Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Classics: How the Jane Collective Helped Women Get Abortions

Transcript

SMNTY Classics: How the Jane Collective Helped Women Get Abortions · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I Never Told You production of iHeart Radio. So we
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: recently did a feminist movie Friday on the Jains, which
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: is uh an HBO documentary about the Jain Collective. And
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: uh it's something we've been talking about a lot, given
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: what's going on with rov weight in the United States,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: um an abortion in the United States. And on her podcast,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: on Bridget Todd's podcast, there are No Girls on the Internet,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: she recently we ran this, but we thought we would
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: too because it's just something we really wanna get out everywhere. UM,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So we have a classic for you on the Jain
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Collective and please enjoy. Hey, this is Bridget and you're
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: listening the Stuff Mom Never told you. And today we're
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: continuing our series all about Abortion, bringing you stories about
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: abortion that you might not know about. And today's story
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: is the Jain Collective. Now I want you to imagine
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: it's nineteen seventy you're pregnant and you need not to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: be but row of you Aide is a few years away.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: An abortion is still illegal now before this landmark nineteen
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: seventy three Supreme Court decision terminating a pregnancy meant taking
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a gamble on a back alley abortion provider. Maybe they'd
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: be competent, maybe they wouldn't be. But when you're pregnant
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: and desperate, you don't really have a lot of options.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: For women living in the sixties and seventies, this was
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a reality, and then on Chicago South Side, women began
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: organizing an underground network to do something about it. In
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, Heather Booth was a nineteen year old college
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: student at the University of Chicago. Her friend's sister was
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: pregnant and needed an abortion. Now. Booth had been active
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement and connected her friend's sister
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to a doctor willing to perform in a a legal abortion.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: After that, she started getting more and more calls from women, housewives, students,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and the siblings of police officers. That's when Booth knew
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: she needed to start a network, known officially as the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation. Heather Booth started an
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: underground network to connect women to abortions, using the code
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: name Jane. As it was still a crime, I remember
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: this ad that said pregnant need help, called Jane, So
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I called Jane. Jane. Ultimately served over ten thousand women
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: before a Row of View Wade made abortion legal in
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: nine In the beginning, the network connected pregnant women with doctors,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: but eventually they realized that many of the people providing
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: abortions weren't doctors at all. That's when the women and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Jane started performing abortions themselves. The women were not doctors,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: but according to the Chicago Tribune, their skills were attested
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to by a doctor who risked his license by doing
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: post operative checkups on clients. At this point, the Jane
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Collective was providing abortions for as many as sixty women
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: a week. Jane's facilities were raided by the police. During
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the raid, police asked all the women identify the doctor
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: who was performing the abortions, obviously expecting to find a man,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: but there was no man. The group was arrested and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the media called them the Jane Seven. After being indicted
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: by a grand jury, their case was only dismissed thanks
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to the Supreme Courts legalization of abortion in nineteen. After
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: this quick break, we'll hear from Heather Booth about how
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Jane got started. Today. I am so so humbled and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: thrilled to be joined by the legendary Heather Booth. Heather,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for being well you are your
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: your a legend. Well, I'm so glad to be talking
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: with the amazing bridget Todd and what service you're doing
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: for the public providing this information out about some of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the stories that are not as well known exactly. That's
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: really what we want to do with this series. Everybody
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: feels like they know a lot about abortion and about
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: you know, reproductive health, but there are so many stories
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: about abortion in choice that people might not know. You know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the Jaine Network was such a critical thing for these
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: women who were living, you know, while before Reviewade was enacted,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, people don't even really know about it.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Glad to describe of how it came about and and uh,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I appreciate your spreading the word to let people know
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: that if we organize, we can change the world. We
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: have changed the world, and we need to change the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: world and the story of organizing the Jane Network is
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: one important example of that. So let's talk about Jane.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: So when you started Jane, you were just a nineteen
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: year old student at the University of Chicago. So what
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: was your life before you started Jane. Yeah, a little
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: bit about my life and also a little bit about
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: what women's lives were like in general. Ah. For me,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I was brought up in a family UH that was
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: very loving and believed that people should uh follow the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Golden rule. We should treat each other as we wanted
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to be treated, and I carried that with me. I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: became active in the civil rights movement. In nineteen sixty four.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I went to Mississippi with the Freedom Summer Project, and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: some of you may have heard about it, because that
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: was the time when the Civil rights movement was recruiting
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: northern students to come down to Mississippi because in Mississippi,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: black lives did not matter in nineteen sixty four, and
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: they thought that the attention of northern students might bring
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: additional visibility and potential power to shine a spotlight on
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: what was going on in Mississippi. And during that summer,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the three young men, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Schwerner were killed at the hands of the clan. What
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: people may not know is that while they were looking
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: for the bodies of the three men, they found bodies
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: of other black men whose hands have been bound or
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: feet chopped off. And those murders weren't even investigated once
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the bodies were found until years later. But because people organized,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: there was a voting right back within a year, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Mississippi now is more African American elected officials than any
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: other state in the country. And mentioned that because it
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: was formative for some of the ideas that led to Jane,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: which is that you have to stand up to unjust authority.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: If you take action, you can make change, and that
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes there even are risks, but together we can really
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: build a better world. I returned back to my campus
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: and a friend of mine had been raped at nice
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: point in her bed in off campus housing. We went
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: with her to Student Help to get a gynecological exam
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: for her, but was told that Students Help didn't cover
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: gynecological exam and she was given a lecture on the promiscuity. Now,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: because we sat with her, they called it to sit in.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: But over time, because people protested and organized, now Students
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Health would cover gynecological exams and people would be given
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: careful comforting counseling, and there also is support and attention
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: about the crisis of rape on campus. Those changes happened
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: because people organized. We still look much further to go.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: There's still our attacks on Women's health plan parents that
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: is under attack, but we make progress when we organized,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: and those were some of the lessons that I learned
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: also from the civil rights movement on the campus. To
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: give a sense of how women were treated broadly UM,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I formed a pulled together a group called the Women's
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Radical Action Program or wrapped w r A, and we
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: did studies about UM and supported women to promote women's
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: positions on campus. This it's probably was the first campus
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: women's organization of the new and emerging women's movement in
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: and we found that professors gave four times as much
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: attention to men's students as to women's students, called the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: significant response, how often would a teacher actually engage with
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the students? And because of that and other things, we
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: found ways to support women on campus UM. The foundly
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: was discrimination against women faculty members. They mostly were kept
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: as adjunct professors and not allowed on a tenure track.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And there were other issues that people need to understand
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the emergence of Jane within the context of lessons from
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: an emerging movement in civil rights, context of UM changes
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: going on in the society where on the one hand,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: women were at the universities and entering into into public life,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: and yet we're not treated equally. So there was this
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: emerging women's movement developing, and also in the context of
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the values that many of us shared, believing that there
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: should be a country that treated all people equally, gave
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: people equal support and and respect. I love that. So really,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: one of the big takeaways from what you've done with
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Jane is that organizing and people power can really change
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: culture and change laws and change lives that you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: oftentimes we feel, at least I feel overwhelmed that oh,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: just little on me. What can I do to change this?
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: This seems so bad up against so many fights, But
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: actually if you're if you really work hard and organized,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: you can change things. Absolutely absolutely to bring us up
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: to Jane to explain how my involvement with that and
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: how that developed against this backdrop, um, a friend of
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: mine told me her sister was pregnant and was nearly
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: suicidal because she wasn't ready to have a baby and
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: she wanted an abortion. I have never thought about the
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: issue before that, I recall, and I've never had to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: face the issue myself, but I said, I tried to
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: do what I could do to help again, sort of
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: as part of the Golden rule, trying to one to others.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I went to the network of doctors from the Medical
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Committee for Human Rights, which was the Civil Rights Medical Arms,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and I found a doctor, doctor TRM. Howard, who had
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a clinic on sixty three Street in Chicago, Friendship Clinic UM.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't know its history at the time, but he
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: had been a dynamic civil rights leader in Mississippi and
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: came to Chicago when his name appeared on a clan
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: death list. I called him up. He agreed to do
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the procedure next Sally. I didn't really think much more
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: about it, but word must have spread because short time
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: later someone else called. I thought it was a coincidence
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: in in where it must have spread, and someone else called.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: At that point I realized they really one is the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: broader problem that needed to be addressed, and being an organizer,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I decided to create a system and called it Jane.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Over time, the women of Jane themselves performed eleven thousand
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: abortions between nineteen six and nine seventy three. When Roe
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: became the law of the land and the experience of
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Jane both improved the lives of the women who came
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: through who are looking for a way to decide when
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: or whether they could have a child. It changed the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: lives of the women who were in Jane, letting them
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: know what they could do to improve the lives of
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: women on a broad scale. UM. And it also provided
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: a basis giving people confidence. I hope now to say
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: we can make change if we organize. So let's say
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that I'm a woman who calls Jane. Can you walk
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: me through the logistics once I call? What happened? Well, first,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: there were too UM kind of two or three eras
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: of Jane the era's UM. When I first started it,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: it was a very small service. It just kept growing
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and growing. When it started, someone would call up and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: ask for Jane. And even before they said they were
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: asking for Jane, I knew immediately there was a sort
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of hesitant pause on the phone, and I just knew
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: immediately what they were probably calling about. UM. They say
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: what that? They usually said some version that they were pregnant, UM,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and we're looking for an abortion for some women. We
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: do the counseling on the phone. We then trying to
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: arrange a time where they could come in and have
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a longer conversation and could talk with them and find
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: out what the details were. Long they were I had
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: been pregnant, what the medical history was a little bit, um.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: And then we'll just go through the details of what
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: to expect. Um. They want to know what how long
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: does it take, would there be pain, their side effects?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: What do you need to do afterwards, how to take
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: care of yourself if there are any uh medical complications,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: what they need to do, who they call. We go
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: through how much it cost. Initially Jane costs five um,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: though we negotiated down the prices. The number of people
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: came through and then went for two for the price
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of one. That we got it down to two fifty
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: dollars and then even sometimes got three for the price
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of one. We sometimes I would ask for special arrangement
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: if someone didn't have money, and and then we arranged
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: where people would go, where they would meet, how they
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: would get picked up, um, that someone should be with
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: them to care of them, um, you know, to be
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: with them as they as they left after the procedure.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: That was the first stage of Jane, where I was
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: doing the counseling and Dr Howard had explained to me
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: in a lot of detail what was involved. Dr Howard
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: died natural causes, and I found another person and to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: provide the procedures. His name was Mike and uh we've
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: basically had the same process, though he had a suburban
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: effort and UM the numbers were increasing so much as
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the numbers of people coming through. I was about to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: have my first child, and I was very busy and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: many other things to getting a graduate degree UM, working
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: on other social change issues, and I realized I couldn't
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: handle it all just myself, and so I decided I
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: needed to recruit other people to be involved with this,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and I go to meetings and at the end of
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the meeting would say, if anyone wants to be involved
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in abortion counseling, please see me. And I recruited a
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: number of people. We did a training and made sure
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that everyone understood the process and would provide the high
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: quality of care that we wanted to see for all
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the women who came through UM. And then with that
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: I turned over the effort to another group of women
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: out Jodie Parsons and Ruth's Cercle with the two leads
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: women who helped coordinate it. At that point, As the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: numbers increased, more hands were needed. One person doing the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: procedures wasn't going to be enough. And then it also
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: turned out that the women that were helping might do
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the procedures. And then Mike shared that he actually wasn't
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a license position, and they thought, well, if he could
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: do it, so could they. Now though this was the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: women doing the procedures starting to learn how to do
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the procedures, it was actually probably safer than this medical
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: procedure being done in a hospital or clinic or other settings.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Partly because it was illegal. UH. Everyone wanted it to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: be as safe as possible so that no one would
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: be hard, no one would be UM, there wouldn't be
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a UM an adverse effect. It also was a women's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: culture who cared about women, and so the priority wasn't
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the profit making. It was the care for women and
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: for their wishes. They're also UM. It was the only
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: thing that they were doing, and so there was a
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: lot of attention on it. It's not like you were
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: getting lost in the shuffle of oh, am I doing
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: an app inductivity or am i UH doing a different
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: procedures UM. In fact, at the after row became the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: law of the land. That was a study done by
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: University of Illinois program called the pre Sectorship, which was
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: about entry into uh positive medical care within Chicago, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: they did an analysis of the outcome from Jane and
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the outcomes from clinic service for abortion and found that
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the results from Jane were more positive than the results
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: in a clinic setting, again, I think for the reasons
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: that I just mentioned. So at that point the women
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: started to take on doing procedures themselves, and in the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: course of that, there was a larger group that was
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: recruited to actually be the service, which is what we
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: called it, what they called it Jane or the service,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And as women came in, there was a a front
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: or one apartment someone's apartment that was designed in a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: very cozy, homely supportive way. Sometimes they were kids there,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and a number of weight of women who would be
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: waiting for their own procedure would gather there and in
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: a supportive environment, and then they would be taken to
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the apartment where the procedures would be done, and then
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: they were supported and given care while they were recovering
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: from the procedure, and then would be sent off as
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: full information um about what to do if there are
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: any issues if there often are with any medical procedures
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and given health and then UH told umbers to call
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and people could be in touch with them afterwards to
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: make sure that everything worked out. Okay, So that was
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the broad process. There's a book about Jane by Laura
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Kaplan called Jane Because Jane an abortion Story. There's also
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a movie about it, and actually I'm now told there's
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: at least two Hollywood made movies that are being made
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: about Jane, as well as a new documentary, and they're
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: more details of it captured in the book UH that
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Laura Kaplan wrote about Jane. So, Heather, now you're a
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: part of this really robust tradition of Jewish activism. I
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: actually read some place that at one point you wanted
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: to be a rabbi, but that you heard that women
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: couldn't be rabbis. Do you feel like your background, as
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: you know, part of the robust legacy of Jewish activism
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and social change work. Did that also impact your work
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: with Jane. Indeed, it was part of my moral upbringing.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I believed, as it's said in the Bible, justice justice
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: that shall pursue, saying justice twice because it's that important,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: really believing UH that the stories of the prophets should
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: guide us in some ways, that it's the people who
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: should rise and not just those in wealth and power. UM.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: There also was a history of struggle of the past
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: over story pants overs coming, and the story of people
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: even going forty years in the desert to us the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: land of greater promise h to to escape oppressions, and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I believe that was a tradition that was worth embracing.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So that was part of the moral lu ringing that
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: I had, and had tried to carry that on into
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the organizing work I've done, and since that time, I've
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: tried to carry it on in so many ways. I
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: started a training center for organizers called Midwest Academy. People
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: encourage your listeners to pursue Midwest Academy because it's a
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: it's a place to learn the skills of organizing UM.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Their website is www. Midwest Academy dot com UM. I've
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: also ended up running some large scale organizations for advising them.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I was strategic advisor for the immigration reform campaign, the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Alliance for Citizenship. I ran the campaign for financial reform
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that won the Dodd's Bank Bill. I with the coordinator
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: around the marriage equality campaign. Um I just was the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: field director around the campaign to stop these of tax
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: breaks for the millionaires and billionaires. That will mean that
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: there will be an excuse to make cuts in social security,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Medicare and medicaid, and education and other essential human services.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So the struggle continues and right now people, I think especially,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: need to learn this lesson that even when time seemed
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the most difficult, we can make progress if we organize,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and if we organized, we can change the world, and
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: we need to change the world. I could not have
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: put it better myself. These fights are still fights that
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: need to be fought. And we can get complacent and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: we can get comfortable, but as you said, we need
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: to be organizing. And I'm so glad that you're in
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the fight doing this work with us because we need you, Heather,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm so glad that we have you well, and
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we have you, Uh read the words,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: spread the message. I'm so glad we have those who
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: are listing in. I hope they'll take they probably have
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: been taking action. We need to continue taking action and
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: unify and give people confidence that we can organize and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: when we organize even in times that seemed the most difficult.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: We have changed the world in the past, and we
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: can change the world for the future. Let's take a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: quick break. Well it's been to listeners now. I know
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: abortion can seem like an issue that we no longer
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: have to fight for that we did in the seventies,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: but that's actually not true. In March, Mississippi's governor signed
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a law banning abortion at fifteen weeks, the earliest abortion
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: ban in the country. The law is temporarily blocked by
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: a federal judge, and some states only have one left
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: that provides abortions thanks to restrictions specifically aimed at forcing
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: providers to close. Reproductive freedom is constantly under attack, so
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: let's stay vigilant and get organized to help protect our
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: right to access. What did you think of Heather story
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Let me know. You can find us on Instagram at
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Stuff I've Never Told You, on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and as always, we love getting your emails at mom
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com.