Latest / The Dr. Joe Show / 174 - The Dr. Roe Show with Professor Grace Howard

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174 - The Dr. Roe Show with Professor Grace Howard · The Dr. Joe Show

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Joe ya know we are here.
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We are here.
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Marky Mark went somewhere. We're here and she's wrong.
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But I should probably close the door.
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I'm sure you want to see something really by the dress.
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So we did this, this Comic-Con.
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What about signing thing over the weekend with his own kids?
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And these were all over the wall.
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So what I'm showing here is the one of the first pictures of me
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from Zoom, 1972, 50 years ago.
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I have a request.
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Can I please pretty please with sugar on top,
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have an autographed version of that so I can scream at you.
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I would be honored and delighted.
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And with no charge, Mark.
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No charge. No charge at all.
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I love it. That is awesome. That must have been so much fun.
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Nostalgia is such an amazing concept.
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It is.
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It's it's really quite remarkable.
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I was actually away during the 4th of July for the first time
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in my life, outside the country, on our Independence Weekend.
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And it was just July 4th, 2022 in Espana.
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So I went to Spain. Dr.
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Joe, with my family and my in-laws, who I adore so very much.
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So we try to do a big vacation every year, starting about
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seven years ago, and then COVID blew it up for a couple, so it was time.
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So we went to Barcelona.
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One of our Julian I's nieces is working, studying abroad.
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If you will, and beautiful city.
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But you know what?
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When in Spain, what do you have to do?
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So to summarize.
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The sun also rises.
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Yes. I mean, Ernest Hemingway, you're in Spain.
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You go to a bullfight, right?
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Right.
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Yes. Wow.
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And I was very ignorant
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going into the whole thing.
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Noble, go ahead and hear about it.
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So Bugs Bunny, right? Looks fine.
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It looks artistic.
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It's a it's an event.
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It's cheering, it's sombreros.
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It's fun. Right?
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So I have this this fantasy of what a bullfight
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is in my head, kind of because of the sun also rises, too.
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So we figure it out.
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You know, Timmy, he's focused on it, too.
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He's dialed and he wants to do it.
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All the signs were there.
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Don't do this.
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Wow. All of them.
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That every moment. Every turn.
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Julio is like, I'm very sad.
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It saddens me that you want to go to a bullfight and I'm like, really?
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Like, is it.
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Is it that bad?
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Is it that bad?
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So then we go to it. We bike to the train station.
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We're trying to figure out how to get tickets to Madrid
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for an overnight stay and a bullfight.
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And it was a disaster.
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It was the DMV at its worst taken number.
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People were leaving
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and a couple of employees were doing their best to take care of everybody.
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But for the most part, it was a disaster.
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Probably 4 hours of my time going to the kiosk.
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Kiosk didn't work. This go to the window.
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Finally, this woman helped us.
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We got three tickets for the train and I figure we'll do a hotel tonight
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when we get there.
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And hey, worst case scenario, we see an amazing city, right?
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The capital, Madrid.
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So we go
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and 0mg have you ever
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been described exactly what happens at a bullfight?
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So why don't you just go ahead and tell us?
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I had no idea.
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So they come out
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and it's really formal and nice and they go to that where the royalty
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would be and the horses and they go to the to the area where the royalty would be.
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But they weren't there. And neither was 80% of the stadium.
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So it's like 20% full,
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which is a really good sign for the future of bullfighting. And
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then they bring out the bull.
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And in their in their face, Dr.
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Joe is like Rudy. It was like Bella.
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Like they were just like, what am I doing? Like what?
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What's going on here?
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And they go out and get them all fired up
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and they have their holy drapes and get him all fired up.
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And he's like, okay, I'm fired up now.
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So I have no idea what's happening.
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Like, I'm like, okay, the matador, this hero
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is going to come out in the middle now and have a fair fight.
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He's going to bring his his thing out.
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There is little red thing and have a fair fight, just like in Bugs Bunny, right.
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It was fair.
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And then this horse comes out
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full padding, thick padding, blinders on the horse.
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So because I mean, obviously, if a bull comes charging at a horse,
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the horse is going to freak out and run, boom,
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hits the horse.
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And I'm like, what is going on?
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And the guy on the horse, spears
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the bull in the back of the head. Yep.
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Blood spurts out.
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I'm like, Whoa, what is that?
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So then they get him fired up a little bit more.
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And this is not the matter of.
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All right, this is the toreador.
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The the matador is around.
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So there was two, two
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stars, if you will. Yeah.
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And they were kind of around, but it was more like
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the rodeo clowns were running out there and just getting him fired up.
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So then two other individuals come out and it was really weird.
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They're in like tights and it looked like they had boogies in their hand
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or like bowling pins.
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And I'm like, What the hell are they doing?
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They're going to get hurt out there.
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And then bang, they spike the back of the neck of the ball with these two things
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and they run away
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and the bulls sometimes chase them because it's like you just stuck a
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knife in my back
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and then the matador comes out
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and this bull is like half alive at this point.
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Continues, continues.
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And then that's where the the drama is.
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Is there
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oh, everyone's cheering.
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Oh, they and I'm like this.
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This animal's almost dead right now.
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Like, what is what is so cool about that?
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And then it's
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showing the stadiums, shushing each other
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and he gets in his position with the sword.
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The matador does.
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Yes, sir.
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Bang right in the back of the head
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and then maybe pulls it out and does it again.
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And then if it's not dead,
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there's folks that come over and like stir it around in his spine.
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And then they bring out the horses
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and they drag the body out of the stadium.
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It was the most gruesome, barbaric thing I've ever experienced.
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Yeah, it's a powerful image.
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It's remarkable.
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Here's the moral of the story. Okay.
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Don't go to bullfight.
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Don't pay the money.
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Be like Barcelona, turn it into a mall.
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It was not art because I read some articles afterwards
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and that's one of the debates.
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You know, we have art, it's custom, it's culture.
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You can't take this away.
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Oh, yes, we can.
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It's a it's a powerful story, powerful image.
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I will tell you my story about it as well.
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When I was about three or four years old, I went to a both.
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Whoa.
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Who brought you?
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My dad was a line.
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He actually took films of it.
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We have had he bender, had he been to one before?
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I don't think so.
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I don't think so.
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And it was it was pretty much identical to what you say.
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But but we have it all on tape on our on
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these old real show, you know, RTL.
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Click, click, click, click, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
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And it is it's brutal.
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I mean, you know, there you are.
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It's a very interesting, interesting image.
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It was one that I'm not going to ever get out of my head.
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I'm glad that you that you went you know, there's there's one thing about,
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you know, human beings, you know, taking the life of an animal.
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But there
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is another thing about other human beings
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dictating to other human beings what they can and cannot do
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with who they are, with their bodies, with their lives.
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Can you please introduce our amazing guest?
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Absolutely, Mark.
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Our guest tonight
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is an assistant professor of justice studies at San Jose State University.
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She earned her Ph.D.
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in political science at Rutgers University.
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And her new book, The Pregnancy Police Conceiving Crime Arresting Personhood,
9:16
is under contract with the University of California Press.
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Obviously, tonight we're talking about
9:23
the new Thor movie
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now, ladies and gentlemen and everyone, Dr.
9:30
Grace Howard.
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Professor Grace Howard, thank you so much for being here tonight
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to talk about this topic that is affecting not just America, but the entire world.
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Thank you so much for having me on.
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It's it's really important.
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I know it's been sort of a bananas couple of weeks here,
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but I'm never tired of talking about this.
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It's so important.
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It's such an intimate kind of feature in so many people's lives.
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And our lives are about to change kind of fundamentally.
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So I'm happy to be here to talk about it.
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So let's just go out.
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So we're talking about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade,
10:09
which I believe is about 49 years old, passed in 1973.
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That's correct.
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Yeah. Yeah, just shy of the 50th birthday.
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They knew we were going to have all kinds of
10:20
like cool pro-choice swag and they really they didn't want to give it to us.
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So where do we start with this discussion?
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I mean, is it even a discussion tonight?
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Oh, I don't know.
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I mean, it's it's like this is huge, right?
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I mean, I know there's been a lot of discussion already
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about how the decision is written and what it means.
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But just to like quickly reiterate essentially what the court did is it
10:45
said, hey, I know that about 50 years ago
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we said there was a right to privacy, but
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now we're deciding there's not.
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And they said essentially, but don't worry about it,
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we're not going to get rid of all of your privacy rights.
11:02
We're only going to get rid of this one because the state of Mississippi says
11:06
that this privacy right is leading to you destroying living humans, i.e.
11:12
fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. Right.
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So that's what they said.
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But if you read between the lines and I think that we really ought to,
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there is no way that they can have this decision
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written as is and not have it take out every other privacy.
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Right.
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Those are things like birth control.
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Those are things like gay marriage, those are things like non
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procreative sex of all kinds.
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I know we say like gay sex, but like non procreative sex, period.
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I mean, when you saw anti-sodomy laws on the books,
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they weren't just for gay people, it was for non procreative sex overall.
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Right?
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So all of these things rely on a right to privacy,
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which is never explicitly stated in the Constitution.
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The word privacy isn't in there. Right.
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But we can look at all these little amendments and kind of taken together
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50 years ago, the court said it sort of
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looks like there's a right to privacy here.
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Let's do it right.
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So this court and this is in this in this opinion
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has essentially dismantled this whole thing.
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And that's really only the tip of the iceberg.
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But now everyone in every state can vote on it.
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Right?
12:15
Like if I'm in any state, I get to vote.
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Yeah.
12:19
So, I mean, this is something that's really frustrating too, is that
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I mean, I would suggest that the way that our voting system is set up,
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it's like inherently anti-democratic, right?
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This the structure of the Senate, right.
12:31
Where, you know, people in L.A.
12:33
County, the population is so huge and it's bigger than, you know,
12:36
all of these state populations put together.
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But California gets to senators just like every other state does.
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So, I mean, what this decision did was it kicked the issue back to the states.
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Right.
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And that means that if you are someone with voting rights in a state,
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then like hypothetically, you can vote and you can keep
12:56
abortion legal where you are.
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That's really
12:59
hypothetical, though, because this court, of course, has also been very active
13:03
in gutting voting rights for for like the last decade or so.
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They've been like really active in this way.
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We see all of this really rough gerrymandering
13:13
that it's being ruled as acceptable.
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Right?
13:16
It used to be if states wanted to pass some kind of voting regulation,
13:21
we would assume that that regulation was unconstitutional and the burden
13:26
was on the state to prove this is why we really, really need this regulation.
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It had to be like super important, but we got rid of that, too, right.
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So now states can pass all of these voting restrictions.
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I know my area of expertize.
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I work in reproductive law broadly,
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but I do a lot of work on the criminalization of pregnancy.
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And so this is a concern that we have to if you make abortion a felony
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and we
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punish pregnant people who try to have abortions,
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then like we're about to have like a pretty
13:57
substantial segment of the population, have their voting rights removed.
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And we know that that big leap.
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Isn't that a big leap right there?
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I always thought this was a big leap.
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But where we have a big leap, mark.
14:11
The suggestion that you just made there.
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Becoming felons and getting our voting rights taken away.
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Yeah.
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So in my. Would that how would that happen?
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How would it go from today to that in the process?
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But before that, let me get Jeffrey. Sure.
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So if you are a felon and convicted of something and are in jail,
14:33
your voting rights are taken away from you.
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Is that correct?
14:36
Yeah.
14:36
I mean,
14:36
this is another kind of the technicality of it is a state by state thing.
14:40
But in a lot of places,
14:41
if you've ever been convicted of a felony, you lose your right to vote.
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In some states after you get out of prison,
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you can like fill out paperwork and appeal to have that right restored.
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And they'll only do it for certain kinds of crimes,
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I believe, if it's considered like nonviolent crimes in my home
14:57
state of Virginia, that was that was the case
14:59
like a decade ago when a friend of mine
15:01
was trying to get his voting rights back after incarceration.
15:04
So how do we get there?
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Here's why. I don't think it's a stretch.
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So the book I'm working on right now,
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I look at only three states, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.
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And these are the three states that ever officially,
15:16
either through the courts or through the legislature,
15:19
made it a crime for a pregnant person to do something
15:23
that could have a negative impact on a fertilized egg embryo or fetus.
15:27
So that
15:30
varying times in South Carolina,
15:32
they started arresting people for stuff like this.
15:34
In the late eighties.
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And there were like a couple of moments where it became very official.
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I'd say 2003 is like most recent court one.
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Alabama did it in 2013, and in Tennessee it was on the books for like two years,
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which is weird for a criminal law,
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but it's because people were like, Should we do this?
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And that's it had a yeah, automatic sunset provision.
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So it expired after those two years.
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But that was like, say ended in like 2018.
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And so, you know, just from those three states,
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I have around 800 arrest cases
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of people who were charged with these crimes,
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and some of them were felonies.
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So like even
16:26
sorry.
16:26
They were convicted.
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Or they think people are against. Right.
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Because most, most criminal cases end with a plea bargain in the United States.
16:33
So they pled guilty to that crime.
16:36
Yeah, right.
16:37
And so this is another important thing to note, is that.
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Let me just let me just for our listeners, just clarify distinctly
16:44
what was the crime that they pled guilty to.
16:48
And the table?
16:48
So so it can be
16:51
that the technical charges that are brought vary a lot.
16:56
They can be things like chemical endangerment of a minor, right?
17:00
If you take a substance, even a legally prescribed medication,
17:04
that could potentially have a negative impact on a fetus.
17:07
And we know there's a lot of misinformation about drugs in pregnancy, too.
17:12
There's what lot.
17:14
Let's stick this
17:16
crap.
17:17
But it's it's it's coming at us so quick.
17:19
Yeah, let's let's just stick first with.
17:21
With what? What were they pleading? Guilty.
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So the first one was endangerment of a minor chemical endangerment.
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This was Alabama.
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It's mostly chemical endangerment there.
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There were some other things, too.
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So there was a
17:37
someone managed self-managed
17:39
an abortion illegally in South Carolina.
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She was 16 weeks pregnant at the time, could have gone
17:45
to North Carolina to have a legal abortion,
17:48
but she couldn't afford it and she didn't speak English
17:51
and she had very little resources.
17:52
So she did a medication, abortion at home, and she got caught
17:57
and they tried to charge her with homicide.
18:00
Eventually she got the charges
18:03
reduced a little bit to an illegal abortion.
18:06
There are cases where people are charged and feticide is another that we see. So
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these two aren't from my steady states, but
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just as illustrative.
18:18
So one of these cases that was someone surviving a suicide attempt,
18:24
she was in her third trimester pregnancy and an immigrant woman,
18:28
pretty isolated in Indiana, a baby, which way is her name?
18:32
And her boyfriend left her and she freaked out
18:36
and she ingested rat poison and survived
18:40
and went to the hospital and was like, Do everything you can to save my baby.
18:44
She they did an emergency caesarean section.
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The baby didn't make it.
18:48
And she sat in prison for or in jail, rather, for a year.
18:52
They didn't give her bond.
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She was charged with feticide, which is a felony.
18:56
It's a homicide charge.
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She got out on a technicality.
19:00
But just a few years later, another woman in Indiana was convicted
19:06
for four well, two things.
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You know, there was only one fetus, so it could technically only be one.
19:13
They say that she caused a miscarriage to happen.
19:16
They charged her with neglecting a newborn
19:20
and with causing the miscarriage. Right.
19:23
It can only be one.
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And she got a 20 year sentence for this.
19:28
Right.
19:28
So a lot of these folks are getting
19:32
I mean, they're having their children taken away, which is substantial.
19:35
Right.
19:35
But they are also having lengthy prison sentences
19:39
or terms of probation that are sort of just impossible to comply with,
19:44
especially when you really look into kind
19:45
of the details of their lives and what they have going on.
19:49
Right.
19:49
So this is all with the protection of Roe v Wade, by the way.
19:55
Right.
19:56
And, you know, I've got around 800 cases for my three states, but for the
20:00
for the US we've counted at least
20:03
1800 arrest cases
20:07
under Roe v Wade.
20:09
So without that,
20:11
I think we should only expect to see more.
20:14
I expect to see people most of the time people are getting arrested
20:17
when they go to give birth.
20:20
So like the baby comes out, they slap handcuffs on you
20:23
when they put you in a solitary cell in a jail.
20:25
Where are we in this discussion at this point?
20:27
Where do we go?
20:28
Well, so we've just been talking about all of this stuff
20:32
that, you know, folks have been able to get away with doing to people
20:36
with the protection of Roe v Wade on the books.
20:38
Right. And now that's just gone away.
20:40
So where people were maybe getting arrested
20:42
when they go to give birth, we're bringing charges then.
20:45
I'm expecting now.
20:46
And this is based on things that I've seen cops, district attorneys,
20:51
health care providers in these states saying that now we can go earlier.
20:55
Right, because viability isn't an issue anymore.
20:58
Roe v Wade, you know, spelled out
20:59
that a person who is pregnant still counts as a person fully
21:04
and they have full rights to their body until viability,
21:08
which was like, oh, that's such a low bar, right?
21:11
But we don't even have that anymore.
21:13
And so, you know, it
21:15
I mean, this is technically true already in Alabama.
21:18
This was true with Roe v Wade on the books.
21:20
But I think we'll start seeing this in more places where, technically
21:23
speaking, if you were like 2 hours pregnant
21:27
and you drank a beer, you are technically a felony child abuser in that state.
21:32
Right? You may not know that you're pregnant.
21:35
Even if you don't know that you're pregnant. Yes.
21:36
They specified that that knowledge of pregnancy is irrelevant.
21:41
Right.
21:42
So substance abuse, folks, this is
21:44
this could be a blessing when I say nobody should drink or do any drugs ever.
21:48
I'm being. Yeah.
21:49
Telling people that works great.
21:50
Right, right.
21:52
Right, right.
21:53
And you know, most of the cases that I've seen did involve
21:56
folks who were struggling with substance use disorder, became pregnant.
22:01
And now what do we do? Right.
22:03
And apparently our answer to that was like, put them in cages.
22:08
Hasn't been great health wise.
22:11
I'm seeing some stuff happening already, though.
22:12
I mean, obviously
22:13
there's all those kinds of trigger laws going into effect and various states
22:18
kind of watching the update almost hourly to see like,
22:20
okay, are you allowed to do X, Y and Z in Texas?
22:24
But I've been noticing some other stuff too,
22:26
so I've already been seeing that if you are someone
22:30
who seems like you could become pregnant, I guess like female ish
22:35
and of reproductive age, some health care providers are not prescribing
22:40
needed medications anymore to these patients because they're worried
22:45
if you become pregnant, this medication could cause a miscarriage.
22:48
And so I'm sorry that you have lupus.
22:50
I'm sorry that you have rheumatoid arthritis.
22:52
I'm sorry that you got long COVID and you need this medication for clotting,
22:56
but it could cause a miscarriage and you look like you could get knocked up.
23:00
So we're not going to give you these pills.
23:03
From tear gas.
23:04
Can I ask you a question, Professor?
23:06
Yes. How did you become so passionate about this topic?
23:11
Oh. So?
23:14
So I was. Smart.
23:15
Yeah. I got all fired up when I.
23:19
Well, so
23:20
I wasn't really raised as a feminist,
23:25
but, you know, some of these issues even, you know, back in middle school,
23:29
seeing the like the injustices of like a little sister, watching her
23:33
big brother getting treated like a guy, you know, and being like this isn't fair,
23:38
you know, those early feminist origins.
23:39
But when I was in college, I got much more involved
23:44
and interested in reproductive rights in sexual politics.
23:47
Frankly, I'm a victim of sexual violence and for me,
23:51
learning as much as I could about bodies and about sex and about reproduction,
23:57
it was like this really healing, empowering thing.
24:00
It's a knowledge that I wish I had had at a much earlier age.
24:05
I think it would have helped me maybe contextualize and understand some things.
24:10
And so, you know, I got involved in campus groups
24:12
and so writing all of my little college papers on these issues.
24:17
And I like.
24:18
Did you have any family that was upset?
24:21
Yeah.
24:23
Yeah.
24:25
You know, I've got some awesome kind of pagan aunts,
24:30
but yeah, my mom is so not into this stuff at all.
24:34
Is she pro-life?
24:36
Oh, I guess, yeah.
24:41
It's complicated with her.
24:43
It's the sound of some foster cats that I have.
24:46
So do you have do you have conversations with your mother about it?
24:50
I'm not anymore. We're.
24:51
We don't really talk anymore. But, you know.
24:54
How did this how did this conversation become the most divisive,
24:58
most heated conversation that the world has ever seen?
25:04
And I think a lot of bad faith politicking
25:09
that led to some very effective
25:14
kind of discourse framing and event like
25:17
linguistic framing of this issue
25:22
that I mean, now there's so much misinformation,
25:24
even like when news outlets are reporting on various bills,
25:27
they'll say like, oh, it's a heartbeat ban bill.
25:30
Like, don't call it a heartbeat ban.
25:32
Right? You're ceding the.
25:33
Why is it always a fight and not a conversation?
25:36
It's always there's a line drawn and you're either on that side or that side.
25:42
I don't know when it became political because it is absolutely political.
25:46
Similar to. Prohibition.
25:48
After.
25:49
Well, it's always been political, right. And varying stages.
25:52
But back to.
25:52
When like can you go back and give us the evolution of it
25:56
like 1800s and what, what it was like is an illegal and then.
26:01
Yeah, it became legal and where the pushback was and,
26:05
and when it actually became this huge division.
26:09
Yeah.
26:10
So I know the Samuel Alito played
26:14
like loosey goosey with the history in the opinion too.
26:17
I know a lot of pro-choice historians are pissed
26:19
about his characterization of abortion has always been like a common thing.
26:24
Like as long as people have been wanting to have sex
26:27
and not have babies, they have been finding ways to do that.
26:31
And so, I mean, you can look historically like at various plants and you know.
26:37
Since Franklin, Ben Franklin wrote recipes on him.
26:41
A guide on how to do it safely.
26:43
So this was something that was considered normal and considered.
26:46
But there was always still a group of people
26:48
who thought that that was wrong and immoral.
26:51
Even yet not yet willing get you in.
26:55
Well, for Abrahamic religions it was the moment of quickening
26:59
was the kind of cutoff.
27:01
So abortion was like a pretty normal part of life.
27:05
You didn't regulate it because like we don't regulate
27:08
a whole bunch of our normal stuff from life.
27:11
So going back to evolution,
27:12
like we have no significant brain and we choose like we don't want another
27:19
animal that we've birds would eat our child
27:23
going back to that period of evolution, are we?
27:26
Well, I'm I'm not sure that we can we can comment on that.
27:30
We can speculate about it.
27:31
I'm not an anthropologist, but people were also having way fewer periods
27:37
back in the caveman days because of things like malnutrition and stuff.
27:41
So I think being burdened with
27:43
child after child and being read to death as maybe not as much of an issue then.
27:47
But so one of the things that we saw
27:50
the in the this era, we see the professionalization of medicine.
27:54
They're trying to kind of midwives do all that birth stuff.
27:57
What if we did it instead, right?
27:59
Kind of wanting to get into that territory.
28:01
That is our real concern about white women not having as many babies anymore.
28:07
Right.
28:07
And was.
28:08
That where where are we in the.
28:10
We're in the like.
28:12
Mediating countries.
28:14
So that we've got immigration happening?
28:16
Oh, we've never liked that much, depending on where they're coming from.
28:21
And, you know, it's a normal kind of economic thing.
28:24
As societies industrialized, there is less incentive to have a ton of kids.
28:29
So we see white women having fewer children.
28:32
We see this professionalization
28:34
of medicine and doctors kind of wanting to scoop up birth.
28:37
What is what is what?
28:38
What do you mean?
28:39
Well, that's true.
28:40
That was that was part of Semmelweis.
28:42
There's no question. Birth. Absolutely.
28:44
The the it was. Some like mystical women's.
28:47
Movement in folks recognized.
28:50
I'll just comment on this quickly that that pregnant woman
28:54
was a potential gold mine and to take that away from midwives
28:59
there's no question that that was happening around the 1830s.
29:02
1840s, absolutely. And that was that.
29:06
We can talk about Semmelweis later on, but let's go back to this.
29:08
So so I think Tom did some research about it.
29:14
What was your sense about the Constitution?
29:17
Yeah, so and I think it's I think
29:20
it's a bit fallacious to say, well, what would the founding fathers say?
29:23
But as a reference, the Founding Fathers thought the topic of abortion
29:29
to be so trivial that it didn't warrant mention the Constitution.
29:34
Yeah.
29:34
So normally you don't legislate breakfast cereal.
29:37
Right? Like pants.
29:39
And we don't they just. Like yeah.
29:41
This and my, my, my wife commented that
29:44
we don't legislate whether you can get a coronary bypass.
29:47
Right.
29:48
So you're saying that the evolution was the people saying that this isn't right.
29:54
Yeah.
29:55
And it's around that same time that we see a religion.
29:57
What time? Well, some people said it's not right.
30:00
1800s. Right.
30:01
So it was normalized until the mid 1800s.
30:06
Well, I'm not sure.
30:07
I'm not sure. Normalized. It was.
30:09
Still normal.
30:11
So we just have to pretend like it's not.
30:13
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm trying to go back and see the evolution
30:17
of how someone from the 1880s got to the 20 and 22.
30:23
So some more things happened, right? So.
30:25
So open ended that.
30:27
It's even more things.
30:28
But what did the people start to say like this is in right?
30:31
And we're stepping aside.
30:33
We don't have good poll data from back then, but we can look at what
30:38
these big institutional moves were that were being made.
30:41
And one of the big ones is a religious shift.
30:45
And this is I mean, the Catholics, right?
30:47
This is big for Catholicism.
30:48
But the Abrahamic faiths in general, this was like sort of the rule.
30:51
Is that
30:53
quickening or being able to feel the fetus moving
30:56
inside of you is when the fetus gets its soul.
31:00
And if you Google image quickening, there's like a painting of like a baby
31:03
flying through the sky and like going into like a sleeping woman.
31:06
And so it's
31:10
that was for, like, centuries and centuries.
31:12
Okay. Right.
31:14
And something that's notable about
31:15
that is only the pregnant person can tell you when that happens.
31:18
Right.
31:19
It's literally her ability to like feel the movement.
31:21
Right. But there was this the shift.
31:24
The Catholic Church said actually not anymore.
31:28
Quickening isn't going to be the thing anymore.
31:30
Now, abortions are legal all the time. Right.
31:32
And to me, it's difficult to separate that out
31:34
from a lot of the other stuff that's happening, you know, in this time period.
31:38
But so those are like three big things that happen.
31:40
And then we have the passage of what are called the Comstock Laws.
31:44
So Anthony Comstock, one of my students obscenity laws.
31:48
Yeah, one of my students.
31:50
I asked the class, you're doing exam review?
31:51
And I was like, Who's Anthony Comstock?
31:53
And the student was like, he was that guy that was afraid of sex.
31:55
Right?
31:56
And I just thought that was so funny.
31:57
So he was a postmaster general, but he was also this like big anti obscenity guy.
32:02
And he wrote this piece of legislation that went into effect
32:06
that made it a crime to send anything considered obscene through the mail.
32:10
And this included medical textbooks.
32:13
This included pamphlets about like the rhythm method.
32:16
And then this included also the actual instruments, herbs, etc.,
32:20
that you would use to do contraception that you would use to do abortion.
32:23
And so at this point.
32:26
Everything you say that in his in his law,
32:29
it was like included but not limited to and name days.
32:33
Or was that over time courts were like, well, maybe it does apply.
32:39
This is obscene to me.
32:40
So oh, I mean, our trying to figure out what counts as obscene is like
32:44
and constantly changing.
32:45
But no, like it was pretty adamant.
32:48
It was.
32:48
Like I don't want people sending obscene.
32:51
Child condoms or my lawn or medical textbooks the pictures of naked.
32:55
But that it was said that or it was just like obscene defined in his mind.
33:00
Isn't it subjective? I don't mean to sweep.
33:02
I don't mean to slow things down.
33:04
The things that we've been talking about.
33:05
This is a three hour show. Right.
33:07
I clearly want one of the most
33:10
politicized, divisive decisions.
33:13
And yet who has the right to take away decision from a woman,
33:18
from anyone who has the right to do that?
33:23
So let's let's we've got a few minutes left, Doctor.
33:27
Professor Howard, what about that?
33:31
Yeah, I
33:31
mean, to me, this someone who like, I'm not culpable, you know, sort of like
33:36
it is a really jarring thing that this something that was once
33:40
considered a fundamental right is now something that I do not have
33:43
the right to anymore, not a protected constitutional right to anymore.
33:46
And you know where I am now in California, I'm safe, but I have friends that live
33:50
in these states with bans.
33:51
I have students that live in these states, a ban.
33:53
And I'm really worried about what's going to happen to them.
33:57
You know, I think we were talking about reasons why people have abortions.
34:01
And I think that there's a lot of misinformation about this.
34:04
Most people who have an abortion in the United States are already moms.
34:08
60% of people who have abortions have already had one child.
34:12
And so in a big way, when we talk about making sure people have the right
34:16
to abortion, we are trying to make sure that families are okay.
34:19
Right.
34:20
I mean, look at the reasons that people give for why they have abortions.
34:24
It's a combination of things.
34:25
I mean, I'm I'm a I'm a free abortion on demand without apology go myself.
34:32
Right.
34:32
But most of the time, it's happening in the first trimester, over 90% of the time.
34:36
And it's happening because we don't have good childcare.
34:40
It's happening because you can't continue education.
34:42
It's happening because it won't work with your job.
34:45
It's happening because you can't afford it.
34:46
We don't have great resources for families.
34:49
We have a serious poverty problem in the United States.
34:52
The maternal mortality rate in this country is really high
34:57
for developed country, and because of this decision,
35:00
we anticipate that it's going to go up a lot by around 33%
35:04
for black women who already have this hugely elevated rate.
35:08
And so, you know, we're talking about the lives
35:12
and the families of people who can get pregnant.
35:15
And then when we look at some of the kind of far reaching implications of this
35:18
decision, it's about what rights do people with the capacity for pregnancy
35:23
have because we're seeing these decisions being made on the basis
35:27
that at some point in the future you could become pregnant
35:31
against your will, right?
35:33
Like denied your medication for this reason,
35:37
in the past, we've deprived people of certain kinds of employment.
35:41
For this reason,
35:42
if you couldn't prove you were infertile, you weren't allowed to work in
35:44
some of the best factory jobs, for example. Right?
35:47
So yeah, I mean, the implications of this are huge.
35:49
What it comes down to is our people
35:53
with the capacity for pregnancy fully, people under the law or not.
35:57
And with this decision it was a big push in the direction of not.
36:03
Again, I got to say,
36:05
because a lot of people have images in their head of what an abortion is.
36:09
I so I went to a Catholic school for,
36:12
I'd say preschool to maybe fifth grade.
36:14
And I read in our like student Bibles, there's a past.
36:18
There was a passage about, you know, abortion, about what it is.
36:21
And it describes the worst case scenarios of a third trimester, like
36:27
something that no no one actually wants the procedure of.
36:31
And I won't go into detail on the radio, but it's grisly.
36:34
And it can be. Yeah.
36:35
Well, because, like, you know, this is third trimester.
36:38
Yeah.
36:39
A first trimester abortion is a heavy flow period.
36:43
Well, I mean, know what?
36:44
It takes about 2 minutes if you're doing an aspiration of abortion, right?
36:48
It takes about 2 minutes to actually do the thing.
36:51
I used to work at a clinic.
36:52
I was a hand holder at a clinic.
36:54
So helping people breathe and feel their feelings and do the pain and stuff.
36:58
Most people feel relief after they have an abortion.
37:01
Most people we didn't.
37:03
Some clinics will knock you out and some patients want that, which I respect.
37:07
Our clinic didn't do that.
37:08
People were awake just with with ibuprofen.
37:11
Right.
37:11
So it's it's not it's not surgical.
37:14
Nothing gets cut and it's quick.
37:16
And recovery is not really intense and it is so safe.
37:22
It is like so much safer than so many other totally common
37:25
outpatient procedures.
37:27
And yeah, that's that's over 90% of abortions.
37:30
And that's that's what I think is
37:33
it's kind of it's really insulting to think that so many women
37:37
are these like evil witches who want to get pregnant
37:41
so that in their third trimester they can have the fully formed baby
37:46
ripped out and torn apart in front of their eyes
37:48
so they can sell the limbs to make vaccines.
37:51
Yeah, these. People are fantastic.
37:54
Well, then it freaks people out pretty good too, right?
37:56
I mean, can you think of anything more horrible?
37:58
If you are interested in the reality of third trimester abortion,
38:02
I recommend a documentary called After Tiller.
38:05
They follow the, I think at the time, five remaining
38:08
abortion providers who would do three third trimester abortions.
38:11
And you see the things that they do to make the experience
38:15
as painless as possible for their patients.
38:18
And that includes if patients want to the ability to hold
38:22
and grieve an intact baby once it's been removed.
38:26
Right.
38:27
So there are all kinds of ways of managing that.
38:29
Yeah. The amount of courage and commitment.
38:32
You're in favor of that.
38:34
Like that's.
38:35
Yeah. Yeah.
38:37
You know, it's, it is like less than 1% of abortion cases and it is basically
38:42
always a wanted pregnancy when something's gone terribly wrong.
38:46
And so parents are in this position of deciding, okay, we can
38:50
we can, you know, continue to carry this dying pregnancy
38:54
and you'll feel it and you'll think of it and it's in your body at all times.
38:57
Right?
38:57
Or you can give birth to a baby that will have a short, painful,
39:00
terrible life or we can take care of it. Now.
39:04
What do you say to somebody who says that's murder, that's immoral?
39:07
Can we have a conversation and agree to disagree?
39:10
Here's what I would say.
39:12
Legally speaking, anyway, at least for now, you're not allowed.
39:17
How about forget him? Finish there. Russell.
39:20
Because morally it's hard when we're talking about murdering people.
39:23
It is hard for us to come to a moral consensus.
39:25
But I would say that, you know,
39:26
you're essentially requiring someone to use their body against their
39:29
will to support the life of another, and that that's considered
39:33
a form of indentured servitude
39:35
and that
39:35
that's not legal in this country in terms of morally.
39:39
I think most of the parents who are making that decision are making
39:42
a moral decision for themselves.
39:44
They are choosing to spare their baby of pain and suffering.
39:49
We're talking about we're talking about fetuses that are already
39:53
at risk for profound medical compensation
39:57
when they are born, not not necessarily
40:00
a baby that is healthy and ready to go.
40:03
But these are fetuses that have been diagnosed by professionals,
40:08
said this patient, this baby is at high, high risk
40:13
for a life of trauma.
40:17
And a short one at that right.
40:18
Like short people.
40:19
So, I mean, and sometimes it's not even a
40:22
there's no question that the baby won't survive.
40:24
It's a matter of, well, its heart still beating and it's inside your body.
40:28
And so even though you are going septic right now,
40:31
a reality right?
40:34
The heart still beating. So we won't do anything.
40:36
I mean, a woman in Ireland died.
40:37
That's one of the things that galvanized the movement there to legalize abortion.
40:40
Right. Is the hospital couldn't do anything.
40:42
This is the Constitution
40:44
says that the fetus in your body, the heart is still beating.
40:47
It's a person. And so we can't help you.
40:49
And so we're going to watch you while you slowly die on this table.
40:53
She went septic and died.
40:55
And what infection because of the pregnancy.
40:56
And we've been seeing this already too.
40:58
So like not in the third trimester, but ectopic pregnancy is it's a pregnancy
41:03
where the the egg implants somewhere other than the uterus.
41:07
So these are not viable pregnancies.
41:09
And most of the time it settles in the fallopian tube and it'll kill you.
41:14
Right? It'll rupture the tubule. You'll hemorrhage and die.
41:17
We've already been seeing cases
41:19
in a handful of states with bans where physicians don't feel
41:23
like they can do the medical treatment until they consult hospital lawyers.
41:28
And there was just a case they didn't disclose the state,
41:31
but it was just last week where someone came in with an ectopic pregnancy.
41:35
They consulted with lawyers for 11 hours before they treated her.
41:39
And in that time, the tube did rupture and she'd been bleeding out.
41:42
I mean, it's it's nightmare stuff.
41:45
So was the baby. All right.
41:47
Professor, we have a few minutes left and there's so much more to discuss, but
41:53
the I Am approach and this is still
41:55
and I am says because the the man's your home the social biological.
42:00
I see. And we've been talking about all four of these
42:03
because the problem is interconnect.
42:05
A small change can have a big effect, you know, to change everything.
42:08
There has been a small change, but the big effect
42:11
of that's how what small change do you recommend to our listeners
42:15
as we begin to grapple with
42:18
the new ruling?
42:21
I would believe people when they tell you about their bodies in their lives,
42:26
believe them.
42:28
Believe
42:30
the second truth of the I am
42:34
you control no one.
42:35
You influence everyone.
42:36
You get to choose the kind of influence you want to be.
42:39
Professor Grace Howard What kind of influence do you want to be heard of you?
42:44
I want to be a caring influence. See?
42:48
Think like human animals, like our fingernails kind of suck
42:52
and like, our teeth aren't that sharp and our knee joints don't make any sense,
42:56
but we're like, good at being together, right?
43:00
And humanity works
43:02
when we're together and humanity works when we care about one another.
43:06
Yes. That is very true.
43:08
Okay.
43:09
I hope that that we can continue this very important discussion.
43:13
Not an argument.
43:15
Mark is absolutely right.
43:17
We need to be able to respect each other, value each other
43:20
so we can trust each other with our points of view.
43:24
This is how we come together as a community, as a culture, as a species.
43:29
We all want the same thing to feel valuable.
43:31
I want you to do that.
43:33
My concern is that when someone's rights are taken away and go,
43:38
where is their right?
43:40
And I'm I'm not saying one way or the other,
43:43
but we are in a position right now that as a country
43:48
that must come together.
43:51
Professor, thank you so much for being on The Dr.
43:53
Joe Show.
43:54
Joining us now is we'll see you next week.
43:58
It's.