're going completely opposite of that, because now you're taking it away from the states once again.

And so do I think abortion should be protected at the federal level? Yes, Do A think that there's a possibility the discussion for a national federal or a federal abortion band is on the table. Yes, I don't think that would pass muster, just because if we think about who gets abortions, it's across party lines, it's it's across race, it's across gender, it's across this economic status, it's across ages.

And so the idea that if abortion was banned federally, no one would be able to act as an abortion including folks like Republicans who were anti abortion, who have in facts gotten an abortion right. And so the outcry I think for a national band would be higher than what it is right now. And as we know, polls have showed us that at least sixty percent of Americans, regardless of party, believe that abortion should at least be

accessible in some capacity. Fund Texas Choice executive director Anna Upani. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the thing on the I Heart radio app spot of y or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Anna Rupani speculates on what other laws are at risk if Roe v. Wade is indeed overturned. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.

Anna Rupani of Fund Texas Choice is engaged in the on the ground work helping Texans gain access to out of state abortions. The native Texan told me why her state has been ground zero for the anti abortion movement. I mean Texas is large, and lots of people are moving to Texas. I mean I think Dallas Austin and Houston are some of the top three largicities growing in the nation. And so I think people are flocking to Texas because of the Texas Yeah, I think for Texas.

Let's not kid ourselves, it's mostly that, right, and the land. Right, Like, if you live in California and you're paying one point two million dollars for foot house, you could get a lot more for one point two million in Texas, or you could get a four thousand square foot house with land, and so we think that's a big part of it. And you don't have state taxes, and so now you're like, Okay, I can think about living in Texas. And parts of Texas are very beautiful, and the larger cities are very

much welcoming and you know, progressive. But Texas is so massive that you think about the rural areas and Texas could be five states, right, and so there are parts of it and pockets of it that are somehow overshadowing the larger cities. But then let's not forget jerrymandering as a thing, and states like Texas are jerrymandered, so it doesn't matter. There's massive populations and cities like Dallas Austin, Houston,

San Antonio, Corpus Christi, al Baso. What ends up happening is all of the smaller cities make up more in the voting power because of the Jerrymander districts, the state legislature is full of more republic against the Democrats, and you ended up having more Republicans voting for Center Bill eight, which has you know, become known as a six week ban. It didn't matter that all of the Democrats said no or could have said no, we still didn't have a

majority or even fifty. And so you have more people that are anti abortion and anti choice voting against abortion access. And so that's what happened in Taxas. It's not just, you know, all of these folks are anti abortion, it's all of these folks are probably and likely feeding on power and want more power and want to continue to suppress the folks too, that are already lacking power to continue to access it because they don't get a choice over their bodies. It has nothing to do, I think,

with not actually wanting to access healthcare. It has a lot more to do with what is the impact of not accessing healthcare? When I first heard someone say in the last couple of weeks, Roe v. Wade was now likely to topple. I thought, oh god, this is another sign that this country is having a nervous breakdown. I do believe the United States isn't a full blown nervous breakdo and ever since Trump was elected in two thousand six, And what's next? Is contraception really next? Do you believe

that's possible? Yeah, I mean I think I read something that Tennessee is trying to allow Plan B. And if folks have access Plan B, there's like a fifty fine. It's literally a two step pill and you're supposed to take that within seventy two hours of having unprotected sex, just to make sure you don't get pregnant. It doesn't cause an abortion, it's literally to help prevent getting pregnant.

And so, yeah, contraceptive care is probably next. So it's probably gay marriage, and so it's probably in a racial marriage because when you think about how Roe v. Wade was defined, it was it was under the privacy that individuals are afforded under the fourteenth Amendment from the number of rights that they have, and so privacy was the underpinning to access to contraceptive Karen Griswold, privacy is the underpinning of what you do in your home and against

anti sodomy laws in Texas v. Lawrence. It was the underpinning for obergha Fell, for gay marriage, and it was the underpinning of who you choose to marry in loving And so once you get rid of privacy, all of those things are up for debate again. And and Alito's draft, they are talking about getting rid of privacy. Right that privacy is not in the constitution and therefore you're not afforded that right to privacy. Um, so anything that comes

from that is gone. And and just so you know, folks in the reproductive justice reproductive choice abortion movement, I have been sounding the alarm about Roe v. Wade for a very long time, where it has always been the floor, not the ceiling. And folks have been sounding that alarm for long before Trump came into office. I think folks thought that that was more of a reality once Trump came into office, But that alarm has been ringing well before that time. And it's because we've seen things like

House Bill Too. So House Bill Too was a law past in Texas. They basically said that if someone wants to provide an abortion, they have to have admitting privileges in a hospital nearby, which is nearly impossible for lots of clinicians who are in smaller cities where hospitals aren't there. They aren't there, and so that shuttered fifty of the

clinics overnight. So we went from forty to clinics to about twenty clinics overnight in Texas, and then throughout that year several shutdown and we were left with eight clinics in the entire state of Taxes and so fun Texas Choice came to be because we're like, oh, folks are gonna have to travel really far to get to their abortions in Texas is how are they going to do that?

And so we decided to provide that logistical support. But I bring all that up because that alarm in pretty much was there eight clinics one fifth of the clinics, right, And so we all knew this was coming pre because there have been so many laws that have just been passing and trying to be passed, even if they've been ultimately banned by the Supreme Court. Anti abortion folks and anti cho choice folks have been doing this and we've been sending the alarm for a long time to say, hey,

this is coming, this is happening. It's not just that started about. You know, if people want to know what's going to happen, if we're always overturned to ask Texans that are doing this work, that have been doing this work, they know what this is like. We've spent three or four times our annual budget in the last eight months for programmatic care because that's how much more expensive it's gotten.

That's how much money we have to spend. And so if you want to talk about what's going to happen, listen to Texans and make sure that doesn't happen again by electing folks that are pro choice, that are pro abortion. And I know folks are. I'm not pro abortion, people say that all the time, but really pro abortions about getting access to abortion care because it's health care decisions and you should have access to your health care. What does fund Texas Choice, what is it telling its constituency

in Texas? And beyond that they can do between now and the mid terms to have any impact whatsoever on what's happening right now. Three things that we've been talking about not just to our supporters but just out loud, is support your local abortion funds, their local abortion funds everywhere, support them there on the ground doing the work. They are supporting the folks in paying their abortion, getting them to their abortion, helping them leave the stat if need be.

The second is vote like your life depends on it, and make sure that people around you were voting too, because it really, in fact does right. The more of your rights that get diminished and turnished, the less human and less citizen you are. So make sure you're voting for pro choice and pro abortion folks. And then third, talk about abortion. Stop making abortion the word abortion stigma.

Stop saying I don't want anyone to have an abortion, or abortion only happens when you know there's dire circumstances, or we should have exceptions for rape. No abortion should be allowed whenever someone needs it and wants it, because we shouldn't allow them and bodily autonomy be autonomy to be violated. But before we say they should access healthcare, So talk about abortion. De stigmatize it as much as possible,

because that's the only way forward. Right. If we keep making abortion stigma, we're never going to be able to move past that. It's a decision for someone to make for their own healthcare. My thanks to Anna Upani at Mary Ziegler. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoben. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingwich. Hi'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the

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