Why We Can't Say Ab*rt**n

You know, folks, I have been talking about abortion on this show, probably more than I have since I began woke F many years ago, and it's because I realized for the very first time that abortion is under assault more now than it was when Rove Wade was passed

back in nineteen seventy four. And as we make the slow Death March to June, when the Supreme Court will provide the death knell to Rove Wade, which provided abortion access to women and people with uteruses across this country for the last forty seven sid years, we'll come to an end and Renee will talk today about why it's so important for us to tell abortion stories and actually utter the word abortion instead of saying reproductive care or

women's rights, why it's important to name this thing. And she will also talk about her push with her organization, we Testify to get the Abiden administration to finally utter the word abortion. She brought up something interesting that I kind of want to talk about in my opening today, which was this, why is it that the left right, the quote unquote left, is so against uttering the word abortion,

but the right uses it all the time. So by virtue of the right using the word abortion, right, whether they're talking about you know, oh, yes, a fetus was aborted at you know, thirty six weeks, which by the way, never actually happens, but they have been able to claim the word, and they've been able to shroud it in shame and make us apologetic about even uttering it, let

alone having one. And I know several women, different ethnicities, different economic status who have had abortions, and they tell me that each and every one of them. Was it a difficult decision? Yes, sure it is. But would their lives be dramatically different? Would they have had the careers that they have had, would they have had the schooling that they have had, would they have had the opportunity that they have had that getting an abortion actually provided

them with. And you see, Democrats had walked themselves into a corner where we're afraid to say the word. Where we were the ones that came up with the campaign slogan of you know, safe and rare right for the use of abortion. We've come up with all of this flowery language instead of just calling a thing what it is. There is power in naming something. There is power in taking that name back right and making it so that no, we're not talking about Roe v. Wade, and we're not

talking about a woman's constitutional right. We are talking about abortion, and that abortion is a part of family planning. An abortion is a part of healthcare. One of the things that Renee brings up as well in our conversation is the fact that when Roe v. Wade was first passed in the early to mid nineteen seventies, the federal government, by virtue of Medicare and Medicaid, you are allowed to use your money right the federal government gave you to

get an abortion. It would be then the High Amendment that would make it illegal for you to use federal funds in order to access an abortion. That was one of the first pushes by the Republican Party and it was met with absolutely no pushback. And because of that, throughout the years, we have seen abortion access and rights and what that actually means shrink over time. And now we are in a situation where the people in Texas have to flee to bordering states, and now the right

is not even just okay with that. They're not okay with just shutting down abortion in their state. Now they're trying to pass legislation that says that if you go into a different state where abortion is legal, but you come back and it's found out that you had an abortion while you were in California or New York or Massachusetts, then you can be criminally charged. Think about the ramifications for that, folks, Think about if you can do that with abortion, what else can you do that with? Right.

This is when we talk about the fact that abortion

has always been the rights bullhorn right. They've always used it as a way to rally their troops, and for half the population right that doesn't have a uterus, they have made abortion a women's rights issue instead of a person issue, and by virtue of that, we have allowed for this to be the problem of those people over there not recognizing that what the Right always does, is that they start with the low hanging fruit folks, and then they see, oh did anybody try and check us?

Did we get any lawsuits waged against us? Oh? No, nothing, you see anything over here? No great, Let's keep bulldozing over everyone else's civil rights. Let's move to the next community, to the next group. It has always been the path that Republicans take, which is that if they see no real resistance, then they just keep going. And the reality is is that we need to put up that fight.

We need to have been vigilant this entire time, and not just assuming that because something went up to the Supreme Court and was passed, that the Supreme Court doesn't change over time. It fucking does they die or they retire, given whatever president is in power at that time. A less of course, it's a black man giving them the

right to be able to seat those justices. So why would we think that if ever there was a time for the radical right to now have a six three court, that they wouldn't try and succeed in overturning all of the things that took fifty plus years for us to get in the first place. We weren't paying attention and This is part of the conversation that I will have with Renee, which is, where do you think that Democrats

went wrong here? You know, for every year we always seem to cry wolf about the courts, but not in unison, not with an education campaign right to the public as to why the courts are important. Why there was no fucking pushback. Like I said last week to fucking Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell had no constitutional right to hold up a Supreme Court seat, but because Democrats are so fucking chicken shit,

they let him do it. And now we got another sexual offender, right, people who the ABA doesn't even believe are qualified to be Supreme Court justices sitting there by virtue of the fact that oh, I wrote a memo to Donald Trump so he knew that I was his woman, Amy Covid, Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsitch. That should have never happened. Donald Trump most should have had one, maybe two Supreme Court seats. But we just let it go. And now, for the first time ever, Roe is not

going to be the law of the land. Now we're going to have to fight tooth and nail to get something back that we should have never lost in the

first fucking place. So my conversation with Renee, she will also lay out the real scenarios that are already unfolding, what the handmaid's tail looks like in Tennessee, in Texas, in Florida, in Mississippi, in Alabama, and how it is that we should not be sitting here saying, well, at least I live in a blue state, because she will talk about that and what blue states are going to

be up against. We are living in some trying, trying times and its people like Renee Bracy Sherman who have been doing the work, been on the front lines, powering through so that we as people have access to abortions, that we listen to the stories of people who have had abortions, so that we are educated, so that we are thoughtful and we know what we're fighting for. I hope that you enjoy this conversation coming up next, folks.

I am very excited to welcome to Okay f Daily for it the very first time, Renee Bracy Sherman, who is the CEO and head of We Testify, an organization that looks at and uplifts stories with regard to abortion Renee. Thank you so much for making the time to join woke f now must be a real critical time for your work, and I don't want to I don't want to say that lightly as if there is probably a non critical time, But you know, I mean, I have

never in my lifetime. So I want to ask you about yours seeing such an unrelenting attack on abortion rights in modern times like we are seeing right now. Tell us first a bit about your organization, and then how you are feeling in this moment. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. It has been just an all out, unrelenting attack on abortion access for so long. It's been over a decade of just NonStop restrictions, wacky bills that people used to

laugh at and say, this is ridiculous. I can't believe you would, you know, somebody would propose this that are actually now enacted, and that they're really pushing forward to keep us from being able to access an abortion. And so a lot of the nightmare realities that we've all been afraid of are coming true. And I think that's what's scariest about it. I think so many people assumed five ten years ago. They're never going to overturn Row. Why are you all like going on and on about this.

It's not that big a deal. I remember being at various conferences or events and a lot of a lot of progressives, particularly white progressives and men, would say, you know, this isn't really that big of a deal. They're never going to do that. It's not politically advantageous for Republicans to overturn Row. But again, it's because they don't actually think that abortion is essential to how we make our families.

They don't understand the connection to protecting abortion access to healthcare overall to liberation for all of us and how we create our families, and also the way in which attacks on abortion access are so deeply connected to white supremacy and white supremacist ideology, fascism, the way in which they want to be able to control how we live

our lives and our families. And so that's actually part of why I started my organization We Testify, because when I started sharing my abortion story a little over ten years ago, I was often one of the only, if not the only, person of color on a panel. There was no trans inclusion, There was really no queer inclusion. Often I was asked to represent, as a biracial black woman all people of color and our abortion experiences, and everyone else on the panel would often be white people

who haven't had abortions. A couple of times there would be some who did. And when I learned the statistic that the majority of people who have abortions are people of color, the majority are living at or just above the poverty level, the majority are already parenting, I thought, what would it take for us to actually make sure that the stories that we hear are reflective of the

reality of who is having abortions and why. And of course, part of the reason we don't hear those stories is because white supremacy, white privilege, all of those things still operate within progressive spaces. Right we get to decide, you say, these are the charismatic leaders who often end up being

white people. They're the ones who get funded in repro It's a lot of white women, white women who haven't had abortions, because it's kind of this idea that people who have had abortions those the people we serve, not necessarily the people who are destined to lead us. And so I've been working a lot over the last ten years to change who's at the table, whose stories we hear. And yes, it's important to hear abortion stories, and that is a large crux of the work that I do,

but that's actually just the end. The end is actually to change the leaders at the a table, to make sure that organizations that are working on abortion access have a leadership that is reflective of people who have abortions, but particularly the demographics of who has abortions, Like I said, for melon carcerated folks, immigrants, people of color, folks who've been on medicaid, right, that is just not the reality right now, and I think that it shows up in

the priorities of what the abortion rights movement has been fighting for or not fighting for for the last almost fifty years. Rene, do you feel, you know, wokaf is by virtue of a political show, right, and so, but I see politics in every shape and form of our lives. Do you see do you believe that Democrats have done a poor job in terms of talking about abortion and

how it has always been at risk? I mean because I say that I asked that question assuming that we shared the same answer, which is yes, right, But but you know, but at the same time, you know, it's been forty seven years that we've had Roe v. Wade, damn near fifty, right, So the assumption was, oh, this is codified law. And I don't know why anybody made

that goddamn assumption. So like, what where do you where do you see in the last decade since you've been doing this work, Where do you see that there could have been changes or pivots that could have avoided the moment, the Handmaid's tail moment that we are in now. Yeah, I mean actually next year marks the fiftieth anniversary okay

of what would would would right if it lasts? Which? Right? Yeah, And I think that's what's scary, right, depending on what they say in June, it's not going to make it to fifty honestly. And the reality is that it effectively is not real for so many people across this country. If you are on Medicaid, you cannot use your health insurance to pay for your abortion. And that is something that is a policy, is something that Democrats have defended

for over forty five years. It is only within the last couple of years that we got the Democratic Party to stand in opposition to the High Amendment. The federal ban on abortion coverage, to standing in opposition to that, and then to finally get a presidential candidate speaking out about it, and one presidential candidate who then became president, in particular President Biden, he had to be pushed with the rest of the field standing in opposition to it,

he had to be pushed and change his position. That is a lot of advocacy work that we've had to do, which I'm really proud of the work that we've done. But also, if we are saying that Democrats are the party of protecting abortion access, why did we have to push that hard to make sure that black and brown folks, poor folks, poor white folks, anybody on Medicaid, anybody on medicare disabled folks have access to abortion coverage. Why did

we have to fight so hard. If you believe that abortion is the law of the land and everyone should have equitable access to it, then you should not support any abortion bands at any time and for any reason,

because it will harm someone's access. I am also really proud of the fact that we have gone from politicians saying things like safe legal and rare, really stigmatizing abortion right and not encouraging us who've had abortions, to share our stories to move to the point that we My organization has a campaign right now that is demanding that the president used the word abortion. He has been in office over four hundred days and he refuses to use

the word abortion. It took two hundred and twenty four days of US pushing for his administration to use the word abortion. In a written statement that his staffers wrote, wrote like, shout out to the staffers who did that. But if you are saying that you are a pro choice president, and you are saying that you believe in the right to an abortion, and you want to codify ROWE, why are you unable to say the word abortion. It is not a bad word. It's not going to get

censored on TV. I mean, but you know what, literally it actually kind of does. I was watching I feel like I was watching something recently and you know, it was like, I think it was an old episode of Will and Grace and they were like and they were refused to say the word abortion. And I said, you say shit and fuck on television, right, but you can't

say abortion? What does that mean? And I know that, Like, so what do you how do you see the power in utilizing that word, because you a part of what you do is to you don't say we're telling pro choice stories or we're telling reproductive health stories. You say we're telling abortion stories. What is the power? What what what power do you see in that word? And what would it mean for it to come out of the

mouth of the President of the United States. Yeah, I mean, simply put, I didn't go to the clinic to have a constitutionally protected right by rov Wade. I went to have an abortion. And I think that when we talk about things very clearly, we are open about it. Right. Conservatives are not afraid of using the word abortion. They've kind of pushed it so that it is this dirty

word and that people are afraid to defend it. And I think that when we talk about something openly right, we name what it is and we take away the stigma and oh, you can't talk about it up, you know, in public. It's not polite dinner conversation. Why it is a healthcare procedure. It is a procedure that made my life the way that it is, and it has shaped

millions of families across this country. But why is it that any type of reproductive healthcare, anything that deals with our bodies, whether it's trans healthcare, whether it's prenatal care, any of those things. Periods that they're considered stigmatized and

that we can't talk about them openly. I just saw the film, the Disney film or picks, our film Turning Red, which is about periods, essentially this little girl getting her period and the awkwardness of being a tween, and vidoms are upset about it, claiming that, oh, well, we don't like that film because it's, you know, a little girl disobeying her parents, which so is a little Mermaid. Okay,

so is Beauty and the Beast. They all are right, but I think actually, at the core of it, they don't want to name the thing, but they're uncomfortable with a film talking about bodies and periods and reproduction, and they're afraid that people will see that we can talk about these things in a thoughtful way, We can talk about them within our families, We can get rid of

the stigma and the shame, and that it's okay. And I think I often hear a lot of people say to me, well, it's just a word, Renee, what's the difference? Who cares? What the president says it, he's on our side, And my response is, one, if it's just a word, why won't he Why won't use it? Right? So you'll use the right. They say it's just a word, what's the big deal? And then you say it, right, it's just a word, what's the big say it? So say it?

And I guess the question is why do you use triple the amount of characters in a tweet to say women's constitutionally protected healthcare under Roe v. Wade when you can just say abortion? Abortion. My goal, my wish, my hope is that at some point the president will address us himself, because he has not come out and address the nation in a way that he should and the

way that he should. He has on so many other issues, right, what would it look like for him to come out and address the nation and say we're at a crisis. Conservatives are using abortion to destroy so many of the basic held protections of our constitution and our democracy because they are. What they're doing is they are using abortion and the central holdings in Roe v. Wade. If they can unsettle those, then what they can do is attack

the Fourteenth Amendment, the right to privacy. They can attack federal jurisdiction and protections in over states. It is about abortion, but it is also beyond abortion. This is about trying to unsettle so many pieces of our democracy. He could talk about it in that way. He could talk about it and say, look, look, folks like I, like all

of you, love someone who's had an abortion. I think that these laws are malarky, and I think that, you know, we should make sure everyone has access to abortion care at any time and any reason. All he has to do is come out and say that you know, these these are ridiculous that you are trying to allow citizens to sue other people for being able to access healthcare in their communities or also now the new laws or new bills are to sue them if they leave the

state to access that healthcare. Oh yes, which sounds to me a bit like, oh, I don't know, communism and banning travel of citizens like freedom of movement. How does that work in a democracy. I'd be truly wild to me the way in which they want to be able to say, no, you cannot leave a state to go get healthcare. Oh and by the way, we're not going to give it to you here. But what I think is again the central holding in that is the abortion stigma. They want people to be afraid to tell their loved

ones that they want an abortion. They want us to be afraid to go to people in our lives for help. That is why us sharing our abortion stories and talking about it. It's so scary to them because we're pushing back on all of the myths and the stigma and the lies, and it's absolute disinformation that they've been pushing. Right, they want to criminalize the idea of supporting loved ones in family at least, and I think it's simply that they that they want to keep people from being able

to think about abortion as an option. I remember years ago Paul Ryan when he was I think Speaker of the House that you know, something like they we don't want to make an abortion like not a choice, We want to make it unthinkable. And that is that is it? Right? It is this idea that they want to criminalize people for helping one another, for even thinking about wanting an abortion. And I also think it's wild because like there are other things in which some things are legal in some

states and not in others. Take marijuana for example, Right, you can fly to DC or California, and you know it's either it's decriminalized here in DC, it's legalized in California. In Oregon, right, you can buy weed, you could smoke it, enjoy and then go back to your home, let's say, in Missouri or to be where it's illegal. You did the thing in it's legal in that state. Imagine coming home, not doing it in your states, right, but still being sued for it because you went into a state where

it is legal and you did it and you enjoyed. Right. That is essentially what that law in Missouri is trying to do. And Idaho as while later, what they're really trying to do is say if you leave the state to go get this constitutionally protected healthcare, you can be sued. That is nuts because if you think about it again, what other things can they do this too? If they can do this on abortion and this is but this

is they would anything. This is the thing that I believe is the failure of messaging right by the Democratic Party is that you everything that Republicans are doing right now is a slippery slope. Everything right, So you start it, you start off in the schools, and you start and you target transy youth, right, Who do you think is going to be next? Do you think that they're going

to stop there? You go ahead, and you and you target first, you make the first policy and legislation that you're putting out at about abortion in Texas, and then all of a sudden it's in Florida, and then it's in Tennessee, and then it's in all of these places. They are not going to stop there. It is a

game of how far can we go right? And what they are seeing right now is absolutely no opposition right from the Democratic Party in any way to defend right people with uteruses in these states that are under attack. And so you know, for me, it's like we need to tell the stories. We need the president to have a spine and to say and to say the word, to say abortion and to talk about abortion freely, because it is what it is, right like it is what

it is. It is a necessary part of life. It is a necessary part of family planning, like it just is. And so to even entertain an idea of a Paul Ryan and of oh it needs to be something that

is unthinkable, you know what should be unthinkable? Rape? You know what should be unthinkable incest, you know what should be unthinkable, human trafficking, none of those things which are which are carved out in any of the pieces of legislation that are happening, right, And so I feel what get I get so angry because I'm like, the opposition to this shouldn't be rocket science, right, it's just telling the truth as many times as you can it right. Truly,

it's so simple. And I think what that the goal is that they're playing on the uncomfort that people have with abortion, with sexuality, the gender identity. They're playing on that and hoping that you see us as not you. Oh, that I would never need an abortion, I would never want one. I'm not trans. I don't know anyone's trans. That's not me. That's not something that's impacting my family

and my life, which it is. But because you don't talk openly about it, the people in your life who are queer or trans or had abortions are probably not telling you about their experiences because they don't know how you're going to react. So that's why it's important that we talk about this openly. But they're hoping that the Democratic Party, that all of us, won't mount a defense enough that they can get it through, and then they can use it as a testing ground for something else,

such as voting rights. They basically take a lot of the playbook that they use for abortion, and the way they've shut down clinics, the way they have waiting periods, all of those things. They've taken that, and then they actually apply it to things like voting rights, immigration. It's all at the exact same time because they know it's the same group of people. Again, the majority of people who have abortions are people of color. They know that if they can attack us on this, they can use

it to attack us on everything else. And so, if you are not willing to defend the reproductive freedom, the ability to create families for people of color like you're, there's so much more that you're not willing to defend until it harms you. And again, this assault on abortion

access has been happening for a long long time. It started with the High Amendment because after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion across the country, we did have a couple of years where Medicaid covered abortion, but they specifically went after the High Amendment because they knew it was impacting people of color, poor folks, poor white folks and what happened,

nobody defended it. And then after that, that is when they started doing all the like personhood stuff where they basically went after people who had drug addictions, particularly black and brown pregnant people, criminalizing them for what happens to their pregnancies. They're criminalizing people for the outcomes of their pregnancies now, right, But that's been happening for forty some

odd years. But people didn't pay attention why because it was happening to black and brown, because it was happening to people that they didn't care about. I mean that's I mean, this is that is the reality of war, right. You dehumanize people. You target people that no one will care about, and no one will come to their aid,

and they will make it their fault. As to why you like it is, there is so much there's such a lack of empathy and understanding because we've dehumanized you to the point where you should just make better choices, right, you should, It's about you. You should just keep it.

I posted a video, yeah, I posted a video just recently, and I had women about abortion, and I had women in the comments telling me, well, you just need to keep your legs closed, bitch, excuse me, right like you know, it's it's one of those things where I recognize that it isn't just the right you know, it isn't just the white evangelical Christians, It isn't just the right wing conservatives.

It is the problem of people within within our own party right who haven't been who haven't been warriors for us, And that, to me, is the problem. So last question for you. We know where this is going in June, when the Supreme Court decides on the Mississippi case. We know that that is the end of row. What does the country look like Renee after June. Yeah, I mean

it's actually really terrifying to think about. And I'm gonna do us not to cry because I think it really stresses me out to think about this, right because what we see in Texas right now is we don't have to wait till June to know what it's going to look like. We already know. You can look at Texas, you can look at Mississippi. It is everywhere. And I think that's what's so frustrating and scary about it is that everyone keeps saying, well, would have after June, after

the Supreme Court decides. The Supreme Court told us what they thought. Y'all just need to believe them the first time they told you. The fact that they took the case up told us that they were getting ready to overturn right, the fact that they let Texas allow Randos to sue people and effectively ban abortion after six weeks, which is mostly abortions at like they said, sure fine, despite robing quote unquote the law of the land right now,

that should tell you that's the answer, right, Yeah. And I think this idea that well, people in red states will have to travel absolutely that's true. That I really need people to understand that everyone is probably going to have to travel, because what will happen is, yes, people in places where it is severely restricted and criminalized will have to come to states where it's more legalized, more available, but also appointments get booked up, and people it takes

them longer and longer. I live in Washington, d C. And people travel to Washington, d C. To be able to get abortion care here. Yes, from Florida and Mississippi and Alabama, but also from Massachusetts and New York. So this idea that oh, I live in a blue state, I'll be fine, No, you walked, It's stop it. It's not true. Everyone needs access, they deserve it in their communities. The other thing we're going to see is increased criminalization. Again,

it is a thing that is already happening. People have miscarriages or are suspected of self managing their abortions, they go to the er asking for help, right, they tell their story to a trust and medical provider, and then that medical provider breaks that trust by calling the cops. So again it's a whole other conversation. But why defunding the police is an abortion access issue? Right? We have

to decriminalize pregnancy and abortion. And then lastly, what I think we are seeing right now and I hope we have more of and folks can get involved in, is supporting local abortion funds to help people travel to be able to get their abortions and afford their abortions. And also we're going to see more self managed abortions, which I want to be clear, just because something is illegal does not mean it's unsafe. Self managed abortion is not

always unsafe, right. There are, of course historically unsafe methods. But if you just take one methopristone pill and four mysopostal pills twenty four hours later. That's a medication abortion. Whether you get it via telemedicine from a doctor or a nurse at inside the clinic, or you order it online yourself, it is safe and so people can take it on their own safely at home. The only risk

is criminalization. So let's say you start bleeding a little heavily and you're like, something's wrong even though it's going normal, and you go to your doctor and you're like, I want some help, and the doctor is like at starts asking questions and then again calls that cop. We do not need cops in healthcare. We do not need cops in abortion care at all. And so I think that's what's really important, and we really need to focus on the criminalization piece as we move into this larger scale

criminalization of abortion nationwide. Renee, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate you, your work, your passion. I know that it is an incredibly trying time for all of us, but particularly those that are working on the front lines. So I hope that you do take good care of yourself and your self care and you your self management, because it's a lot. It's it is a lot to listen to horrible stories every day of things

that are going wrong. I really do hope also that you'll come back and join us on We'll Gay f again. Really appreciate you. Please tell folks if they want more information, how they can follow you and find you or support any of the number of campaigns that you are working on. Yeah, you can check out we testify at our website. We testify dot org. Of course we're on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter really importantly. On our website, we have a

project called Abortion Explained. Anything you want to know about abortion, especially it's intersections with incarceration or queer justice or you know, poverty, whatever, any of those things. We have explainers for that to help break this down. If you want to join us in calling on the President to say the word abortion, you can follow our campaign Say Abortion Joe on Instagram and Twitter, and our website is did Biden say abortion yet? Dot org? We are keeping track if he's saying the

word abortion. We hope you will. I believe in you, Joe, and then of course you can find me. I love Twitter, so I'm you know at our Bracy Sherman on Twitter and then Renee Bracy Sherman on Instagram and then my least favorite Facebook. Thank you so much for making the time. We appreciate you, and strength and power to you as you continue the fight that more people need to be a part of. Thank you so much. 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 fuck.