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Transcript
Episode 66
Jessica Mason Pieklo 00:00
There was a political shift in the right wing of this country to become anti-abortion very politically when it was no longer as politically salient to be anti-segregationist… Abortion in lots of places in this country is legal in name only… If a pregnancy is in the process of terminating, the state will need to determine if that is a natural occurrence or if there was some sort of intervention. States can think of any old reason they want to ban abortion and the federal courts are going to give that the green light… We cannot rely on the courts to protect or expand rights… This is a fundamental shift in civil rights law within 50 years. That is just a fundamental injustice in this country.
Sam Goldman 01:02
Welcome to Episode 66 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers, and host of the show. Today we’re talking about abortion rights. I’m sharing a conversation I had with Jessica Mason Piccolo, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor for RewireNews. Plus an interview conducted by Sunsara Taylor with Dr. Warren Hern, a doctor who has been providing abortions for many decades.
But first, you may be asking, why do we keep covering this supposed “special interest issue” on a show that is devoted to the larger political battle against fascism here in the US and its connection to the rise of fascism around the world? Well, in the words of Dr. Hern, the anti-abortion movement is the face of fascism in the United States. This movement is centered on a political program of white supremacy, the subjugation of women, theocracy, and a form of rule enforced by fear and coercion. It’s a violent movement that has assassinated 11 abortion providers and staff. And it’s a movement with a mass base, organized and funded by elite sections of society. There’s the alt right, and there’s Q-Anon and there’s Trump, but before all that, there was the anti-abortion movement, which murdered Dr. George Tiller in 2009. The role of women in the world, whether we are to be more than breeders of children, has been one of the touch points for determining whether society is modern or not. Trump’s Make America Great Again was by definition, harkening back to some earlier time, when society was ordered in the “right” way.
It should be no surprise that the roots of the anti-abortion movement, the Christian fascist movement, rose to political power through their role in white supremacist segregationist efforts. White supremacy and patriarchy are bound together and are key pillars of this program we see aggressively being fought for by this fascist movement. So as the right to abortion continues to be one of the most important battlegrounds on this larger political battle is fought, we have to put attention to it. There are some troubling days ahead for us all, and we need to watch closely and prepare to act accordingly. Now my interview with Jessica Pieklo. As promised we’re bringing you more on the republi-fascist assault on abortion, what’s fueling it, enabling it and what’s needed to stop it.
The Supreme Court of the United States, with a stacked fascist majority, granted Mississippi’s request to review Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, a challenge to Mississippi’s 15 week abortion ban. As the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote this case presents a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, and violates 50 years of Supreme Court precedent. Center president and CEO Nancy Northup wrote, “the consequences of a role reversal would be devastating. Over 20 states would prohibit abortion outright. 11 states including Mississippi currently have trigger bans on the books” And we’ve talked about before that this is truly a five-alarm fire moment for the right to legal abortion. The fascist threat is not gone, and in my opinion, you’ve heard it before, relying on the Democrats is what got us here in the first place. So to help us dig in to understanding this case, what the stakes are and what we can do, I am so happy to have the perfect person. We’re gonna chat with Jessica Pieklo, a Senior Vice President and Executive Editor for the RewireNews group. She also is the co-host of the RewireNews group podcast Boom, Lawyered. Jessica has over a decade of experience as a former litigator and taught law for four years before transitioning to journalism. She also writes smart books, her latest being The End of Roe v. Wade: Inside the Right’s Plan to Destroy Legal Abortion, which was co-written by Robin Morty. So welcome, Jessica. I am so glad to have you on to help us process what’s up here.
Jessica Mason Pieklo 05:39
Oh, my gosh, thank you for that introduction and for having me on the show. I’m thrilled to be here.
Sam Goldman 05:43
So let’s start with a breakdown of what this case is about. Why and how are people saying that this is the most direct threat to abortion since the decision itself?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 05:55
Sure. So the reason people are saying that this is the most direct threat to abortion rights since Roe vs. Wade is because it absolutely is. What Roe vs. Wade established were a couple legal principles. One, it reaffirmed what we all knew, which is that everybody has the right to reproductive autonomy, right? We don’t need the courts to say that to know that that is a fundamental truth. But it’s nice when they do and they said that in Roe versus Wade. So that was the first thing that the court did. And then in Roe vs. Wade, they also set forward what are limits on state power to regulate reproductive autonomy. We always talk about Roe versus Wade as a decision about individual rights, and it is, but it is also a decision about the limits of state power. And that is going to become really important as we talk about this Mississippi case.
Because, in Roe versus Wade what the Supreme Court did was say that there are limits of when a state the government can come in and restrict an individual’s reproductive autonomy. There are some times when the state has no power to do that. And then there are times when the state has a lot of power. Roe v. Wade said that the state has no power to ban it before viability; hat states can’t ban abortion outright before a fetus is viable. That used to be in the trimester framework, that’s changed a little bit. So that’s where the law was in 1974. Roe said that as a person is further along in their pregnancy, the power of the state to come in and regulate what they can do with that pregnancy increases. And ultimately the state has the power to say: “We can set a point in time when we can cut off abortion access”. So there’s a range of power possibilities is one way that I talk about it. What the Dobbs case out of Mississippi does is present a six to three anti- abortion majority on the Supreme Court with an opportunity to say that: “You know what? States do have the power to come in before fetal viability and ban abortion if they want to.” And this is a fundamental shift in civil rights law within 50 years. This is a huge shift.
As we have seen in any other area, we can’t think of one where the court has retreated so quickly in the arc of rights. So that’s the nugget of why this is a direct attack on Roe. The question teed up for the Supreme Court to answer this fall is really deceptively simple. They have one question that they have to answer, and that is “do states ever have the power to ban elective abortion before viability?” There are so many landmines in that little simple question, what the court can do is answer that with “Yes, states do have the power to do so.” And then that opens the floodgates for all sorts of bad laws being enacted.
Sam Goldman 08:40
That is really clear on what’s at stake. I’m wondering for our listeners who hear this term all the time and may not understand it, but are nodding along. What is viability?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 08:52
Yeah, this is an excellent question, because it’s not even the same thing in medicine as it is the law. So viability as a phrase just means the ability to exist meaningfully outside of the womb. Fetal viability is, as medical providers will tell you all the time, an individual marker. So while the law wants bright lines and can say like at this point, you know, “X amount of weeks is considered viable.” What physicians will tell you every single time you talk to them is that each individual pregnancy is different, and viability is a different marker. And that is specifically why in Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court said there are some places state power should just not reach, and that’s one of them. But the law, you know, the courts have said we need to give the judges something to understand when they’re talking about viability. So the courts have spent some time slicing and dicing that term, and functionally it means “meaningful life outside of the womb.” What is that? Well, can a fetus functionally survive on its own with some medical intervention? On a respirator for example. Are they able to breathe on their own or do they need some respiratory help? Already just having those kinds of examples, you can start to see why this is such a mess for courts to be saying: “No, this is okay, but this other thing is not”. That is specifically why when you go back and read Roe versus Wade — it’s not even really a fun decision to read, it’s actually pretty dry — the court is very clear about why viability is an important marker, because it sets limits, it sets on judges, and it sets limits on the state.
Sam Goldman 10:25
That’s an important way to look at it. I haven’t thought about it from the way that it could limit states. I’ve thought about it in terms of that person accessing it. It’s good to think about it from the other perspective. I was wondering how, even as Roe stands right now, the evisceration of abortion access has been well underway for some time. Roe isn’t, in my opinion, and has never been enough. Can you talk to us a bit about what it’s been like to get an abortion in Mississippi?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 10:59
Sure. I mean, I can’t personally because I have not tried to get an abortion in Mississippi. But as somebody who has existed as a journalist in the space for over a decade, and in particular, I think Mississippi is really an excellent example. Because it is in some ways interchangeable, and in some ways, also very unique. So what folks need to know about Mississippi is that it is one of a handful of states with only one clinic to service the entire state. At most Mississippi sees maybe 25 to 5000 patients in the scope of the entire year. And that’s really not a lot when we think about the number of people who need access to reproductive health care, right. So folks are already in the state of Mississippi, limited to where they can access care and have been for some time, limited in terms of how they pay for care, because Mississippi is one of a lot of states that makes it very expensive. Medicaid won’t cover it, for example, and also there are insurance bans in place, so if you do have private insurance, the chances they would cover your abortion are really slim to none, if it’s something that exists for most people.
Then there’s just the functional reality of all of the other restrictions that exist in the state of Mississippi. It’s not like before Mississippi passed a 15-week ban, there was a lot of open access. Even with one clinic, there are waiting periods, there are licensing requirements on clinics that make it more difficult. There’s a provider crisis that people may not understand. Jackson is the only clinic in the state, but they don’t even have a full-time licensed physician who is able to provide care there. Because it is so difficult to be an abortion provider in this country, we have a provider shortage. So even scheduling an appointment within the windows that the state of Mississippi allows is nearly impossible for a lot of folks. They will tell you that abortion in lots of places in this country is legal in name only; that it is an aspirational right that they have, but not one that they can actually realize. And that’s terrible. I’m here in Colorado, we have a lot of good laws on the books that allow access, and we have successfully pushed back attacks at access in the state. There is no reason it should be easier for me as someone living in Colorado, to access reproductive health care and get an abortion if I need it, than somebody living in Mississippi. That is just a fundamental injustice in this country.
Sam Goldman 13:17
I couldn’t agree more, Jessica. To me, I think of like an apartheid situation. I’m in an urban center. So like I have access, but other parts of the state, it would be, in the vast majority of the state, extremely difficult. So I think that it’s a really important point you’re making. One of the many things that has been puzzling so many is why is the Supreme Court taking the case when they could and so frequently just say “no,” when for 50 years, they have and lower courts have done so.
Jessica Mason Pieklo 13:51
The answer to this question is why advocates are as chilled about this case as they are. As folks have asked me the question, one of the things that I explained to folks is that it takes four Supreme Court justices to decide to take up a case, but it takes five Supreme Court justices to decide to change the law. And I don’t believe that the Court would have taken this case as an opportunity to say that it wants to reaffirm all of Roe versus Wade. I do not think with three Trump appointees, all of whom pledged via their Federalist Society ties to strike at Roe vs. Wade, if given the opportunity, that we should do anything but take them at their word on it. So the reason the Court took the case now is functionally because they could.
Sam Goldman 14:34
In your opinion, what do you think is fueling this onslaught? You know, when you look, at the Supreme Court case, but you also look at Texas and all these other very extreme bans taking place, why are the anti-abortion forces so powerful, given their disconnect from the views of the majority?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 14:52
The place where the anti-choice movement deserves credit, and I’m not saying like in a good sense, is that they have been really very unified in their vision against abortion rights since the ink was dry on Roe versus Wade. And honestly, this actually predates the legal decision. There was a political shift in the right wing of this country to become anti-abortion very politically and publicly anti-abortion, when it was no longer as politically salient to be segregationist. So that shift from opposing desegregation efforts to opposing legal abortion is a real one in this country that predates the decision. But once the decision came down, then it was all hands on deck as far as the anti-abortion movement is concerned, and not just in terms of this is the goal, but executing on the goal and understanding that it would be a goal that would be impossible to execute without capturing the federal courts.
So we cannot have a conversation about what is happening with abortion rights right now, without also having a conversation about what has been happening with the federal courts for the last 10 years. Because during the Obama administration, Republicans blockaded almost all of Obama’s nominees. I mean, Garland gets the most attention, but Mitch McConnell literally blocked nearly all of Obama’s appointees. Trump gets elected, they stack the courts, and so now it’s game on. Like they know that it’s rigged. They’re not even shy about it. I mean, I think in response, folks who vigorously support abortion rights need to call out how blatantly political it is, because there is going to be a whole lot of conversations when the Court hears arguments about, well, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe John Roberts will go a different way. And the thing is, we can’t fall for that. We know who they are. They’re telling us, so let’s not get distracted!
Sam Goldman 16:48
I really appreciate that last point. I mean, there’s so many people saying “we don’t know with Roberts, we don’t know what he’ll do.” And a lot of “he just hated Trump.” No, they’ve told you who they are. Very clearly. And they keep telling you. And if we don’t start believing them, we’re going to be in for a world of hurt. You know, I’ve been talking with younger people who don’t have, there’s no pre-Roe memory. And I was wondering whether you could help explain, like, why this is so important. Not that people think that the women and others seeking abortion in Mississippi are not valuable, wonderful people that deserve bodily autonomy. But why does this matter for all people? And maybe how does this connect to some of the trigger laws and the federal judiciary that you talked about being remade under Trump?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 17:40
Yeah. So before the Court took this case, and before coronavirus, I would speak on college campuses a lot. And in particular, I would go to college campuses in the South. You would think that going to a place like the University of Arkansas, for example, would be super hostile to talk about abortion rights. And sometimes the folks there are all lovely, but you know, certainly Arkansas is a contentious state for this issue. And so I like to use it as an example, for a lot of reasons. Abortion is politically very contentious. There’s a big fight around Medicaid, which is also sort of another conversation that we need to have, as we’re having that. And there’s a real evangelical presence in education. When I would go and do talks like this, I always started them with a survey, which was “how many of you here had any kind of sex education, that wasn’t abstinence-only?” A show of hands would show me that in an intro class of 200, maybe a handful, had something beyond abstinence-only, because you know, a lot of folks are coming from Baptist evangelical backgrounds. When you start with the understanding that there are people who just don’t even know how babies are made at a very baseline level, and that they then never really learned that and get elected into office, that’s an issue. So there’s part of that, but there are ways to connect with even these folks. And these are some of the points they use.
Abortion bans sound bad, maybe tolerable, if you’re one of the people who think it’s not going to be something that I need. But nobody knows how a pregnancy is going to turn out. Nobody knows if they’re going to end up in a miscarriage. And if abortion is illegal, then anytime a pregnancy goes sideways, there is an automatic criminal suspicion. And it’s not because we want there to be. It’s because the law now dictates that terminating a pregnancy is a crime. And if a pregnancy is in the process of terminating, the state will need to determine if that is a natural occurrence or if there was some sort of intervention. That’s an investigation.
So, back to my students in Arkansas. They all have pastors. They know people who are perpetually pregnant, right? Quiverfull families have 10-12 kids. When you have families that big, you know, people experiencing miscarriage. I asked them quite point blank if they want state troopers showing up and rooting through their pastors’ garbage because if they’re wife had a miscarriage, that’s what’s going to happen. It’s silence. It’s crickets, people don’t put those things together because the right has done such a good job of controlling all of the messaging around abortion. So that’s one example that I use. Another example is a case out of Michigan, where a woman presented to the emergency room at a Catholic hospital three times. Tameshia Meeks is her name. The ACLU ended up suing about this. She was in the middle of a miscarriage for a wanted pregnancy. And she was turned away until she came back the third time in sepsis, and then miscarried, actually, in the emergency room, the hospital wouldn’t give any medical intervention because there was still a fetal heartbeat.
When we have these fetal heartbeat bans that are all the rage right now — this is the Texas ban — this is all of that. What those laws will mandate is pregnant people potentially bleed out because hospitals cannot engage in medical intervention then. That’s terrifying! Like, those are things that should really, really scare people, regardless how you feel personally, about people’s individual choices. in individual moments. We’re talking about the state, taking a heavy hand, not based in science, and dictating medical care for entire swaths of populations. We don’t do that anywhere else, except now we’re trying to do that with trans kids and trans patients. And those attacks are absolutely completely related. It just really highlights the political nature of what goes on around abortion care, I think
Sam Goldman 21:33
I really appreciate you sharing both those stories. I think that they’re highly illustrative. And with the “heartbeat” bills, I think it does raise this personhood question, which is connected to the discussion of what’s the future for trans kids? Who is deemed a human being? And is it fetal tissue? Or is it the person sitting on the table? Whose life is on the line? I think that there’s tremendous stakes involved in what you decide in that question. I was wondering if you could walk a little bit through. They won’t take the case till I think the fall, correct me if I’m wrong, and then there wouldn’t be a decision until maybe, ’22 right?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 22:17
Yeah. So the timeline on this is gonna be wild for folks, because there’s like all of the flurry of activity right now. And then it’s gonna be kind of like, hurry up and wait. So we don’t know when oral arguments in this case will happen. We believe that they’ll probably happen in November just based on some of the early filings by the parties involved. And what does it mean that the court will hear the case in November? That’s another question that I get. First of all, we don’t know if the court is going to have in person arguments in the fall. I hope they do. Maybe they will. We don’t know with coronavirus, though. That’s an open question. The Court has not said what it plans to do in the fall. The case will be argued but will it be in person? Will it be remote? Who knows? That remains an open question. But arguments in Supreme Court cases usually only last an hour, which is another thing that I like to talk about. Because when we think about what’s at stake, the idea that advocates on each side get about 30 minutes, and that’s not even 30 uninterrupted minutes, it bleeds a little bit. So you know, we’re talking rough here. But questions and answers from the justices? You’re in and out. It’s done. And as someone who sat through a lot of arguments, it’s fast, even if the case is kind of boring. This one won’t be, but we’ve got an hour of debate functionally where you make your best case, and then the justices decide. There’s no visibility into the decision process. So there will be no clues from the justices when the decision comes. It’s going to be early in the term or late in the term. All we know is how the Court does its business. And it has to end its term by the end of June, which is basically this time next year is probably when we’ll have a decision.
Sam Goldman 23:49
And what would the effects be immediately if they agree with Mississippi?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 23:59
The devil is really in the details here. So this is where things can get really messy at the Supreme Court because the Court could deliver what I would call a clean decision. That is one where there’s a clear majority and a clear minority and a clear statement of the law. We are modifying the central holding of Roe versus Wade and say that states can go in and ban abortion before viability if they want. That’s not the same thing as saying we’re overturning Roe versus Wade. Those are two different scenarios, right there. Modifying Roe versus Wade wouldn’t for example, in most situations, trigger any of those trigger laws that you mentioned. So for those folks who are listening, some states have laws on their books that if a decision comes down that overturns Roe versus Wade — they’re kind of like zombie statutes I call them — then these laws get suddenly animated and then ban abortion. So think of them as zombie abortion bans. That’s what they are out there for.
If the Court says states can do that, but we don’t have to overrule Roe vs Wade to give states the power, those trigger laws may not be an issue. But what will be an issue are things like six-week bans in Texas, six week bans anywhere, because what that statement says is that states can think of any old reason they want to ban abortion and the federal courts are going to give that the green light if they want. Then that’s a politically really difficult position for progressives and Democrats to be in because they will find themselves with conservatives still able to politically fundraise off of “legal” abortion, but also functionally able to outlaw it everywhere, which will leave their base devastated. So there’s a lot of room for bad action here without even overturning Roe versus Wade outright.
Sam Goldman 25:40
That’s a helpful clarification. Let’s talk about the dead hand of Trump, if you will. The effects Trump has made on the Supreme Court cannot be overstated with three appointments of the most hostile to humanity, especially women, but also other historically oppressed communities that anyone could think of. They are like the monsters of our nightmares. I wanted to find out your take on how these appointments have thus far been affecting the cases that you’ve seen this year?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 26:13
You know, it’s interesting, because recently, we had a decision from the Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act that was kind of a punt. So there’s this massive challenge to the constitutionality of the individual mandate, another completely politically ginned up legal challenge by conservative attorney generals. Frankly, this is a case that I was even feeling very pessimistic about. And Amy Coney Barrett joined with interesting coalition of folks to “save the ACA.” But what is missing in that conversation is she didn’t actually save the ACA. What she did is set up the next standing abortion argument. So what I will tell folks about the Trump nominees is that even if you think they’re doing good, they’re not. We have no reason to believe that they have any good intentions, as far as moving the law is concerned. And there’s honestly actually no intellectual debate around this. If the decisions that the court was handing down were good faith disagreements in the law, then we wouldn’t have, for example, a decision on the constitutionality of a major portion of the Voting Rights Act coming down on the very last day of the term. We wouldn’t be waiting till the very last day of the term to see what the Court is going to do about political donors and disclosures. Those are good faith arguments about the law. So let’s stop pretending like that’s even going on.
Sam Goldman 27:29
I just feel this very deeply. And I am going say it again, for people that heard it before that there, I feel there was a cost that we are paying for not flooding the streets during the hearings, a cost to listening to those who told us to wait when we should have been screaming and who kept you off the streets, subordinating women’s lives to the interests of the Democratic Party. And there was a cost for in particular, not flooding the streets during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. I remember helping block the doors of the Court and thinking “Where the f is everyone?” And I just feel like we’ve got to rely on ourselves and each other.
In my opinion, there is a little time, as Jessica said, not a lot time but there’s there’s a little time between now and when the case is heard before the court to create public opinion. And in my opinion, an urgent need for people to be in the streets and powerful nonviolent resistance against the mounting attacks on abortion. There has been a marked absence of such mass resistance. Instead, I see people either relying on the legal structures, the political structures to suffice and holding on or the idea of, “I’ll still have access in my state, so it’s okay.” Or like a pre-resignation of our lost bodily autonomy. I have friends that are working to make sure that there’s funds to get people out of state or out of the country, or I have friends doing work to make sure that people know how to self-abort through the abortion pill. I am all for people having access in every way possible. But it seems like there’s some sort of romanticizing of the old days, Jane [pre-Roe v Wade network that assisted women to get abortions] and whatnot, and people thinking there’s some kind of work-around, like we can mutual aid our way out of the repression of no abortion rights. I just wanted to get what are you thinking about?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 29:24
So I fully love and appreciate and support the mutual aid folks. That is really doing the real work. To give folks a sense of how drastically the landscape has shifted, there is now a legal defense fund that has been established via If/When/How of the reproductive justice advocacy groups if you are a person who finds yourself in criminal hot water for terminating or attempting to terminate a pregnancy. It is a fraught time and nostalgia does not serve us well in my opinion there. All these aid efforts have to continue, they have to happen. I mean, people need care. So regardless of what the courts do, people are going to need access to care. So that needs to happen. And we cannot rely on the courts to protect or expand rights. It’s not the appropriate framework.
I really do believe that this is the window of time for folks to make it very clear that this is unacceptable across the board. And that’s just not being mad. We have ways to fix this. Congress can come in and create some federal legislation to shore up some of these immediate attacks. If you are in states that are not gerry-mandered to conservative power, then you have the ability to pressure your lawmakers to pass proactive reforms. I don’t like to use red states because they’re not red. They’re just gerrymandered, crappy. That’s what that’s all about. So there’s real time we have a window to do that. We can’t control what the Court will do. But we can absolutely control our reaction in the immediate and long term. It is difficult to be in this spot now because so many of us have been screaming about this forever. I remember in 2010, we were like, “Oh, the Tea Party revolution is really bad for abortion rates, really bad for abortion rights.” And everybody was like “nah, it’s not that bad.” The reason we are here now is because we had the Tea Party revolution in 2010. That’s the federal courts part. So they didn’t get to hold up all the nominees until 2010 happens. So here we are, that’s part of that long arc.
Sam Goldman 31:32
That is a really good point. We’ve talked about it on the show before, in larger conversations about like Christian fascism in general, but you forget how big of a difference the Tea Party movement made. It was sweeping. And I think that this situation has been building, ever since we won the right to legal abortion. We made this striking advance 50 years ago in getting legalized abortion under very limited terms. But it’s been constrained and constricted ever since by the same legal structures and the growing fascist political movement has been the ones that are resetting the terms to shame and threaten women, and by organized overt violence, as you mentioned earlier in relation to the shortage of providers and murder. And I think there’s been a real danger for so long in people thinking that they’ll never take away the right to abortion, or this isn’t a real threat, while the other side has been on the offensive, completely having the initiative politically, ideologically and morally for years and years now. I think that there is an absolute necessity, but also like such a real possibility, and all the people that poured into the streets last year, and before that, with the Women’s March and things like that, that there are many, many people who don’t want to see this go down. But there’s like a cost for so long for not even saying the “a” word on our side, and letting them say it and us being like “choice.” So I think that there’s a lot that we have to learn and break with. But I think that there’s also a lot of hope.
Jessica Mason Pieklo 33:10
Not that we let public opinion dictate who gets and doesn’t get rights, because that’s not how it should go. But when you just actually have a conversation around this, most people land on the side of “even if I don’t like it, I feel more comfortable with it being accessible than not.” Why have we ran away from that? I don’t understand.
Sam Goldman 33:31
Yeah. I wanted to end I guess, with two connected questions. One is, what do you think that people who are concerned should be paying attention to around the Supreme Court? Could be something that we touched on or something totally different. And if there were any things that we didn’t discuss that you think is really important that people think about?
Jessica Mason Pieklo 33:51
Yeah, absolutely. End the filibuster. There is no progress on any of these fronts if the filibuster remains in place. It is a fluke. I mean, honestly, it’s a copy editing mistake that is now oppressive. Amani and I have talked about that on our podcast before. So definitely end the filibuster and really push folks on court reform. This is a really important moment. Because one example that I use in this space is we used to expand and contract the federal courts all the time. The reason we have nine Supreme Court justices now is because we used to only have nine federal circuit courts of appeals. It used to be that we had a Supreme Court justice for every court of appeals. Well, there are now 13 courts of appeals, we should have at least 13 supreme court justices by that map. So there’s lots of non-political reasons why we should do that, that actually also help progressive causes, because the courts have been so broken for folks who really want to get granular on the law and the courts.
And then this case, in particular, my colleague, Amani Gandy and I on our podcast Boom! Lawyered have a weekly feature called “this week in J woo” where we talk about details in the case. It is going to be something over Rewire News group that we are really focused on for the coming year. I mean, we do reproductive rights, health and justice there, so this is kind of a big deal in our spaces. So please feel free to check us out over there because we are on it. We’ll be at the court for arguments, all of that. But you know, I think it’s really just important to not be afraid to talk to your friends and neighbors about this too. Everybody’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about abortion. That gets weird.” And there’s a running joke with me and my friends. If you give me two minutes, I will bring the conversation to abortion. We can be talking about basketball, I’ll make an abortion reference. But you know, not everybody needs to be quite that extra about it, but be a little more extra than you would maybe feel comfortable right now because so much is on the line.
Sam Goldman 35:36
Thank you so much, Jessica. And you can find a link to Rewire and Jessica’s Twitter and the podcast all in the show notes. So check it out. Thank you so much.
Jessica Mason Pieklo 35:51
Thank you. This was a blast.
Sam Goldman 35:53
The SCOTUS term has ended. And since recording, we have learned in the words of Eli Mystal, that “bigots have finally accomplished their goal of gutting the Voting Rights Act” and we’ll have more on that in future episodes. Next, we’re sharing an interview conducted by Sunsara Taylor with Dr. Warren Hern, a doctor who has been providing abortions for many decades. This interview originally aired on the RNL, Revolution, Nothing Less show on YouTube, and a link to the show is in the show notes.
Sunsara Taylor 36:27
Without the right to abortion, without the right to decide for themselves without fear, stigma or state interference when or whether to have a child, women cannot be free. And yet never since 1973, when the right to abortion was won in this country has abortion been more difficult to access, more dangerous to provide, or facing greater threat. In fact, just since January of this year, 561 restrictions have been introduced, including 165 outright bans on abortion in 47 states across this country. 83 of them, including 10 bans have been enacted. Most alarmingly, the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case that could fundamentally challenge Roe v Wade, the decision that legalized abortion in 1973. So it is with tremendous appreciation for his life’s work and for agreeing to come on this show today on the RNL show that we welcome our next guest, Dr. Warren Hern. He has been providing abortions performing abortions for women for nearly 50 years, he has faced threats and violence. He has seen colleagues and friends assassinated, and yet he has never backed down in the face of this. Not only that, he is one of the very few doctors in the world who proudly and publicly performs abortions later in pregnancy to women across this country and around the world. So Dr. Warren Hern, it is our great pleasure to welcome you here today to the RNL Revolution, Nothing Less show.
Dr. Warren Hern 37:50
Thank you very much for inviting me. It’s an honor to be here.
Sunsara Taylor 37:53
So Dr. Hern, abortion is one of the most common procedures for women to get. I believe one in three or one in four women will get an abortion in her lifetime. And yet, it’s one of the least spoken about, most shamed and stigmatized medical procedures. And I wonder if you could talk about who are the women that you serve? What brings them to your clinic, and why this is so important to their lives?
Dr. Warren Hern 38:15
Well, I think that one of the things to think about is the fact that pregnancy is not a benign condition. Women die of being pregnant. And that’s been always true, it’ll go on in history. But the fact is that women need to be able to make this decision not only to protect their health, to be able to continue their lives, to not simply be at the mercy of their reproductive biology. And I think that women come in, and they’re having their, for example, very young women, adolescents say, “I’m not old enough to have a baby, I don’t know what to do.” No education, no job, no partner, not able to support a child, not able to take care of a child, as some of them are not ready even to take care of themselves. If you have a 12 or 13 year old girl who’s a victim of rape or incest, whatever, there’s no reason why that girl should be forced to continue the pregnancy and have a baby. And then you have young women who are just starting their lives, that are pregnant and they’re not ready to be a parent. They want to finish their education. They want to have some security, they want to have a partner or maybe they have a partner who is unable to help them. Then you have women who are later in their reproductive age who in fact have a desired pregnancy, and have a catastrophic complication to pregnancy. Just recently, young woman came in from a red state where she couldn’t get an abortion. Her doctors that had discovered that she had conjoined twins joined at the chest with one heart. There was not any chance of survival. The pregnancy was a threat to her life. The only way that they normally manage this is to have the patient go to term and then do a vertical c-section incision which damages the uterus. It is much more likely to rupture in the next pregnancy. So a very dangerous situation, and there’s no hope or survival. We took care of this woman and she came in she was extremely hostile to us, angry, contemptuous, defeated. Her attitude for me was disgust, because I perform abortions. We took care of her, and we got her through that and she and her mother were very, very moved. They wanted to hold their babies and you know, and breathe and we helped them do that. This is someone desperately needed to have this procedure, which we did and saved her having a C-section. But in another century, this was a death sentence. This pregnancy was a death sentence. And I work in the Peruvian Amazon. I worked there since I was a medical student in 1964. Out there in the Amazon tribal society, this pregnancy is a death sentence. And so we need, we need to be able to have the freedom to help women, no matter what the situation is.
Sunsara Taylor 40:53
The anti-abortion movement has claimed to be motivated by the desire to preserve life. And in fact, what they’re doing is endangering the lives of real people, women. You have frequently called this out and said the anti-abortion movement is the face of fascism in this country. And I wonder if you could talk some about that?
Dr. Warren Hern 41:11
Well, it is it’s a violent fascist movement led by a white supremacist Christians, and they have laid the groundwork for people like Donald Trump and the radical right of the Republican Party. First of all, the anti-abortion, violent fascist movement will stop at nothing to oppose their view on other people, up to and including assassination. They’ve assassinated five of my medical colleagues, they’ve killed a bunch of other people. They assassinated one of my best friends, Dr. Tiller. I’m on the hitlist. They’ve tried to kill me and my life is at risk every single day. These people are opposed to democracy. They’re opposed to individual freedom. They’re opposed to free speech. They’re opposed to basic premises of a Western society. And under Trump, they were running the government.
I think that the one of the most dangerous things that the radical political right joined 45 years ago was the radical religious right.To form this movement, which is about power. It has nothing to do with protecting women. By keeping women from having contraception and safe abortion, this leads to more unplanned pregnancies, more abortions, and more maternal death. The women died by the thousands before we had legal abortion in this country. That’s what they want. They want to punish women. So there’s a mixture of authoritarianism, the..Republican Party to get power. So the Republican Party now is a fascist political party, is a fascist led by a white supremacist Christians. Christianity, in fact is in my opinion, has become the face of fascism in this country. Who else besides the fundamentalist Christians are so prepared to believe the absolute nonsense, but to put it very politely, spewed by Donald Trump and the Republican leaders, because they have learned to believe absolute preposterous nonsense from the time they’re first awake. That is the basic teachings of Christianity that don’t believe in facts, believe in some superstition or ignorance. So I think that this is a fundamentalist religious fascist movement, what they want is eventually the opposite. That’s what their aim and the evangelicals have been after that for a long time.
Sunsara Taylor 43:18
And what would you say to those who are breathing a great sigh of relief because Trump is not in office, and they just want to pretend that this is behind us?
Dr. Warren Hern 43:26
Well, that’s false comfort, because just the poll just the other day, 25% of the people in this country want an authoritarian government who are very, very authoritarian in their attitudes. 60 something percent of the people in this country believe in the devil. More people believe in the devil than believe in evolution, which is a basic biological fact. No matter what atrocities Trump inflicted on the country, you had a basic support of about 40% of the people. And I think that, you know, 89% of the republicans support Trump, in spite of the fact that he’s a cruel, fascist bully who is ignorant, who is a sociopath. He’s mentally ill. And they believe everything he says and they’ll do what he says, We came within minutes of a military coup d’etat in this country, on January 6th which would have destroyed democracy. Trump and his people are the worst thing that’s happened since the country was founded, and I’m including the Civil War. Yes, there were 700,000 people died in the Civil War. But Trump killed over 500,000 people by the way he handled COVID. Lincoln was there to protect the American government, to protect democracy, freedom, where Trump as he has spent his entire time trying to oppose democracy. Now he’s in the middle of the Republican Party, which is opposed to democracy. The Republican Party and basically saying, you know, if we don’t win, then we don’t count the election. So you can’t have a democracy in a circumstance like that. So I think that Trump is out of office, but he’s out trying to inflame his followers to believe everything he says about how silly or awful it is. Trump wants a civil war. At his rally in Ohio on Saturday, there were people actively there who think they want a civil war. That’s what they’re going for, because they believe in this kind of violence.
Sunsara Taylor 45:13
I wanted to circle back to the question of the women, where you just ended, the lives of women. You talked about when abortion was illegal, that many women died. And that’s true. And you’ve spoken about the risk to women’s health. But I think one of the things that’s also stood out from you, as I’ve heard you over the years, and from other doctors who do this work, is how much being forced to have a child against one’s will affects the entire existence of a woman.
Dr. Warren Hern 45:41
We have evolved in time as sexual beings. That’s the way evolution arranges to keep the species going. And so that’s an important part of our lives. One of the consequences for women is pregnancy, obviously. And there was a time when women were simply at the mercy of pregnancy, at the mercy of this condition, which could kill them, and they might be happy, they may not be, but they were at risk. It is one thing for a woman to feel that she wants to have a baby and she’s willing to experience the risk of pregnancy with good medical help. She’s entitled to the best medical care she can have to make sure she survives pregnancy and has a healthy baby. But if she doesn’t want to be pregnant. there is absolutely no justification whatsoever, for forcing her to continue the pregnancy to term. There’s no medical, legal, philosophical, any kind of religion, or any kind of justification. Religious justifications are about power, it’s about controlling the lives of women. And so the lack of access to safe abortions are things that leave women at the mercy of these circumstances. Maybe they are at the mercy of an abusive spouse, maybe they’re victims of rape or incest. And the pregnancy is for them a threat to their life, to their physical existence and continuing their life as they wish. So helping women end pregnancies when they want to, and when they must do it, is an absolutely critical, fundamental of basic medical care. Okay, that’s what it is. And safe abortion is a fundamental component of women’s healthcare. That’s an absolutely keystone proposition. But the larger picture that threatens democratic society is that the Republican Party, which earned eternal disgrace, has used abortion and stepped on the bodies of women 45 years using the abortion issue to get power. And they’ve been very successful.
Sunsara Taylor 47:27
Dr. Warren Hern, I have to say, it’s been a tremendous pleasure to talk to you today. I think we first spoke almost 20 years ago, 15 years ago, during the Bush years. You were one of the very first people I ever interviewed on live radio. And at the time, I was so impressed by your decades of service to women and your courage on the front lines. And that has only deepened in the 15 plus years since. I just want to thank you so much for all that you’ve done for all the thousands of women that you have helped and for again, the moral example you’ve set for so many and for joining us here today on the Revolution, Nothing Less show, and on your birthday. Happy birthday!
Before we close out the show, I just want to reiterate what I said at the beginning of that interview, that without the right to abortion, without the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have a child free of fear, stigma and shame or interference from the state, women cannot be free. This is why millions of people need to be saying and acting on the demand: abortion on demand and without apology to bring about a world where all forms of violence and oppression, degradation and abuse against women are finally ended. We need a revolution that overthrows this whole system of capitalism imperialism that has this oppression, and so many other forms of oppression and exploitation built into it. A key part of the revolution that we’re making and fighting for is to shatter and completely abolish the thousands of years of traditions’ chains that have bound women and all oppression based on gender and sexual orientation. And precisely because of how vicious and ugly this current assault on women’s lives is, there is increased potential right now to mobilize the fury and organize the rage of women as a driving force to make this revolution. This is why we say “break the chains – unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution.”
Sam Goldman 49:13
Thanks for listening to the Refuse Fascism podcast today. I know some of you are rejoicing that the Trump Organization was indicted this past week. And certainly it’s a pile of crooks. However, I want to encourage everyone who hasn’t already, to go and listen to last week’s episode number 65. With lawyer and writer for Slate.com Dahlia Lithwick. Dahlia says “you can’t tilt at this fanciful, aspirational notion that if we just abide by the norms, that may somehow mean that democracy comes back. We’ve seen an object lesson it seems to me this year, in the fact that there’s one side of this bipartisan game that doesn’t care about norms at all, and that actually use them to continuously pants the people who are trying to reinstate them.” The fact is, Trump is not experiencing any consequences for his crimes in office while in office. And that matters for the present and for the future. Again, thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. If you want to help the show, it’s simple. You can rate and review us on Apple podcasts, or your listening platform of choice. And of course, subscribe, so you never miss an episode. You can chip in to support the show by clicking the donate button at RefuseFascism.org or Venmo @Refuse-Fascism. CashApp $RefuseFascism. And be sure to let us know it’s off of hearing this podcast. As always, I want to hear from you. Share your comments, ideas questions or lend a skill. Tweet me @SamBGoldman. Or you can drop me a line at SamanthaGoldmanRefusefascism.org or leave a voicemail by calling 917 426 7582. You can also record a voice message by going to anchor.FM/ Refuse-Fascism and clicking the button there. You might even hear yourself on a future episode. Thanks as always to Lina Thorne and Richie Marini for helping produce the show. In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America