Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Amy Littlefield - Who Is Responsible For The Death Of Roe?

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Interview Only w/ Amy Littlefield - Who Is Responsible For The Death Of Roe? · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: Joining me now is the author of a book. It's
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  Speaker 1: called Killers of Row, my investigation into the mysterious death
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  Speaker 1: of abortion rights. Book just came out. Well, the investigator
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  Speaker 1: in this case is Amy Littlefield, and that's what makes
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  Speaker 1: this book I think a This isn't just a policy
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  Speaker 1: analysis of legal strategy. This is in some ways a
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  Speaker 1: history of the of the anti abortion rights movement in
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  Speaker 1: many ways and the fifty year campaign that was waged
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  Speaker 1: and arguably a six obviously considering the Dobbs decision an
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  Speaker 1: effective campaign, and in many ways is the book is
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  Speaker 1: designed almost as a murder mystery. You're trying to figure
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  Speaker 1: out who you know, who got rid of these rights,
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  Speaker 1: how did it happen, did it happen immediately, or as
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  Speaker 1: this book essentially teaches you, it's kind of like bankruptcy.
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  Speaker 1: It happens very slowly and then suddenly it happens quickly.
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  Speaker 1: And Dobbs was the feeling of quickness. But the fact
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  Speaker 1: of the matter is this was literally a fifty year
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  Speaker 1: campaign that arguably again the hour after the original road decision.
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  Speaker 1: So to discuss this book fall out on abortion rights
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  Speaker 1: and it's been well timed. You guys have had a
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  Speaker 1: bunch of questions of me of wondering where is the
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  Speaker 1: abortion issue this year in the midterm elections. Well, here's
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  Speaker 1: a good way to have that conversation. Amy Littlefield, the investigator,
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  Speaker 1: joins me. Now, Amy, nice to have you on the podcast.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Chuck, It's great to be here.
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  Speaker 1: So I guess that's it. Let's start with this. Why
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  Speaker 1: did you choose this framing and what made it so
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  Speaker 1: compelling to you? I mean, I'm gonna let the cat
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  Speaker 1: out of the bag. I find it. I found it
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  Speaker 1: to be a compelling framing because it was a nice
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  Speaker 1: way to understand things. But you could have gone in
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  Speaker 1: a number of directions. Why this one?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so the murder mystery framing came about
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  Speaker 2: because I had covered abortion rights for many years at
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  Speaker 2: The Nation and New York Times Opinion and elsewhere, and
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  Speaker 2: I was focused really on the grassroots of the abortion
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  Speaker 2: rights movement and their strategy trying to defend abortion rights.
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  Speaker 2: But I had also written a lot about near death
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  Speaker 2: experiences that had been faced by women who had been
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  Speaker 2: denied adequate care for miscarriages, principally in Catholic hospitals that
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  Speaker 2: basically run under abortion vans, like the ones we're seeing
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  Speaker 2: in states like Texas today. Right, You're not supposed to
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  Speaker 2: do an abortion in a Catholic hospital, and.
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  Speaker 1: Well, tried just asking for tried, just asking for recommendations
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  Speaker 1: about getting an IUD in a Catholic hospital exactly, And
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  Speaker 1: in fact, there can be no written record of this.
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  Speaker 1: We'll whisper it to you. We'll talk to this person.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying I know this from experience,
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  Speaker 1: but I'm going to tell you I know this from experience.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of people do, because one in six
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  Speaker 2: acute care beds is in a Catholic hospital, right.
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  Speaker 1: Care Right, I mean, it's just like some of the
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  Speaker 1: best hospital care in the country is Catholic hospitals. But
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  Speaker 1: they do operate with with essentially on one issue, very
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  Speaker 1: much through a religious lens, not a scientific lens.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: And the problem is, these are hospitals that look and
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  Speaker 2: operate like any other except that there's rules written by
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  Speaker 2: Catholic bishops governing how they administer reproductive healthcare, everything from
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  Speaker 2: contraception to gender firm and care to of course abortion care.
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  Speaker 2: And so I had been interviewing women for years who
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  Speaker 2: had wound up in Catholic hospitals when they were losing
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  Speaker 2: pregnancies and had almost died as a result. Now, these,
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  Speaker 2: of course are the stories that we're seeing coming out
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  Speaker 2: of Georgia and Texas. And so all of that is
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  Speaker 2: to say that when I learned that Ruth Vader Ginsberg
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  Speaker 2: had died and that roeb Wade was almost certainly going
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  Speaker 2: to be overturned as a result, I was a new mom.
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  Speaker 3: I had a five month old baby. It was COVID times.
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  Speaker 2: We're in the middle of a pandemic, and about the
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  Speaker 2: only thing I could read was Murder Mystery. Specifically, I
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  Speaker 2: get the Christie because I was basically, you know, I
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  Speaker 2: was anxious, I was angry, I was sad about what
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  Speaker 2: I knew was going to happen, and that was my escapism,
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  Speaker 2: was just mainlining.
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  Speaker 3: I get the cost.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody should go through an Agatha Christie face. It's just
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  Speaker 1: a total at side. I did it at one point
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  Speaker 1: in time too. You realize that, you know, look, she
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: didn't quite invent it, but she popularized the genre, and
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  Speaker 1: you realize when you read her stuff, you're like, wow,
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  Speaker 1: so many people ripped her off. Sorry, it's it aside,
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  Speaker 1: but it's so so great that you mentioned that little aside,
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  Speaker 1: because Agatha Christie's one of those you know it is
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  Speaker 1: it is prolift obviously not to go down a rabbit hole.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe she didn't write all I'm ready.
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  Speaker 3: To go down to get the Christie rabbit hole with
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  Speaker 3: you any time, but it.
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  Speaker 1: Is everybody should go through an Agatha Christie face. But
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  Speaker 1: I digress, go ahead.
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  Speaker 3: Completely, and for me, I went through it twice.
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  Speaker 2: I went through it in adolescence that I was a
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  Speaker 2: teenager and first discovered her, and then I went through
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  Speaker 2: it again as a new mom, where you know, I
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  Speaker 2: just love disappearing into that world that she has created.
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  Speaker 2: And yes, indeed we live in the literary world that
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  Speaker 2: she has made.
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  Speaker 1: She is true crime and all crime. Right. Well, that's
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  Speaker 1: the other part of this is that, I mean, look,
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  Speaker 1: I think all of us in journalism, all of us
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  Speaker 1: in activism, are always looking for more compelling ways to
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  Speaker 1: reach more people. In framing this in some ways as
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  Speaker 1: a murder mystery, as a crime novel, if you will, right,
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  Speaker 1: except that happens to be back not fiction, is a
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  Speaker 1: way to perhaps widen the ambitshre here a little bit.
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  Speaker 2: So, I mean, it started out as a way for
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  Speaker 2: me and to entice myself to tell a really difficult story.
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  Speaker 2: I knew I was going to have to sit with
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  Speaker 2: some pretty difficult people. I was going to have to
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  Speaker 2: sit and spend hours with anti abortion activists. I was
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  Speaker 2: going to have to spend time telling the stories of
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  Speaker 2: women who had died as a result of anti abortion policies.
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  Speaker 2: You know, the sort of cliff notes version of this
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  Speaker 2: history is that it's fifty years of women dying preventable
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  Speaker 2: deaths because of policy. It's advanced by men who thought
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  Speaker 2: they were speaking to God himself directly, and so it's
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  Speaker 2: not easy to sit with that, especially today, right, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: people of conscience in this country are having a really
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  Speaker 2: tough time. We're watching, you know, bombs being dropped on
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  Speaker 2: civilian populations from Gaza to Iran. We're watching you know,
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  Speaker 2: constant social media imagery of parents holding their dead children. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: it's it's a pretty rough and immigrant neighbors being rounded up.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, this is a rough reality we're dealing with.
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  Speaker 2: And I knew I was gonna have to tell part
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  Speaker 2: of the history of how we got to this point,
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  Speaker 2: of how the Republican Party, you know, wound up opportunistically
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  Speaker 2: using the issue of abortion to end up where they
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  Speaker 2: are today, and so I wanted to sort of entice
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  Speaker 2: myself into that story. And as I got into it,
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  Speaker 2: I realized, you know, not only is this providing a
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  Speaker 2: little bit of comfort and escapism and I hope a
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  Speaker 2: little bit of humor and levity too, to this very
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  Speaker 2: serious story, But it turned out to be the right
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  Speaker 2: frame to tell the story I was trying to tell
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  Speaker 2: because I really was interested in the behind the scenes
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  Speaker 2: figures in the suspects that you don't notice until you
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  Speaker 2: get all the way to the end, and then the
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  Speaker 2: detective says, you know she did it. It was the
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  Speaker 2: housekeeper who was, you know, always in the background. And
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  Speaker 2: I was looking for those people, you know, in the
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  Speaker 2: margins of history, right, the people, not the Supreme Court justices.
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  Speaker 2: We know that story, right, We know what the Supreme
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  Speaker 2: Court did. We know how Donald Trump put the justices there,
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  Speaker 2: we know how Leonard Leo picked the justices.
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  Speaker 3: We have that story.
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  Speaker 2: And I wanted to tell the story of the social
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  Speaker 2: movement and of the grassroots activists and the more hidden figures,
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  Speaker 2: and discovering them.
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  Speaker 3: Was just as exciting as real life as it is
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  Speaker 3: in a novel.
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  Speaker 1: No, And that's to me what was really important. I
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  Speaker 1: don't think people understood because it was you know, one
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  Speaker 1: of the harder things to square over the last thirty
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  Speaker 1: years in my professional life covering campaigns was you would
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  Speaker 1: have fairly moderate Republicans still stick to some pretty strident
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  Speaker 1: views on abortion, and it would always be a bit
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  Speaker 1: of a head scratcher at first, and then over time
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  Speaker 1: you've just come to learn, you know, if you wanted
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  Speaker 1: volunteers to show up at your campaign to stuff envelopes,
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  Speaker 1: and you didn't have of the essentially the old Phyllis
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  Speaker 1: Schlapley crowd. You know, they showed up, they licked envelopes,
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  Speaker 1: they went door knocking, I mean, and you didn't get
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  Speaker 1: campaign volunteers. State parties wouldn't be able to get volunteers
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  Speaker 1: had they ever quote moderated their position on abortion.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean the hard reality I think to
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  Speaker 2: look at for people who support abortion rights is that
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  Speaker 2: the anti abortion movement, one of the ways they won
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  Speaker 2: was by erecting an incredibly impressive grassroots infrastructure.
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  Speaker 3: And of course they hit the.
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  Speaker 2: Ground running on that because the original infrastructure for organizing
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  Speaker 2: in the anti abortion movement was the Catholic Church itself, right,
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  Speaker 2: And I tell the story of the passage of the
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  Speaker 2: High Amendment that ban on federal funding of abortion and
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  Speaker 2: how that came about. Basically what tipped the scales on
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  Speaker 2: that was the Catholic Church getting involved in rallying pastors
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  Speaker 2: in the districts of critical members of Congress. And what
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  Speaker 2: could be a better, you know, organizing infrastructure than the
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  Speaker 2: Catholic Church, I mean.
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  Speaker 1: More importantly back then and people don't realize this. You
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  Speaker 1: still when did the Catholic Church stop allowing priests to
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  Speaker 1: serve in elective office. It was, it was right around then.
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  Speaker 1: But the point was is that it was more common
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  Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties and seventies for a Catholic
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  Speaker 1: priest to be political, and it was sort of accepted.
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  Speaker 1: And then because you know, it's only in the recent
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  Speaker 1: last fifty years arguably that this idea of clergy in general,
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  Speaker 1: let alone Catholic priests getting you know, running themselves for office.
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  Speaker 1: But you had you know, one of my favorite stories
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  Speaker 1: campaign stories to tell is that there was a sitting
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  Speaker 1: Catholic priest who ran against Claiborne Pell for the US
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  Speaker 1: Senate in Rhode Island in the early sixties. That priest
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  Speaker 1: would leave the priesthood and start a political television show
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: called the McLaughlin which you may have heard of back
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: in the day, the originator of political punditry on television.
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  Speaker 1: But the point was is that the Catholic Church and
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  Speaker 1: they had tentacles in both parties. You had. It was
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  Speaker 1: this was a case where this was not yet a
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  Speaker 1: divisive correct me if I'm wrong, But in the seventies
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  Speaker 1: This was not a red versus blue issue.
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  Speaker 2: This was within both parties, right, right, absolutely. I mean
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  Speaker 2: Mary Zigeler talks about how from nineteen seventy three to
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  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four, the majority of anti abortion policies that
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  Speaker 2: were introduced in Congress were brought forward by Democrats. Right
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  Speaker 2: in the early days, you had Catholic Democrats, you know,
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  Speaker 2: who were anti abortion. You had pro choice Republicans, some
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  Speaker 2: of whom I talked to in my book, like Senator
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Bob Packwood, who's in his nineties now, you know, complicated guy,
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  Speaker 2: but he was a pro choice champion through and through
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  Speaker 2: so and he was a Republican.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, there's a certain member of the Bush family that
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  Speaker 1: started out as a pro choice Republican politician and then
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  Speaker 1: literally flipped to get on a certain Republican ticket in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty Arguably.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, the man they used to call Rubbers who
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: was so fond of family planning that he earned that
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  Speaker 2: Moniker And yeah. So, so this was not guaranteed to
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  Speaker 2: be a partisan issue when it started out by any means.
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  Speaker 1: So when would you say that switch flipped? You know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: so you talk about the High Demendum in seventy six,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: this is massive majorities right at that point in time
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  Speaker 1: for Democrats. So this was This is why, you know,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who I think think politics
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: began in two thousand and eight, and you know sometimes
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that they forget that.
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  Speaker 3: You know, you may have some listeners who were born
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: that night.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I say this with love, but this is why they are.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Sometimes our history sections are the most popular things we
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: do because because you know, you have to understand these things.
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  Speaker 1: So seventy six, this is after the This is basically
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  Speaker 1: the first Congress after the Watergate Congress, the Watergate elections,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: which is just a massive democratic majorities. This was not.
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  Speaker 1: And so the High Amendment I assume passed with more
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Democrats and Republics.
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  Speaker 2: Right, This was a Democratic Congress that passed this policy,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: and it took Democrats. You know, Democrats supported it for years.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden supported it for many years until you know,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: a renegade faction of the abortion rights movement made it
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: untenable for him to do.
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  Speaker 1: So, you know, he supported it through both terms as
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: vice president. He's stuck by this. It wasn't until he
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: wanted to be president himself.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly exactly.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: And so you know the part of The history I
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: tell in the book is the history of sort of
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: democratic complicity in the slow and steady erosion of abortion rights.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: And the High Amendment is really you know where it starts.
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  Speaker 2: That's the policy that restricts medicaid funding of abortion. To
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: this day, most states, unless they cover abortion with their
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: own state funds, medicaid patients can knot get their abortions covered.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: They have to raise hundreds or even thousands of dollars
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: out of pocket, which has put enormous pressure on the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: abortion rights movement as well to come up with the
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: millions of dollars that it takes to try to fill
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: that gap.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Never been enough, and so you know that policy.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I tell the story of some of the behind the scenes,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: you know, Catholic Republicans that were involved in that history.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And of course the Catholic Church played an important role,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: but so did Democrats, you know, Democrats like Republican I'm sorry,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Representative Dan Flood, it was from Pennsylvania who oversaw the
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: subcommittee in charge of the Appropriations bill that the High
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Amendment was sort of being tacked onto, and he was
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: very against the High Amendment. Saw it as an attack
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: on poor people. He railed against it, and he was
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: this Shakespearean theater actor, very dramatic.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: So this is a you know, attack on poor people
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: as plain as the nose on your face.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Well then what happened. A Catholic church got involved, sent
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: him thousands of letters. You know, he came from a
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: heavily Catholic district, and he flipped. And that's part of
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the story of how the High Amendment got through a
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Democratic majority Congress. I mean another thing, and you know,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: you know this history even better than I do. But
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six, right, this is the even nineteen
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: seventy sixth election, Evangelicals are becoming a big political force
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: for the first time. And I think there were plenty
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: of Democrats in Congress who maybe thought Roe v.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: Wade was a good thing. Most Americans did at that point.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: And yet they thought public funding of abortion poor people,
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: women of color, Maybe we can, you know.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: We better not take a stand on that one this
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: close to an election where there's this new you know, political.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: Force, and so anti abortion.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: You know, politics have always been a minority point of view,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and this is one of many stops along the way
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: where we can see how that minority point of view
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: asserted itself on a population that disagreed with it.
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  Speaker 1: Look, you brought up the sort of the evangelical movement
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: which began, you know, sort of politically first flexed its
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: muzzle with the election of the first ever evangelical Christian
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: to be president, Jimmy Carter. And immediately within four years
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: there's the evangelical leaders, people like Jerry Fowwell standing next
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to Ronald Reagan, who at one point was a supporter
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of abortion rights as governor of California. How did that
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: moment come up out?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the Reagan eras where we really
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: start to see the partisan lines. They're still not totally fixed,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: you know. I think that's an even more recent development,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: but I think that's where we start to see the
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: partisan lines start to solidify a bit more. When you
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: have Reagan campaigning on a strong anti abortion position, even
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: though he himself, of course had signed an abortion liberalization
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: law when he was governor of California, later said he
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: regredit it. You know, he gets dubbed in the first
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: pro life president. Of course, he makes out a major issue,
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: and you see right to life groups really supporting him.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, one of the interesting pieces of raw material
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I was able to examine for this book where some
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: communicates between right to life groups and the Reagan campaign
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four, where basically, the rights to life
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: groups were saying, listen, we do not have a majority
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: point of view. Right most people disagree with what we
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: want to do, and yet we do have a majority
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: of people who will base their or we do have
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a strong contingent of people who will base their votes
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: on a single issue of abortion. And so they were
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: basically saying to the Reagan campaign, Hey, we have this huge,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: super impressive grassroots infrastructure. Use it, Use our volunteers, Use
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: the you know housewives out there who you know, to
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: whom you know the issue of abortion is an existential threat.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Use the you know folks out there or going to
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Catholic church on the weekends and want to you know,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: stamp envelopes for the Reagan campaign during the week I mean,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: this is this is sort of how they built this
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: alliance between the Republican Party and anti abortion diehards.
• 18:44
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  Speaker 1: it's interesting, you could do a very similar There was
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a similar sort of evolution to the gun issue that
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: started as a you know, there wasn't a arguably there
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: was a pro gun majority in both parties for a
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: period of time. But guns and abortion are both single
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: issue type of voters, right the voters that say it's
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: their number one issue, it's the there is no number
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: two issue. And it's an interesting phenomenon. It's sort of
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: like when people try to ask yourself, you try to
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I hear I get this question all the time.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Why what is something that has seventy percent support? I
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: guess abortion rights. It's sitting somewhere between fifty five and
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: sixty five depending on the stage go into. But it's
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: you know, there might be two states in the Union
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: where's upside down maybe, but we're talking like Idaho and Wyoming.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: If any and I'm we're talking narrow, but it is
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: this issue of being a single issue voter. And how
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: if you are, if you really want, if you have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a minority position and you want outside political power, get
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: as many single issue allies as you can on this.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And when you think about the power of the Republican
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Party was able to extract out of just guns and
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: abortion basically in the nineties. By that's really I know,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I'm fast forwarding here being single issue I don't it
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: is it is. It is fascinating whenever we pull these
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: questions we used to pull wed ask is there an
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: issue that's so important to you that you would vote
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: against all your other interests just for this issue? And
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you look, and it's always been abortion one guns too.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: You know where those things come down.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: And we've seen what happen when what happens when people
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: vote on the single issue of abortion, specifically, Right with
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: all of these ballot initiatives that have come about from
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: you know, Missouri to Vermont, you know, across the political spectrum,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: in the wake of the Dobb's decision, a record number
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: of states are putting the issue of abortion directly on the.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Ballot and more often than not, abortion rights.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Wins in almost any state you go to right because
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: when people have the chance to vote directly on this issue,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: they vote in favor of it. I think when you're
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: talking about political parties and you know whether people are
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: going to vote for a candidate based on it, of
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: course it gets more complicated. But the anti abortion movement
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: is always known that that's one of its straints, that
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: one of the ways that they win with an unpopular
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: point of view is that there are people who are
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: willing to compromise the rest of their you know, values,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: in order to vote for a politician who stands against abortion.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: In fact, there's not a lot there were. There weren't
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: that many attempts by the anti abortion rights movement to
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: go to referendums were they're compared comparatively.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: By the abortion rights movement.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You're saying type vers rights movement. Well, I'm trying to
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: think there's a person I remember a personhood amendment? Yeah, empt, Yeah,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I mean I think that I don't I believe that failed.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: I think it was lot in South Dakota or yeah.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: I mean when this personhood fails, when it because people realize,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: oh my god, wait a minute, if you're talking about
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: life beginning at conception, you're going to come for my
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: IVF are you going to try to come for my iud.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: So so when you go. So it is interesting that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that if they thought, I mean, that's sort of in
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: some ways, the lack of action is proof that they
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: knew they didn't have majority support.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Oh. I think they've always known they don't have majority support.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: I think they've always known that. You know, they have
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: to find That's why, you know, defenders of abortion rights
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: will say democracy and abortion rights go hand in hand.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: The more voting rights you have, the better abortion does,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the more you know. And that's why if you look
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: at authoritarian societies, you know, around the world, not just
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: here at home, you're going to see that, you know,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: reproductive rights are off in the first one's constrained. I mean,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: these issues can't be separated. When you have one, youre
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: women who will have an abortion in her lifetime. You know, yeah,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: that's going to be a pretty popular issue.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: There's another way to look at your book about you know,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: you're chronicling a brilliant campaign strategy that the anti abortion
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: rights movement ran versus a the abortion rights activists who
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe they were probably spent so much time, couldn't
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: believe they were losing. You know, It's sort of like
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: there's a there's an old SNL skit, you know, where
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the guy playing John Lovett plays Michael deccause. I can't
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: believe I'm losing to this guy, and you're just And
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I've always sensed, I mean, there's sort of two things
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: now in hindsight that I want that I've always been
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: curious about what the abortion rights movement. One is, was
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: it a was it a failed defense strategy from the beginning?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Was choice the worst word they could have picked? And
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: how did they you know, in what why didn't they
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: make freedom and right the centerpiece rather or even healthcare
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the centerpiece. I feel like in the last four years
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: those advocating abortion rights have gotten smarter about this, but
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: in the previous forty six not so much.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the problem with choice is.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: That, even with rob WA being a lot of the land,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: it was always a false promise. Right, It's not do
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: people have a meaningful choice when one of the top
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: issues that people get an abortion is financial right. And
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: I've worked in clinics, so I can tell you, most
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: people are saying, I can't afford this baby right now,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: and so is.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: That it's rare to meet somebody who got an abortion
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: who's like, I'm so glad I got an abortion.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: They're out there, you know, they're out there. That's not
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: you know, there.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Are there's a lot of people, a lot of people
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: are getting it's it is. There are other reasons they
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: feel they need to do it, and so they don't
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: like being told it's a choice exactly.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: It was always a false promise. I mean.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And you know, when you have the right to abortion
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: coming about at the same time that you start to see,
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: you know, the eviseration of the social safety net in
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: this country, the backlash against the War on poverty, the
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: backlash against the civil rights movement, the backlash against feminism,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the fact that we don't have many of the like
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: basic policies like you know, childcare and paid family leave
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: that it would take to raise a family. Then choice
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: is not really it doesn't really operate the way that
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: it promises to do. And I think the other issue
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: with it is that the choice framework could be weaponized
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: in order to promote anti abortion policies. It could be
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: weaponized to say we shouldn't have tax payer funding of abortion,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: We shouldn't we should have parental consent laws. Right, These
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: are two of the kind of most popular anti abortion
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: policies that even Democrats often supported. Why because you know,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: if the government's supposed to stay out of abortion, and
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: it's supposed to be a personal choice, you know, then
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: why would they funded then? You know, why wouldn't we
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: want parents involved in this choice that belongs to the family.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: And so I think there was a way that it
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: could be used to justify, you know, conservative policies. And
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: it's a less encompassing framework than freedom. It's less encompassing
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: than reproductive justice, which was the framework developed by black
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: women to say we shouldn't just have the right to abortion,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: we should have the right to parent and to raise
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: those children in safe communities. And especially after the Reagan era,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: that is not what the United States has been able
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: to provide for families.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: You spend a little bit of time on the first
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: deaths sort of after the High Amendment, and you were
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: talking about how it's a woman who name's Rosie Himanniz.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Didn't I think there was some thought she'd become a Look,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: this is what happens when when you make this more difficult,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: when you add more hurdles on something that the Supreme
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Court said was a right, okay, and suddenly in order,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: you know, our rights were never supposed to come with
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: a fee, right way, I think we you know, we
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: decided we weren't going to allow poll taxes. Right. I'm
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: not trying to, but you know, essentially the idea was,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: your rights aren't supposed to cost you money. And in
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: this case, here's a death because somebody couldn't afford an
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: abortion because they were in medicaid. It didn't galvanize. And
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: why didn't the galvanize?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is the question I asked in the book,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: and I cover the first death of Rosi Jumenez, which
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: was the horrible, you know, eight day long saga of
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: her getting an infection and dying as a result of
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: the infection while doctors were badgering her to talk about
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: her abortion and she was pleading to be left alone
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: to die in peace. I talk about that first death,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: which was horrible and completely preventable and resulted from this
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: policy called the High Amendment. And then I look at
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: the second death, which was how was the pro choice
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: movement implicated. How are democrats implicated in the fact that
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: this policy that killed this woman became accepted, became popular,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: became seen as a middle ground on the abortion issue.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: As you're referring to. I think her name's Becky Bell, right,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and she was under eighteen, so right right? Did to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: tell her parents?
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Becky Bell is a seventeen year old in Indiana. Because
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: of a law passed in the nineteen eighties in that state,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: she had to tell her parents and get consent if
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: she wanted an abortion. She told a friend, I love
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: them too much. I can't tell my parents. I'll disappoint them,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And so instead she got an unsafe abortion. Her parents
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: take her to the hospital. She dies of pneumonia. They
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: have no idea what's happened until they get a call
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: from the coroner. It says, your daughter died because of
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: an abortion. That's what caused the pneumonia that killed her.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: And what's remarkable about them is that they could have
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: had the secret that their daughter had died to keep,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: and instead they decided to share it with the world
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: and to say, listen, these policies are popular.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: We would have supported them. We like the idea. You know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: lots of.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Liberals like the idea, my daughter should have to come
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: to me if she needs an abortion. But they said,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: we wish she had had an abortion, we had never known,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: because then she would have been here today. And when
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Dobbs happened, when the Supreme Court overturned ro v. Wade,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: all but fourteen states in this country were enforcing some
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: version of a parental involvement law. And so that's another
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: example of how, you know, this incremental erosion of abortion
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: rights that killed real people, you know, that killed women.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: How that happened and was supported by people across the
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: political spectrum.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: So when you talk to folks on the abortion rights
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: side of things as you were investigating this mystery, what
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: ownership do they take in? I mean, because you know,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: one of the my conservative legal friends will say, well,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the initial decision was a bad decision. And in fact,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why equal protection wasn't used as the
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: argument right that they went searching for this right to privacy. Now,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: is it the legal argument that did it? Or was
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: it the justicees desperate to not do a five or
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: right They didn't want a five to four in row,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: so they came up with a convoluted way in order
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: to believe it was a seven to two. If I'm
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: not mistaken, it was sixth three, which one the original row? Right, Yeah, yeah,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it was it six three or seven two. But I
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: knew they didn't. They were fearful of a five to four, right, right,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and they come up with this, this this version. But
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: you know that's my conservative legal friends will say the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: reason Roe fell is it was poorly it was, it
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: was poorly decided. Did you come across those on the
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: abortion right sides that look at it now and say, yeah,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: maybe that wasn't that that maybe that was the original sin?
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think you could.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I think people will definitely find flaws in the legal
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: rationale of Roe v.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Wade. But I think we both know that that's not
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: why it fell.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: They felt because abortion, and it fell because the anti
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: abortion movement built very powerful connections and was able to
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: orchestrate this, you know, political coup, despite having most of
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: society against it. So I don't think it was like, oh,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: there were flaws with the legal rationale and therefore, I mean,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: there's plenty of flawed decisions out there that are still
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: the law of the land.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: You know, Another culprit you don't talk about that much.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: You talk about it with High with the High Amendment.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: But you know, I've been I've been growing more fond
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: of being of realizing that ninety percent of our political
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: problems over the last sixty years in this country stem
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: from inaction by Congress. And because of Congress's inability to
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: deal with problems, many activists started going to the courts.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: You know, you could argue the courts never should have
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: been involved with this. If we had, you know, any
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: other system, you would have just had this past just
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: slatively what you know, how has that never really been
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: pursued seriously.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a good question. I mean, there
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: have been attempts. And by the way, Chuck, you were right.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: The original Ruby Wade was seven to two two and
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: so I mean the question of Congress, and it's so true,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: like the abortion rights struggle has always been in the states, right,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the fatal flaws for the
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: abortion rights movement is they did not have a huge
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: amount of investment. No one on the progressive side of
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: the equation really had a huge investment in state legislatures.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: There was much more focus on Washington, d C. And
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: there was very little happening in cong.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: The conservative movement has been exact opposite. They have, starting
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: in the late seventies, been very focused on the states.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: You know, is something called go pack exactly in the
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: old New Gingrid era, but anyway, go ahead.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And that's where you know, I mean, we're talking about
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: hundreds more than a thousand, and you know, policies coming
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: out of state legislatures that chip away at people's access
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: to abortion, and basically the abortion rights movement saying, well,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: we'll have to fight those in court, right, I mean,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: starting eventually, you know, the High Amendment. Eventually, they they thought,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: if we can't stop this in Congress, we're going to
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: have to fight it in court. And that strategy worked
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: until it didn't. Didn't work with the High Amendment, didn't
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: work with Roe v.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: Wade.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: You know, it took them fifty years, but that fell
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. There were moments that I revisited
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: where this issue came up in Congress and where you know,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Democrats in Congress with a democratic administration actually had an
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: opportunity to codify Roe v. Wade until on I look
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: at why didn't that happen when it could have. There
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: was one moment in the nineteen nineties where there was
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: a possibility it could happen, and where basically there were
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: disagreements within the abortion rights movement over who do we
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: include in codifying the right to abortion? Do we include
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: young people, do we include people who are on medicaid?
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Do we try to, you know, protect everyone's rights or
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: do we only protect you know, the bare minimum.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: And what you're describing is you know what you know,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: how they what fell through and they had they lost
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins when there was an attempt
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to do that in the Senate. And that's the question.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Are you codifying row right or are you codifying the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: right right right?
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And and we saw this happen, you know, I mean,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: and the problem is, right, you don't have this sort
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: of vociferous dedication to this issue on the Democratic side
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: across the board that you do for Republicans who see
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: what a brilliant opportunity it is for them to restrict
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: abortion and rile up this, you know, contingent of their
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: base that they need for that. And so there's disagreements
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: within the abortion rights movement about how to contend with
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: the weak support that they get from Democrats relatively speaking.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: And we saw this happen again with the Affordable Care
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Act right where abortions became the scapegoat around the Affordable
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Care Act. And Obama, who had come into office promising
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: to sign the Freedom of Choice Act to caudify Row,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: then when he gets there says, that's not my priority.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to pass his healthcare law. And
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: you know, while that law was an incredible you know,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: expanded healthcare to millions of people who didn't have it,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: on the abortion rights issue in particular, it was seen
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: as a step backwards because of the.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: So called look I had to cover that hour by
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: hour when these negotiations were taking place. It was the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: so called Stupak Amendment, a pro life Democrat from Michigan
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: who was sort of pro union pro you know, it
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: was one of those that Catholic Democrats from the seventies
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: that you described, and they needed his vote and they
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: came up with this convoluted executive order I believe that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that Obama signed in order to get Stupac on.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Board exactly exactly.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: And so you know, the silver lining of that is
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: that for abortion rights activist, especially those who are younger
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: and sort of outside the hill, outside the sort of
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: center of political power. That was a real catalyzing moment
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: for them to say they're going to escapegoat abortion. While
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: they do this, we might as well just go for
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: it and call for repealing the High Amendment. And they
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: form this sort of long shot campaign to do just that,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: which I talk about as I think the greatest unsung
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: success story that the abortion rights movement has had in
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: a generation. I mean, it's a really remarkable story of
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: how they got people including Joe Biden to talk about
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: the High Amendment and how it needed to go.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Well, if you know, is that the beginning of the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: abortion rights side basically saying, all right, you guys wrote
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the playbook, we'll use your playbook, and we'll start chipping
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: sort of chip instead of chipping away. I guess this
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: is rebuilding the rights while brick by brick.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think what I would argue is that, yes,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: there needs to be incremental progress, and we are seeing that.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: You know, I talk about the activists in Texas who
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: bring forward legislation to restore full reproductive freedom there, even
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: though they know it won't pass. Okay, that's an example
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: of an incremental you know, you introduce legislation, you know
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: it's not going to happen, but you keep doing it,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: and you keep doing it, and you know, years from
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: now at finally tips to scales. But I also think
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: like that, the way that the anti abortion movement succeeded
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: wasn't just the incremental legal approach, right, That's where we
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: get the most attention, because of course that's what eventually
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: resulted in the Supreme Court decision. But they also had
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: radical and even extreme militant, you know, factions within their movement.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: They had Operation Riskue that was bringing the you know,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: thousands of people. Randall Terry, who I interviewed for the book,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: had a fascinating run in with him.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: They they had their militants, they had their you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: their radicals, and you know, they had a long term vision.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: And so I think you need all of it. You know,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's an either or, And I think
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the abortion rights movement often has you know, planned parenthood
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: has had a hugely dominant role in the movement and
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: has relied on a strategy of protecting its own health
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: centers which provide essential services to many. There's often been
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: a focus on defending abortion through the courts versus having
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: a grassroots, state by state strategy, and I do think
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: you're starting to see more boldness. I do think you're
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: starting to see more radical thinking on the abortion right
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: side now that the constitutional right to abortion is gone,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: because there's this recognition that came too late that the
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: courts are not going to protect, threat or expand this right.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
• 39:38
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• 41:12
  Speaker 1: if you've got a growing family. Would there be a
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: federalist society without rope?
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: That's a great question.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think they would find other quibbles with, like,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: you know, women's participation in public life even Well, the.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Reason I said is I think the whole reason we
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: got a federal society, yeah, right, where they wanted to
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: no longer have the a BA as sort of the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: vetter of things that they wanted, a conservative vetting, not
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: a legal vetting on expertise, and you know it's you know,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: basically there's been two sort of one would argue very
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: radical schools of thought on trying to deal with certain
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: legal issues, one on guns, on an abortion that all
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: these legal arguments basically came through Federalist society meetings and
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: organizations and trainings.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and Leonard Leo effectively, you know, handed Trump the
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: names that he knew we're going to overturn Roe v.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Wade, and you know here we are.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess one thing that's super interesting about
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: organizations like that and Alliance Defending Freedom is in this
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: category as well. You know, you said that the abortion
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: rights movement can copy the anti abortion playbook. But you know,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: part of the way that the anti abortion movement got
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: where it is today is by copying their enemy's playbook, right.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, I spoke to the conservative architect Richard Vigory
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: for this.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: You figured out how to raise money through direct mail.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: He was the and arguably the the You know, if
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: you hate if you hate direct mail fundraising, if you
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: hate email fundraising, you can blame Richard Vigory.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Roger Craber, who I also talked to his you
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: knowargenemy and your friend on the.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Other, an old friend.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: It's hilarious to revisit a time when like these letters
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: they were sending asking people for money were like this
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: controversial new technology.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: It was like, oh my gosh, what are they doing,
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: you know, And now they just go into the recycling bent.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: But but yeah, they copied the playbook of the civil
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: rights movement, they copied their rhetoric, they called themselves, you know.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: And and Jennifer Holland talks.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: About the civil rights movement for white people, which was
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: the civil rights movement for fetuses, and how you know,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: when civil rights activists were saying, hey, we need to
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: talk about, you know, white supremacy, and white conservatives didn't
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: want to do that. Instead, they created their own sort
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: of imitation civil rights movement where they were championing the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: rights of the fetus. And they co opted the language,
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: I mean right to life, you know, And they saw
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: themselves as civil rights activists. They ran clips of Martin
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Luther King. You know, they believed that they were carrying
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: on the great civil rights struggle of their time. And so,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: you know, I think the other side has really been
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: masters of copying the playbook of and you know Alliance
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Defending Freedom, which ultimately brought the case that you know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: designed the legal strategy that overturned ro V Wade. You know,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: they were a response to the ACLU and to left
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: leaning legal power, and so a lot of how he
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: got here is through reactionary strategies. And I think, you know,
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: the abortion rights and left side has not always been
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: as good at observing and learning from the enemy.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: So ultimately, a right that a large majority of Americans
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: believe should exist was overturned in a fifty year campaign.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: So if you were to line up five entities responsible
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: for this, are there anybody on the pro abortion rights
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: side that belonged there.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Say it again, if you were to line.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: If you had a line up, say the five entities,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: whether it's people or groups that you would say, Hey,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: they deserve credit or blame however you want to look
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: at this. But for you know, for the overturning of
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Dobs for taking away this right. Is it only people
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: who were advocating to take this right or are there
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: people who in theory didn't want to see the right
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: go away who also belong on this list?
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, And that's why you know, I'm in my
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: like Miss Marple approach to figuring out who did it
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: and why. That's why I talked to people on both sides,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: and I went after, you know, everyone I could talk
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: to who had been there on the abortion right side,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: you know, the people who were heads of NAYRAL, of
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: the National Organization for Women.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: Of Planned Parenthood.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: I went and talked with Fay Waddleton, it was Planned
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Parenthood president starting in nineteen seventy eight, and I asked
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: them all some version of the same question, which is
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: like what keeps you up at night? What could you
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: have done differently? And some people didn't want to take
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: responsibility and some people did. You know, of course they
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: did greed about exactly what could have done been done differently,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: but I think that they're and look, the other issue
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: is they were under resource for what they needed to
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: do and consistently outflanked by their opponents. So but I
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: do think you need to look at at organizations like
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Nayral and Planned Parenthood and what you know, complicity they have.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, those were the two most influential organizations, and
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: what decisions were made along the way that you know,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: in some way made this a cause that that more
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: people could support because they were narrowing the frame. They
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: were talking about choice, they were talking about just protecting
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Roe v. Wade rather than focusing on things like you know,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: young people and public funding. And yet there you know,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: there was damage done as a result of those compromises
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: as well. So yes, I think you have to look
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: at at people on both sides of the struggle.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Using or feeling as if you're having to fight for
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: something can be more galvanizing than defending something that's legal. Right,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: and that used to be one of the rationales. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the assumption was, you know, why why was the right
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: always more motivated by Supreme Court openings and elections than
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the left? Right? One of my great you know, I
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: love I love butterfly effects with history and you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: like you use of one thing had changed and you know,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: had Scalia lived, I don't think Donald Trump becomes president.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: It's just one of my theses. Because the right there
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: were people that didn't like Trump's character, who held their
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: nose because it issue matters to them so much, who's
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court matters to them so much. Even
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: in the wake of losing Dobbs. I think there was
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: an assumption I had it there was some evidence in
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: polling it would be there that the single mindedness that
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: we saw on the right about this issue would basically
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: transform itself and become a single mindedness on the left.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: We're not seeing that. Why do you think that is?
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: I have to say I shared that misapprehension as well,
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: which is why I put myself in the position of
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: being in Amarillo, Texas, in a room full of Trump
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: supporters on election day, because I was interesting choice. I
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: went down there thinking I was so confident that anyway,
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: I did have another prediction that turned out to be true,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: which was there was an anti abortion ordinance on the
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: ballot in Amarillo, and that anti abortion ordinance failed in
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: this super conservative area in Texas, even though, of course
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Trump was elected, and so the activists I happen to
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: be spending time with were actually super depressed, you know,
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: for that reason, because they've been working very hard on
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: this ordinance. I mean, and that disconnect, I think tells
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: you a lot, right about the fact that even in
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: this super conservative area, this pretty extreme ordinance that was
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: trying to stop people from leaving the state of Texas
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: to get abortion.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: You couldn't leave the county, right or something like this, right.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Didn't one people, and people were passing through the Texas state.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: So they were.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: It was this kind I mean, really to restrict people
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: driving to abortion clinics or ordering pills through the mail.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: It's very hard to stop the unstoppable unless you resort
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: to pretty draconian scenarios, and.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: This was one of them.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: It was defeated, And so I was talking to as
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: many people as I could in the parking lot outside
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: these polling places, and some of them had indeed voted
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: against this ordinance, right, so effectively in support of you know,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: limited abortion rights and voting for.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: Trump, you know.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: And part of it, I think is that Trump had
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: convinced some number of voters that he was a moderate
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: on the abortion issue.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: He had convinced some number.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Look what he did in Florida. I mean, it was
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, his that you know, you know,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: it's funny, it's just like, you know, it's the there's
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: that Joe Biden saying, don't judge me by the almighty,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: judge me by the alternative. And this is a case
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: where Trump took advantage of the alternative. Boy, this six
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: week ballot initiative is so extreme, I don't know who
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: could support that. Well, it looked moderate because he was
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to the left of Ronda Santus, right.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Right right, which worked with a certain number of people.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: I think, and I mean I think the other issue
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: going on, it was fascinating to watch the abortion rights
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: activists and their strategy on the ground and Amarillo. They
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: were basically copying the other side's playbook. They were trying
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: to make abortions sound like a conservative issue.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: Right, don't let the government tell you what to do, right.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: Yes, get the government.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: The government's trying to make a travel ban here, you know,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: they're coming for your guns, except it's reproductive freedom.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: And it worked.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: And I but I think that there's, you know, a
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: downside to framing abortion as a conservative issue. Yes, it
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: means you could win on the single issue with conservative voters.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: But let me let me push back on let me
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: push back in a second, because this is where I
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: get frustrated. The word freedom is not a conservative word, right,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: but the conservatives have more successfully used the word and
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: marketed the word as a you know, you see the
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: words freedom and patriot right, and automatically there's this assumption
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: that they're trying to appeal to the right. And I'm
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: sitting here going, hey, I'm a patriot, I'm for freedom.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, you know, and and it
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: is not lost on me. I mean, Kansas was another
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: example of this. We're using these same sort of keep
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the government out of you know, the same arguments the
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: right makes on guns. Make it the same thing about
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: your personal autonomy and the argument, I mean, the good
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: news is it shows you people are not like you
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: know people actually, you know, we think everybody has groups.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Now when you frame it this way, people do start
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: to personalize. Well, let me put this in my shoes.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: And I think that's why you get the numbers that
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: you get on this issue. Is this not the playbook?
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Go with the freedom the freedom messaging and the and
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the autonomy messaging.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: It worked, you know, it worked and defeating that ordinance.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: You know, it was the message that that you know,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: and it certainly wasn't the first time that it had
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: been used successfully. But then you know, is there a downside?
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: And then giving people permission to vote in line with
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: their conservative politics and other issues? Right, I mean, I
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: think that's an interesting question.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: This is right, It's it's having personal rights be up
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: for debate versus right. This was arguably the whole point
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: of the constitution, right, so that we didn't have elections
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: constant elections to determine, well, do you have a right
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: to speech this year or not? You know that sort
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: of thing.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, oh yeah, that document. Sometimes you forget about
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: it these days.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Right, I know, I just wish I remember Congress would
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: read it once, you know, realize where Article one sits.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: But I digress. So where if I three years ago
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: I was pretty confident that the right to abortion would
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: be an all fifty states by the start of the
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: twenty thirties, why am I less convinced that's going to
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: be the case.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Why are you less convinced that it's going Yeah?
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: And I feel like your book only frankly reinforces my
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: newfound skepticism that, oh, is the public going to start
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: to tolerate this or accept this or sort of decide
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: not to fight this or is this something that maybe
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: when Trump goes away, this reanimates itself, right, right?
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: I mean I think I don't want to overlook the
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: fact that it is animating for a decent chunk of Americans, right.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: I think that you know that one in four women
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: will have an abortion in her lifetime. My friend, the
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: activist Renee Bracy Sherman likes to say, everyone loves someone
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: who's had an abortion, and so for those for those people,
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: this is a live issue. This is never something that
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: it is always top of mind. And I do think
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: it was an issue in the twenty twenty four election, right,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: I know, because I sat in on focus groups, I
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: talked to voters. It was something a lot of them
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: were thinking about. But I don't know why it wasn't
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: enough to tip the scales, right, I mean, when.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: He's already a pretty big gender gap. But I guess
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: the gender gap wasn't big enough. I mean, there's still
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a significant chunk of women that do not share the
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: share the same views on bodily autonomy as a majority
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: of women do, right.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Right, right, you know, And and abortion was pulling as
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: an important issue, you know, it certainly rose in importance
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: for voters after the Dobs decision, but it didn't outweigh
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: the economy, didn't outlish some of those other issues that
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: people care about because it affects their day to day lives,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: which again abortion does.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: Too for a lot of people.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think potentially one you know
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: flaw in the Democrats strategy with this in twenty twenty
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: four is again when you talk about just choice, when
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: you talk about abortion, when you talk about it in
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: isolation from other issues, you don't give people a framework
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: to think about it as connected to the economy, as
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: connected to you know, all of the other issues that
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: they think about in their day to day lives, when
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: in fact, it is when people are making decisions about
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: the shape of their families based on how much money
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: they have, on how much support the government is providing,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: on whether they can pay for childcare. Abortion is an
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: economic issue, but I think the way that it gets
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: talked about is again in that narrow choice framing. You know,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: this is just about the decision that you make and
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: whether you can get to a clinic or not. And
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: in fact, the way that people experience it is that
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: it's part of the sort of fabric of how they
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: you know, shape their lives, they choose to live with,
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: you know, what they choose for their work like this
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: is this is not a decision that's made in isolation.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: And I think a lot of the way that it
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: got talked about was sort of with these sort of
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: narrow stories that were much more about abortion in isolation
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: from the rest of people's experiences.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Is there anything to learn from the fact that birth
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: control is in some ways been taken off the political
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: debate stage. That's interesting, you know, in that look, we
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: still have some fights over what do you do do
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I U D S or you know that going to
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: get paid for and all? You know, I but you know,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: it's almost as if those that cared so much about
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: getting rid of the right to abortion, we're willing to say, Okay,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be It was always the you know,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I remember Bobby Jindall, I'm going to make birth control
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: free over here in Louisiana, while we also to advocate
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: for not having a right to abortion.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Is there.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Is there anything to be learned from the fact that
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: there is even greater support for birth control that the
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: abortion rights movement can sort of draft off of.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: If that makes sense, You know, I'm glad it looks
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: to you that way. I spend a lot of time
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: for my job as a reporter hanging around with anti
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: abortion activists.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: No, I know, the activist community still wants to get
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: rid of birth control, but it doesn't have.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: A traction right right, right.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: But it's very live for them. I mean, that is
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: their end goal, right. They think abortion should go. A
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: healthy member of them think IVF should go as well.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: But of course, you know, savvy politicians are more circumspect
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: about that, you know, I mean again, listen, Richard Viggery.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: You know we just talked about and his ilk saw
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: the way that they could make abortion specifically political issue,
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: you and sort of manufactured it as a political issue
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: that could rally strategically, could bring Catholics into their coalition,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: social Catholics to their coalition exactly, and how are they
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: going to get Catholics to to you know, come into
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: the fold of the Republican Party on the issue of abortion, right,
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: And so they isolated it as a political issue, even
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: though that's not how it is in human beings, real lives, right,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: The issues of birth control abortion are in me.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: It's all intertwined, and that I've always thought, could could
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the Morning After Pill become the parental notification of the
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: abortion rights movement where where they're essentially the bild instead
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: of the chip away the building that this is you know,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: as you know, and this goes to the whole should
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: is it going to take you know, is it going
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: to take fifty years to get the right back? Or
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: maybe twenty five years take the right back? Because this
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: has to be this has to be methodical. It has
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: to be sort of one brick at a time, because
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: hoping that there will be a Congress that will do
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: this and a president that'll sign it, that that actually
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: that's just like buying scratch scratch off lottery tickets that
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: you're better off at least making incremental progress. And the
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: more you know, parental notification getting mainstreamed, right, kept the
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: idea that abortion was controversial, right, meaning once you take
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: away and there's an argument you made, if the Morning
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: After Pill became mainstream, then all of a sudden people
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: see it, it's no longer, it's less controversial, right, So
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: you're tipping away at a psyche. And I guess that's
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: my question, could is where do you expect the abortion
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: rights activist community to go to be going immediately to
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: try to get a congressional answer here or this long
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: sort of basically mirror image campaign brick by brick, Right.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the predominant place where the abortion
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: rights movement, at least the sort of ground troops within
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: the abortion rights movement have gone at this point is
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: there just providing abortions regardless of what the laws in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: these states, say.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Right, I mean, you know, yeah, and they have sued
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: and so far, you know, this is all going to
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: end up before the Supreme Court. But you have eight
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: states that have passed shield laws that say a doctor
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: in New York or Massachusetts can ship medication abortion to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: Texas or Alabama, and they're doing this for free or
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: for very cheap and will protect them. Right, States like
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: my state of Massachusetts are protecting those clinicians. So far,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: this is held up, and so what that means is
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: that the number of abortions has gone up since the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: Dobs decision, and so I think it remains to be seen.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, finally we're seeing the kind of like legal
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: experimentation that the anti abortion movement was so good at
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: happening on the abortion right side. I think that's what
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: these shield laws are. I think it remains to be
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: seen if the Supreme Court is gonna let it hold.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I think it remains to be seen if after the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: midterms are done, the Trump administration comes in with some
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: sort of restrict on abortion pills by mail. I mean,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: it tells you everything that they seem to have decided
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: not to do so before the midterms.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: But I think there are a seeming to be some
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: You talk to some of my folks I've talked on
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the right, and they're really bitter that RFK Junior is
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: sitting at HHHS because of this very issue.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you know, and you know, the FDA
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: could crack down on you know, abortion pills by mail.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five lays out a way that the
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Justice Department could invoke the eighteen seventy three Comstock Act,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: this Victorian era anti vice law, to stop the mailing
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: of abortion pills. And so far, you know, Trump hasn't
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: seemed interested in doing that. I mean, he's busy waging
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: war in Iran, I guess. But also I think that
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: you know, his strategists understand that this is a deep
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: liability for Republicans, and so I think what you're seeing
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: is that people are sort of rising up to the
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: challenge of this public health emergency and providing abortions where
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: wherever they can. There's another slower process that's going to
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: have to happen with restoring the legal rights so that
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: the experience for people seeking these abortions isn't fraught with
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: fear and risk as it is today in states where
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: abortion is banned.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: So do you want to reveal your suspects? I mean,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: in some ways we've been talking about it, all of them,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: but we're coming to an end here. Or do we
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: want to make people read it all the way to
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the end?
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: I get the Christy spoiler alert, Chuck, and she's dead. Okay,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: thank goodness she's not here because she hated it when
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: people spoiled her endings. Murder on the Orange Express spoiler alert. Okay,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: you get to the end of that book or that movie.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: If you watched it and what happens, you learned that
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: they're all guilty.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: They all did it.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: And that was my experience with you know, the death
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: of Rowe was death by a thousand stab wounds. It
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: was death incrementally over decades. It involved people on the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: Democratic and the Republican side. It involved grassroots activists you've
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: never heard of. It involved people who didn't care about
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: abortion but saw political opportunity for themselves. And it involved
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: diehards who thought they were the great civil rights heroes
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: of their time and who believed they were earning a
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: ticket to heaven by restricting abortion and you know, putting
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: women through hell. And some of those suspects are pretty
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: colorful characters, and I talk about them all in my book.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: No, it's an important it's look, it's a bit of
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: a history book, but it's one of these. But it's
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: also obviously it's still a relevant I mean, you you
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: cannot deal with today's politics without understanding and in many ways,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: I I don't know this, Shet And fifty years from now,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: maybe you'll be around to see this. I doubt I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: will be, But you know, I think we are at
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: the end of this movement somehow, some way, that Trump
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: is sort of the dead cat bounce, and we're going
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: to see an entirely different conservative movement in this country
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: grow after he leaves the stage. But that may be
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: my own version of TDS. So what do I know,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: but and I think that's the that's the mystery, right
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: are we Are we at the beginning of something or
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: at the end of something? Mm?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a total hope practitioner. I read a lot
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: of Rebecca Soulnett. I believe in hope, So I'm gonna
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to choose to believe you there, although I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: have to say, you know, some of what is coming
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: out of the extreme right fringe it's not even extreme
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: fringe anymore.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: In I don't know what to fringe right exactly. Fringe
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: it's in the center camera some days.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: What do you call it?
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: You know, I think there there's folks now who are
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: gaining way more traction in the anti abortion movement who
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: think that women should get the death penalty for abortions.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: The there's a legislation being introduced. You know, this is
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: gaining more traction than it did before. There are people
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: who think women should not have the right to vote.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm profiling some of the women leaders of
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: anti abor organizations who have men constantly harassing them, saying
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't have a job, you should be at home.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: You know, this is this is coming out of the
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: right wing part of this of the antibors movement.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: So well, it's been interesting to see like a Marjorie
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Taylor Green, who you knows, I don't think it's coming
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: out and saying, hey, this mega movement's not very pro woman.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: That's interesting, right, It is interesting to see what choices
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: women make when they look around and discover just how misogynists,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: you know, their peers are in.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: This coalition, and some of them are staying and some
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: of them are leaving.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know if if a, if there isn't a
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: senator named Katie Britt that IVF is protected. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: I mean it is interesting. The women in this in
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party, who you can tell are very are
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: very They're not comfortable with the position they've been put in.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: M h. Look, they made the choice, so I'm not
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: going to say, but you can feel that discomfort.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's interesting. You mentioned Kansas.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: You know, this was the first state to vote directly
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: on abortion after the Dobbs decision in twenty twenty two.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: And I was on the ground there going door to
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: door with some of the door knockers, and there were
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: people who came to the door who were women who
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: were registered Republicans who were like, yeah, I'm really worried
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: about this because my IVF, And I told my mom,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: you know you better, you know, you better vote the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: right way on this because my IVF. You know again,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: this is what happens when you come for an issue
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: that's central to people's decision making and autonomy, well, create coalitions.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: You know. Technology. I always thought technology helped the anti
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: abortion rights community when you could see that heartbeat, so
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: we're like right, and that allowed them to make the
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: weak designation and keep moving it up, moving it up.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Is there technology that benefits the right side of this
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: as we can going forward?
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Social media seems to be helping the abortion rights move
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: and get their word out. I mean a lot of
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: young people are out there, you know, sharing their abortion stories.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, people sharing their personal experiences, whether
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: it's on TikTok or Instagram or you know, breaking this
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: down saying like, hey, you know, I think a huge
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: part of the way the anti abortion movement one is
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: through creating this impression that abortion is this deeply divisive,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: deeply shameful, deeply stigmatized stigma.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: They stigmatized it, yes.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and that was one of the main triumphs of
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: Operation Rescue. I think if you're blockading clinics, if you
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: have hundreds of people getting arrested in the parking lot,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: it sends this this impression that this is a battleground,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: even though when you look at the polls, it's like, oh,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: most people seem to actually support this issue and think
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: that the status quo is.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: Probably fine, you know.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: And so you know, I think people sharing their stories,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: people talking about this is you in a way that
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: you know, I haven't coming up with Beccaraya Tucker, the
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: Sweet Feminists, and her thing is like she she's on
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: social media and she makes these cakes and then she
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: writes like throw abortion rights slogans on the cakes, you know,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: and shares them on social media. I mean, hey, that's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: the use of technology to spread a pro abortion rights message.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like I said, your book is well timed,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: just simply by the number of questions I've been getting
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: about the campaign trail and where is this issue and
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: where should it be? And we know the Democrats are
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: wringing their hands about culture issues and all sorts of things.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Oh they're losing the manisphere, should they? You know? Not
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: this or that. But I have a feeling this your
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: book's going to get more traction and people are going
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: to say, oh, that's right. People care about this issue.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, people care about this issue because it affects
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: the shape of their lives, men and women, and because
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: lives are at stake, because women's lives are at stake.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: And I hope that we remember those stories. I know
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: that people do, and I know that, you know, true
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: believers on the right side of history are keeping those
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: stories alive and keeping them in front of mind, even
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: if people seem to think voters have forgotten.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: Well, Amy, pack up a bunch of bagif that. Christine
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: novels for your book, doer right, so you can, you know,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: have some you know, have some reading to do in
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: your downtown.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: You know, I will. I think I'll go read one
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: right now.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Congrats of the book. It's like I said, you took
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: a topic that I'm not gonna lie to you. I
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: know it well, I've you know, if you cover American
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: politics over the last thirty years and you aren't familiar,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you're doing yourself into service. It's it's so woven in
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: to campaign tactics and why messaging sounds what it does,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: and all of these things, and so many interest groups
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: that literally exist solely because of this issue. And so
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: if you're not as well versed in this, I highly
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: recommend this book because you do a terrific job of
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: making the history also digestible. As we all we know
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: we have the attention economy coming for us all the time.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure you'll have a TikTok version of
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: your books soon, but in the meantime, good old fashioned reading.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with it.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for saying that you got it.