Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with Me your Girl, Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, I'm very excited about today's interview with Crystal little John. She is the Associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and author of Just Get on the Pill, The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics, and is the author of a new book, Fighting Mad Resisting The End of
Roe v. Wade that just hit stands this month. You know what is extraordinary about the times that we are living in, and I mean there are so many things that are extraordinary, that are uniquely absurd and obscene, and one of them is the war on women, right. And we've heard that phrase before, and when I say women,
I mean all women, I mean people with uteruses. There is and has been since the founding of this country, the desire to control women, whether that be to deny them access to the ballot, to deny them employment, to subjugate them as nothing more than cleaning, cooking, and staff in a man's household if you were in a heterosexual relationship. Because that is what prior to women being able to access their own financial wealth, visa, credit cards, and loans,
which didn't happen folks until the nineteen seventies. Right, Like, you know, you have people in your family who were probably born at a time when women could not get credit cards without their husbands or their fathers. Right, That did not happen in this country until after nineteen seventy four.
And so when we see this renewed push to criminalize a uterus right, to give women absolutely no control over their futures, this is the world that Republicans want women to go back to, where there was a permission structure. You had to ask permission from the men in your life, right in order to make any type of move at all.
You know, we have the audacity to look at some Middle Eastern countries and look at their treatment of women and say, oh my god, no one would ever force me to wear a job or a veil or this, that and the other thing. And I'm just like, you didn't have power until nineteen seventy four, and right now, in a majority of states in this country, women don't
have power. I mean, the stories that are coming out of places like Louisiana, right places like Alabama are horrific stories of women being forced to miscarry, women being forced into cesarean sections, you know, because of doctors that are unwilling to take the risk of caring for them because they don't want to end up in jail. So the way that our society and the way that Republicans are trying to set up our society is backwards. It is dangerous,
it is patriarchal, it is beyond oppressive. And I pray folks that the more than half of this country right will stand up come November and say no to the Republicans up and down the ballot. And so my conversation today with Crystal Little John is about what is happening right now, how women and people with uteruses are fighting back. This situation feels so incredibly bleak, but we have to find hope and fire someplace because they're not going to stop. Right.
We thought that it was all, well, it'll just be abortion. No, now it's ivy app Next up it is birth control. Because if you can control a woman's uterus, you can control her future. You can force her out of the workplace. We saw what happened during the height of COVID two million women, two million women left the workforce, because they had to now be a full time teacher to their
small children. Men didn't leave the workforce, and I don't know how many of those women were able to return, but it goes to show you just how fragile the victories are that we have won, and what it's going to require in the future. Right, if we are to ever get this right back in my lifetime, what it will mean to solidify it so that it can never be taken away again. My conversation with Crystill Little John
is coming up next, folks. I am very excited to welcome to WOKF Daily, Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, author of Just Get on the Pill, The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics, and the new book Fighting Matt Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade. Excited to have Crystal Little John join us. Crystal reproductive rights is something that I feel like I have been talking about, if not every day, every week since the overturning of
Roe v. Wade in twenty twenty one. It is an issue that I think that many people just assumed was going to just be there. Access to abortion was just going to there. It was quote unquote precedent, as all of the justices that came in, Gorsich, Kavanaugh, and Barrett come in and they say, oh, no, you know, we uphold precedent, fingers crossed behind their back. They overturn Roe v. Wade.
And now what is present is in America. I don't even want to call it a patchwork of protections, as I have done many times before, is a dystopian America. So please talk to us about your book Fighting Mad and why it's so important for it to be out right now in this moment.
Yeah, we wrote this book for exactly the reasons that you're talking about, right. We wanted to edit a collection that would show what people on the ground are doing to protect abortion access in the midst of attacks from every different angle that we can imagine, and to really show that even as people are having to confront lack of abortion access today, they also had to confront lack of abortion access before Roe v. Wade was overturned. But there were people then and now that are saying, we're
not we're not going to accept this right. We're not just going to let the Supreme Court violate folks's rights. We're going to fight to try and figure out what we can do to get them the support that they need.
So from abortion funds continuing to do their work to try and get people to be able to travel out of state to get abortions, to folks working with lawyers to try and help people get access to legal support if they face criminalization for their pregnancy outcomes, whether that's miscarriage or abortion, and so we just really felt like it was important to showcase the work of folks that oftentimes can get hidden, especially when you have these major
shocks to our system. Right when everybody can be focusing on all of the different moving parts, it can be hard to see the stuff that's going on behind the scenes where you have people doing the day in and day out work to protect people that can sometimes get
lost in the shuffle just not even be known. And so we wanted to showcase the work of so many folks that are brave and committed and courageous in just so many ways, that are out there fighting every single day, whether or not people know it or realize that that's what they're doing.
Talk about the stories and talk about the kind of profiles and courage because I don't think you know what's funny is that we now wright eight years after Donald Trump, talk about political violence in this country in a different way since January sixth. But folks also need to remember that one America has always been a wildly violent place, particularly for Black Americans, at the hands of white domestic terrorists. But abortion clinics used to be in the news because
of being bombed, right abortion providers. There are a number that were killed and or shot at right for providing abortion. So talk to us about because when we say profiles and courage, it's like, oh, yeah, you're doing a great job. It's like, no, this job of providing reproductive care, abortion care, providing information is actually dangerous inside the United States.
Absolutely, and we have so many different like you're saying profiles of courage from people that are doing this work. So I immediately think about the work of the Emma Goldman
Clinic in Iowa. We talk with friend Seeing Thompson in the book, and we talk about the work that clinic has been doing, especially as they face all kinds of different legal restrictions, new restrictions on abortion in the state, and how their staff has responded to that right from trying to make sure that they remain steadfast and the work that they're doing right, committed to patients that are coming in that are facing all kinds of hardships, that
are facing confusion about what's available to them, what they can do, what they can't do, where they might need to go to get services. And so you have clinics like the MMIC Goldman Clinic that even amid the different restrictions that are being passed that make their work harder and harder to do, they stay steady doing the work and trying to figure out how they can pivot what they can do instead to try and make sure people
get the care that they need. Especially when we think about the dab's decision and the context of the pandemic, right and all of the different stuff that was coming down and affecting people's lives. So I think about the Emma Goldman Clinic and and the abortion the folks doing abortion care there. I think about abortion doulas. So we have Cynthiapu Theatris in our book that talks about her work and as an abortion doula, which some people may
not even know about. Right. The work of folks that are providing support for patients as they're thinking about their abortions, as they're trying to get access to abortions, as they're going through their abortions, and then after they have an abortion right, if they need additional support there. And so you have folks that are both agitating within care facilities and within clinics, and you also have folks that are everyday people just trying to make sure that they can
provide support to those people who need it. We also have profiles from folks that are I think about if when, how that are really working to develop legal funds so that people that are facing criminal and have to deal with all kinds, you know, they have to think about how they can pay for a lawyer, they have to think about some people have to think about bail, right, Having funds available for people kind of anticipating that when this criminalization happens, people are going to need to make
sure that they have as much support as possible as they navigate things that they may have no idea about how to navigate. And so you have so many people from the educating, the education domain, the healthcare domain, like
I said, just regular people, everyday people. You have professors, right, you have people, you have nurses, doctors, there's so many people in the book that talk about the different ways that all of us can can be involved in the fight for abortion care and abortion rights, regardless of whether or not we're directly involved in providing abortion care in terms of being a health care provider, whether or not we are involved in work with the government right, everybody
can have a role to play, and they provide just a number of examples to show us what that can look like.
It's extraordinary because I think that where I am, you know, and where some people sit, which is in these tentatively i'll say, tentatively blue states right where they feel as if, well, you know, we're protected here, and well, why don't these people that need care just go to where care is available?
And I want you to be able to speak to one the resources just as you were naming out that are required right in order to get to these states, but then also the potential criminal investigation that they can be under once they return, Like what is it that crystal that people on the coast, who frankly are only as safe as who is sitting in the White House right now, need to understand about what has transpired since the fall of Row.
Absolutely, I think One of the biggest things to keep in mind is the effect of both misinformation and disinformation on how people experience, As we talked about before, the patchwork of abortion care in the United States, and when it comes to thinking about who this fight pertains to and who's involved, I think it's important to recognize that because of all of these different changes that have been taking place state by state, and because of the rampant
campaigns to misinform people, it can be hard for folks to understand what are their rights right, what will happen to them if they travel out of state to get an abortion, how could that differ by states? What is the information that might be collected on them that they may or may not even recognize as being collected from them.
And so I think when we talk about the resources that it takes to get an abortion, I think, obviously people have to have money if they have to travel out of state to get an abortion, but I think it's all we also have to think about information as a resource and the importance of just knowing what's going on on a day to day basis and how that can change. And so when I am me and my co editor of Ricky Soalinger are thinking about this issue.
We're thinking about the resources that involve the finances whether when you have to travel to get an abortion, we're thinking about the resources that might involve child's care. Right. Many people that get abortions are already parents, and so if they have to travel to get an abortion, who's going to be around to take care of their children? Sometimes, you know, people are having to travel for hours and hours. They might have overnight trips, right, so that you have
costs ofel, you know, hotel stays, gas flights. Right, There's all of these things that start to add up when it comes to quote unquote just trying to get to travel to get an abortion. And I think that though even as we know that different companies you know, said that they were going to provide travel for abortion care, right, we also know that in the aftermath of some of those promises, people didn't necessarily deliver on the things that
they said that they were going to. And even though that's the case, I think that's why it's so important that you have the work of abortion funds and reproductive justice organizations, right, who have long been committed to folks in their community who are striving to provide that access to people where that's access to information, access to resources, right funds to be able to get them to where
they need to be. There are people that are continuing to do the hard work of providing the access the different resources that people need to get access to abortion, and those grow every day.
You know, before the fall of Row, so many women and people with uteruses in these red states only had but one abortion clinic, if any right in an entire state.
So even before the fall of Row, what we had seen over the last you know, forty nine plus years or whatever it was, is a chipping away right at access and ability and of you know, for those who know as well that you know, the High Amendment which denied women the ability to use right like federal funds and resources that you would receive medicaid and the like to get an abortion right were not allowed. And so
there were already all of these restrictions. And from my question for you, Crystal, is then now that it's gone, how do you get it back right? Like your book is about, you know, fighting back. And we've seen the marches, right, we've seen women, politicians and others speak out against this where you know, we saw it just recently in the State of the Union, where Biden is, you know, making it a front issue of his campaign. But how do
we actually get it back? And do you think that we will in our lifetime?
I have the book gives me a lot of hope that we that we will get it back. I think that a key component of that is to refuse to make concessions around abortion. I think that some of this, uh, some of the issues that we continue to face are in part a consequence of not having enough pushback to the kinds of things that we're being done to chip
away at abortion access. So when we're talking about restrictions on when into a pregnancy people can get an abortion, and people being okay with saying okay, well, let's allow people to keep saying we can set this limit, this limit, this limit, versus saying people need access to abortion and we need to fight restrictions that are preventing them from
receiving that access to abortion. And I think one of the things that is just so heartening for me about reproductive justice as a framework and as a movement is a recognition that the courts have long failed to uphold the rights protect the rights of marginalized folks in the United States, and not only have they failed to do that, as we see with Dobbs, and the Dobs is just one example of the many ways that the courts have actively sought to violate the rights of folks that are marginalized,
and so with reproductive justice, the biggest one of my biggest takeaways is the importance of continuing to use and deploy the things that we can do in all kinds of domains as activists to fight for things, because I don't think that any change is going to come from folks just acknowledging that things are hard and that things are continuing to be hard and feeling like there's nothing
that we can do. I think that change always comes about by people fighting to demonstrate that they're not okay with the way that things are going, that they're not just going to quietly accept the violation of people's rights. And I think that as we see the different effects of what's been happening with Dobbs, I think that you also see it We already had a lot of support for abortion before before the Dobs decision came down. I think when you see the horrible consequences that Dobbs has
wrought for so many people across the United States. I think that you also see more visible activism around it.
It was always there, but I think that you have more people who didn't feel like this was necessarily their fight joining the fight and saying this is important for all of us, even if people don't feel like they are going to need an abortion or that they would have an abortion, to recognize that this is assault on people's freedoms generally, an ass alt on the reproductive freedom specifically, but an assault on people's freedoms generally that people need
to actively agitate against. And I believe that it is that agitation that can show political leaders that their constituents are going to hold them accountable for protecting abortion rights as a fundamental human right that people have in the United States. Whether or not the Dobbs decision did what I believe so and we know the court should have done to protect people.
You know, I wonder my last question for you is, as we move into November and the stakes on so many levels and so many issue areas could not be higher, what would be the one message that you would want the Democrats to relay to women and people with uteruses. If in fact, Donald Trump were to become president again.
I would say a key, a key thing that needs to be relayed is that we cannot allow that to happen. We cannot allow that to happen. We have to fight to make sure that that doesn't happen. We need to make sure that we loudly proclaim the importance of people having access to abortion as right, the importance of making sure that we undo the damage that has been done by the Dobbs decision, and the role that everyone has
to play in trying to make that happen. Obviously, we know that people's voting rights are continuously being encroached upon in the United States, and we also know that the courts have failed to uphold people's rights. But I think that as part of citizens of the United States, we can all have a role to play by doing our part to try right to try and make sure that this doesn't happen, because we've seen the consequences of it happening.
We've seen the consequences of not having leaders in power that respect and uphold and value not only abortion rights, but the very lives of women and people that have universes. And I think The message that needs to be communicated is we can't allow it to happen if we believe in supporting people's freedoms and upholding people's freedom.
Folks, the book is fighting mad, resisting the end of Roe v. Wade. And I just have to tell you christ a little John. I'm just I'm so grateful for the work that you do. I'm so grateful for this book that you have written and that you made the time to share it with us on woky If really appreciate you.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
That is it for me today, Dear friends on wokay app as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.