Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro] Hi rePROs, how's everybody doing? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/ her. So y'all, I'm coming to you today with a bit of a heavy heart.
I'm recording this on Friday, June 20th, and so it's still very close on the heels of the Supreme Court decision in Skrmetti. We'll talk about that a little bit in the interview today, and we'll have a full episode talking about it later, but just still feeling just very, just heavy. I just, I don't know.
I'm thinking of all of the young people who are going to be impacted by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors. It's going to have just huge effects on the lives of young people.
We know that gender-affirming care is life-saving and life-changing healthcare, and to prevent young people from accessing it will just have devastating impacts on their lives.
You can't talk about that decision without talking about an action the administration took the night before, where the administration formally suspended funding for the Trevor Project, put a stop work order out on the work that they were doing for 988, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
Trevor Project was doing a lot of specialized support for LGBTQ people, and the administration has ceased all specialized support for LGBTQ people with the 988 hotline. So I just, my heart is breaking for all of the young people who are impacted by this decision and now have lost this such an important resource for support when they may need it the most.
It's just senseless and devastating and cruel and it's just making, it's just really heavy right now and I just, my heart goes out to all of the people who are impacted and know that the fight doesn't stop here. We see you. We support you. Trans rights are human rights. That includes trans young people.
That includes everybody who needs access to gender affirming care. We are in this fight until we have bodily autonomy as a reality for everyone. And this week, it was a bad setback, but it is not the end. And so, we'll keep fighting. But I've just been sitting with that a lot this week and just thinking about all of the people who are impacted.
And today, when this episode comes out, it marks three years since the Dobbs decision. So, to have such a negative bodily autonomy ruling so close to the anniversary of another terrible bodily autonomy ruling is just it's hard and so I'm just thinking of everybody right now but I am feeling very excited for today's episode.
It's a little bit of a longer conversation, so I'm going to keep the intro short. I read this amazing book After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion, and I could not think of a better way to mark the three-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision than talking to the authors of that book, David Cohen and Carole Jaffe.
So, I'm so excited for you all to hear our conversation. It was a great one, and definitely check out their book. We'll have a bookshop link in the show notes. So with that, let's turn to my interview with David and Carole.
Nice to be here.
Thanks for having
So before we get started, let's do a quick round of introductions. Carole, would you like to go first and introduce yourself?
Sure. I am a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. I am a professor emerita of sociology at UC Davis.
Great. David?
I'm a law professor at Drexel's Klein School of Law in Philadelphia. I also represent abortion clinics in Pennsylvania as pro bono counsel on a wide variety of matters, including litigation and policy work.
So, I'm so excited to have the two of you on today. I was telling you before, and I really loved your book. Often when I talk about how I can keep doing this work and the parts that give me hope, you really kind of dug into all the parts that give me hope to keep going on. So, I'm excited to get to that.
But I think we need to start with kind of the elephant in the room. This is coming out on the Dobbs anniversary, but there was also a big decision last week, this week as we're recording, that is about bodily autonomy. David, do you want to talk really quick about the Skrmetti decision?
Yeah, so the Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling in a case called Skrmetti, which is out of Tennessee. It involved the state banning gender-affirming care for minors. One of, I think it's almost half the states in the country that do this.
And the claim in the case was that this violated the Constitution prohibition on sex discrimination because cisgender kids who need hormone therapy, for instance, are able to get it, but trans kids are not. And the Supreme Court rejected that claim. It was a six to three decision along ideological lines. And kind of, you know, echoing Dobbs in a couple ways.
One, the court said that this is not sex discrimination because it's linked with medical care and it's linked with medical care that not all girls or boys get. So it's not sex discrimination. It's not like there's one side that can get it all and the other side can't.
And then second, they said in a field where there's medical uncertainty, we're going to defer to the legislature. Kind of like Dobbs, where they said when there's dispute about the morality of abortion and even medical issues, too, we're going to defer to legislatures.
So this is really just the court once again saying that legislatures get to make decisions about medical issues. people's medical lives, just like in Dobbs.
I found the especially tragic part of, I mean, all of it was tragic and terrible, was that the announcement of the ending of the LGBTQ support systems for 988 came down that same morning or the night before and you were hearing about it that morning.
And I was just thinking about all these young people who needed that extra support that day that was no longer federally available.
Yeah. I mean, it's tragic. It's just tragic for kids in these states. And especially, you know, there's often discussion, "vote with your feet," right? If you don't like a state's policy, then move to another state. But kids, right? Kids don't have the ability to just move to another state. So they're trapped in these places, and they can't get the care they need.
And it's just, it's going to be tragic for them.
Okay, so let's turn to what we were here to talk about today. And that is three years since the Dobbs decision came down. I really love that your book talked about kind of you had the three stages of interviews. So before and then right after and then was it like six months later?
So, let's start with: what was kind of the immediate reality you were seeing after Dobbs? And Carole, let's have you go first this time.
Well, immediately after Dobbs, people were deeply saddened, heartbroken, I don't think is too strong a term, but frankly, for the most part, not surprised. What we found out was that the provider community, their allies and the abortion funds, I mean, they had begun strategizing long before. I mean, people knew this was coming.
If there was any doubt, the leak that happened in the May proceeding the June of the decision, it was clear this was going to happen. So I remember vividly one doctor who we asked how she felt that day. She said, it's like if an alien had landed on this planet. I mean, it was so shocking to her.
And she also said, and this has stayed with me, "my life's work has become a crime scene."
Yeah, I just remember even knowing it was coming and for sure know it was coming because of the leak, there was just this emotional difference between knowing it was coming and then having it actually happening. There was still just your heart fell out, your stomach fell out, and it was like, what do we do now immediately?
Speaking of stomachs, one person told us she was driving with her family in the car and heard it on the radio. Told her husband to stop the car and she had to vomit. So, yes, stomachs were literally affected.
David?
The emotions were raw. The emotions were immediate and really devastation. But at the same time, the people that we were talking with, they knew they had to get to work. So, they had to process this emotionally. One person we talked to said that she had a period of time with the people who were in her office with her, half hour, maybe an hour.
But then they had to get to work dealing with what next. We've got patients in the waiting room. We've got patients who are calling about the weekend. We've got a clinic that we, in some of the states, we have to close . Or we have a clinic we have to move or change, or we're now going to get flooded with calls.
So the people who we were in the middle of talking with in the year of 2022 when Dobbs happened, they, you know, like us, processed all the emotions, but then they just had to deal with, we still have to do the work that we're doing in this radically changed environment. And so, they had to figure that all out.
Yeah, and it was... hearing the stories of the things everybody went through, like, there were so many different versions of ways that people were going and making these adjustments to continue to provide care, you know, as I mentioned like these were all the reasons I had when people ask [me to] talk about hope is: all of these things these amazing ways people fought
to ensure people were getting care is what is brings me hope. That when people [say] like: don't you just want to give up? And it's like no, like, people are making sure that everyone as many people as possible are still able to access care. And it was amazing to see the many ways that people did that.
It's easy to when you're not in the middle of things and you're not providing health care to try and to have the thought that you said to say, you know, maybe this is time to just give up. Right. It's devastating. You look at the long term prospects of the Supreme Court and you're just like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be terrible for a long time.
But the people on the ground don't have the luxury of even entertaining that thought. They've devoted their life to health care and a particular kind of health care that they are expert at. And people are always going to need abortions. And so there are people who need this. There are people who have the skills to provide it.
And so they're not sitting there thinking, well, should I just give up now? They're saying, patients, I can do it. I'm going to find a way.
Yeah. The other thing I was thinking of is: it's so easy to get caught up in the fight and seeing like the new bad thing that's coming or fighting against to ensure everybody is able to access care.
This book was a great reminder on all the ways that Dobbs didn't stop abortion, that people were still able to access the care that sometimes I can forget as I'm continuing to fight to ensure that more people are able to get access. So, that was really wonderful to read. So maybe you want to talk a little bit about what we have seen since then.
I know you had interviews up to six months after, but kind of where we are now and what has been done to ensure that we are increasing access. David, why don't you go first this time?
Yeah, so what we know has happened, you know, we started finding this out six months a little bit after Dobbs, that abortion numbers have actually gone up post-Dobbs, right? This was the big surprise for most people.
When Carole and I started doing these interviews in 2022, we, like many people, thought abortion numbers were going to go down and maybe go down quite substantially if up to half the states in the country were going to ban abortion or seriously restrict it, the natural consequence, we thought, would be that numbers would go down and a lot of people would no longer
be able to access abortion who previously could.
But what we found out from the people who are the number crunchers— that's not us, but there are others, We Count, which is a project of Society for Family Planning and the Guttmacher Institute —[they] have steadily released numbers that have shown that abortion has gone up in this country, about 10% in 2023, close to that, although a little less in 2024.
And so, that's been the big surprise, but that has continued. I think what we've seen, we document in our book a lot of the different stories and we can talk more about the different methods, but providers have really stepped up. Supporters through funders, practical support groups have done amazing things.
Funders have come through, whether it's individual funders or foundations, but also individuals. And this we don't talk about in the book as much because this wasn't what we interviewed. We interviewed providers.
But legislatures in pro-choice states have done things that we've been asking them to do for a long time, which is: get rid of the restrictions that you actually do have on the books. Even if you're a liberal state, look at your abortion laws and get rid of the things that are unnecessary. And they didn't do that before Dobbs. They were complacent.
But Dobbs really kicked them and said, we need to do that. And so a bunch of states have said, okay, let's look at our abortion laws and get rid of the things that we don't need. And they've opened up access, supported access with money as well. And so, I think that's been significant too. And then just the last thing is that popular opinion, right?
Abortion was everywhere for a few years and it's died down in the past few months because of sort of all of the, nonsense from the Trump administration has really taken over the media landscape for good reason. But for a couple of years, abortion was everywhere in every media outlet, covered multiple abortion stories.
And I think that helped normalize abortion as a political concept, as a talking point, but also as medical care that people you know, who may have thought abortion as stigmatized or shameful before, maybe a little less so now that everyone's talking about it. So I think we've seen, you know, in those big macro level, big shifts post-Dobbs.
Carol?
Yes, to add to that, for me, one of the real excitements of doing this research was was learning how at a very almost granular level, if I can say that, I mean, just to see in real time how this was happening. And what I'm thinking about particularly is the role of patient navigators.
Pre-Dobbs, there were abortion funds, both at the national organizations like the National Abortion Federation, like Planned Parenthood, [and] almost every state has a local abortion fund. So there were groups helping poor women and poor pregnancy-capable people of getting procedures, of paying for them. But after Dobbs, things changed.
It wasn't just here, yeah, we'll help you pay for this. We'll help you find a place. We'll help you arrange a flight. or a bus trip or pay for gas. We'll help you find lodging once you get to the place. I mean, this was incredibly labor-intensive work from the time a patient would contact a fund till when she actually or they actually got their procedure.
It was a matter often of weeks, everyday phone calls. Okay, have you arranged childcare for people who were driving? Have you had your brake lights checked out? You don't want to get stopped on the road for, you know, for something like that. The majority of abortion patients are poor.
Many of them had never been in an airport, knew nothing about TSA, didn't know they were not allowed to bring their shampoo, for example. So these patient navigators were on the phone with these patients till the moment they got on the plane, and then when they get off the plane, how do you get to the clinic or how do you get to her hotel?
So it was really extraordinary to see just the level of dedication and hard work, labor intensive work to get people where they needed to go. And without this kind of work, we would not have seen this rise in numbers.
So, a lot of clinics and people working in abortion chose different paths and ways to get people to increase that access. So Carole, you just talked about patient navigators. Are there any other of the paths you want to talk about?
Well, there was a lot of fundraising and it cannot be stated strongly enough how important money has been to this whole process. to the past three years. Right after Dobbs, there was a an explosion of funding. Rage spending is how people have, including us, have come to refer to it.
And this money and the useful deployment of the strategic deployment of this money explains a lot. A doctor located in the Midwest told us of a story of a patient who was coming from a banned state for an abortion. There was a big, it was winter, big snowstorm in the Midwest. Patient's flight is canceled.
Within hours, patient is rescheduled, a new flight to Las Vegas, a new hotel, a new appointment, a new clinic to pay. And this is a combination of the incredible dedication of the workers, but also the money that then they had at hand.
So even though, as you pointed out, Jenny, our book tells a quite surprising, in its own way, upbeat story story, yes, people are still getting abortions, but we end on a note of caution. We end on a note of caution saying, you know, if this level of money, of donations is not sustained, much of what we saw will not be able to continue.
Right after Dobbs, as I said, this explosion, since then we've had an election. Now we have huge range of social problems, very worthy of support. For example, immigration assistance. There are many worthy causes asking people for donations. But if people forget about the abortion funds, a lot of what David and I documented may not be able to continue.
As somebody who is very much a rage donator, I also have my monthly donations. So like, so like I do, I do do both, but I, but I was very much a rage donator and somebody who works on global repro as well. So with the loss of foreign assistance, there are so many places for your money to go right now.
It's really hard and it's really hard for the abortion funds to keep up with that level that they're not seeing anymore. David, do you want to talk about the other adjustments that you saw?
Yeah, so, you know, we saw a lot of abortion providers move their practice from one state to another. And this happened in a lot of different places in the country. You know, a provider in Texas moved to New Mexico, a provider in Tennessee moves to Virginia, or into Illinois from Tennessee as well, the other side of Tennessee.
One of the providers we talked to, and we tell her story in our book, is Tammi Kromenaker, who's the director and owner of Red River Women clinic that had been in Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo, North Dakota had been the only abortion clinic in the state for a long time.
It's right on the river that separates North Dakota and Minnesota, just across the rivers, Moorhead, Minnesota. Tammy and her clinic, they saw the writing on the wall, just like we all did. And they were secretly planning if Dobbs came down the way they expected to move across the river into Minnesota.
And just patients would have to drive an extra few minutes across the river, although actually all their Minnesota patients, it would be closer because they were seeing people from Minnesota before Dobbs. And so they were planning for a year before Dobbs. And then once Dobbs hit, they did this secretly so that the anti-abortion movement wouldn't find out.
Word got out pretty quickly after Dobbs hit that this is what they were planning to do. And the escorts who worked at the clinic started a GoFundMe page to raise money to help with the move. And their initial ask was $25,000. They hoped to raise $25,000 to help with the move across. You have to move a whole medical clinic across the river, right?
$25,000 sounds like that would help. Well, people were so pissed off after Dobbs, this went viral in a way no one expected. And the expectation of the hope of $25,000 turned into over a million dollars raised in a very short period of time for this clinic. And it just shocked Tammy and everyone she worked with.
She was able to do the move, buy the building, and move the clinic across the river without any debt. And really propel that clinic to success in Moorhead in a way that no one expected.
And the irony of the situation is that as much as she was devastated to leave North Dakota because that had been her home, that had been her business's home for decades and provide, you know, she didn't want to give up. She was a fighter. She is a fighter.
She had fought the state of North Dakota multiple times in court and in legislature, and she still was there. Right. And so it devastated her to leave North Dakota. But what she found was that moving to Minnesota actually made care so much easier for her patients and for her workers and for herself.
Because Minnesota didn't have any of the regulations and the restrictions that North Dakota did that put barriers in the way of people accessing abortion. So she was able to provide better medical care, more efficient medical care, and with the support of the politicians and local communities.
In Minnesota, the governor called her, the senators, attorney general, local FBI, they were all very supportive in ways that she never had in Fargo. So, you know, it was one of those situations where she didn't want to do it, but actually doing it now realized it was a better situation.
And again, you know, the people in North Dakota, it's just an extra five minute drive for them.
I really appreciated that story. I am originally from Wisconsin, born and raised. So, uh, hearing about that story really touched me and hearing about all of the work being done in Illinois for, to get people to come there and a new clinic just opening in Wisconsin, also very exciting.
So, but yeah, it was a nice hearing about something a little local to where I grew up.
I want to say one more thing of the Tammy story. She was not only visited of the summer, you know, by local, I mean, not just local politicians, both of Minnesota's senators contacted her. But I think in what has to be a historic first, Tammy and several other abortion providers and some patients were invited to the State of the Union by Democratic senators.
And for someone like me, who has studied abortion providers for many years noting how stigmatized, how marginalized they have been, often even by people who consider themselves pro-choice, to have abortion providers sitting at the State of the Union— I mean, that tells us something about the changing status of abortion providers.
Okay, I guess the next big thing to talk about is something that we're definitely been keeping an eye on is I'm sure the fights in the courts are going to continue to affect it. And that's medication abortion. David, how about you go first this time?
Yeah, so abortion pills have played just a massive role post Dobbs. And to be clear, they were becoming much more common even before Dobbs, right? So abortion pills is two different drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol. And mifepristone is the one that's FDA approved for abortion.
Misoprostol is FDA approved for ulcer treatment but it's used in conjunction with mifepristone to accomplish a medication abortion. Mifepristone was approved in 2000 and it was slowly becoming right up until Dobbs it just cracked the majority of abortion point right before Dobbs so 53% of abortions before Dobbs were accomplished through medication abortion.
Now the number is up into the 60s and I would you know, the most recent data is from a couple years ago, and it was 63%. I would be surprised if it's not up around 70% of abortions or medication abortion right now, once we get the numbers for this time period.
And that's because Dobbs has propelled abortion pills into the news in ways that, you know, people really wanted people to learn about abortion pills beforehand. But possibly because- a big part because of the anti-abortion movement with their major lawsuit in Texas that went to the Supreme Court that was about abortion pills.
The whole country learned about abortion pills in ways they didn't know before. So that's part of it. But also providers have really experimented with new delivery models for abortion pills. Sort of necessity being the mother of invention, right? And so there are now a lot of new ways to get abortion pills post-Dobbs.
Some of that is not with a medical provider, right? A pharmacy, informal support groups that just will distribute pills, international mail to get abortion pills. But within the United States, with licensed medical professionals, we've had an expansion of telehealth and telemedicine clinics that are providing abortion pills in different places in the country.
And then the real novel legal development is telehealth shield laws. Shield laws have been passed. They are laws that protect people in states where abortion remains legal from other states where abortion is illegal.
There are 18 states that have shield laws generally, but eight of those 18 states allow within their shield law license medical professionals in that state to mail pills into a state where they don't have a license, including states where abortion is banned.
So concretely, a New York doctor with a New York license who is physically located in New York can mail pills into, say, a state like Texas or Alabama and do so protected by New York law. Now, they will be violating Texas and Alabama law, but New York will protect them.
And because of these shield laws, there are over 10,000 packs of pills mailed every month from these shield providers, and the vast majority are going to states with abortion bans. So people in states where abortion is banned are getting pills from licensed medical professionals, and that is increasing abortion access, even though clinics have closed in those states.
Carole, do you have anything to add?
Yeah. Should the worst case happen, should FDA withdraw approval of mifepristone. Should the Comstock law start being enforced? And I'll leave it to David to explain to your listeners what that will mean. But spoiler alert, it's a scary story, but we'll get to that.
Anyway, should we be in a situation where in the United States, pills can no longer be mailed, or mifepristone is no longer legal, should that happen, an unknown number of people are getting abortion pills from the internet, bypassing the various groups that are now doing it. They're just ordering pills.
Now, we could have a discussion of, is it better to get these pills and not have any interaction with the doctor? And for some people, unquestionably, it's much better. I just this morning read a report saying younger patients in general really want the reassurance of talking to a healthcare professional. So, I'm not saying this is better.
I'm just saying if all else fails, some people, those whose pregnancies have not advanced too far, some people will always be able to get pills from the internet, often sent from a foreign country. There is some legal risk, but the mail would have to be examined very closely. These pills will come in an unmarked envelope.
I'm sure it won't say abortion pills on the mailer. And one thing that I find very interesting and reassuring is that a couple of years ago, a research group in New York, a group called Gynuity, it's a reproductive health research group, they actually ordered pills from these various places offering them. There was a lot of skepticism.
You know, are people just getting taken for a ride? Are these going to be sugar pills? So they actually ordered these pills, tested them, and it turned out that these pills, for the most part, these were the real thing. If all else fails, well, first of all, big picture, there's always going to be abortions.
Throughout history, there always have been abortions, even in places where it was illegal. So, we could get into an interesting discussion of what else people might do, some of the options people might choose would be more dangerous, but ordering pills for the foreseeable future will always be an option for some.
David, do you want to do Comstock real quick?
Yeah, so Comstock is a federal law that was passed in 1873, so over 150 years ago. And it's an obscenity law. And the definition of obscenity includes a lot of things about immorality and indecency. But basically, the way it accomplishes its goal, it says these things are unmailable material so that you cannot put them in the mail.
A couple decades later, they included private express mail services. So you can't mail things that are considered obscene. In the text of the law, it says that you can't mail anything that can produce an abortion. And so at the time, it was really understood that that would mean abortion outside of the medical context, outside of a medical professional context.
But the text of the law doesn't say that. It just says producing an abortion. And the anti-abortion movement today is saying this law that you know, it was in the 1920s, 1930s, the courts, not the Supreme Court, but the courts right under that, said this only applies to unlawful abortion outside of the medical context.
But the anti-abortion movement today is saying those rulings were wrong, and what we have to look at is the strict language of the law, and it says anything that can produce an abortion, and so that would mean you can't mail pills, everything we were just talking about, but you also can't mail that would be used in a brick-and-mortar clinic for a procedural abortion
because that equipment and those instruments are used to produce an abortion. So you can't mail those. And so their extreme interpretation of the Comstock Act would basically shut down abortion because if you can't mail things, whether express mail or mail, or U.S. postal mail, pills or equipment or instruments, then how are you going to practice abortion, right?
How are you going to do that? And so they're pushing that interpretation. Like I said, it's a federal law. So the Trump Department of Justice gets to decide if they want to put, you know, implement that interpretation. Now, to be clear, it would also be challenged in court. There would be pushback.
And so, we don't know, you know, I would hope it wouldn't take even if they tried it. But here we are five months into his presidency and they have not tried it. I think that's notable because the anti-abortion movement has written many letters urging them to do so. They have been very vocal about this and it hasn't happened yet.
Now, it might not have happened yet because they're busy doing other terrible things and they're going to implement Comstock in this way later this year or next year.
But it might also not have happened yet because they're not going to do it because of political pressure or it's unpopular or they want to spend all their political capital on sending people to countries and prisons in other countries and ICE raids. So, we don't know what's going to happen with the Comstock Act, but it is a threat.
And as we said, if they really do strictly enforce it the way they're trying to push, it could be devastating.
I guess that leads me to, if you're like me, which I'm sure you have this as well, you're worried about any number of things at this moment that could happen. What is something that you were either keeping an eye on or actively worried about right now when it comes to abortion? I think we have Carole first this time.
I'm worried about RFK Jr., let's put it that way. He has the capacity, he actually has announced he's going to review the safety of mifepristone, which is absurd. You know, this drug has been reviewed extensively. It's been approved in this country since year 2000, in Europe since 1988.
When RFK Jr. was before a congressional committee and he was asked about this, one of the Democratic senators held up a stack of papers. Well, your listeners can't see what I'm doing, but held up a big stack of papers and said, you do not need to review this. It has been reviewed extensively. So yes, I'm worried that in theory he could withdraw approval.
But I think more realistically, what I'm also worried about is an overturned of a Biden administration regulation that said mifepristone does not have to be picked up in person at an office. I mean, this was a response to COVID. When the regulation was dropped, you don't have to be there in person.
So as we've said earlier, telehealth has been incredibly important to this. If the FDA were to say, no, you can no longer send this medication through telehealth, that would be devastating. I think it would cause less public outcry than an outright withdrawal of FDA approval.
I mean, people who do not think about abortion 24-7, like the three of us, would say, well, what's the big deal? They didn't withdraw the approval. So yes, I'm worried about that.
David?
So FDA, absolutely. Comstock as well. But I think I'm also really worried about sort of the finances of abortion clinics and abortion providers.
We're seeing, you know, Carole talked about sustainability with rage donations, but that's coupled with the attacks on Medicaid providers, in particular Planned Parenthood, and the threats that taking away support, financial support, could really devastate abortion.
Abortion providers, their patients, and the people that abortion providers see that aren't abortion patients, right, that for other reproductive healthcare and other kind of healthcare. And so at a time that we are seeing such attacks on abortion and reproductive healthcare, just the financial sustainability of these entities that, you know, they need money to survive.
They're not, you know, they're not free clinics with, you know, that just magically get their supplies and their workers and their rent for free. Right. You know, a lot of people think, oh, these this should be mission driven and people shouldn't make money off this. But people need to eat. They need to put roofs over their heads. They need to pay workers.
They need to get supplies. So money is involved. Right. And if if the if there's all these sets of with regard to funding, that's really a challenge going forward with how these essential medical care facilities are going to continue.
Yeah. And along with Medicaid, Title X as well, seeing attacks on that.
Okay. So I always like to end the podcast, not just focusing on all the things that are wrong or need to be fixed, but the ways the audience can get involved and what they can do. So any suggestions on how the audience can get involved on this? David.
Yeah, so look, there are things that we are very concerned about in the future, but I do think that people need to spread the word that as much as the Supreme Court issued this terrible opinion three years ago, abortion advocates, abortion providers, abortion supporters are still doing this incredible work of resistance on the ground every day.
And so, I think part of what people can do is: spread the word. Abortion remains legal in a lot of places. Abortion pills remain accessible everywhere. Make sure people know that so that people can get the care that and not feel, oh, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I guess we can't get abortions, right?
So it's important for people on the ground to know that and spread this word. And then the second thing I think that people can do is, you know, ultimately we want some kind of national right to abortions that people all over the country are protected.
And so we think, you know, I think of the environmental movement from decades ago, think globally, act locally, right? I think this is a think nationally act act locally thing here, because you want to do everything you can to get Washington, D.C. to change, but most people aren't going to be able to do that.
But what you can do is you can escort at your local clinic. You can be part of a practical support group in your local area, help drive people to and from clinics, and you can support your local abortion fund. All three of those things are intensely local.
They are not going to change the general policy environment in the entire country, but they are going to help people getting care today in your community, and you can be a part of that.
Great.
Yeah, well, I obviously agree with all of that. The only thing to add, and it might sound a little lame, is vote. And when I say vote, not just for president and for senators and congresspeople, all of which you shouldn't vote for. People in general have typically not tended to vote lower down on the ballot. And these are incredibly important.
Some of the most important abortion action for years has taken place in state legislatures. So state representatives, state senators, city council people, listeners might say: well, what does that have to do with abortion? It could do plenty with abortion. If you want to establish a new clinic, you have to establish this clinic in a place where there's zoning.
And very often this becomes quite contentious. So voting at every single level on the ballot is essential.
Well, David, Carole, thank you both for being here today. I had so much fun talking to you.
Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Okay, y'all, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with David and Carole. Like I said, I really did love their book, After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion. You should absolutely check it out. There is a link in our show notes for a bookshop link so that you can shop at your local bookstore. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed that conversation.
I thought it was really important and it was
great to see all of the ways that people are still being to access abortion care even as the Supreme Court tried to end access to it. Now, does this mean things are good? Obviously not. Obviously, we are continuing to fight to make access so much better for everybody. People should not be having to jump through all these hoops of traveling and all of these things to get it. But this book really gave a voice to what I was talking about—there are so many people on the ground doing so many amazing things to access care.
You can sometimes forget about in the day-to-day fight to ensure that everybody is able to access care, which is so important. It is also important to take a chance and celebrate the ways that we have won, that we are still able to get people access to the care they need.
And this book gave me the time to take a step back and appreciate that bigger picture while still fighting to ensure that more people are able to access care and that we don't lose any more access.
So it was a great book for just kind of doing some reflection and to read all of the stories about the amazing things that people are doing to ensure that people are able to get as much care as they can. Okay. With that, I will see everybody next week.
[music outro] If you have any questions, comments or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at Jennie, J-E-N-N-I-E @reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram.
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