2022 in Review: Roe v. Wade Overturned

conversations we returned to

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Sarah [00:00:25] The year is coming to an end and we hope you are having the best holiday available to you. As we wrap up 2022, here at Pantsuit Politics, we decided to pull together our conversations about some of the biggest news stories of the year. We're not sharing a single episode. Instead, we're following the story across several conversations. In some ways, 2022 feels like it can be divided right down the middle. With the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade cleaving the year in two. Even though a draft of the decision was leaked in May, you can hear our initial shock and anger and how we began to make sense of this new reality in American politics.  

Beth [00:01:08] There are many dimensions to this conversation. I am certain we will not scratch the surface of even 25% of the dimensions of this conversation. Sarah, knowing that there are people listening who have heard us talk about abortion over the past almost seven years many times, and also people who are hearing us talk about it for the first time. I wondered if we might give an abbreviated version of how each of us feel about this topic before we discuss the layers of this this newest development? 

Sarah [00:01:43] Of course. Well, I am pretty devotedly pro-choice. My first job out of college was at Planned Parenthood. I believe it is a tough issue for individuals, but I think that's where the decision should remain. I am a woman of faith. I do fall in the Barbara Bush category. I believe life begins with breath. There's an old episode where we talk about Barbara Bush's fascinating thoughts on the topic of abortion through the lens of someone who buried a child. But I won't get into that here. I do understand that I am more radically pro-choice than most Americans, I would say. I'm comfortable with that position. But I think it's always really important to talk about where you fall policy wise and where you fall sort of ethically, because I think sometimes those two things get mixed up in really toxic ways when we talk about abortion. And so policy wise, I'm pretty radically pro-choice. And ethically, I'm willing to have a more curious and complex conversation about it. 

Beth [00:02:45] There's not a ton of daylight between us on this issue, except that I am probably more uncomfortable with it than you are, Sarah. Uncomfortable discussing the issue in a variety of ways, not just with the ethical calculation. I have really been thinking about the ethical calculation, and I use ethics differently than faith, right? I am not trying to have a public discussion about my religious views on abortion because honestly -- and I am grateful for this, I have not spent my life in churches that spend much time thinking or talking about abortion. It's  just not been a central part of my faith journey, and I am grateful for that. So, ethically, I think it is really difficult. And I think that there is a societal function, a collective function in working out the ethics around it, that it's not just an individual decision. But legally I have become much more comfortable saying, "No, I don't think the government has a role in making this decision." I think there is a societal function but not a governmental function. And I have become more convinced of that by listening to physicians.   

And understanding all of the ways in which abortion care is a form of care, that we aren't just talking about one type of situation. We aren't often talking about something that feels like a real choice. I think a lot of the language around this debate has hardened in ways that don't match the reality, and learning more from care providers has made me much more comfortable saying, "No, I don't think there's a governmental role here." I think there are roles of licensing authorities  in the medical profession there are really needed ways to ensure that this is done ethically, carefully, safely, effectively. But I have shifted to be probably more extreme than most Americans, in my views, on what legally should be regulated around abortion, because of what we do and the exposure that we have to medical professionals who are willing to share in a lot of detail what walks into their offices and what their options are.  

Beth Today we had one of the most significant developments in American life since we started the podcast. In our over seven years, we've confronted some very difficult subjects, and today is among the most difficult that we have confronted. As you probably know by now, the Supreme Court, in its opinion, Dobbs V. Jackson's Women's Health Organization, has unambiguously overturned Roe V. Wade, Planned Parenthood V. Casey, and eliminated any constitutional right to abortion services whatsoever. And so, Sarah, we're just sitting down together to try to walk through our understanding of these decisions and what they mean.  

Sarah [00:05:38] Even though most of us knew this was coming because of the leaked opinion that came out several weeks ago, it still took my breath away. I think every day that the Supreme Court came out and didn't release the decision, I told myself maybe Roberts convinced somebody on the edge to step back. Maybe they're going to do something different. And so when the decision came out and they took back an individual right granted by the Supreme Court and assured by the Constitution for the first time in our country's history. I felt it in every part of my body. I had an adrenaline rush for about 2 hours. I was shaky. I kept crying. It just felt like I'd been thrown off the edge of a cliff.  

Beth [00:06:41] And the guy shared your hope that the time that passed between the leak of the draft opinion from Alito and the time that this decision was released would change something. And I sort of expected with the Dobbs case, which involves a Mississippi law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks. I expected with this case something similar to my expectation in the case about New York's gun law that came out this week, too, that the court would chip away instead of wholly reject. And so my hope was that we would get the best case scenario to me, knowing this court was to get a decision that said Mississippi could prohibit abortion after 15 weeks, but that left some right to abortion in place, which is what Chief Justice Roberts advocates for in his concurring opinion. He concurs in the judgment only, not in the majority analysis. Instead, we have now five justices of the Supreme Court unapologetically, proudly comparing themselves to the court that decided Brown V. Board of Education unanimously saying that Roe V. Wade was a profound legal wrong and that they are undoing that profound legal wrong.  

Sarah [00:08:01] I think this court has shown itself to be unlike any other cards they have removed, any remaining belief for a significant proportion of the country. And I think even people who agree with this decision would be hard pressed to justify it based on anything other than the shifting politics of the court. The dissent at one point cites one of the Mississippi legislators who said, "Well, we knew the court changed and this was our chance." And that's where this decision comes from. The court changed. The court got new members, three of which from a twice impeached president who lost the popular vote. And that's where this decision came from. And that is why it is horrific and I think a moment in history where we will look back and say that was it, like, that was the moment that the Supreme Court, as we understood it, ceased to exist. Because they have shredded any idea of neutrality or legitimacy based on the institution itself and have revealed the body to be nothing more than one more political branch of our government. Only it's a political branch unaccountable to the people.   

And so we have a political branch now telling us that we interpret through the Constitution, through history. Does it matter if it's a history written by men only? That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that it's a history written by people who were slave owners. Doesn't matter. Because all we can do here, we're not judicial interpreters, we're historians. And I can't imagine that the Supreme Court can survive or move forward in any real way. I mean, it is abundantly clear from the three liberal justices dissent that the collegiality is gone. There is no respectful dissent here. It is dripping with disdain for what they see as a lack of judicial humility, for a lack of wisdom and for a lack of fundamental regard, much less respect for the institution of the Supreme Court.  

Beth [00:10:50] The disdain is mutual from the majority opinion as well toward the dissent. In total, the court produced 213 pages of writing about this decision. I read them all today, and what I took from this case alongside the New York gun case is that we have here a court that is so deeply split on what they exist to do that it's hard for me to imagine what comes next. And the dissenting justices tell us we should expect more of the same, that there is no reason to believe the majority of the court, which throughout this decision assures us that abortion is unique, that abortion is unlike other individual rights.  

Sarah [00:11:37] Or some of them as the dissent goes out of its way to say over and over again.  

Beth [00:11:41] Yeah, the dissent tells us to expect more of the same. I think, Sarah, to your point about the legitimacy of the court, I try to be honest with myself as someone who loves Supreme Court jurisprudence, I just do. I love to read the cases. I love to think about who wrote which case and why, who wrote which opinion and why. Who was assigned the majority opinion in each case. I think all of it is so interesting. It has always depended and still does on certain fictions. Like everything in governance, things exist because we agree that they do. When you're in a society that governs itself, things exist because we agree that they do. And I think when you have a court of nine members where there is such difference about what-- they don't agree what they're supposed to do. So how are we as a people to see them as legitimate when they don't agree what the body exists to do when we have two decisions this week where the majority of the court tells us we are only here to ensure that the Constitution is read through the lens of the late 1700s and a minority that says we are here to ensure that the Constitution endures as a document with relevance based on society and the reality that we all live in. It's just a split that I don't think gets reconciled. And so I don't know what the court means at this point, because I don't think the members of the court know.  

Sarah [00:13:17] It feels like another attack on the rule of law that the laws apply until a person with enough power decides they don't anymore. And that's what this feels like. It feels like, well, we finally got the numbers on our side. And so the rules are going to change for millions and millions of people. And that creates that sense of instability, distrust, frustration, lawlessness. So my point on when we were discussing  gun control case on More to Say, when you attack the rule of law and act surprised by lawlessness and violence, I don't have a lot of words of comfort for you because I'm not sure what you thought was going to happen. 

Beth [00:14:03] I think what is particularly galling in this set of decisions, the majority and the concurrences, is the pretense that what is being done here is actually upholding the rule of law. Justice Thomas's concurrence has gotten a lot of attention today because, as you said, he expressly said we should overrule those cases that are decided under a concept of substantive due process. Meaning Justice Thomas thinks the 14th Amendment only entitles us to procedural due process, not to any expansion of what liberty actually means. And I just read that thinking about Justice Thomas himself. And the fact that we are learning that his wife has been abusive of the power and authority that he has in her political engagement. And I think we're going to hear a lot more about that, that he has a view of executive power that is extremely expansive. And so I wonder if he looks at his colleague, Justice Gorsuch, and thinks, wow, the Senate really overreached and abused the rule of law by holding open this seat for a Republican president to appoint you. I think that's the trouble. There is no aspect of this court, including the vast majority of its personnel, that is uncontroversial now. And for this court to repeatedly tell us, well, we should definitely overrule our predecessors if we think they got it wrong, it leaves us without a cornerstone in our government that is anything other than a naked power struggle. And I don't think that we are a democratic republic anymore if we are left without a cornerstone that is nothing more than a naked power struggle. 

Sarah [00:16:05] Yeah. Because there's no course of action if the federal government prohibits and criminalizes abortion. The sole remaining course of action is amending the Constitution because we have a nakedly political branch that has no political accountability. And that is harrowing. 

Beth [00:16:32] It's especially harrowing when you think about the fact that we have lost faith in the political accountability of the people who this court says are to be so responsive to the populace. That we have a country that is deeply divided over whether we should have an Electoral College anymore. That the majority of this court exists because of appointment by a president who lost the popular vote and was impeached twice and is currently being demonstrated to have no respect for the rule of law whatsoever through the January 6th hearings. That so many people feel that their congressional races aren't even close to competitive by design. That here in Kentucky, where we have a trigger law that ensures that, as of this moment, all abortion is illegal  including in cases of rape and incest, with the only exception being to save the life of the mother. And I very seriously doubt we'd all agree on what that exception means and how it should be applied and by whom that should be decided. Here in Kentucky, we have just seen a districting process that is grotesque. It is so nakedly partisan as to be grotesque. And it was a redistricting process targeted mostly at women legislators. So it's just difficult to have confidence in our democratic processes right now. And that is another layer to reading Alito's opinion that makes you think you're not living in the real world or even trying to. 

Sarah [00:17:45] But the real world is where the rest of us have to live. In the fallout from this decision. 

Since this newly constituted and restless court has asked us all to spend so much time with the words the Framers. I keep thinking about we hold these truths to be self-evident. It's so beautiful. Sounds like a hymn. And I think at this moment, I just realized that they're so weirdly self-evident to all of us. It's such a promise, but it's such hard, impossible work. I think it's tempting to think that once those truth are assured to us, that they are permanent. And I think the hard and difficult lesson we're all learning today is that even in the United States of America, they are not. Democracy is impossibly hard and also our best option. And so the work is to continue to campaign and vote and persuade and influence and tell your stories. And to keep trying to make the truths that seem so obvious and self-evident to some of us available to the rest of us.  

There is no way around the heartbreak of today. And there will be more heartbreak to come. I have no doubt about that. As I sat in my car when I first got the news of the decision, Angels from Montgomery was playing. And there's that great moment in the song where Bonnie Raitt sings "To believe in this livin is just a hard way to go." And I thought, well, what a song for this moment. It's just a hard way to go.  

Sarah And I wish there was an easier way. I wish there was an easier way for myself, for all the women this will affect, for my children, for Beth's daughters. And I have to feel that heartbreak. And we all have to feel that heartbreak. That's just part of the process. We just can't let the heartbreak turn to despair. Because despair isolates us and separates us and tells us there's nothing we can do for each other now or in the future. And that is not true. That is not true.  

Beth [00:20:58] Yeah. I don't really know what it is that we're doing here as humans or what rules should govern what it is that we're doing here. I just know that in the course of my life, I am better off the more I respect other people's knowledge and understanding of what a good life looks like for them, instead of trying to impose my view of what a good life looks like on the people around me. That's why it strikes me as so sad that today we had a right erased and that there is celebration of the erasure of that right. That feels really hard to me that there is celebration of a decision that will be applied in context, that the celebrators have never confronted or contemplated. That land's really hard for me. And I have a lot of anger in me right now at these justices because I believe the justices have contemplated those circumstances and decided that it's worth it anyway. And so I'm pretty mad about that. But I have to remember that for me, inviting hatred of the justices is just deciding to swallow a poison pill that will only hurt me.   

I have to remember that I believe that people should serve this country and be safe in their role serving the country, even when they're doing abhorrent things. And that the justices, as angry as I feel toward them, represent a lot of my fellow Americans who I have to figure out a way forward with now. And so I'm trying to keep a measure of softness, even though I feel pretty hardened in my reaction to this opinion. 

Sarah [00:22:55] I am not hardened in a way that creates fragility. I don't want that. I don't want to be hard in a way that makes me easy to break. And I think violence is that bad. I think violence, political or otherwise, paradoxically creates fragility. But I am hardened in a way that creates strength. I am hardened in a way that creates adaptability. I am hardened in a way that releases that grip on the past, the comfort and the control of trying to get back to the way things were. I'm done with that. We're not going back to the way things were. We're going forward. It's going to take a lot of strength because we're going to have to build new things and new ways of being. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if that looks like a constitutional convention. I don't know if that looks like splitting apart and no longer being the United States of America. I just know that I want to be strong and ready for the challenge.  

Beth [00:24:29] I think the hardest thing about this conversation, especially as we're asked how do I talk to people around me about this, is that it doesn't mean one thing. That is the gist of the decision. That we don't have an American policy on abortion now. So we've gotten a lot of really specific questions about ectopic pregnancy, about rape and incest, about what it means to save the life of the mother. And we can't answer those questions for the entirety of the country. It's going to depend on state law. It's going to depend on how that law is enforced. And I think we're going to have to just take a pause and watch what happens over the next weeks and months to really understand the impact of this decision.  

Sarah [00:25:12] When I posted on my personal Facebook page, I very specifically and deliberately said this is what Kentucky legislators have done today. Because we had a trigger law started immediately. And I thought, well, this is the conversation we're going to start with is the state we live in. And so I've had a conversation in the comment thread about Kentucky law. I posted the single paragraph of a three page bill that is supposed to lay out the situation in which there would be an exception for the life of the mother. Language is something like reasonable medical conclusion. Well, reasonable to whom? I feel like there's a lot of "But there's an exception for the life of the mother" that's holding a lot of water right now in a way that legislation cannot and was not designed to hold in the course of this thread. A man I knew growing up in a Southern Baptist youth group, you know, very kindly and in the spirit of compromise, said, "I'm all for eliminating uncertainty." And I said, "Friend, that's not available to us. We cannot use law to eliminate uncertainty. That's why everybody goes to law school and that's why we have judges, because there is inevitable uncertainty." We saw that with Roe. There was a lot of uncertainty. And so the idea that we're going to craft these exceptions so that nobody ever has to feel bad about a position a woman was put in due to this legislation. Oh, man, I can't dress that up or make that a softer landing for people. It's going to be a hard, hard, fall.  

Beth [00:26:58] We're hearing from a number of you that people around you are celebrating the decision in ways that you're finding really callous. And the only thing I know to do in the face of that is to try to, with more patience than I feel, create a more expansive understanding of what abortion services look like. Because it does feel that the gleeful have one particular type of abortion in mind and a very limited understanding of what that type of abortion looks like. And I just hate saying, well, I guess more people are going to have to tell their stories because it's been years of women telling their stories and people still not listening or getting it or just not wanting to. But I don't know what else to do here, especially those of us who are not survivors of sexual assault and rape, those of us who have not had to have abortion care. People like me, who had only two desired relatively easy pregnancies saying, let me tell you what I know about what women endure, because it is less painful for me than for others. But there is just a part of me that feels like you can only keep knocking on the same door so many times because people just want to feel like they've won something here. I think that's what this is about more than anything else. And we'll talk about this with the court in a minute. But almost everything coursing through the court right now and this decision is like the biggest manifestation of that. It feels to me like it is so much less about what it's about and so much more about a cultural victory and that's hard. 

Sarah [00:28:45] There is no awareness from the people celebrating of what they have wrought. Like, I just think that the celebration is also a type of siren song and it has blinded them to what people around them are saying. 

Beth [00:29:00] One of the questions that you all ask is, will this change the way we parent? And the question was really put more to me, I think, how will you parent girls? But I think this is a very important question for the moms of boys too, the parents of boys, all the adults who love boys and girls in the world, all people need to be answering this question. And I think in my moments of my lowest moments over the weekend, I just thought about the fact that I have an 11-year-old who could get pregnant. I have an 11-year-old whose activities right now consist of things like making a sticker for her door that says fries before guys on her cricket. You know what I mean? This is not a conversation about promiscuity or sexual morality. It is a recognition that I'm not with her every moment of every day. And I will do everything I can every day to keep her safe and to keep her protected from predators. And I try not to spend my life thinking about predators.   

But when I imagine a circumstance in which I am not able to keep her safe from all predators, and the consequence of that would be that in Kentucky, I have a pregnant 11-year-old with no options is a low moment for me. It's just a low moment for me. And as much as I will and can educate her about her body and about sex and about risk. And as much as I can teach her that-- this is the thing, the conversation about abortion with people who tend to be like the most staunchly pro-life, I always feel like they refuse to acknowledge the things that are completely out of a woman's control. So that's something I'm just thinking a lot about. I already was very committed to providing really strong education about relationships and sex to my daughters. And this increases that conviction. But I also am left realizing I would love to live in a world where they were empowered to be in control of absolutely everything that happens. And this is not that world. 

Sarah [00:31:15] We picked up our kids from camp on Saturday and Griffin got in the car and we were driving up to Amos's cabin. And he said, "What happened?" And I said, "Well, some good things and some bad things." I said, "We got a once in a generation gun control legislation." And we sort of went through what it could do and closing the boyfriend loophole and these big achievements that this legislation has accomplished. And I kind of read out Chris Murphy's thread to him, and we talked about a little bit. And he goes, "And they overturned Roe V. Wade. And I said, "Yeah. They did. They did overturn Roe V. Wade." We talked about Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion and his threat, which is what I'm going to start calling it, that the court should also overturn the right to contraception and the right to gay marriage. And we talked about how disheartening that is and what can I say? It's going to be okay. That's a lie. I know what happens next. That's a lie, too. And then that evening, when I got home, when I was Facebook ninjaing, I was checking my feed and a guy I knew a long time ago, he's probably ten years younger than me, posted that the only responsible thing to do as a man right now is to get a vasectomy. That he'd gotten one, and he has never regretted it.   

And in some ways, I know many of you have read Gabrielle Blair's Twitter thread about responsible ejaculation. She's got a book coming out. I'll be purchasing that for my children not to read right now, but maybe in a year or two. I think the shift to men to say there is responsibility here. Real responsibility when you're talking about there are things Jane can't control, that's because the ultimate control is always in the hands of the man. That's Gabriel Blair's argument. It's like I want them to have that, but it also makes me so sad that they could get to a point where they're like, the only responsible thing I could do is get a vasectomy. Makes me really, really, sad and really angry at people who claim to be pro-life and promoting families that a lot of young men are going to make that decision. They're going to say the only way to be a responsible male inside this country right now is to get a vasectomy.  I mean, I get the argument. So I don't even disagree with it. It just makes me sad. It makes me really sad to continue to have that conversation with my boys and to feel like to be responsible members of society, they have to foreclose this choice to themselves forever and always, I'm sure, is a conversation we're going to have.  

Beth [00:33:16] Yeah. As I was thinking about this over the weekend, it would not surprise me if the long term effect here is an even more rapidly declining population.  

Sarah [00:33:25] Absolutely.  

Beth [00:33:26] And the other thing I kept thinking about is the callousness with which we talk about our birth control choices, because there's not a path here. A vasectomy, having your tubes tied, using any kind of medication and IUD, all of it affects our bodies and it affects all of us differently. We can't predict all of the effects that it will have. You can get into a conversation with any group of women about the effect of birth control and hear stories that are just heartbreaking about what happened just trying to take a pill and be responsible the way we've been told to, you know. Were so dismissive of everything that has to do with sex and reproduction in our bodies. And that's the only call to action I know for people who are loving on kids right now is to just try so hard to take our bodies seriously and to teach them to do the same and to get as much information as we can about all of the things that we put in our bodies and the way that we interact with them. Because I think the consequences of approaching our bodies with shame and detachment are woven deeply into this decision. 

Sarah [00:34:43] We're going to talk about some of those individual stories, that individual fallout. And before we do, I want to say that we are going to talk about this on a high level. But some of y'all out there who can hear my voice are living this. Are being put off by your doctors. Are having to face impossible decisions. And I just want to acknowledge that. I just want to acknowledge that like this is playing out in headlines and they're heartbreaking to read. And if they're heartbreaking to read, then they are impossible to live through. So we understand that and we are thinking of all of you who are struggling with these decisions, and your reproductive health, and your reproductive options right now today as we are recording this podcast. 

Beth [00:35:31] And we use the word women. A lot of the heartbreaking individual stories that I'm aware of are about what can only be fairly described as children. And the lack of options available for girls who are very young, who find themselves pregnant and trapped in states where they can't get care around that, are just brutal. They're just brutal. If you are new to Pantsuit Politics, we're talking about this as two mothers. Sarah has three children. I have two. We both attend church every week. We are people who have wrestled with the topic of abortion many times over the seven years that we've been doing this podcast. And I think as we've had those conversations, we've learned a lot, we've grown a lot. And when the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs opinion, which explicitly overturn Roe versus Wade, we knew that it was going to result in a level of chaos and heartbreak and tragedy that was both entirely foreseeable and also unfathomable. And that seems to be what has taken place. 

Sarah [00:36:19] You called out in that conversation that so much of this was theoretical. It really wasn't, honestly. The people who were crying out from the beginning weren't living in the theory of reproductive health and the politics of reproductive health. They were living in the day to day of reproductive health. So that's why you heard that crying out of this is not going to go how you think it's going to go. And so now that's real. Now we're not thinking of, well, should there be an exception for rape and incest? Now we're reading about an 11-year-old girl who was pregnant in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana. And Indiana's response from their government is, well, we better make that illegal, too. I had a friend who looked up the results in Kentucky and last year a nine-year-old and a 11-year-old got abortions in the state of Kentucky. I will never as long as I live forget Jamie Golden's Instagram story where she says I've stood in the backyard of a home where an 11-year-old sat in a swing with a ponytail and a lollipop while also pregnant with her father's child. Proximity will change you. And that's where we all are right now. We are all in that sentence. Proximity will change you. It's not theoretical for those of us who had the luxury of debating this. What will this mean? Now the proximity is here. It's looking you in the face every day. You're going to have to hear from women who say, "I needed a DNA because my fetal sac was empty and I was put off and put off." Or you're going to have to listen to doctors who take care of pregnant cancer patients saying, "I have to wait for her to get sicker in order to avoid jail." So the proximity is going to change all of us. 

Beth [00:38:00] It's not that a question like when does life begin becomes irrelevant. Those are still big and important questions. Where I've been from the beginning on this issue, is that because those are big, relevant, hard questions that people of different faiths and life experiences and values will answer very, very, differently, we cannot write a law that answers and meets us in those questions. So we have to write laws for a situation where you present to a doctor with an empty fetal sack. We have to write laws that allow for the flexibility of all the various ways that the human body shows up seeking care. We have to write a law that allows for a nine-year-old who's been impregnated by her father. And what the physical reality of what a pregnancy will do to a nine-year-old body is we have to live in what some people will say, "Well, you're just pointing out the extreme cases." Well, health care providers are telling us that those cases are not extreme. Health care providers are telling us that they regularly need to be able to provide these services. And not just health care providers, if you talk to ministers-- specifically, if you talk to women ministers-- about the situations that they've seen and provided support around, we're just nowhere in the debate in the realm of the people most impacted by these very restrictive laws that states like ours in Kentucky have implemented. Here we sit in a state where you cannot receive abortion care without your doctor taking on incredible risk. And if you look around, Indiana now is very restrictive. Ohio is banned after six weeks. Tennessee is banned. You're talking about having to travel a tremendous distance to get just care, just health care. And it's scary. Honestly. I don't use that word very often because I don't feel a lot of fear in my heart. To borrow a phrase that you've said that your mom taught you, Sarah, I'm not a fearful person. But I look at this situation and wonder what it is that we have created and how long we're going to live this way. 

Sarah [00:40:19] And you know, I'm not a fearful person, but I am an angry person. It is an emotion that I can easily access. And I'm just pissed off right now. I just want everybody who thinks they've sorted this out to sit with the woman in Louisiana who had a skull-less fetus. Her fetus did not have a skull. And I don't want to be graphic, but I want you to think about what that would look like if you gave birth to a skull-less fetus. As someone who's had to deal with the reality of a lost pregnancy, I am furious that people are being put in this position. Furious. There's just this sense I feel this sort of disgust. This sense that I want to turn away. How dare you bring this to me? You're just trying to be hyperbolic, and it makes me want to set it all on fire. I am so sorry that the lived reality of reproduction grosses you out and makes you uncomfortable. If you wanted it to stay private, then you shouldn't have passed these damn laws. If you don't want to deal with the private reality that women across this country have to deal with every day, them and their doctors, you should have kept your fingers out of it. And that's just how I feel. It just feels like, well, that's not what we meant. Well, I'm sorry. That's what we were telling you was happening. It's not like there was a loss of expertise of people who deal with this-- both doctors and women and reproductive rights activists-- saying this is how this is going to play out. And it's like it's not just these lost pregnancies. It's not just these difficult genetic situations. The Washington Post had a great roundup where they literally just tallied the miles and the money women had to spend to receive abortion care.   

One woman was, like, it was great I had my tax refund because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to do this. And I already have five children. It just makes me want to burn it down. 

Beth [00:42:21] When you read the Dobbs Opinion, the Supreme Court stayed in theory mode. They decided this case based on their conviction, that Roe versus Wade was shoddy legal work. I don't totally disagree with that. And on their conviction that because Americans have different feelings about abortion care, then this should be decided in the states where people are arguably represented more effectively than they are at the federal level certainly by the court. And I think the Supreme Court needs a little bit of a moment of feelings are important but not in charge, because by disrupting the status quo, as the court did, they ensured that in states where voters have not been able to express their opinions on abortion care and haven't needed to in 50 years, suddenly we live in a space where we are in these restrictive settings. I am concerned that we are so deep in our feelings about abortion care that we're going to have to continue to tell really graphic stories about the reality of this on the ground in order to shake us loose from those feelings. And I wish there were a way around that, because we're asking those stories to be told on the canvas of a culture where we won't even talk about perimenopause because we're so uncomfortable, where we fight about whether you can show a tampon in a children's show. We are asking women to say, give us the most intimate, devastating, terrifying thing that has happened to you in graphic detail, so people might believe that you have an ability to exercise some kind of decision making in the course of coping with that. Against this backdrop of a culture that won't even discuss a period candidly. And as a mom of two daughters in that culture, I just don't know what to tell them about the society that they're living in right now. I don't know what to say about the disregard for their experiences that are conveyed in two ways. I can't even discuss a monthly reality for you, but also we're going to need you to pour your soul out if something heinous happens to secure what had been a legal right.  

Sarah [00:45:00] I have released my need for repudiation despite being a person who is highly motivated by justice. Repudiation is not a thing that happens a lot in American politics; especially the bigger and more diverse we get, the bigger and more diverse and intense our media environment get. So I don't hold that. And as much as I do, let me tell you, I feel like we got it around abortion. I feel like we got it around abortion. To see states like Kansas, to see our home state of Kentucky defeat an abortion amendment that would have stripped any right to reproductive freedom from our state constitution, I wept. I wept when those results started running in. And people would look at me and say, "Well, it's so close." It's not close. It's not close. Not in the state of Kentucky unless you were looking for no one to vote for it. But that cannot be our standard. Come on, that can't be our standard. I am so incredibly encouraged by the resounding answer America has given through elections post Dobbs, which is you went too far. And as much as I was looking for  a repudiation in this election, that was the issue I was looking for it in and I found it.  

Beth [00:46:15] I wonder what's next now, because it is a strange thing to be in Kentucky celebrating that we said no to riding the courts out of judicial review. Because what it took to get to that no was framing the issue as do you support any right to an abortion or not? And all of the people who turned out to say, yes-- there's got to be some, there's got to be some flexibility here-- are still waking up today in a state where you cannot get an abortion. And so what happens next? Our attorney general put out this really strange statement about how disappointed he is in the results, but how the results should not at all change our Supreme Court's analysis when this issue reaches it soon. And I thought, well, you could have just said nothing and that would have been fine. And two, what a weird thing for us, because our court is not guaranteed to find that right in the Kentucky Constitution. And then what? The voters said you went too far. The legislature still has no incentive to walk that back. So what happens from here? I think that's going to be fascinating to watch in Kentucky and across the country.  

Sarah [00:47:29] The conversation has just flipped. For so many decades, it was, how far can we go? Where is the ceiling on abortion rights? And all of a sudden we're discussing the floor. And I think that's fine. I'm fine building it from the floor. I'm fine working that out, and I'm fine with the answer being different. I understand that my home state of Kentucky is much more conservative on abortion rights than I am. But I'm so pleased we seem to agree on the floor that no right at all is too far and I'm fine working up from there. I think that's the hard, difficult work of a democracy is saying, okay, what can we agree on and let's move up from there. I think that that's fine and I think it's long, hard work and that's what's in front of us and that's what comes next. And anybody that supports reproductive freedom understands that and always understood that, especially in states like Kentucky. But the Supreme Court decision has upended the conversation and just the political process in such a dramatic way. It does feel like for the first time in my lifetime, we have real movement. We have a real stability and visibility and transparency, at least, about what we all see going on and what we can agree on. And I'm incredibly encouraged by that. 

Sarah [00:48:46] This decision changed everything about one of the most controversial issues in American politics, and the fallout has only just begun. Of course, we anticipate having many more conversations about abortion and the future of abortion access in this country throughout 2023. If you would like to listen to the full episodes, these highlights come from, the list is in the show notes. Thank you for joining us here at Pantsuit Politics. We've got one more of these special episodes left for you this year, and we can't wait to be back with you. And new episodes beginning Wednesday, January 4th.  

Beth [00:49:33] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director. 

Sarah Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky, Allie Edwards, Janice Elliott, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holliday, Katie Johnson, Katina Zuganelis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs, Katherine Vollmer, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, Linda Daniel, Emily Neesley, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katy Stigers, Karen True, Onica Ulveling, Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Amy Whited, Emily Helen Olson, Lee Chaix McDonough,  

Beth [00:57:26] Jeff Davis, Melinda Johnston, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McCue, Nicole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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