The Post-Dobbs Human Rights Emergency

Refuse Fascism Episode 151

Sat, Apr 01, 2023 3:32PM • 50:58

Christine Ryan 00:00

Essentially, women’s lives and health are on the line in the US right now. Anyone who is capable of pregnancy is now at risk. We’re actually seeing a crisis that has never been seen, I think, in any other country. With regards to criminal abortion bans, we think it is crucial that abortion continues to be seen as a human rights issue. Denial of abortion care can constitute a violation of the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. It is a real danger that we just become used to what’s happening until it knocks on your door.

Sam Goldman 01:01

Welcome to Episode 151 of the Refuse Fascism podcast brought to you by volunteers with rRefuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and a host of the show. Refuse fFascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. In today’s episode, we’re sharing an interview with Dr. Christine Ryan, Legal Director for the Global Justice Center. Earlier this month, the Global Justice Center helped spearhead a letter to the UN signed by almost 200 human rights organizations urging the UN to intervene to protect abortion rights in the United States and accusing the US of violating international human rights law.

But before we get to it, thank you to everyone on patreon.com/refusefascism for supporting the show for $2 or more a month. Thanks patrons. Not one yet? Become one. Thanks as well to everyone who shares the show, rates the show, subscribes, follows, and yes, yes, leaves reviews. After listening, go do all the things to help us reach more folks that want to refuse fascism.

Okay, well, Trump got indicted. And of course, we have something to say on that, in fact, Refuse Fascism has a statement about it. Read it online at RefuseFascism.org. Trump’s Indictment, a time for Vigilance, Not Complacency. Read it to share it with others, and we hope you’ll send us your thoughts reach out to us on the socials @RefuseFascism, or send an email to infoRefuseFascism.org. With that, here’s my interview with Christine Ryan.

Sam Goldman 07:02

Today, I am so glad to welcome Dr. Christine Ryan. She is the lLegal Director at the Global Justice Center. Christine is an international human rights lawyer and gender expert. The Global Justice Center is committed to building a global rule of law based on gender equality, and universal human rights. Welcome, Christine.

Christine Ryan 07:27

Thank you so much for having me, Samantha.

Sam Goldman 07:29

Can you start by telling us a little bit about the work that the Global Justice Center does, and the work that you typically do there?

Christine Ryan 07:37

The Global Justice Center is headquartered in New York, but our reach is quite global. We’ve traditionally worked on international human rights issues regarding accountability for sexual and gender-based violence in the context of atrocity crimes. So, think international justice, international criminal law, international humanitarian law around war crimes and other violations, whether it’s crimes against humanity or genocide. We also have had a long-standing program advocating for human rights within US foreign policy, such that we’re doing consistent advocacy to basically put pressure on the administration to comply with international human rights law in regards to reproductive rights.

So we’ve specifically looked at the Helms Amendment, and other key areas of US foreign policy that are failing to uphold human rights. Then, in recent years, in response to the human rights crisis in the U.S. in terms of the onslaught of anti -abortion restrictions, even before the Dobbs case, the Global Justice Center has brought its expertise in international human rights law, and its experience in using human rights methodology to examine the human rights crisis here on abortion and other areas of reproductive health care, and to create a segment of the movement that is focused on using international human rights norms to advocate for abortion rights in the U.S. In that work, we take most of our inspiration from international movements for abortion rights while also being very cognizant of the routing of the reproductive justice movement here in the states in universal human rights standards. And that is we situate ourselves at that intersection and try to add value there.

Sam Goldman 09:56

Earlier this month, on March 2, you and an impressive list of almost 200 organizations and individuals, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued an open letter to UN agencies asking for the US to be investigated for human rights abuses. You address the letter not just to those who are focused on gender issues, but to the special — I cannot say this word Christine, help me out — rapporteur [CR: rapporteur] — rapporteur, I did it correct — on torture and other cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment, detailing out the effects of the Dobbs decision on the rights of 22 million women and girls and others living in areas that have various abortion bans in place now. Can you describe some of what you compiled in this letter?

Christine Ryan 10:47

As you mentioned, together with numerous organizations, we made this submission. The submission itself documents a range of human rights violations — essentially, the harms of the jDobbs decision and the attendant passage of state laws throughout the country that restrict abortion access. We framed those harms in terms of international human rights standards that the U.S. is obligated to uphold, but is failing to do.. Those human rights obligations include the right to life, the right to health, privacy, liberty and security of person.

You mentioned the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and other rights; freedom of talk, conscience, religion or belief; the right to seek, receive and impart information; and crucially, the right to equality and non-discrimination on grounds of gender, race, socio-economic statu. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of issues and evidence to raise at this level detailing the horrendous consequences on people’s lives following the Dobbs decision and the related laws. We focused on a number of key areas and this could have been a 500 page report, but that is not digestible by UN investigators given the amount of work that is on their plate.

We began by focusing on the issues on life and health because essentially, women’s lives and health are on the line in the U.S. right now. While, in the months since Dobbs, we have been able to talk to healthcare practitioners around the impacts of anti-abortion legislation and there have been far- reaching implications in terms of accessing abortion care; accessing abortion in cases of miscarriage; forced travel at extreme risk to health across state lines in obstetric emergencies; hospitals delaying care until the person’s health has deteriorated to a level that may fit within those vague exceptions of right to life; right to the mother; professionals withholding information; reduced access to non-reproductive health care like chemotherapy.

The way that it is playing out, I think, so quickly, following the decision has shocked many in how visible the harms are across the board. In terms of women’s lives and women’s health, this isn’t new, depending on the state where people were living, but now there are so many more states and the landscape is tightening because people have to travel further and further distances, and the fear of criminalization is creating a real chilling effect amongst physicians who are, as I said, either withholding information from patients for fear that their medical advice could violate state anti-abortion statutes, and really just feeling like they can’t even counsel patients.

That is something from our perspective is quite striking in showing almost through su generis nature of the U.S. context, because you have the compounding problems of the politicization of things like medical licenses, as well as the penal power that exists in numerous states in the U.S. Also, in our submission to the U.S — you know, we documented the numerous ways that women’s health was impacted, but — we looked at the penalization of access to health care around more extensive look at the statutes that now criminalize health care providers who perform — that’s the terminology used — abortions; penalties up to life in prison, fines as much as $100,000 in Oklahoma, the statutes that impose criminal liability for aiding and abetting abortion, making it a crime whether you’re a healthcare provider or not, to assist a pregnant person obtaining abortion, and also the civil liability that’s imposed in some states.

Texas, for example, where individuals are permitted to become bounty hunters, essentially, and this threat of private suits placing further pressure on providers to cease providing abortion care, even for patients who are experiencing complications. I will say in this work, looking at penalization, we’ve worked closely with our partners from Pregnancy Justice and Amnesty International, who have been documenting for years risks that pregnant individuals face from the criminal legal system in the U.S. around self-managed abortion, but also different pregnancy outcomes that may be suspected of being in some way related to actions of the pregnant person.

I’m glad that it’s getting attention now, but it was very much buried for a number of years, that how, prior to that, prosecutors were charging pregnant women or individuals who had been pregnant in numerous situations where they suspected that actions during pregnancy might have harmed the fetus. Conduct deemed worthy of prosecution went beyond suspected abortion to include drinking alcohol or falling down stairs. Just, again, to acknowledge others’ work that we’re building upon, Michelle Goodwin had documented a lot of this. Pregnancy Justice has been doing Trojan work in representing women who have been incarcerated for this reason; women with stillbirths.

A third issue we looked at was the threat to privacy from increased surveillance. There are numerous threats to women’s and pregnant people’s privacy when the state restricts abortion, not least the decimation of their reproductive autonomy and the power to control aspects of their reproductive health. That is at the core of their right to privacy. Until recently, it has in part been recognized by the Supreme Court here in the U.S. as part of the liberty protections within the right to privacy. But we have seen growing concern about the extent to which surveillance and the availability of data among healthcare professionals and the gathering of personal information, how that may play into this increased environment of abortion criminalization. There’s been an awful lot of tension around the ability of law enforcement officials to use electronic data to prosecute patients or those who help them access abortion. That is a risk that we highlight, and within the submission, we also make calls on private companies to ensure that they’re only complying with requests for information when it is legal to do so.

But we’re also aware that a huge issue particularly now that we are seeing forced travel increase is that within the healthcare system, patients don’t have enough control over their own data. Because most of the reporting is done within the healthcare system — and by which I mean their reporting of individuals to law enforcement — that is a serious risk to privacy that we’re concerned about.

One thing that we really wanted to emphasize, and is more than evident to anyone who has been following this issue, is the devastating impact of abortion restrictions on marginalized populations. That’s a reality that holds across the world and has been particularly racialized in the United States. So, people who have diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, people with migrant status, persons with disabilities, people with low income and those living in poverty, rural residents, these communities already had poor health outcomes compared to other populations and abortion restrictions are greatly heightening that.

We began this work last year in our submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and highlighted everything from reproductive injustice issues from the U.S.’s history of engaging in forced sterilization of different racial communities in the United States to the real barriers to quality health care that already exist for people of color in the United States, and how issues of poverty and race compound in this context and how difficult interstate travel can be for those who lack resources, those who face particular legal risks, or even risks around existing in the United States.

In terms of migrants, this was work we began in the third context — so that’s the Committee On the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — and we were successful in having the Committee recognize that this is an issue of racial discrimination. The last thing, that main area of human rights that we focused on was — and it’s an interesting one, and one that I think our movement has looked at as extensively as it could have prior, but we’re doing it now — is to recognize their real legitimate claims that persons who support those seeking abortion, or who have abortions do so on the basis of their right to freedom of conscience, religion or belief.

There are numerous cases being litigated in US courts, and from our perspective, it was important to bring this to the attention of the UN experts because within the international human rights law system, the right to freedom of religion or belief, unlike the unyielding power that attributes to certain religious communities in the U.S., this is a right for everyone, not just right-wing activists. So there are a lot of the meaty areas that we documented within this submission that we’re calling on the UN experts to pressure the United States government to their mandates require them to engage with the government itself to respond to this litany of human rights violations.

Sam Goldman 22:09

I want to thank you for walking us through. It is really staggering and overwhelming to think about the monumental harm that has already been done in the nine months since the Dobbs decision came through. Nine months of real harror, and still, the full effects of it have not been seen. It’s hard to not be speechless and just sickened by the amount of harm and the scale and the scope of it.

Christine Ryan 22:37

This is the reality that’s only going to get worse year on year on year. I’m from Ireland and lived under Ireland’s abortion ban until it was successfully repealed in 2018. So, none of this this surprises me. They’re all issues that played out in the Irish context, but what you have in the United States is a massive scale at which the risks are astronomical — in large part because of other structural issues regarding access to health care, the criminal legal system, corporate medicine in the United States, and the distance and the disparities that exist for different populations. We’re actually seeing a crisis that has never been seen, I think, in any other country with regards to criminal abortion bans.

Sam Goldman 23:36

Yeah. And then, as you were talking, I was thinking about the news that I just saw on my phone shortly before we spoke that Idaho is set to become the first state to restrict interstate travel. So there’s the forced travel, and then there’s the criminalization of those who try to travel. Obviously, it’s not constitutional, but that doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

Christine Ryan 23:57

That particular instance, the legislation as I understand it, it’s focusing on minors, where it is easier for states to encroach upon the constitutional rights of minors. To me, it’s almost like stepping through the looking glass because it just harkens back to Ireland and this was something that was challenged; parents trying to take minors abroad for necessary abortion care. But in the hypocrisy that is exposed when many of these anti-choice entities also rail about different alleged encroachments from the left on family rights, and now you’re interfering wholly with numerous important family decisions and in areas of care for a family in not allowing and trying to criminalize parents who would take their under-eighteens to another state to access health care. It’s shocking. Again, another example of how brazen the anti-choice movement really is.

Sam Goldman 25:02

For all those times where I remember people telling me — and I’m sure they told you to — like: Oh, they won’t go that far, they won’t do that, or: Oh, you’re being hyperbolic, or whatever. No, they’re showing you exactly what they want and who they are. This is a movement that, unless we stop them, is going to stop at nothing less than preventing all abortions, preventing all birth control, [CR: All] they want it all. That’s what they’re going for.

One of the things that stood out to me when I was reading it, and when you were going through it just now, was that the letter references other ways that the UN, in previous circumstances, has treated the denial of accessible abortion as an issue of torture and unjust imprisonment. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what has been said previously on these topics and the UN has chose to intervene.

Christine Ryan 25:58

In the past 15 years to a decade, the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms — the mechanisms that exist to interpret human rights standards in light of the conditions and the issues that come before them — have recognized that in certain instances, denial of abortion care, can constitute a violation of the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In terms of specific jurisprudence, cases have mostly focused on what I would describe as the most harrowing situations — and these are the cases that have directly come before their committees, in terms of women being denied an abortion where the fetus has an anomaly incompatible with life outside the womb, or where somebody has been denied an abortion following rape or incest.

I think that the direction of international human rights law gestures towards when women’s life and health is at risk, and can also constitute torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment if abortion is denied. That doesn’t mean that international human rights law isn’t and doesn’t offer protection to individuals who seek abortion care to affirm their decisions outside of tragic contexts, and I think that that’s important to keep in the conversation as we’re now living in a situation where, obviously, the more tragic the case is, the more attention it will get from the media, in part because we’re still shocked that people are being driven to life-threatening circumstances just to access an abortion.

But that framing has been useful as a campaigning tool in different countries. It has been useful in pushing states themselves to legislate differently, but I can see how in the U.S. context, the narrative around torture is salient. We’re not used to considering many of the harms that women experienced, particularly in the context of pregnancy as cruel inhuman degrading treatment, or as torture, but using a human rights lens, in numerous instances, the way that the state is treating women does rise to the level of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Christine Ryan 26:38

I wanted to help myself and my listeners understand more when we say that these abortion bans violate international human rights law, does this mean like the Hague could potentially issue an arrest warrant for someone like a Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, for signing that state’s abortion ban into law? What could be done? And what are you and others asking the UN to do?

Christine Ryan 29:04

As much as it could be a great moment for everyone, the International Criminal Court won’t be issuing an arrest warrant for somebody like the Governor of Texas, but that isn’t among our main asks now. One thing about human rights law is that we’re always looking for state accountability. One of the first things that we’re hoping that the UN Special Rapporteurs, independent experts, as they’re known, will do is engage directly with the state and essentially seek a response. The U.S. presently, theoretically has an open invitation to these investigators to come to the U.S. and look at issues and we want them to make good on that open invitation. If one of these independent experts makes a request to come to the U.S. that request is accepted to allow for a proper investigation into the human rights situation here on the ground.

Beyond that, what I think is important for us at the Global Justice Center and others that we’re working with is to use the human rights framing and methodology in the U.S. Just to go to the first issue around the framing, abortion is now a crime in numerous states; at least 13 at my last count in the U.S. We think it is crucial that abortion continues to be seen as a human rights issue and as a human right while we’re in a context for possibly a couple of decades to come, and the power of the seat is trying to tell us that our fundamental rights are criminal and trying to access them is criminal. So there’s that element in terms of engaging with the international human rights system and thinking about looking abroad.

There’s one thing that we have to do is embarrass the U.S. on the world stage as a state that tries to represent itself as a beacon of democracy and human rights, as a state that tries to export democracy and human rights. All of rhetoric you’ll hear from the Biden Administration consistently, but at present within its own borders, individuals and communities are suffering grave consequences of human rights violations. While we’re focused on reproductive rights, what I would love to see is a greater understanding of the history of the American refusal to engage with international human rights. And that history, like a number of areas of human rights in the U.S., is one that is rooted in racism.

At the outset of the modern human rights movement — that’s in the 40s 50s 60s, post World War Two — it was segregationists and their allies who fought against U.S. engagement with the U.S. human rights system because they thought that human rights was a threat to segregation. They worried that UN human rights bodies would put pressure on the U.S. to end its systemic racism. There’s a fabulous petition that was created by the NAACP, essentially saying “we charge genocide” for how the U.S. was treating the subordinated racial minorities. That gets forgotten, and has been excluded from popular histories of the U.S. civil rights movement. It’s a conversation we’re trying to generate with others. We’re not the leaders in generating that conversation, but I think that there is a time and this in part marks a time when we look at the intersectional issues around access to health care, more broadly, access to housing, gun violence, as well as reproductive health care, that there is a need for advocates to reclaim their engagement with human rights.

We take our inspiration from the reproductive justice movement, who didn’t feel their full needs represented in what U.S. constitutional law could offer, and grounded their demands in universal human rights. And that is [what] we’re building on and trying to support those asks that look at abortion, while certainly focused on abortion care, but also look at what it means to realize and have access to the right to become pregnant, the right to raise your family in a healthy, secure environment, as well as the right to bodily autonomy.

When we talk about abortion bans violating international law, there are a number of different levels we’re looking at and what it can offer to advocates as a tool, rather than assuming that some supranational entity is going to chastise the United States and that will be the one thing that will turn Greg Abbot. We’re more focused on thinking about how we rebuild with human rights norms as our basis. Just one other thing that I think we’ve seen more of, and is quite powerful, is the transnational solidarity that comes from grounding your demands and your advocacy in human rights, feminist terms.

We see that play out in the connections that have long existed, but are being expanded among Latin American feminists and American feminists, and a lot of the solidarity around the criminalization of abortion in Poland. I can also see from the Irish context, it was very empowering for advocates to be able to rely on feminists around the world to support their advocacy, to provide resources and and to keep this issue in a human rights framework on the world stage.

Sam Goldman 35:30

Absolutely. Thinking about that, across Latin America, we’re seeing an expansion of abortion rights — yes, there are exceptions, El Salvador, other places — but here in the northern hemisphere, we’re going in this barbaric direction, doing insane things like forcing women to bleed for days, waiting for them to go into a septic state, before allowing an utterly routine medical procedure.

To me, the big question is, where does the U.S. get off calling itself a beacon of liberty in the world today? And what does the rest of the world think of this situation? I mean, part of me is like: Will there be a humanitarian intervention for the women of Texas, Mississippi, South Dakota, and so many other states? Of course not. But if it was happening somewhere else, what would we expect here? So I just wanted your thoughts on that.

Christine Ryan 36:21

I totally agree with you. If this was happening somewhere else, and you were reading that and another state was forcing women to be on the brink of death, before a health practitioner could intervene to provide routine health care, you will think to yourself: That is an authoritarian state — certainly in how they treat pregnant people. It is harrowing to think about the disparity between the direction in which other countries are going and the US persistently failing, and getting worse on abortion, on maternal mortality, and gun violence.

One thing that I hope is invested in more, and can be done, is we need to really be documenting these harms on a massive scale, because we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg in wash reaches the level of the media. As you said, if you were to look at another state, what the international human rights groups would be doing is having full-scale, well- resourced, monitoring and documentation campaigns, such that there is a record of what the state is doing to people.

This isn’t going to go away, but as you record and detail what is happening, that gives you leverage to call on the state for those interventions. You described it correctly, they should be seen as humanitarian interventions. That doesn’t take away from the work that activists are having to do in these states in trying to provide care under the radar in helping people exit the state, but I think that there’s an obligation to those of us who work in the international human rights field to be using that type of fact finding methodology that we would apply elsewhere to report on these horrendous violations. Because if we don’t have this evidence base, it can still seem like an exceptional issue when it isn’t because anyone who is capable of pregnancy isn’t now at risk.

Sam Goldman 38:38

I was nodding my head a lot because I think that last part is… it should be a situation where it is un-ignorable; the impact, the harm, the totality of this crime against women and others that can become pregnant should be un-ignorable. I think that right now, it still is too easy for people to look away from, and I think that your point is really essential. I wanted to talk about compliance, because it’s something that we talked about on a few episodes, and we talked about with

Julie F. Kay about this as well — the process of compliance that’s happening wherever these repressive laws are springing up.

Healthcare workers are essentially figuring out how to comply as soon as the rumor of a new repressive law comes up. Again, this isn’t to put the onus on them for the situation, but there is a sense in which people can actually make the choice to resist these unjust laws. What sort of international apparatus of support, legal and otherwise, is there to help enable doctors and caregivers to be able to do the right thing and refuse to go along with these horrific laws?

Christine Ryan 39:52

There are a couple of things there, but first, you mentioned Julie Kay, and as an Irish woman, I’ll always be grateful Julie Kay for coming to Ireland to work on litigation. The ABC versus Ireland case in the European Court of Human Rights, among other efforts, was instrumental in repealing the Irish abortion ban. I don’t think she gets enough credit for it. In terms of resistance, I often think about this in feminist terms, because feminists have always had to resist unjust laws to live in accordance with dictates of equality.

We’re seeing this in the feminist and racial justice networks that are supporting access, whether that is around abortion pills, accompanying individuals or providing support networks to even help provide information, as basic as that is, around abortion. I think that’s the real feminist value that isn’t as common among elites, whether medical or legal. Those working in medical and legal fields, they are not trained to operate outside certain parameters, whether it’s the law or the regulations set by the medical board.

I would say I myself often don’t feel comfortable saying X, Y, or Z group of people should be content with breaking the law because of the extent of criminal sanction that exists in the zeal with which prosecutors act in this country. However, what we’ve been thinking about and also with partners is how to elevate those who assist abortion seekers; elevate their calls, their actions, as part of human rights work, and increase the understanding of these practitioners as human rights defenders who are deserving of protection under international law.

But again, if you were to think about the U.S.’s efforts, by the way, to support human rights defenders globally, if they’re not doing so nationally, what does that type of hypocrisy mean for an administration that says it has a whole of government approach to addressing the reproductive healthcare crisis? As with many elements of any social justice campaign, a lot of it plays out in terms of what type of political force you can leverage in support of a human rights defender, in support of a cause.

There is a responsibility on those of us working in the fields of advocacy, rather than service provision, to really think how we can support those who are working in service provision and try to protect them. Eight states now have abortion shield laws for providers. The extent to which those shield laws provide legal protection against a sanction from other states differs, but that is a concrete measure that advocacy groups in abortion supportive states can direct their attention towards in a real tangible way to support, whether it’s these doctors or caregivers.

I’ve heard a number of conversations in the medical community, where older practitioners feel like they have a greater responsibility to essentially put their licenses at risk. It really points to such a systemic issue with the healthcare system that you can be in the stranglehold with a licensing board where decisions that are made are so political, really pointing to the tragedy, that is the lack of universal health care in the United States.

Sam Goldman 43:58

I wanted to give you an opportunity as we close out our conversation, if there was anything that I didn’t ask you about that you’re like: Listeners really need to know this, or anything that’s on your mind that you want people to pay attention to, that we didn’t cover already, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share.

Christine Ryan 44:16

I would say that I hope that listeners know that there really are efforts that they can support, whether it’s supporting through resources to an abortion fund, or trying to ensure that your workplace is supportive of reproductive rights, to the extent that you can do that being an advocate and supporting advocacy at the state level, as well as the national level and paying attention to what’s happening.

Rebecca Traister gave a warning last year that really sounded true for me was that there’s a real danger that we just become used to what’s how happening until you know, it knocks on your door. I’m terrified of that complacency because it is so detrimental to our ability as a movement to fight against abortion laws that are causing harm at every level of people’s lives right now. There is a real danger as well of overt stigmatization of abortion, and under-the-radar stigmatization of abortion that is replicated at present in law and policy.

But among women, social justice advocates, others who can become pregnant, I think it’s really important to tackle that stigmatization, to be willing to discuss reproductive care as an issue of healthcare, as an issue of human rights, and to be very cognizant of the risks of exceptionalyzing certain abortions over others, and portraying certain abortions as good abortions and others as essentially seeking bad abortions. That’s a risky and you know, in every movement, certain types of victims will be privileged.

I hope that anyone listening to this podcast just remains attended to that risk on how this is an issue of equality and liberation, broadly speaking. And it’s an issue of human rights. And that means every individual, not just those who have circumstances that can provoke tears, because they’re stories who tragic, there are a couple of things that I would end with that are germane necessarily to international human rights law, but are a very important part of thinking about the crisis that we’re in. And I also want to thank you for having me on.

Sam Goldman 46:49

I want to thank you, Christine, for sharing your insight, your perspective and your expertise with us and of course, your time. And we will be putting in the show notes, how you can learn more about the Global Justice Center and their work and how you can follow Christine on social media on Twitter. So thank you so much.

Christine Ryan 47:13

Thanks, million. Samantha, it’s been fabulous to talk to you.

Sam Goldman 47:17

The time to stop allowing yesterday’s outrage becoming today’s compromise position, and tomorrow’s limit on what’s possible is now. Well, it’s actually years ago is when it should have happened. But you know what? Now, it’s now as lives are endangered, as women and girls are trapped, as our status as full human beings is further degraded, as helping becomes a crime. We must declare, creatively, boldly, relentlessly, defiantly in word and deed, “legal abortion on demand and without apology nationwide.”

The decision that can potentially effectively ban the abortion medication mifepristone could happen any day. We encourage folks to be following this and be ready to take to the streets. Check out our February 26 interview with Carrie Baker for more on this case and see the link in the show notes for where you can join RiseUp4AbortionRights, same day and next day protests. Thanks for listening to rRefuse Fascism.

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We’ll be off next Sunday, but we’ll be back with a new episode April 16. We encourage folks to check out previous episodes. If you missed last week’s interview with Jeff Sharlet, be sure to give it a listen. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America