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Monday Mini: Texas' Abortion Law · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie Smith. I don't also to Stephane
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: never told you production of Ihart Radio. Okay, so I
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: guess quick trigger warning. It's probably obvious from the title
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about abortion and um the law in
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Texas specifically, and a lot of the politics around abortion
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that are going on here in the United States right now.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Totally hear you if you're like not today, not today.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: And since this is an ongoing news story, we wanted
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to time stamped as we're recording and it is September one.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I did most of the research came from like a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: week ago. I did check make sure nothing was like
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: drastically different, but just to put that out there. And
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: we have done quite a few episodes on abortion and
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  Speaker 1: laws around abortion and even international laws around abortion, if
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: you want to go check those out. We've quite a
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  Speaker 1: few of them under our at this point. We know
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  Speaker 1: these are constantly changing, as in fact, Mexico had some
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  Speaker 1: good news that happened in regarding abortion laws as well.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're out there internationally and things are happening,
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  Speaker 1: we always love updates, so let us know please, But yes,
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  Speaker 1: we are going to talk a little bit about what
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  Speaker 1: is happening in Texas or what has happened in Texas.
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  Speaker 1: And yeah, we're a little late, as this is kind
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  Speaker 1: of old news, but it's still concerning news, so obviously
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: we're going to keep talking about it. As of September one,
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  Speaker 1: two thousand twenty one, the Texas legislature enacted a law
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  Speaker 1: originally passed in May, prohibiting abortion after six weeks in
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  Speaker 1: the state, long before many women know they are pregnant.
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  Speaker 1: H Yeah, and this is again one of those things.
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  Speaker 1: It's not just Texas, it's everywhere. I know that Georgia
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  Speaker 1: has also tried to pass that law. I don't think
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  Speaker 1: it's been addressed yet, and there's several states who are
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: lying in wait essentially for something like this. This essentially
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: undoes the protections offered by Row v. Wade in Texas,
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  Speaker 1: legalizing abortion up to twenty two to twenty four weeks,
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  Speaker 1: and experts estimate this will eliminate eighty five of the
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  Speaker 1: legal abortions previously happening in the state. By the way,
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  Speaker 1: once again, there's not many places that allow for this
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  Speaker 1: just straightforward abortions. There are a lot of like hoops
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  Speaker 1: you have to go through in order to even get there, um,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: including the fact, one of the things that we've talked
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  Speaker 1: about many places you can't even go before like four
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  Speaker 1: or five weeks of determining your practacy, so you have
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  Speaker 1: like a small window to get there. So just to
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  Speaker 1: put that out there, so it does away with and
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  Speaker 1: limits people who do use or have used abortion in
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  Speaker 1: court and protection in their rights. So that is something
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  Speaker 1: to know, and it puts the ones's on them to
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  Speaker 1: prove the legality of abortion. Yeah. Despite an emergency request
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to stop the law from going into effect, the Supreme
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  Speaker 1: Court allowed the law to go forward based on some
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  Speaker 1: extremely shaky technicalities and it was a lot of we're
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: not going to completely address it type of off hands
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  Speaker 1: label type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's extremely
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  Speaker 1: concerning and disheartening and reading stories from both like providers
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  Speaker 1: and people in Texas who might want an abortion or
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  Speaker 1: need an abortion saying like, you know, I'll comply that
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  Speaker 1: this is really scary, and already people are making moves
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  Speaker 1: to to comply so fast. Not only that the law
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  Speaker 1: allows for private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone
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  Speaker 1: that in any way helps someone get an abortion, UM drivers,
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  Speaker 1: people who provide financial assistance, insurance companies, anyone, even someone
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  Speaker 1: they have no connection to, which is a big deal.
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  Speaker 1: That's different. Most times in the law, you have to
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  Speaker 1: know the person you're suing, or have some kind of
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  Speaker 1: connection to them, or are the entity. In this case,
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  Speaker 1: you do not for ten dollars, they can sue them
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  Speaker 1: for plus attorney's fees and even more. I've read the
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  Speaker 1: people suing don't even have to be Texans, and they
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  Speaker 1: have four years to decide to sue and consue hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of people if they want, Like one person could do
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: this hundreds of times should they desire. And if one
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  Speaker 1: case sales, that doesn't mean that others won't, which is
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  Speaker 1: sort of throwing precedent out the window. Usually like you
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  Speaker 1: can point to well, see this case and what happened
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  Speaker 1: to there, They're they're not going along with that, and
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  Speaker 1: for this law, experts speculate this could lead to abortion
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  Speaker 1: bounty hunters and vigilanteism. An anti abortion group has already
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  Speaker 1: hosted a website where anyone can report people they suspect
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  Speaker 1: being involved with an abortion, which has of course been
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  Speaker 1: flooded with things like Shrek poor and claims of Marvel
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  Speaker 1: characters seeking abortions. But still that is that is very scary, right,
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  Speaker 1: and just a reminder if you remember what happened in
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  Speaker 1: Alabama in which they executed a woman who got into
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  Speaker 1: a fight, got shot, lost the baby, and they actually
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  Speaker 1: prosecuted her for illegally terminating a pregnancy, which was not
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  Speaker 1: even the case at all, and it actually worked for
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  Speaker 1: a minute until it got like national headlines. And that's
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  Speaker 1: why stuff like this is so scary. We know we're
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  Speaker 1: preaching to the choir, but this is what the conversation is.
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  Speaker 1: And we also have talked about civil suits before as
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  Speaker 1: a good thing when we talked about rape and sexual
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  Speaker 1: assault survivors being able to get some type of compensation
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  Speaker 1: or justice. This goes to a whole different, ugly level,
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  Speaker 1: but it comes to the same merit that it doesn't
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  Speaker 1: hit the same standards as violating law or serving time,
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  Speaker 1: So this is way easier to prosecute people. But that
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  Speaker 1: is really really upsetting, very scary. And by the way,
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  Speaker 1: that ten thousand dollars comes from the person who was
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  Speaker 1: accused of helping or getting an abortion right f y I.
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  Speaker 1: But using civil lawsuits as a way to stop or
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  Speaker 1: slow the rate of abortion days back to the nineteen
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  Speaker 1: nineties when prize. A Texas pastor created Spies for Life,
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  Speaker 1: a program that put out pamphlets instructing people how to
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  Speaker 1: use the legal system to go after abortion clinics and providers.
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  Speaker 1: The author of the law said it was modeled after
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  Speaker 1: a similar local law in Texas County. But the law
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  Speaker 1: is mostly a political statement, and we know there's plenty
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  Speaker 1: of those out there. Um, and there were no abortion
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  Speaker 1: clinics in the county, which again we also need to
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  Speaker 1: talk about the fact that Texas, uh much like kind
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  Speaker 1: of like Georgia, is very limited, and how many abortion
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  Speaker 1: clinics there is in the first place. They shut them
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  Speaker 1: around pretty quickly, very fast. And also, yeah, this is
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  Speaker 1: another tactic that we've seen from abusive partners who are
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  Speaker 1: trying to control their partners through pregnancy or through a
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  Speaker 1: child too. That's been a whole thing. Yeah. People have
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  Speaker 1: also pointed out while is horrific that this slaw bands
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  Speaker 1: abortion even in the case of raper incests, these conversations
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  Speaker 1: often imply that abortion is always a bad thing, or
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  Speaker 1: always the result of something bad that's used in the
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  Speaker 1: worst case scenario, and that we need to change how
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  Speaker 1: we talk about that, how we think about that, like
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  Speaker 1: that that is terrible that it bans that, but also
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  Speaker 1: like abortion is not always rightly okay in those instances, right, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's the big things that I know. There were several
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  Speaker 1: tweets where people are like, hey, can we stop this
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  Speaker 1: whole like morality in abortion conversation, And it is and
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  Speaker 1: it is something that it is so ingrained with us,
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  Speaker 1: and I've talked about it before, Like it's even for me,
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  Speaker 1: who was like changed my mind drastically, so it's coming
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  Speaker 1: out of my conservative childhood to this to understanding, oh yeah,
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  Speaker 1: this is bad. Still has a hard time not kind
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of moralizing it and wanted to that. But again for
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: me talking to my family because when I talked to
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: my mother, I think I've talked about it, but this
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: before we had a big blowout, And this is one
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  Speaker 1: of the things that I'm other brought up. Also the
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  Speaker 1: type of I'm adopted and that I should be, of
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  Speaker 1: all people, the most grateful that I wasn't aborted. Whole
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  Speaker 1: other law of conversation, but like that type of conversation
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  Speaker 1: is unfortunately what we have to use because they really
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  Speaker 1: think this is a moral stands that they truly, truly
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  Speaker 1: have believed it for so long, I might say, so
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  Speaker 1: long as in their childhood, because to be fair, for
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  Speaker 1: a long time, abortion wasn't a big issue until Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so like sixty seventies that they kind of came up
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  Speaker 1: as an issue, but a whole other conversation. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we just need to let that point go, just like
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  Speaker 1: this is about autonomy and our body. And now this
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  Speaker 1: law has a huge national implications as we talked about earlier,
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  Speaker 1: and not just when it comes to abortion. A Missouri
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  Speaker 1: law just passed has the same vigilante mechanism. There are
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  Speaker 1: voting restriction laws that function or could function similarly to
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  Speaker 1: the Texas law. Has also caused confusion and fear for
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  Speaker 1: Texans who might be seeking an aborre. The bill is
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  Speaker 1: written specifically to get around Rope versus Wade and ultimately
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  Speaker 1: go on to challenge it. And yeah, that's kind of
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  Speaker 1: that bigger conversation that we were gonna need to come
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  Speaker 1: back to. And again, why everybody is very upset about
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  Speaker 1: the current last two Supreme Court justices appointed because they
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  Speaker 1: knew this is one of the major things, major contentions
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  Speaker 1: that we're going to come up and what they were
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  Speaker 1: trying to do, especially when it comes to Amy Cow
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  Speaker 1: and Barrett, who has a pretty staunch pro birth stance.
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  Speaker 1: So and yeah, and there are a lot of impending
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  Speaker 1: lawsuits against it, including from the U. S. Department of Justice,
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  Speaker 1: which I think we need to come back to look
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  Speaker 1: at because what they are doing is a weird roundabout.
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  Speaker 1: To get this stopped, I guess try what you can.
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  Speaker 1: Um And at the same time, other states are trying
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: something similar. Some companies like Salesforce have offered to move
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: employees out of state if they desired, without further details.
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  Speaker 1: Lift an Uber claimed they will pay for any driver's
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  Speaker 1: sued under the law. And at the same time, others
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: have pointed out that while many big companies have taken
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: public stances for voting rights, that it gets racism and homophobia,
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  Speaker 1: so they may just be superficial. A lot of these
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  Speaker 1: same companies haven't said anything about this, and I'm not
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: gonna lie. It could be also our parent company who
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: might be a part of that conversation. Oh yeah, we
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: talked about this in kind of the big idea behind
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  Speaker 1: this law is like, yeah, places like Georgia do have
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  Speaker 1: in Mississippi, like we have these laws on the books
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  Speaker 1: that were ready, Like if row View aid gets overturned,
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  Speaker 1: then they go immediately to be enacted. So that's part
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  Speaker 1: of the really scary thing is that a lot of
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  Speaker 1: states have done something similar to what Texas has done
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  Speaker 1: and are just waiting to see what happens and how
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  Speaker 1: they can get around it or how they can overturn
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  Speaker 1: versus wade ultimately. And yeah, abortion can already be and
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: often is a trying and emotional experience, and now Texans
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  Speaker 1: and potentially people across the country you have to worry
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  Speaker 1: about fine, financial penalty and judgment sanctioned on a legal level,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: as well as potentially traveling out of state. One estimate
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  Speaker 1: suggests that for the average Texan legal abortions just went
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  Speaker 1: from on average about twelve miles away to two hundred
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  Speaker 1: and forty eight miles away, which is a huge burden
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  Speaker 1: and not an option for everyone. An abortion, you know,
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  Speaker 1: isn't free first place, everybody generally um and this is
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  Speaker 1: an impact that will especially be felt by women of color.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Oh So, if you have questions, there are resources online,
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  Speaker 1: including Planned Parents. They have a they have a site.
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  Speaker 1: Their site has an f a Q about the law
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  Speaker 1: on what it means. There are places to donate and
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: ways to help online as well, So go check those out.
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  Speaker 1: Um and I'm sure we'll be talking about this more
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  Speaker 1: in the future and definitely keeping a close eye on it,
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  Speaker 1: right And just as a reminder, there are still services
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  Speaker 1: out there. It has not completely upended everything. I don't
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  Speaker 1: think it has completely gone into effect as well, so
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: that is still an option for those who need it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And yeah, and this is absolutely when I say this,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not saying this without any kind of sarcasm, but
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  Speaker 1: this is an attack on women. This isn't an attack
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  Speaker 1: on people with uresses and being able to uh I guess,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: being able to reproduce, or whether or not we can reproduce.
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  Speaker 1: This is absolutely coming after women, point blank. And just
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  Speaker 1: because other women are pro birthers and would say they're
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: in favor of this abortion band does not mean it's
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: still not an attack on women. And unfortunately it is
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the women who are fighting the hardest and being the loudest,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: but it's also the women who are most dismissed and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: most likely prosecuted, persecuted as well as a completely ignored
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and owned obviously, And when it comes down to it, yeah,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: rich people will continue to have abortions no matter the
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  Speaker 1: state that's always how it's been, that's always how it
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: will be. Who has access rich people in the story, um,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: who doesn't, those who are disenfranchised and already struggling, and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: those who are completely ignored and completely silenced because they
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: don't even have the option to fight right now. All
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: they can do is maintain. So that's what we are
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: most concerned about, obviously, outside of just yeah, it's our
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: rights in our laws. But when it comes down to it,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: um and and I know we have access because we
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: have a little money more than most, So that's a
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: whole different conversation and it makes us very angry, and
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: we need to be we need to be very very
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: on alert. Yeah, and continue to spread truth instead of
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the stupid misinformation that continues to plague our nations. Okay,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I'm done, okay, um yeah, yeah, No, it's a lot,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: it's a lot. That was It's been a rough I mean,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: it's so silly to say, because it's been a rough
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: like years, mons years, years and years, but it has
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: been a really rough couple of weeks for sure. But
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: that being said, we would really love to hear from
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: any listeners about what's going on in your neck of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the woods around this issue, or anything at all, anything
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: we should be talking about, any people or resources we
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: should shout out. Please let us know. You can emails
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: at steff Adie and mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram at stuff We Never
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Told You are on Twitter at most Stuff podcast. Thanks
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: as always to our super producer Christina, Thank you, and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening Stuff One Never Told, the
• 14:25
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