Abortion Whenever You Need It

finale as we get through Women's History Month. It's not lost on me at all, and it shouldn't be lost on any of you that during the month of Women's History a time for us to celebrate the matriarchs of this country, right of people who have given so much and done so much to advance women's rights and voice in this country. That during this time there is a

full honest by Republicans. And I've said this before that Republicans are using the states of Florida and Texas to test some of their most egregious and draconian laws against women and people with uteruses. You know. So today on today's show, I welcome back our friend Danielle Campomore, who

is a reporter with tooday dot com. And Danielle has been doing woke f through so many years because she is one of the few abortion rights activists that I know that does everything within her power one to share her own story of abortion, but also to lift up the stories of so many women and to make it clear for us and know on certain terms what women, particularly poor women and women of color, are going to be up against in this country that even as we

are watching these terrible laws come into effect in Texas with the vigilante law essentially providing anyone, your neighbor, your uber driver, the fucking person at the checkout counter, with the ability to sue you right for ten thousand dollars if in fact they think that you are going out to go and get an abortion. Imagine being sued by multiple people at one time. Sounds a little bit like bankruptcy. It also sounds like frivolousness as it pertains to our

criminal justice system. Right. Nonetheless, these laws that are going into effect highlight one very important and clear thing is that without the ability to control our own bodies, right, that means that we then don't control our work, right,

our ability to work. That means then and this is what I have said before, and plenty of people love to say, oh, Danielle, you know that sounds conspiratorial, But like, let's be clear, if women are forced out of the workplace because now they're having being forced into force birth, forced pregnancy, meaning that they then can't hold down jobs.

And we already saw what happened with the pandemic in twenty twenty and remote learning and how millions of women were forced out of the workplace because we don't actually care about children outside of the uterus in this country, We could give a fuck. And so what happens then all of these women are forced out of the workforce? What providing a clear pathway once again to white cis head of Rome men to be able to continue their domination, right, Like, what is the goal here? Is it the fear which

I've heard before of the demographic shift? So white men in power believe that if they can force white women into forced birth, then what their demographics will continue to rise? Like? What is the fucking endgame here? And this is the thing that I constantly ask and you know, and I will ask Danielle. I think that cruelty is just the point.

What is the endgame? I think it's power, right, the ability to wield power over a population of people, which it makes up more than half of this fucking country. But if you can control a women's reproductive cycles, right, then you can control pretty much any aspect of her life, right,

which then leaves men incomplete and total power. And the thing that frustrates me, and I've said this before, is that we have allowed Republicans to run away with the label of the Party of Family Values when they don't care about your family. Because if they did, then you would have paid family leave, that our paid family leave

wouldn't be abysmal in comparison to other industrialized nations. Do you know that there are countries that give women an entire year off paid You mean that they don't have to cobble together their vacation time and disability time and then whatever it is the benevolence of their employer to

give them six weeks or eight weeks. I have a younger cousin who currently works at a daycare for babies as young as young folks as a month old, and she has talked to me about how heartbreaking it is for these new mothers, these new parents to drop off their four week old child in daycare right to a stranger so that they could go in and go to work to afford daycare, because they know, particularly as women that if they leave the workforce right for a year in order to be able to tend to this new

life that Republicans say is so fucking important, then they're going to lose footing in their jobs. Then they're going to have to explain the gap on their resume. And while of course you would say, oh, wonderful, how amazing, you're out there like doing one of the most important jobs, which is creating a whole human right and making sure that they are healthy and well and learning and productive and all of these things that you would be rewarded for that, but we don't do that in this country.

We hold it against you, right. It's why we had to put laws in place so that women who were pregnant wouldn't be fired from the workplace, so that employers wouldn't have to provide maternity leave or paternity leave. We've always had to lobby and fight for these things. And so you would think that in a country that doesn't provide any care for children, that abortion would be like a no brainer, but no, we want to control every

single aspect. And so in this conversation with Danielle, you know, we will talk about what women in places like Texas are facing. How the bordering states that still do provide abortion are being overrun with women and people coming in from Texas seeking care that they can no longer get that.

You know, we are seeing laws in places like Florida that don't even have carve outs anymore for abortion in the event that the pregnancy is threatening the life of the mother, or that this pregnancy is a product of incest, human trafficking, or rape. Like, what hind of world are

we living in right now? What kind of country? How can we say that we are an industrialized, democratic nation when women in this country, particularly if you are black and brown, right, are free ish If you don't have the ability to decide when, how and if you start a family, how are you free? You know? And I had somebody recently on TikTok want to pop off and say, well, if women weren't using abortion as birth control, people should keep their legs closed. And I'm like, are you fucking stupid?

Because first of all, abortion is at an all time low, right and has been at an all time low right just for by virtue of abortion being available doesn't mean it's being used like fucking tik taks, right, it is for a lot of people a really difficult decision to make, so they're not giving it and doing it willy nilly,

as if the procedure itself isn't like difficult. And I'm not saying that you need to have a sob story, right, because that is the point too with telling abortion stories, right, with being very upfront and honest, that there are people that are like, yeah, no, I don't regret it. I wouldn't have the job that I have, I wouldn't have the life that I had. I was not ready right, and like, let that just be what it is. We shouldn't have to say things like, oh, abortion needs to

be you know, healthy, safe and rare. Right, it needs to be whenever you need it, however you need it. But the thing is is that we don't trust we don't trust women in this country. We don't trust them to make decisions. And this goes back to our roots and misogyny and patriarchy, which are still ever present. If you think about this, if America had ever passed the Equal Rights Act, I remember the RARA from thirty fucking years ago. Oh we don't need that was what Republicans

love to say, and some Democrats, Oh, women are already equal. Well, really, are you sure? Because had we done that, then no decision that was going to be made right by Mitch McConnell and a handful of white evangelical Christians would have any effect on us because it would be codified law. But that's not the case. Women are unsafe in this country.

And what always kills me is that we love to go abroad wag our fingers at the China's of the world, at the Saudis and the Irans and the Iraqs, and we love to talk about how they are so behind the times, not letting women drive and not letting women go to school, And I'm like, you don't let women

decide their own fucking healthcare? Right, We don't pay women the same as men, But yet we have a day on the calendar every single every single year, in the month of March to talk about equal pay, but actually not fucking do anything about it. So what we offer in this country is a facade of their being women's rights,

but there really isn't. Just think about this. The First Lady of the United States does a lot of work, right, entertaining, organizing, running different events, community engagement, blah blah, blah, doesn't get paid, doesn't get paid for four or eight years, because that is just what soft skills. We don't care about what you are doing inside of the homes of course, right the first Lady of the United States doesn't get a check cut by the American people because you're just there

as an ornament. That's what we think about women in this country. And so you know, I always get outdone by the fact that we still chant and march for the same things. Each generation of women marches in chance, the same thing that their mothers, their grandmothers, their aunts

all did. And so here we are at a point where we are setting up our young girls right in a country that does not see them as equal, that does not see them as powerful, that sees them as a threat to themselves, so much so that we need to throw you in jail for the decisions that you make about your own life, in your own body. This country is incredibly wild and scary and dark. And I don't even know what people are going to teach their young girls, right, like, oh, you can be anything that

you want to be, can you? Right? Can you really? Is that a true statement? Because there are glass ceilings and glass cliffs all around. For the first time in fifty years, girls that are going to be born in this country will not have bodily autonomy. We thought that that was behind us. It is now our present day reality where we are going to see women in this country what rushing the border to Mexico so that they

can get abortions there. America is in shambles. And coming up next is my conversation with our friend reporter for Today dot Com. If you're not following Danielle Campamore, you absolutely should follow her on Twitter, follow her writing at the Today Show. She is covering some of the most important topics and issues of our time. That conversation comes

to you now, folks. You know that I am always so happy when our friend Danielle Campomore, who is a reporter with the Today Show, comes to woke a f and gives us, you know, the mind blowing landscape on where we are in this country as it pertains to

reproductive rights, as it pertains to abortion. Because what we are seeing, Danielle, and you know we will get into is an assault on abortion, on reproductive care, on people with uteruses in a way that in all honesty, I don't know when was the last time you have seen such an aggressive push in so many states at one time on rolling back abortion care. Well one, thank you so much for having me. I always love to come

and talk to you about this topic specifically. I mean, really, this has been a decades long push, and I think it's been more covert and less obvious and unapologetic. You know, we saw Republicans and years prior ease off of some of the you know, in cases of rape or incest. You know, that was kind of something they conceded. They really went towards trying to limit the rules and laws of abortion care centers, and they would try and limit

the ability of abortion providers. They slowly and surely did whittle down some of the gestational age requirements, you know, and would work really hard to establish waiting time. So the assault is nothing new, But what has really given at Breath in Life is the makeup of the Supreme Court now this case in Mississippi, which is poised to completely gut and annihilate ROW and will allow subsequent states outside of Mississippi to ban abortion past fifteen weeks and

perhaps earlier. And we're seeing that happen in Texas, everyone's really focused on Scotus right now, But in Texas for more than six months, it has been illegal to access abortion care after six weeks. There is an embryo at six weeks, so there's not a heartbeat at six weeks, and so it really has forced people to leave the state. Now, medication abortion is the most popular way in which people

are accessing abortion care. They're getting pills online, they're getting pills from friends, and so it's nothing new, but it's definitely less apologetic by those who want to gut access to abortion care. They are abandoning any sort of sidestep in the case of rape or incest. There is a law coming out of a conservative state where it wouldn't allow even in the case of a woman's life being on the line, and it would designate abortion cares homicide.

So they're going back to a time where they didn't feel the need to concede. And it's because of the makeup of the Supreme Court. I mean, you know, Danielle, like just to think about the fact that the life of a person giving birth was seen as a concession right making carve outs for incest, rape, and I believe that in Florida the new legislation that was passed was it didn't even matter if you were trafficked, right, And so I'm thinking I want to other than scream, I

want to understand. And how is it that we are in twenty twenty two that we are going not even going backwards, I mean, we're going to a place that I don't know if we've ever been. What do you think that we are missing as Democrats in our messaging,

in our conversation around abortion? I mean, look, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, we had the Biden administrations first stated the Union and guess what abortion wasn't mentioned, Not the word, not reproductive care, nothing right, And so what what do you feel that Democrats are getting wrong

in this moment about how we move forward? Well, I mean, historically Republicans have never been afraid to stay the word abortion, and Democrats have always tried to sidestep it and use euphemisms instead of women's reproductive healthcare or reproductive healthcare or any of those you from that they use. And the Biden administration certainly picked up on that on the campaign trail he wasn't that afraid to say the word abortion. But since coming into office, he hasn't actually said the

word out loud. They did meet recently with abortion care advocates in the White House. Virtually many of those advocates were part of We Testify. They're a group of abortion storytellers that work to really center people who have abortions, and one advocate did press this administration to say the word because you cannot fight for something if you can't

say exactly what that thing is. Right after that meeting, the administration did release an announcement the first time in his time in office where it wrote the word out twice. Abortion appeared twice. So advocates are really pushing this administration to before anything else, you have to say the word out loud. You have to not be so apologetic and stigma enforcing when you're trying to fight for the very

people who put you into office. And so that has change more than anything, because again this is nothing new

from the Republican Party. We can all recall the time when Todd Aiken I believe his name was said that in terms of a legitimate rape a woman pregnant, I mean is this has been their messaging from jump It's the Democrats who need to be bold and unapologetic and stand beside and center the people that have abortions if they hope to combat these legislations, which many people don't believe they can do at this point given the Supreme

Court makeup. I mean, you know when you say the two words bold and unapologetic are not what I associate with the current makeup of the Democratic Party. I'm just going to be honest, and I am not certain that people understand the urgency. And I say this all the friggin time, the urgency of the moment that we're in.

You know, when we saw Texas a couple of months ago and you would come on the show, we saw Texas and we set, oh my god, they've gotten so savvy because it's really hard to take this case, to take the legislation to court, because you need it to have have been used, right, And so they have gotten savvier in the way that they write the laws that the that the threat of its existence is enough without actually having any vigilantes using the ten thousand dollars bounty, right,

And so what navigations do we need to understand if if we're at a place as Democrats and can't even utter the word abortion, then how are we, to your point, how are we to create strategies to combat this if we don't talk about it right Well, I think abortion centering, abortion storytellers and people who've had abortions is paramount. And we saw that play out in the House where we had women of color, predominantly black women and other women

of color congress. People share their abortion stories and say I've had abortions, and I'm a lawmaker, and this is why it matters. But what's really concerning And ask any abortion advocate and they'll tell you that they are the Canarian, the coal mind. How certain politicians attack access to abortion care is how they will go along to attack voting rights,

Q rights, And we're seeing playout right now. There are similar laws that the one enacted in Texas that are now being enacted against trans students, against teachers that are going to teach LGBTQ history. There's laws that are targeting librarians, and parents can can call on elected officials and have a librarian removed and potentially find and jailed if they're offering certain books to their kids, you know, And so this is wow. I think that so many advocates have

been saying for so long. If you can't care about this, if you can't fight for bodily sovereignty and autonomy and people's access to abortion care to decide when, when, if, and how they start their own families, you can't fight for voting rights, you can't fight for LGBTQ rights, you can't protect tran children, you can't protect access to information. All those things are going to go by the wayside

as well. And that I think is what is the scariest part of all of this is that this will be a domino effect not justin people's ability to access abortion care, but for kids to be able to be themselves in school, to have access to information, for people to vote, and now we're really talking about democracy entirely

and the makeup of this country. You know, one of the things that I want to ask you to and this came up, I don't I feel like it came up in like a Twitter conversation that I was having.

But you know, someone had said that they did not believe that, No, that they believed that part of the push by conservatives for abortion was to force white women into pregnancy because of the demographic shift and the fact that this country is going to be majority quote unquote minority in the next two decades, right, And so it is there some or have you heard of some kind of you know, master plan that is couched in white supremacy as many things are, that is about forcing white

women right to populate this country to preserve whiteness. Is that a crazy theory or have you have you heard it before? It's definitely something that I've heard before. And many abortion advocates, particularly black and brown people, but white LGBTQ young people will tell you the same. Really, if you just look at the data. That is also kind of born out of fact. The majority of people who are most impacted by anti abortion laws are black and

brown people, young people. They will be forced to give birth, while white affluent women will still be capable of accessing that care. This is also born into kind of this gop republican idea that if you ban abortion, you eliminate it entirely, and we're seeing that of Texas that that is not the case at all. While reports show that yes, abortions in Texas have gone down, abortions and neighboring states

have gone up, and it's people are just leaving. The people who can afford to leave again mostly white women. You know, people are also able to obtain medication abortion now, and so it's it's really a twofold of yes, they know that you know, black, brown, poor people will be most affected, will be pushed into motherhood, while those of affluent Wiens means and predominantly why will be able to

access that care. But also they just think that this is that it works, that abortion bands work, and studies show that they don't work. They just cause additional harm. They just harm families and communities and and so um.

And that's again that's what we're seeing happening now. You know, it's not lost on me that you know, this is Women's History month, right, this is this is a month to celebrate and put you know, women upfront, right and and and and really honor how far we have come, right, how far we've traversed from you know, literally being a

prop of patriarchy into being our very own people. And there is this constant, unrelenting effort by conservatives to make it so that women have no autonomy, that people with uteruses have no autonomy over their lives. Right, what I mean when you you've been doing this work for so long, Danielle. When you think about like the ideology that these people are subscribing to, what what do you think is driving them?

Is it that we do we not understand what the driving forces, so that then we don't understand how to stop it. No, I think we do understand, and I think we understand because they'll a lot of Goope politicians will happily tell you their views are based in a white, you know, Christian faith and ideology that has a very specific makeup of a family. That makeup is heteronormative in which a man leaves the house and the woman doesn't. And it's really faith based for many people, and the

Goop politicians they run on that. And we're seeing that more and more as more of the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the party are now coming to the forefront winning primary elections. There's a man running for office in Michigan just the other day now viral video where he's speaking about taking back the country. He wants to take back the election in hand it to Donald Trump, and he also says that he tells his three daughters that if rape it is inevitable, you might as well just lay

down and enjoy it. Those were no no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, I will send send you the video. His daughter actually in twenty twenty went viral where she tweeted out, please don't vote for my father, like, tell everyone, please don't vote for him. Well, he won the primary, he's poised to win that district in Michigan, and so, and he runs on a He'll tell you it's faith based. It's

he doesn't believe in feminism. He it's it's not difficult to know what we're up against because it's proudly marketed, and that is a platform that many people in the Republican Party are running on now. And so it's really just whether or not those in opposition have the stomach to confront those ideologies in clear ways that people can understand, to call them out when they happen in clearer language,

and again be bold and unapologetic in those efforts. Um, and of just treating them as fringe or treating them as us a tiny subset of a Republican Party that is now led by Donald Trump. UM, we can't overlook these issues anymore because we've seen what happens when we overlook anti abortion laws. We find ourselves in twenty twenty two about to lose row. You know, Danielle, it is

it is? Is it complacency that got us here? Is it the belief that you know, we the bravado of the assumption that because our mothers and grandmothers uh and then maybe a few men you know, activated in the in the mid nineteen seventies, that we just thought like the worst was behind us, Like what did is there something that we did wrong? Right? Like? Like did we did we miss something here? I think it it depends

on who is we. I think at the local level, at the grassroots level, black and brown women specifically have been doing this work, fighting this fight. They've made abortion care accessible to people who wouldn't be accessible to even ten twenty years ago. And so I think no, like the abortion storyteller's advocates, fundraisers, people who work on at local clinics, the abortion providers who speak out to the you know, for fear of their lives and the lives

of their families. Know, but those in positions of power, a lot of white people, those with means, who will only really speak on the state of abortion every four years during a high profile election. Yes, I think there was definitely something to take it for granted. I think there was this knowledge that I can just talk about this every four years and people will come out and vote for me, and then we can just let it go back to the way it was, this kind of

silence and women reproductive health speak. And so I think, yes, our elected leaders, if you ask a lot of the people on the ground, they will tell you that they have overlooked and failed and took abortion rights for granted. But certainly not the advocates that I speak to. Certainly not those that are on the ground working every day. They could have told you we would have been here twenty years ago and did a lot of people just didn't listen. Where do you see us in eight months

as we make the track to midterms? Where do you see this issue it positioned in how we hold on? And again, this is supposed this is supposedly what winning looks like, Danielle. We have, you know, outside of the Supreme Court, we have all the branches of government, and this is what winning looks like. It doesn't feel like winning to me. So what do you think for the abortion issue? For these tax how is it positioned over

the next eight months? Well, I think the only way to kind of look at how it might be is to look at how it has been and the reporting coming out now. I think that we're going to see more people have to leave the state, and these grassroots organizations are going to need additional funding in order for them to better facilitate those people leaving their homes in

order to obtain care. We'll see some states shore up abortion rights and really become abortion safe havens, while others will follow suit with Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and abortion won't be accessible for people in those states. I think we'll also see a change in the GOP political desire to curtail abortion rights by going after medication abortion. Now, that really has changed the game. You're already seeing the idea

that illegal abortion is automatically unsafe no longer true. What makes it unsafe will be incarceration for predominantly black people. Medication abortion has changed the game and it's entirely safe, and we've seen in you know, studies that most people now are seeking those services. So I think once as as experts believe Row falls and the states with that domino effects and their citizens ability to access abortion care,

there will be a huge shift and focus on medication abortion. Danielle, I am really worried, you know, I just I really don't know what this country is going to look like

in the next year, in the next two years. You know, when when you're thinking and you've been doing this work and advocating and writing and speaking out for so long, is there a country or a place who at one time add all of these rights and access in the you know, in and then loses them gain them back, Like, I mean, what what what do you see as the trajectory of where America is going and what we're going to look like for women and and and queer people, Like what what do what do you see? Well? I

think that's what. Another thing that for so many people is disheartening is we're also seeing so many other countries,

Latin American countries specifically, shore up abortion rights now. And I read a piece actually today where one apocas advocate from one of those countries told the American Reporter that you all left the streets and we never did and why Americans are seeing access to reproductive care and abortion care limiting while other um countries who didn't have it are actually obtaining it now and so, um, you know, my global history is not the best. I wouldn't say

I'm a global historian by any means. I fail to recall or think of any country that had these rights,

lost them and got them back. But I do think that for those that are worried, there is hope in what other countries are doing, what other advocates and activists and politicians in favor of abortion care, LGBTQ plus rights, voting rights have been able to do, and then what really while it can be very difficult to report on this right now, it also brings me so much hope because there are so many people who are watching a person's children so that she could go obtain a medication abortion.

They're going and offering rides, letting people stay in their homes. They're giving as much money as they can at a time when there's an ongoing pandemic, like there's so many stories of people helping and of these organizations that have been doing the work expanding, And so I think looking at the grassroots level and then what other people are doing across the world can bring hope and what is

a very difficult situation. And yea, I you know, as always, I can't thank you enough for your work, for your writing, for your voice. You know, just this issue, as many of them are now about justice and equity are heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to do this work. It's exhausting to do this work day and day out, particularly at a time when the light seems to be escaping us right and

we're just marching into darkness. So I just I you know, I know that it's hard, and I just want to thank you if no one else thanked you today yet, and appreciate you to continue the fight and and please do continue to take care of yourself, your family as these times are going to get continually tougher. Thank you, dear friend, you as well. I'm so thankful for you and the work that you're doing for me to come back here and talk to one of my favorite people anytime, anytime.

Thank you. That is it for me today, Dear friends, on woke f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fun