A raw, unedited, unproduced reaction episode to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Includes advice for how you can support abortion access and fight back, in both the short and the long term. The episode ends with a moment for reflection, featuring a song called "Animal" by Jean Rohe. In Jean's words, "'Animal' is a song about my own abortion experience, but ultimately much more: the things we can choose (or should be able to choose) in the garden of our lives, and ...
Jun 29, 2022•40 min
It’s no secret that our country’s gun laws are riddled with loopholes, but one is killing women specifically. Since the beginning of the pandemic, murders linked to domestic violence have risen dramatically, up 58% in the last decade. Guns are the most common weapon abusers use to kill their partners, and victims are usually women. And many of these perpetrators are not even allowed to have guns in the first place. Under federal law, people convicted of a felony, a domestic violence misdemeanor,...
Jun 13, 2022•39 min
Recently, Politico published a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case on the future of Roe v. Wade . Unsurprisingly for many in the reproductive rights community, Alito calls for the overturning of Roe . We know that overturning Roe will mean that millions of people of reproductive age will be without access to abortion care. But what does it look like when someone who otherwise wanted an abortion is forced to carry a pregnancy to term? We don...
May 31, 2022•40 min
In Part 2 of our 2-part series on the misleading practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, we delve into another misleading, yet surprisingly underreported, aspect of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (aka CPCs aka "fake clinics). As we covered in Part 1, CPCs masquerade as if they are real health clinics - but because they are not, they're not subject to privacy laws like HIPPA that protect your personal health information. Of course, by design, their clients do not know this. CPCs then use information giv...
May 17, 2022•52 min
Crisis pregnancy centers, or “CPCs,” are anti-abortion organizations that target pregnant people with predatory, deceptive marketing . They hide in plain sight by operating under the guise of offering comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Instead, they are religiously-affiliated, anti-abortion, and often unlicensed “medical” centers that, as stated by the California legislature, dissuade pregnant people from abortion through “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that oft...
May 03, 2022•51 min
Back in early December 2021, you may have heard some rumblings celebrating that the FDA had changed some of its draconian and scientifically unsupported regulations around medication abortion. Medication abortion, a safe and legal method of first-trimester abortion, accounted for 54% of US abortions in 2020 but has been subject to decades of politically-motivated FDA regulations that placed strict and unnecessary controls on it to limit access. In late 2021, amidst the most hostile environment t...
Apr 17, 2022•28 min
Today on the podcast is the Baltimore Abortion Fund (BAF), a grassroots nonprofit that provides financial support for people traveling to and living in Maryland who need abortion care, and as the Supreme Court decides in June on a case that threatens legal abortion like never before, they’re working to remove the financial barriers for those seeking abortion care. As of late 2021, 30% of BAF’s callers were already from out of state, and the majority of people that BAF supports are 13 weeks or fu...
Apr 05, 2022•41 min
You've probably heard of the gender pay gap - the fact that, according to the most recent Census Bureau data from 2018, women of all races earned, on average, just 82 cents for every $1 earned by men of all races. Last week, Equal Pay Day was recognized on March 7 - this is the number of days into 2022 women would need to work to earn the equivalent of men in 2021. Do you know how the gender pay gap may impact your earnings over the course of your career? Do you know that the gap is a LOT bigger...
Mar 22, 2022•33 min
You may have heard that Texas enacted a six-week ban on abortion in 2021, and that other states have begun attempting to pass copycat laws. You also may have heard many people remarking that 6 weeks is "before many people even know they are pregnant." But do you know why that is? Dr. Lauren Ralph, Associate Professor in the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program at UCSF, recently published research that found that 1 in 3 people discover pregnancy past six weeks or later,...
Mar 08, 2022•44 min
It's Black History Month, and we're also in what may quite possibly the last few months of Roe v. Wade 's existence as we know it. So it seems an important time to talk about what exactly Reproductive Justice means, the history of this Black women-led movement, and why it's so very important. Joining the podcast is Monica Simpson, Executive Director of *the* organization for the Repro Justice (RJ) movement, SisterSong . Monica explains what RJ is; its history and founding by Black women; how we ...
Feb 22, 2022•48 min
We know today that the religious right condemns abortion. But did you know just how recently they developed that opinion, and why? Today on the podcast is Reverend Serene Jones , a pro-choice reverend, religious scholar, and the former chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She is a leader on progressive religious issues, including abortion. Rev. Jones is an expert on how abortion and reproductive rights became a political rallying cry for the conservative religious ri...
Feb 08, 2022•59 min
If you have young people in your life, you may have asked yourself: how do I teach them to be feminists? How do I explain what feminism is and what it has to do with their lives? For young girls of color, how do I help them navigate the dual forces of racism and sexism? Fortunately, there is a new book that can help. Brittney Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Chanel Craft Tanner are authors, activists, educators, and members of the Crunk Feminist Collective . Their new book Feminist AF: A Guide to C...
Jan 25, 2022•55 min
We've heard a lot about the hypothetical harm of Texas' incredibly restrictive abortion bill, SB8, and how it is a glimpse into a post-Roe future. But we wanted to talk to someone on the ground in Texas who is seeing firsthand the impact this bill is having on Texans seeking abortions. We're joined on the podcast today by Zaena Zamora, Executive Director of the Frontera Fund . The Frontera Fund makes abortion accessible to people in the Rio Grande Valley (an area on the US-Mexico border in the s...
Jan 11, 2022•44 min
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven up unemployment among women, and the situation is even worse for women of color. Between a lack of affordable childcare, women's caregiving roles in the home, and the fact that women disproportionately work in sectors negatively impacted by the pandemic, the short-term and long-term implications of the pandemic's effect on women's employment cannot be understated. The impact that women's drop in workforce participation has on our economy as whole, and for women (...
Dec 27, 2021•42 min
As the topic of abortion rights is in the courts and in the press lately, one thing that we often miss is the question of what it actually means to have the choice of whether to obtain an abortion. Aside from whether abortion is actually legal where you live, what other barriers may exist that may prevent someone from being able to choose abortion in the first place? What obstacles, such as cost, ability to physically get to a clinic, and social stigma, make it so that abortion is not a viable o...
Dec 14, 2021•49 min
In the midst of nationwide abortion restrictions, one topic receiving a lot of attention is the idea of “mail-order” or telemedicine abortion. Previous Femtastic episodes have covered what medication abortion is and how you can access it in all 50 states through various channels. Today, we are talking to Hey Jane , one company providing telemedicine abortion in a few U.S. states (and hopefully more soon)! Hey Jane’s CEO Kiki Freedman joins the podcast to discuss why she started Hey Jane and how ...
Nov 30, 2021•32 min
medical research gap: a disparity that exists because the vast majority of biological literature is based on single sex studies of males of European ancestry. Did you know that it wasn't until 1993 that it was required for women to be included in clinical trials? Or that as of 2018, 78% of people included in key genomic research were of European ancestry? The implications of gender and racial exclusion in medical and scientific research has had huge (negative) implications for the health of us a...
Nov 15, 2021•45 min
Enid Zentellis thought she knew everything about her Holocaust-surviving, Olympic swimming-qualifying, nudist Hungarian grandmother. But when she discovered that she might have also been a spy for the Allies, it not only caused her to reconsider WWII history, it helped lift her out of her personal grief and helped to understand the power of individual resistance. Today on the podcast is award-winning filmmaker and newly-minted podcaster, Enid Zentellis . In her podcast, “ How My Grandmother Won ...
Nov 02, 2021•49 min
Today on the podcast is Kacie Willis, creator of the podcast “ You Heard Me Write ," a Spotify Studios production. Kacie is an arts advocate who brings together Atlanta-based creatives from different disciplines and backgrounds through art. The series has amassed wide popularity, recently trending on Spotify because of its wildly creative, immersive format. Each episode features emerging writers, musicians, sound designers and dynamic thinkers who collaborate on a multimedia project without know...
Oct 19, 2021•59 min
This year marks the 100 year anniversary of the founding of the American Birth Control League, and while we've come a long way since then, fierce battles for reproductive rights are still being waged today. Today’s interview is with Planned Parenthood's North Central States CEO Sarah Stoesz, a fierce advocate of over 20 years who has been fighting for reproductive health access in a reliably conservative part of the country. We're also joined by award-winning author Ames Sheldon, grand-niece of ...
Oct 05, 2021•56 min
After decades of pursuing public health policies to reduce unintended pregnancies in South Carolina, New Morning President & CEO Bonnie Kapp had a bold idea. What if we made birth control available at little to no cost in every community, in every county, for every person with a uterus in South Carolina, regardless of health insurance coverage? What if we did this against a backdrop of relentless political attacks on reproductive rights and a weak healthcare infrastructure, where 30% of coun...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 11 min
Did you know that childcare is now more expensive than college in 33 states ? While parenthood is beautiful, there's no need to go into it blind. If you're planning to start a family, now is the time to start planning for the financial costs of child-rearing, both from the perspective of short-term, monthly cash-flow and the long-term implications that parenthood-related career choices have on lifetime earnings and savings. Here to talk on the podcast are experts in financial family planning: Si...
Sep 07, 2021•1 hr 12 min
On September 1, Texas enacted S.B. 8, an outrageous abortion ban that not only amounts to an effective total ban on abortions, but creates a bizarre bounty hunter situation where anyone can sue another person for assisting someone who has an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy - and be rewarded with $10,000 plus attorney fees if they succeed. In a country of draconian abortion laws, this is the most wack-a-doodle one yet, and probably the scariest - as the Supreme Court, in a signal of how the...
Sep 03, 2021•1 hr 12 min
While women make up half the population, you may have noticed that women's health is treated like a niche category. Today on the podcast to talk about innovation (or the historical lackthereof) in women's health is Amanda French, co-founder and CEO of Emme , a healthcare technology company that wants to bring birth control out of the 1950s. Emme recently launched the first Smart Case for birth control (and accompanying app) to help pill users better manage their health and never miss a pill agai...
Aug 24, 2021•1 hr 9 min
While accepting her Academy Award for Best Actress in 2018, Frances McDormand shouted out a word that set the internet aflutter: Inclusion Rider. In a 2019 Femtastic Oscars Edition podcast, Katie interviewed one of the co-authors of the inclusion rider, law partner in civil rights and employment, Kalpana Kotagal , to introduce us to the concept. An inclusion rider is a clause added onto a contract, and usually an A-lister's contract, that requires diversity both on-screen and off in the hiring f...
Aug 10, 2021•56 min
As the cannabis industry is booming and on the precipice of federal legalization, it must figure out how it will traverse and address racial and gender equity in its workforce. While folks who have been incarcerated for non-violent cannabis offenses are overwhelmingly people of color, those getting funding and attention in the legalized cannabis industry have often been white men. STIIIZY is a brand changing that paradigm. A Los Angeles-based cannabis company in 5 states, women of color are at t...
Jul 27, 2021•50 min
Medication abortion, or "the abortion pill," is an incredibly safe method of abortion that can be used up to about the first 11 weeks of pregnancy. Many people prefer this method to an in-clinic abortion due to the lower cost and the ability to manage the pregnancy termination to a large extent at home, on their own terms - but there's plenty of stigma and confusion around it (like the fact that "the abortion pill" is actually a regimen of two different meds, taken as 5 pills total). Worse, ther...
Jul 13, 2021•56 min
On March 22, 2020, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that prohibited procedures that were not "medically necessary," claiming that this would preserve personal protective equipment and reduce demands on hospital-based care. Despite the fact that abortion rarely occurs in hospitals, Attorney General Ken Paxton chose to interpret the order to include abortion in defiance of professional medical associations’ recommendations that acces...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Today on the podcast is Jo Tolley , an advocate for disability, equity, and diversity. As someone who uses a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy, Jo spent most of her life running from the label of “disabled.” In the past few years, she has decided to embrace her disability to become an advocate to change our perceptions around disability from being a dichotomy between “disabled” and “non-disabled” people, to instead thinking of disability as just another facet of diversity. Jo talks on the podcast...
Jun 14, 2021•57 min
On May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , a case out of Mississippi that would that ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Depending on how the court rules on this case (and given the conservative make-up, it's not looking good), Roe v. Wade could either be entirely overturned or the court could give the green-light to states to further restrict abortion access - which is already logistically inaccessible to millions of Ameri...
Jun 02, 2021•50 min
