Notorious RBG

you spared life? Could you prepare her right if you tried? Are you the parents type prepared to fight for the writer's choice? And yeah, embarrassed by the choice if it's just a parasite. Why your eyes all boys? Because it's difficult to call the child the choice when a tiny boys inside you was crying out that it's your bright and joy is nobody tells you you conceive it, you could grieve it because I always see is the stigmatization of a procedure, feeding off this information and trait and

conversation for secrets. I am dope knife franca, So how's everybody doing? I don't know why I keep sucking, asking how everybody's doing out there. I want to know. I keep thinking, I keep thinking that we're alive. I misperforming anyway. Okay, so it is a little bit after eleven and in a little under an hour is going to be Lingua Franca's birthday. If I sound really excited, you feeling you're

feeling good there about that. It's funny because I was talking to my family today and they were talking about next year the Big three, oh for me, and so how we're gonna all get together once hopefully coronavirus is behind us, and it's like the last big birthday milestone I have tilling forty. I mean after that, then it's I think it's it's best to start celebrating it in five years and rules after that, you know what I'm saying.

I don't know what is going to occur politically between when we're recording this Monday night and on Thursday, when you guys hear this. I have some predictions, you have some predictions. This is this is in a way, this is similar to our very very first episode, The Emergency, because something happened on the fly that we felt, hey, we we took a break, so we could work on some new episodes, and then something else happened that we

kind of felt we had to address. But before we get into all that, Mariah, won't you tell everybody about the work that you're doing this past weekend. Yeah. So on Saturday, I drove down to us of the Georgia. It's about three and a half hours from here to the Irwin County Detention Center where a group called SOMMO South Georgia reporting it together a protest in support of the folks being held there as well as the women who um, it was revealed, have been given for sister

actomy is at the center there. And so there were folks who came out from all over there. I met, um, some folks from Florida, folks from Atlanta representing Yeah, it's like a hundred people came through. Yeah, I met a girl who drove down from Indiana. So folks came from all over and we had like a caravan's last march. Um. They wanted us at the first to all just be in like a car caravan, like honking, to let the

t dannies inside know that we were outside. You know, it's all dirty with them, partially because there was like an armed fascist presence. I was just about to say it was there was there police presence, heavy police presence. Yeah, cop cars everywhere everywhere everywhere, UM, as well as like some like armed got some pickup trucks with like Trump flags hanging. Yeah. And so thankfully we didn't have much interaction with the cops or with the UM the fascists.

There was like a small altercation, but I wasn't really UM there for that. I just saw some video online afterwards.

But it was really cool, mostly because UM the speakers that we you know, afterwards gathered and heard from some folks from throughout South Georgia and the intersectionality of the struggles related to UM, you know, ice and like the president industrial complex and like women's bodily autonomy, especially with the passage of the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Um the night before thinking about UM, the pro life movement and like it's silence around, like what what's been happening

down in Irwin County Attention Center, Because we had folks talking about the fact that they UM had seen this this doctor before, have been treated by him, and he had actually like recommended his directors for folks who wanted to have children, and so like the way that we can see of our roman's right to choose as kind of unidirectional, like we think about the right to an abortion, but also how important it is to enable folks to have kids if they wanted to have like the economic

conditions in their lives and the healthcare options available to them in their lives to like have kids if they wanted, and like that that autonomy is is bi directional, like you know, it's it's your right to do whatever you want. Um. And so we heard from folks representing like Black Lives Matter, who was like highlighting they had speakers, yeah, who were um talking about how many uh, you know, black detainees

there are. We think of it as a struggle that is faced by folks from you know, South America and Central America and Mexico, but like actually a lot of data detainee is our Haitian or Cameroonian or you know, for a lot of places, and so you know, black immigrant lives matter too, um. And so yeah, it was really exhilarating, uplifting, um, even though I kind of departed wishing, like protests, we gotta do what we can. We gotta

be back here in the streets. But like, you know, we drove away, and those detainees are still behind those walls, and you know, we're still still there tonight. We're still there tonight. And yeah, that kind of like haunted means

staying with me. And so I'm kind of glad we're talking about Roe v. Wade today with like some of those messages lingering after that protest, of like hearing from folks talk about their experiences with the reproductive healthcare reproductive rights um and remembering how all these struggles are intertwined.

So with the sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg over the weekend, it just felt particularly timely to talk about the subject of abortion and Roe v. Wade, the struggle for women's bodily autonomy and what hip hop is that to say about the topic over the years. So let's get into a little history about this epic landmarks Supreme Court ruling back in nineteen seventy three. So in nineteen sixte twenty two year old Texas resident Norman

mccorby became pregnant with their third child. She decided two kids was enough, but in Texas, at the time, abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life and some m Corby, or Jane Roe, as she was known in the courts of the media, got a lawsuit in federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade,

claiming that the law banning most abortions in Texas was unconstitutional. Now, first, the U. S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas ruled in her favor, but the Supreme Court of Texas appealed this directly to the Supreme Court, who would

go on to hear the Roe v. Wade case. So in January of nineteen seventy three, the Supreme Court ruled seven to two that the you process clause of the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the right of privacy, also protects a pregnant person's right to choose to have an abortion or not, which struck down many state and federal abortion laws. Of note, the author of the Supreme Court world view Wade opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun. Blackmun, I

think so yeah. Well, he was a Nixon appointee, and he was joined by two of the other three Knicks and appointees at the time so there was a point in time in which Rob Wade enjoyed bipartisan support de facto by the you know, by right of their appointee, their appointment to the Court by Nixon. So they're not even doing it for necessarily ideological reasons, but because yeah. So Granted, this did not strike down all state restrictions

on abortion. Indeed, the court ruled that these mights must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and protecting prenatal life, a balancing test. They resolved by saying that during the first tribmester of pregnancy, governments could

not prohibit abortion at all. During the second trimester, the government could require reasonable health regulations, and that during the third trimester of pregnancy, abortions could be entirely been except in cases where they were necessary to save the life or health of a pregnant person. Trying to remember which

comedian it was. I think it might have been like Bill Maher back in the day, who had a little a bit where he was like, if dudes could get pregnant, you'd be able to get an abortion at the drive through McDonald's. Yeah, you can get the vending machine some ship, But as a result of this balancing test in the way that it allowed for some state restrictions on abortion. As a result, laws very significantly from state to state.

For example, twelve states restrict coverage abortion and private insurance plans, and forty five states allow individual healthcare providers to refuse to participate in an abortion, and then forty two states also allow institutions to refuse to perform abortions. Eighteen states mandate that women be given counseling before abortions that include information on at least one of the following the purported link between abortion and breast cancer. At five states, the

ability of a feat is to feel pain. That's in't thirteen states, or the long term mental health consequences for the woman, and that's in eight states. Twenty states require women seeking an abortion to wait a specified period of time, usually twenty four hours, between when she receives his counseling and when the procedure is performed. Thirteens of these states have laws that effectively require the women to make two

separate trips to the clinic to obtain a procedure. In places like Georgia, where we have I don't know three providers in the whole state. That would mean driving several hours to go get your counseling, also not only afford the abortion, but also afford a hotel room to stay the night to then actually have the procedure the next day, and then like the last is parental involvement. In thirty seven states requires some sort of parental involvement in the

minor's decision to have an abortion. Twenty seven states require one or both both parents to consent on the procedure, while ten require that one or both parents be notified. So the idea that anywhere in America that there exists abortion on demand, Whether you think that's wrong or right or not, it's another thing. But the fact that anybody thinks that that exists is proof of how effective the

propaganda is. Yeah, it's it's really interesting that folks I think, like a lot of like libs that in blue states aren't even going to be impacted by this at all. The way, Um, that's the point. The point. The point is that it becomes a privilege and that only rich people can do it. Yeah, abortion will always be available

to rich people. This just makes it harder for poor people to have the right to choose what happens in their lives and of worse comes to worse, and Trump is able to install a new Supreme Court justice before January? Who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, says that sweeping bands could be imposed in twenty states that are home to an

estimated twenty five million women of childberry age. So yeah, I mean a lot drafted consequences for the rest of US. Last year's anti abortion legislation in several Southern states sparked

a many outcry from some mainstream hip hop figures. Atlanta rapper Offset from the group Me Gooes, as well as Dreamville rapper j I D had some tweets to say about the topic, with Offset stating, quote the new laws as slavery to force rape victims to keep the child as slavery, I'm not proud to say I'm from America, and j I D chimed in with quote the Georgia abortion bills ship is fucking dumb. This country don't give

a funk about women for real. Perhaps the most outspoken of the mainstream hip hop figures to speak about those abortion bands was Alabama rapper Chica who got to use the Jimmy Kimmel stage to do her song Richie Versus Alabama, which was directly about the issue at hand. Alabama they were trying to criminalize abortion by passing a heartbeat bill, meaning the six week banning abortion after the six week mark, wherein most women have no idea that they're pregnant, but

that's when the fetal heartbeat is first detected. I mean bands like these impact for people and people of color

the most. Um, Black women have been found to be four times as likely as white women to have an abortion in our lifetimes, and these laws are often passed in states like Georgia, like Alabama that have high populations of people of color UM and who also through you know defunding of social services through like a weekend social safety net, have little the way is of time and resources to be traveling multiple hours to go to a clinic or to go make an appointment twice and give

to sit through counseling UM or even you know access in the healthcare to have an O B G Y in you see regularly too, you know, find out if you're pregnant for sure, without a time frame where you can actually go see someone to get the procedure if you need it. So, um, it's no surprise, really, um that hip hop has spoken out given the way that

does impact communities of color disproportionately. So what do you think is at the heart of the argument for those who are against abortion, like those people who would call themselves pro life? Do you do you think it's like a genuine argument or that that is coming from a genuine place, or we you know the or at the root of it, or we're just talking about misogyny, internalized

and original recipe. It's hard for me to say, because I'm I don't know intimately a ton of pro life people or don't choose to spend a lot of time

discussing these matters with those who I do know. I can't help but feel like it's about just grinding the least among us into abject misery through and purely because of its coupling with you know this, this staunch opposition to abortion, with this commitment to do funding social services to make it impossible, or if you have a child, that you can put them, put the child in in pre K and have access to childcare, that they have good schools, that they could go to that you have

a job that pays you enough to make sure the kid, can you know, have the right baby books and get the nice formula and have you know, all the diapers and all the things that you need. Like, I can't help but see these two um, these policy fetiship is

wedded together within a singular ideology. It can't be anything but pure malice if you show me the person that exists that is like anti gun, is against every war, who's saying no death penalty for anyone, feed the homeless, take care of the poor, and also there are pro life. I don't have to agree with that person, but at least I can accept that person is coming from a genuine place that it's like, hey, you believe that ship,

you know what I'm saying. But some motherfucker who's got Trump on the back of their pickup truck and then they own like seventy five guns and having wet dreams about killing Antifa and ship talking about save the children, pro life, get the fuck out of here with that ship. Yeah, And like I love war and I can't I can't look past that because it's you of honesty. At that point, it's like the whole premise of the argument is false. So then it just comes across like you're disingenuous and

you feel like a big fucking troll. And then I don't even want to engage with you to hear any of you blah blah blah. I can't help but feel that way. And I think it might be, you know, a lack of understanding, like maybe if I truly understood

where people are coming from with like empathy factor. Yeah, but just when you look at that whole suite of policy obsessions together, it just doesn't it doesn't seem like anything but uh, trying to make life totally miserable for a certain subsect of the population, subset of the population. It looks like a duck cracks like a duck. So, Mac,

you came across some original research right on this topic. Yeah, it came across an original research article titled Abortion and Contemporary Hip Hop a Thematic Analysis of Lyrics from two thousand and fifteen. It's pretty formal research with the objective to evaluate the representation of abortion and contemporary hip hop, gaining insight into a myriad of attitudes of abortion in the black community. And it was put together by She's from Kumar, Catherine Brown, Bisa, and Andrew F. V. Jackson.

Pretty Much, what they did is they used the rap lyric search engine Genius and compiled some keywords and phrases having to do with family planning, abortion, et cetera. And they analyzed it and you know, went through what they found. Now, the most obvious and striking result to me was that out of the six thousand, five hundred and seventy seven songs available, a total of one hundred and one songs performed formed by a hundred and twenty two individual artists

met the criteria. The majority of the artists were black men. Five artists were black women. I mean, I think just the propor like, I feel like that's proportionate to the numbers the number of like professional recording artists, you know, men versus women. It doesn't surprise me that there are so many men speaking out an issue if it doesn't really have fucking a thing to do with them, it's

not really their fucking business. I mean, like, okay, okay, oh no, that number seems mad low yo, Like, Like, I mean I think that, first of all, I think way more women raped than is represented in that number, right, or is that true. I mean, like, like if we're also fostering it to the lens of just bias in the industry, it was a lot fewer professional female recording artists on a level that not even I don't haven't's

like five of us. I don't know. Well, I mean, if this list has like a hundred or so male rappers that are rapping about abortion and then you've got like fifty or so female rappers talking about it, then I but I mean five because I can think off the top of my head five rappers that are female that I know aren't on this list that I don't know. Maybe I was naive, but I just expected that, whether it be the issue of abortion directly or the things around that, I thought this list was going to be

filled with female mcs. Now, some key themes that they found in terms of how abortion was used in songs was the use of abortion as braggadocio, equating abortion with sin, genocide, murder, male pressure for women to seek abortion, and and specific association of planned parenthood services with abortion. Now, I did not use there their collection of songs to put together

our list. Um, but with that said, I found just keeping it real The general attitude towards the topic of abortion and hip hop over the years has been one from a I think stark and undeniable conservative angle. I mean, hip hop being what it is and you hearing the results, it's obviously a male centric point of view, but even when it's the women of hip hop speaking on the subject, it's rarely, if ever presented as like a joyous celebration

of liberation, you know. And there's definitely a heavy religious angle to it too, but you know that can be something that we can't even cover another episode. But let's get to these songs. Yeah, so let's take into some of these representations, starting with Fresh and the track abortion Baby. Yis yo na what? Yeah? Y'all need to see Maria's face right now. So he's just buying into like the fucking welfare queen even on eighties standards. That ship trash

trash trash song. Okay, So first of all, it opens up with Rockabye Baby. You know how like in all the movie trailers now they play like a familiar theme but with creepy piano. Well, this ship's got the creepy piano version of Rockabye Baby to start it out, Like you're getting ready to watch the new Chucky movie or some ship. It really comes across as like some Christian right the more that you go into it, it really

is on some like Christian right ship. Some of the lyrics include all of us were born into a life of sin. That's something in the jeans buried deep within. On the hookie raps about the world's morals being out of proportion. And then, of course, to start off the fucking song, he's saying, girl, you must be crazy to kill a newborn baby, So I mean, heikes, but to give or take life, you gotta pay the price. What

does that mean? What price does that mean? I'm pretty sure that I remember in two thousand sixteen when Trump was running for office and he was saying that if if somebody, if a woman gets an abortion, that she should, you know what I'm saying, be charged prosecuted. So sounds just in line with that straight out of the Duckie Fresh joint. I mean, yeah, that should straight up. It's like it's like some religious propaganda. It's super high cringe levels.

All right, let's go to the next one. You got laft or fetal, Yeah, lafem fetal by Digible Planets. The song is it has always been around, it will always have a niche, but they'll make it a privilege not accessible only to the rich. Hey dah talking about fighting the fucking fascists ninety one, what's up? So Yeah, it definitely has a strong narrative approach. Yeah, and it has a storytelling approach. Um that finds Butterfly the rapper, being called over to some friends house who just found out

they were pregnant. Um, they want to get an abortion. They're worried about being harassed by anti abortion protesters at the clinic, and the song just plays out is like, you know, this guy having the conversation with his friends. I can almost imagine the story taking place in like

the nineties, seventies or something. If you know Digible Planets or have ever heard them, especially that first album Reaching It has like that retro jazzy vibe to it, So I can almost imagine this story playing out in the seventies before Roe v. Wade or shortly after. Yeah, it's

very spoken word like and it's very political. They talk about the socio economic like pressures that way into the decision of keeping a child or not and out of all of these songs, it's the only one where Ropie Wade is actually addressed directly by now yeah yeah yeah, And then they clearly call out anti abortion activists that's fascists and talking about fighting the fash and the way the Butterfly went about writing that conversation with his friend

telling him that she's pregnant. Our love was a third and spontaneity has brought a third, but due to our youth and our economic state, we wish to terminate. And for this we don't feel great with baby. That's how it is. That's how it is. That's one of those stink face bars, you know when a rhyme is so dope that should just make you make a face like you smell something stink. The next the next one is

also like a really creative take on the issue. This is Jane Gray with my story before friends that dope. So she spoke to dj booth dot com about the song and said the following. The whole idea was, no, I wanted to do a song that was this real about it taking you into the room, the anesthetic you're going through the whole process, especially experiencing as a teenager and not having anyone to share it with. I'm not really sure whether it's autobiographical or she's playing characters in

the different verses or not. It sounds like some of it is drawing from Like it feels like some of it's drawing from real experiences. Then some of it is like, oh, man, I had no idea that Jean Gray went through that. If that's real, you know, Um, there's a part where she talks about having three kids she'll never see it's still being equated to murder someone. Yeah, but I think

that's that's real. Like that sense of regret regardless of what your stance is, uh, you know, in my own experience, like being like very staunch feminists and like, oh of course, like you know, being twenty two three years old, I thought like, I can't you know, have a kid, but you know, that lingering sense of that lingering sense of like wondering what could have been and if you made the right decision, et cetera. I think, yeah, that hits everyone,

and so that's really rude those thoughts. I think they can exist at the same time for sure. Yeah. I mean, these days, I'm very glad for what I did that I have the life that I have now, I definitely still don't think, you know, I could have you know, be a good parent at this point in my life, and I wouldn't want to put a kid through that. Um. But uh yeah, you can like know you did the right thing and feel bad about it at the same time. So popular rapper Nicki Minaj is touched on the subject

a couple of times in her songs. With one of her songs All Things Go, she makes a little bit of a reference about getting an abortion as a teenager. It's really just in passing. It's not really a focus at all, But in an earlier song Autobiography, she goes into it with the whole verse keep conceive the concept of w Yeah. I think she's working through a lot of the questions that come up, the things that linger

on your mind. And I think that's like healthy and I'm kind of happy for her that she had an artistic space in which to do that, because they are things that can stay with you for a long time. I know want people to think that's all it is like, to be too scared to go forward with something that's right for you because of these representations of the mental anguish. It's just like, uh, yeah, it is like a complex thing.

There's a sense of relief and a sense of getting your life back, and then there's you know, also these glimpses of just wondering, all right next to someone who's kind of become a show favorite at this point. But this is no name with the song Bye Bye Baby, like this muscle hesitated almost wait king, yeah, it's it's personification, she says to DJ dot Com of a mother who

has an abortion and the baby. I feel like whenever I hear people talking about abortion, they typically take the love out of it, as if it can never be a loving act, as if it's only done out of hate or desperation. I know women who have gone through that experience and there hasn't been like a song for them or a moment of cartharsis and healing for them in music. That ship was just important to me as

a woman, as someone who cares about these women. I mean, I think that's dope to try to create through art a space of healing for other people, since if catharsis when they see themselves reflected in the content of a song important part of normalized thing that the turbulence of that decision making process. Books go through with the anguish of of figuring out what's right for them, and so I think it's really dope that you create up. That's the famous Tupac line from the song keep your Head Up.

I can only speak for myself, but I would imagine that there's a lot of men my age whole like opinion on the topic is based off of hearing that line when they were like twelve or thirteen. Yeah no, I was like, no, cat for real, Like, yeah, I feel like I've given some of the pervasive stigma on abortion within like the black community and then within the

hip hop community especially. This was sort of like the vanguard of him to say at that point in time, even that just a couple of years or the air, Douggi Fresh was talking about how our morals are all blown out of proportion and ship all right up next, oh boy, look, I'm just we keep it real on the show, all right, just call it how I see it. Next one is pretty cringe e as well, But this is Nick Cannon with can I live? Oh my god, that's the price of living? What mommy like this clinic?

Hopefully you make the right decision, Okay, Okay, okay, wrap it up, Nick Cannon. Um, okay, So first thoughts, that's bad, all right. So he wraps as if he's, you know, like he's the baby in his mother's womb, and he's like, I guess talking to her with telepathy or something, and it's trying to convince her not to go through with the abortion. So like he's saying, ship like, Mommy, I don't like this clinic. Just throw up in my mouth

a little bit. Um. He's even squirming so that she feels him moving, and the hook has the refrain cannot live and they say that a couple of times. By Anthony Hamilton's on the hooks, it's kind of cringe. But at the end of it, he's got a little disclaimer ad libs where you know, he kind of lets you know that it's just a story and he's not passing any judgment. It's a matter of fact. Let me read this verbatim because I want to quote him on this, all right, and these ad libs, Nick says, this is

real uplifting, y'all. I ain't passing no judgments, ain't making no decisions. I'm just telling you my story. I love life and I love my mother forgiving me life. And I think those you know, those perspectives are valuable too, to let people know that in a world where you may feel forced to to uh not half a child, if you choose to do that yourself and like find

joy in that and enjoying motherhood, that's the beautiful thing too. Um. We didn't include the Lauren Hill song Zion on this list, but her song Zion is pretty much about that same exact concept of her getting pregnant at the height of her fame and the people around her telling her, you know that she should get rid of the child, but her keeping it now the joy in her world is Zion. Y'all know that fucking song. I didn't put it on here because it don't got any wraps in it. Next

we got coming in. This song actually features Lauren Hill, but this is a song retrospect for life with a gun. What's the really thought? I was gone to take the life on my side. I could have sacrifice going out to think my home. We did it, I used to choke about from now on you felt control instead of control because we got an abortion for three I want that, you gotta you know, Yeah, inflation is a bit is either that or those are like fucking Walmart value sales

or something. I don't know. I don't want to hate, I don't want to judge anything. I think. I think it does a very nuanced represent It's a very nuanced representation of the conversation that people have. You know, No, I agree with you. I think if for somebody who's worried about messaging, the first verse by itself can might make you a little ways the song leading, but when you take the whole song into account, paints like a bigger picture about like what Commons trying to say with

the song as a whole. The first verse definitely find with some of some of the other things that we've listened to. But but that second verse does come in strong to kind of just round it out and not even necessarily switch up what he's talking about from the first verse, but just giving you a more you know, rounded uh opinion about it. But we're gonna end it there. We've got a ton of notable mentions for you. Just some other songs for you to check out that are

about this topic if you're interested. Um J. Cole has Lost Ones. Tech nine has a real interesting one called Real killer Um arrested development the group, not the show. They had a track called Warm Sentiments and that was dope as well. I think we got to end the show. What's about it for the day, trying to try to feel like I mean, it's past it's past twelve, so it's your birthday. You're officially twenty nine. We gotta get

the birthday freestyle. Okay, birthday, since my mother chose to have me, let's do a little do little celebration freestyle. So make sure you go check out my heart reparations on Instagram. Shout out to jan Cosby for the beats. This episode hit us up on our personal ship. Do all that ship? I do it now? Uh uh yo? Betteral abortion lot? How they gets struck down? What then? How are they gonna go and pick a judge down?

RBG so hasn't even see something now, but they're gonna go and try to stop me from driving to Atlanta and my gelapi sit down in a little clintic lobby wheezing in savvy. When I think about trying to be a mop, me not me. I got too many jobbs and hobbies yo yo. But Counto said he got the votes, so he said, but they really want to overturn roby Way. They want to push the judge through with no delay. It's like two thousand sixteen. They press replay. You can

see the hypocrisy. But these motherfucker's looking like the Nazis be if they get another judge, Homie, we will not be free protesting outside. They will lock these streets with a power to be killing true, and Trump's gonna parton out still in groop. Don't follow the mold, don't care what you told. You don't gotta like Buyen. I don't care if he's old. But if you think that's crazy, you're really gonna be bad when they bring back slavery ship.

I'm legal, Franka, I'm dope Knife. We are waiting on reparation, Aria Waiting on Reparations as a production of I Heart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.