A Russian Coup Attempt, OceanGate, and Abortion in Post-Roe America

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • An Attempted Russian Coup

  • Titanic OceanGate Submersible Implosion

  • The Anniversary of the Dobbs Decision

  • Outside of Politics: Reflecting on June

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:18] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:19] And this is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:21] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:00:37] Hello. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. I'm so happy to be back with all of you and back with you, Sarah, after being out for most of the month of June. Today, as we are recording on Monday, June 26th, we're reflecting on it being a year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade. We're going to talk about the legal and medical and political fallout of that decision and where we see that conversation going next. Before we do that, we spent some time talking about two stories that have grabbed our attention this morning. One of them being the unfolding situation in Russia as a result of the Wagner mercenary group attempting what looked to be a coup over the weekend before quickly negotiating an end to that effort and how we see it fitting into the broader perspective on Russian politics and governance. And then we're going to just quickly talk about how we took in the story that captivated so many of you about the Ocean Gate voyage to see the Titanic and the tragic way that episode ended. Outside of Politics, we're going to catch up a little bit on our reflections from the month of June.

Sarah [00:01:54] Now, we've talked about abortion on the show before, obviously, and we have a playlist of some of those episodes that we will link to in the show notes. In case you're interested in more of our personal perspectives on this topic. In the past, we've had pro-life and pro-choice voices on the show. But we want to be clear that we are both pro-choice and believe abortion access is important in health care, and should be available nationwide. So if you want more of the background of the topic broadly, that playlists will be available.

Beth [00:02:18] We also want to make sure that we invite you to join us in Sarah's hometown, Paducah, Kentucky, from October 20th to 22nd. We're going to have a live show in Paducah on the 21st. Lots of activities around the live show. I'm really excited to come see you, Sarah.

Sarah [00:02:32] I just love an itinerary. I just love a schedule. I love an itinerary. I love a guided experience. And we're going to have so many available in Paducah. Y'all, every day I think, oh will we need to call Kaisa [sp] at our studio so in case she wants to do a live craft class around Pantsuit Politics that's available. And next I'll be like, "Well, we need to make sure and put Red's Donuts on the list because people have to have Reds Donuts before they leave.” So I'm a little worried that three days is not going to be enough. Don't plan on this being restful you guys, I've got too many things for you to see and do in Paducah while you're here- just saying.

Beth [00:03:06] Except that I'm going to offer a yoga class, which affirms will be very restful.

Sarah [00:03:08] It's a good that. We're going to need it, Beth. We're going to need that to balance everything else out.

Beth [00:03:13] We're going to restore and regroup together. I think it's going to be so much fun. Sarah is so enthusiastic about her hometown. I'm sure you know that. But you don't really know it until you're there. And she's showing you the people and the places and the things. So we hope you'll join us. You can check the show notes for more information about that. We also would just really appreciate if you love what we do here at Pantsuit Politics, you take a minute to tell your favorite podcast player that so that more people can find us and join this conversation. Up next, we're going to talk about Putin's former chef becoming the single greatest challenge to his political power that we've seen in a long time. The biggest story as we're sitting down to record on Monday, June 26th, in almost every news outlet, is the unfolding situation in Russia. It's been interesting to hear this reported, Sarah, because over the weekend it felt like there is a coup happening. We know a coup is unfolding. And then it was like, wait, wait, no, it's not. It's been resolved very, very quickly. And I feel skeptical that we have much information about what's really happened and what will happen at all, because we have no reliable narrators here. So our cast of characters are Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, his long time confidant. He's been referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owns a bunch of catering companies.

Sarah [00:04:48] Started with a hot dog stand. I love it.

Beth [00:04:50] The truth is, this is one of Russia's very wealthy people who has a ton of access to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government and the Russian military and now owns the Wagner mercenary group. So Putin, Prigozhin, and then we have in Belarus Europe's last dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. I don't trust any of these people to tell us what has happened with any amount of accuracy at all. But we do know for months there's been reporting about friction between Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner mercenary group. And at least the Russian military, if not Putin himself, that Prigozhin has been very skeptical of the way the Russian military has been conducting the Ukrainian operation. He led a brief rebellion in Russia over the weekend after taking to social media and expressing his frustration about the entire Ukrainian invasion and saying this was not necessary. This was not about Russian interests. This was about a bunch of egomaniacs getting richer and more powerful, which was a very big deal in and of itself, and then accusing the Russian military of killing a number of his troops. So he leads this brief rebellion in Russia, starts marching towards Moscow, and then very suddenly we hear that Prigozhin is going to flee to Belarus, that he and his fighters will not face prosecution and that the Russian government was like, "Everything's cool here. Nothing to see. We're going to continue what we're doing in Ukraine."

Sarah [00:06:31] As I watched all this unfold and you read more about it, it's so tempting to take Prigozhin and make him into the good guy. But he's not a good guy. He runs a mercenary group. He was in favor of the invasion of Ukraine because he makes money, because he runs a mercenary group. And I think the other cast of character we have to include is the secretary of defense, which is it seems to be who his beef is with. It's not like he came on social media and said, Vladimir Putin is destroying Russia; let's take him out. His beef was with the military and has been. I didn't know his name, but we have been following reports about the leader of Wagner having all this criticism and having concerns for like at least I would say a month or two. We've been reading some of his criticism as in some of his concerns. So I knew that the leader of the Wagner mercenary group had a lot of power in this situation, because we know that the Russian military's recruitment, retention, draft not going great. So we knew he had a lot of power in this situation, obviously, because he was able to launch these criticisms without many consequences, which is not something that happens often in Russia. And so I knew enough about him that when this happened, I thought, okay. But I think you're right. I mean, it just happened so quickly. And he's not been heard of, Putin has not been heard of since Saturday, although he came on TV and spoke, which is very unlike him. I think we heard from the secretary of defense today or maybe late yesterday, but there are so many question marks. I think the one conclusion is that this is a brief, clouded, confusing but definitive insight into the weakening power of Vladimir Putin inside Russia. We don't know exactly what's going on here, but the fact that it bubbled up, that it got this far, that he got so close to Moscow, that he was criticizing so openly that Vladimir Putin felt like he had to come on TV and address it, something is up. This invasion of Ukraine has weakened his authority inside Russia. And I remember when the invasion started, you and I both said, like, "In what universe do we get Russia to pull back out of Ukraine, face consequences for this invasion and Vladimir Putin stays in power?" And it felt like a dream, like a wish. Like, could that even happen? And I think what we saw this weekend shows it could. It absolutely could.

Beth [00:09:03] I think the point about Prigozhin not being a hero here is really important too, because the history of most countries in the world is that when you have someone who governs as an authoritarian, they are not usually followed by someone who will instantly come in and create an open, transparent, accountable government that serves its citizens best interests. It is usually a bad guy, followed by maybe a little less bad guy, followed by maybe a little less bad guy, followed by somebody who comes in and says, "Nope, we're going to take it all the way back in the other direction again." It is likely that Russia continues to be governed by someone who does not truly serve the people for the foreseeable future, even if that's not Vladimir Putin. It does seem to be the case that this is about the weakening of Putin. That seems to be expert's takeaway here. There's a part of me that feels a little skeptical because I wonder with this tension having been reported on so long, does something about this work for Putin? Does something work for Putin to have Russian citizens allegedly cheering as Wagner military groups rolled out into Belarus? Or what will he do with this that works for him? But I was thinking about January 6th, which is the closest experience that I've had as a citizen to a coup attempt in my country, vastly different than what happened here. But just trying to consider what is my lens in this situation? I think we have weathered January 6th fairly well as a country, in large part because we have people of many different ideologies who do believe in the structure of American government as part of our story about who we are as a country. That's nonexistent in Russia right now. No one knows how Putin could be replaced. They do not have this structure that people of different ideologies, backgrounds, and stakes agree on. And I don't know what you do when you've had an attempt like this to change the game without a common story about what happens next.

Sarah [00:11:12] Well, what's encouraging to me is that from the beginning I thought, well, all these oligarchs have to have enormous power and they're going to become increasingly uncomfortable with this situation. But there was a lot of reporting from people with lots more expertise and experience with Russia that said, no, he's really squashed. Anyone with any sort of power outside of him. And I thought, okay, I believe you. But I think this shows that that's not necessarily true. I think that the wild card (wild but wholly predictable to me) is that the military is brittle, his leadership is brittle, and that definitely seems to be Prigozhin's serious issue from the beginning. But the fact that he was again able to lob these criticisms pretty consistently over the last several weeks because they needed him so badly and still do. Like, that's the other thing. Okay, so he's in Belarus-- we think. The assumption is that some of these fighters will go serve the Russian military, which I think is a big assumption. So what does this mean for the Russian military force that was dependent so strongly on Wagner, especially as the Ukrainians launch a counter assault? I don't think it's good. I don't think it's a good reflection of their military future, both immediate and more long term. I don't think it's a good reflection of his authority and power, both immediate and long term. And so, I don't want to get in a space where I'm, like, Prigozhin is a hero who's trying to take out Putin and free the Russian. People, I don't think that's what's happening, but I do think it's good news. If nothing else, it is new information that upsets many of the foundations and assumptions and what we had begun calling a war of attrition, which is not what we want. So, to me, anything that sort of disrupts this idea of we're just going to keep slogging it out at a huge cost to human life and flourishing, is good news.

Beth [00:13:17] And I also think there is so much more to this story that will come out over time and that we should be skeptical of as it does come out because of these unreliable narrators. What is the objective of the Belarus and President in talking about brokering this deal? There are commentators who say that's hugely embarrassing to Vladimir Putin, that he needed an ally to come in and help create this agreement. What does it mean for Putin that the people involved in this are not going to face the kind of crackdown that he does on people who challenge him to a much lesser degree? I took a writing class over the month of June with my good friend Anna Gasturi [sp] of Kabby Yoga [sp], and she used lines from poems to get us started in our writing. And one of the lines that we used was "You do not have to know how this ends." And I have really adopted that as a mentality for over the month, especially as I read stories like this. Just remembering I don't have to know how this ends right now, because I do think there are numerous pieces of information that we're missing and too much volatility in every respect around the situation to know where it's going.

Sarah [00:14:25] I think that's a good transition to the other story we're going to talk about, which we do now know how it ended, which is the Titanic Ocean Gate submersible. And the story that really, really captured America's attention. Did you follow the story closely while you were on break in June?

Beth [00:14:41] I did not follow it closely. I knew it was happening. I have never been one who is really attracted to someone is trapped kind of stories. I remember when we had the young child in the well when I was growing up and how much that captivated everyone's attention. And that's just not something that draws me in. Those kind of individual stories, I care about them and I think they're heartbreaking and I care for the people involved, but I don't like trying to write a bunch of systemic stories on top of an individual story like that. And that's really what turned me off about all of the social media posts I saw about this submarine. I felt like we were taking a limited number of people's stories and writing big systemic narratives on top of them in a way that just made people fight with each other. In the meantime, the Coast Guard is doing its best with these other international agencies to just try to help these folks.

Sarah [00:15:39] Yeah, I thought it was cruel. A lot of the joking and the social media posting, that's not my sense of humor. It's not my jam. It even captured my husband, Nicholas, and he is usually-- I must say this with kindness in my heart. He usually doesn't have a lot of sympathy for very rich people and they're suffering. It's just not not who he is. He's usually kind of like, whatever, they're rich, they'll figure it out. But even he was like, this is too much. Like, we don't know what happened to these people yet. And I agreed. I didn't follow it closely. Those stories don't capture me. I've just been on the other end of a national news event. And so, it hits different when you've been on the other side of that bank of cameras. I did have the instinct that most people did, which is they're dead. Of course, they're dead. You don't reach the bottom of the ocean and get rescued. That seemed to be a lot of people consistent instinct, which was true. We learned over the last few days that it imploded. Which I think if I'm picking how I want to die, it's definitely instant and not understanding what's going to happen versus waiting for hours in a something the size of a minivan as my oxygen runs out. But I didn't know enough about that to sort of have that instinct. And so I just thought hope they're going to find them and how scary that would be. And, yeah, I would not pay $250,000 to go down and look at the bottom of the ocean and see the Titanic wreckage.

But I understand that instinct with people. I talked about this on our premium channel. I just think when you reach a certain level of wealth, the world gets very small. And we can say, well, yeah, if I had $250,000, I would go hang out in Italy for a month. But you don't have to under $250,000; you have like $250 million and you can and probably have gone to Italy several times. And so you're looking for something else to do. And I think that sort of extreme adventure never appeals to me, but I don't think it's a character flaw for it to appeal to you. That's not something that appeals to me, but again I don't think it makes you a bad person. There's a bigger conversation about wealth here, obviously. But I just don't think that the loss of life and tragedy is the right place to have it. I do think the extreme tourism and the regulation, that's the reporting now as the investigation is hopefully going to lead to tougher regulations and safety recommendations. And I think that's absolutely called for. But you're not going to remove the risk of going 12,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. It's always going to be a risky activity that some people want to engage in and some people don't.

Beth [00:18:11] I think it's a beautiful thing about our species to want to rescue each other without regard to your wealth or the behaviors that put you in the situation in the first place. And that's how I wish to be. And honestly that's probably an apt transition as we begin to talk about the United States of America post Dobbs, because abortion often is a way to try to rescue someone from a really difficult situation. And we as a country have struggled to maintain that instinct to help without judging how someone got into that position, and with a lot of regard for their resources and status. So that's what we're going to discuss next. It's been about a year since the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the Dobbs case that overruled Roe versus Wade explicitly and that freed states to set their own regulation around abortion. As we discussed at the time of the decision that has led to a state of legal chaos that continues, there have been a number of pieces written about the affected Dobbs over the past week, and many of them have emphasized that that chaos cannot be overstated.

[00:19:36] There are people who have been sitting in clinics having to ask, as of today, is this procedure legal? There are physicians that are spending hours in meetings with lawyers and administrators to figure out, as of today, what can we perform for our patients, what services can we provide? So we have currently 14 states with total bans on abortion. We have eight states that have restricted abortion without a complete ban. We have legalized gestational limits that fall earlier than what was permitted under Roe, which set the viability standard as the line where the states interest in protecting unborn life overtakes the right of a woman to make decisions for that life and for her body. And there is still a lack of clarity. There are states analyzing their own constitutions to figure out what the balance of respective rights looks like based on their own language and how they have interpreted it. And activists for both the pro-life and pro-choice movements are re-evaluating. We've seen efforts on the pro-life side to decide what the next fight is. We see the effort to revoke the FDA's authorization of mifepristone, which is one of the most commonly used methods in a prescription regime for abortion care. And on the pro-choice side, there is a conversation about how to frame this issue up for legislators and courts in a new way. And that's really where we are.

Sarah [00:21:12] Well, we have fewer abortions, depending on how you measure nationwide if you go back to Texas, which had banned abortion before the overturning of Roe v Wade. It's anywhere between three percent, six percent drop in the number of abortions nationwide. So people are getting less care. People are having pregnancies they did not plan to take to term. And I think the legal chaos has, of course, spawned medical chaos. And that's everything from people with planned unwanted pregnancies being forced to sit as they turn sepsis before the doctors can justify an abortion to remove the pregnancy that failed, which is just mind blowing to me to be told by a medical professional who swears an oath to do no harm to say, "You have to sit and wait till you turn sepsis, which is a life threatening event, before we can provide you the required medical care." You have doctors leaving states. We have a very popular provider leaving Paducah, moving to Oregon. I don't know if that's the reason she's leaving, but I can't help but wonder if that's part of it, because I have heard stories in my own life locally where people were required to wait for care they needed post miscarriage. And as I look back over the year, a lot of things I think about is sort of my side. What mistakes did the pro-choice side make that we are seeing play out in this environment. And I think there are many. I think medically a big mistake we made was siloing abortion care, putting it in clinics, removing it from hospitals, perpetuating this narrative that abortions are this separate elective procedure you have when you have a pregnancy you don't want to take to term. That's not true.

[00:23:20] Abortion is a medical procedure that is used in a wide variety of situations. And now when you have a ban, not only do you not have patients receiving that care, you have medical students not receiving that training because the medical schools don't feel comfortable and don't have the opportunity. I mean, they don't have the opportunity to provide that training because the procedure is illegal. And hearing pro-life activists say things like, well, they're just deliberately confusing the terms to create confusion. No, how dare you? How dare you? This is what happens when we said, oh, it's just a separate thing and we'll let you put it over here. It affects everything. Wanted pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies, people's future fertility. I've had so many stories about women who had to get hysterectomy because of the fallout from either infection or ectopic pregnancy that went untreated for too long. And I just think this was the wholly and completely predictable outcome when you try to leave something as complicated as medical decision making to state legislators. Half of which of us y'all know this-- soapbox for me-- are part time. They're a quarter of the year but, yes, they can definitely handle the complexity of legislating medical decisions. So I just think that we are only at the very beginning of seeing this fallout medically.

Beth [00:25:02] The Kentucky Lantern ran an op-ed this morning from two OB-GYNs in North Carolina who talked about the moral injury of not being able to provide the care that you know a patient needs to physicians. And I thought that was a really important way to put it. It's important to understand that morality cuts a lot of different ways in these situations. And I really valued their perspectives as providers in a state that has seen a massive uptick in the number of abortions provided because North Carolina is one of the few places that if you live in the south, you are still able to get any care, and that's about to end.

Sarah [00:25:38] Then, of course, we have the political fallout. And I will say this, as I was looking at the research for this episode and reading all these retrospectives, I thought, well, man, a lot of times I said republicans just use this. They just use abortion to motivate voters, but they don't really care. And I will say that I was wrong because there are some people who care so much. They are willing to take massive political loss around this issue, and they've shown that in the year since. But despite the fact that only about 13% of Americans believe abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, despite the fact that every time this came on a state ballot in 2022, even the reddest of states said, "No, we don't want this illegal in all circumstances," they are just continuing to push for it. They're continuing to just swallow this political liability and say, no, we're going to keep trying to ban it, even though it is abundantly clear that's not what people want.

Beth [00:26:39] I think this is a democracy issue in so many respects, especially sitting in Kentucky where we had a decisive defeat of an attempt to ensure that courts cannot speak to the issue of abortion. And still, after the huge amount of effort and education and fundraising that went into defeating that ballot initiative, you cannot get an abortion in Kentucky and you cannot get an abortion anywhere near Kentucky. It takes a lot of resources to be able to get to a place from Kentucky where you can receive that care. And I think that disconnect between the direct action of voters around the ballot initiative and the legislation that continues to be in effect here is a problem long term for how people view our democratic systems. And I think it's going to continue to be a problem as we see Republican legislatures throughout the country attempting to block voter direct action around abortion. In Ohio, Republicans approved a ballot measure to raise the threshold for passing ballot measures from a simple majority to a super majority.

Sarah [00:27:52] Ridiculous.

Beth [00:27:53] And that procedural maneuver, which I'm sure will be worded in a way that is difficult to understand on the ballot, is aimed at preventing abortion rights direct action by voters on the state constitution in the Fall. And we see that happening elsewhere in the country. And I have worried for a long time that this issue would be one that really broke us as a nation. And if we continue to see push back from voters against extreme abortion legislation and the proponents of extreme abortion legislation being less and less interested in what voters think, that's scary.

Sarah [00:28:33] Yeah. Well, and I will say, the disconnect between the response to the political reality of how most voters feel about abortion with state Republicans and local Republicans versus national Republicans has been fascinating to watch. There was reporting about a Republican caucus meeting in the House where Nancy Mace was like, what are we doing? This is such a political liability. There's lots of reporting that Trump has has worried about this and has talked about this. So you have sort of the far right ideologues on this issue, like Tommy Tuberville, who's just ground all military promotions to a halt over the military's policy around abortion despite the political reality. And I don't know how far this will have to go, particularly in red states, for people to hold their Representatives accountable. It's going to have to come from Republicans that hold their representatives accountable. And in so many of the primaries, the accountability only comes from the right. So I don't know how that's going to play out. I don't know how often the losses will have to come at the national level before maybe the national players get involved in the state politics and the state processes. I don't know. But it is a political liability, there's no doubt about that. And I think it will be a political liability in the presidential race for sure, because this is not what people want. And there's a part of me as someone who's been concerned about abortion my whole life, who worked for Planned Parenthood, who kind of wants to be like, "What did you all think was going to happen?" I mean, there's a frustration.

[00:30:13] There is a real frustration when I watch this play out. As someone who's always worried about it and fought for it and tried to tell people like this could happen, this is what this would mean, and you felt blown off and like you were overreacting and now that it's come to fruition, there is a little bit of me that's, like, I told you. We told you. And then at the same time, there's a part of me that is very frustrated with the pro-choice side and particularly the establishment abortion organizations, because I do not think they have risen to this moment. Because I think when you build organizations and you build a whole movement around one reality and is upended in this incredibly dramatic way that it was with Dobbs, there's just going to be some undoing and rebuilding that's inevitable. And I think a lot of people at the head of Planned Parenthood, at the head of the Democratic Party, they just have so much power inside that movement. It's like the reality of the changes has not hit yet. The reality of the changes that need to happen inside the activism and the organizations have not hit yet and it shows. I mean, I think it shows. There's not just chaos in the state legislatures or medical community, there's chaos inside the pro-choice movement as well. I think there's a certain amount of chaos in the pro-life movement where people didn't expect these ballot measures, didn't expect how unpopular total bans would be. I mean, there's chaos around for everyone.

Beth [00:31:40] And so in the chaos, you look for points of clarity. And, for me, a couple of points of clarity have emerged. When you hear people reacting to medical professionals describing the practical reality that this has created for them and expressing surprise about that, I think it is a reminder that the vast majority of people who have a strong opinion against abortion really are talking about one particular type of abortion and are not investing in this issue in the way the activist pro-life community invests in this issue. I think that clarity also comes when you realize that in states with total bans, those total bans are criminal laws and they are not being enforced. We do not see prosecutors anxious to enforce criminal bans. And part of the problem with this entire issue and with activism on both sides of the issue, and the reason I think that the pro-choice movement has come across as over-reactive or so strident to many people, is that they have been operating in this criminal context. And that is a very binary situation for a topic that has nothing binary about it. And in the legal community, you're seeing that discussion unfold. More Perfect has two excellent episodes about the Supreme Court's use of viability to set that binary. Here's where you can and here's where you can't. As though there is a moment or every unborn life that switches from not viable to viable in a world where our medical technology is changing every day. That doesn't exist. And I think it's encouraging that legal scholars are starting to think through what would be a principled framework for legislating and regulating in this arena.

[00:33:35] That More Perfect series talks to two legal scholars, both of whom had abortions for wanted pregnancies and have faced the medical reality. And they talked about how some of what's been so off putting in the debate about abortion is constantly using the word fetus or clump of cells or acting like an unborn life doesn't have value. And they're making a distinction between an unborn life having value versus having rights, and saying this is really a parental decision and how do we frame it up as a parental decision the way that we do in tort law? So if you are injured as a pregnant person by a negligent driver, part of what you establish in the process of assessing how much money you're owed is how important the pregnancy was to you. And they're trying to say, how could we take a framework that already exists in the law where we recognize that unborn life has different meaning to different people and apply that more broadly so that we are able to open up this arena again? And I just think all that work is really important work. It's hard and it's again something that we're not all going to agree on. But removing this from the criminal arena feels very important to me for us to be able to have a discussion that more closely mirrors the way the vast majority of people feel about this topic.

Sarah [00:35:00] Now, when this decision first came on, Ezra Klein had a moral philosopher on his show, Kate Grizzly. She talked about the paradox of the heap, which I've not stopped thinking about since that episode came on, which is like if you have kernels of sand, at what point when you're stacking up the sand does it become a heap? Can you count the kernels of sand and tell me exactly when it becomes a heap officially? Of course not. And she uses the paradox of the heap to talk about exactly what you're discussing and why viability was such a messed up foundation to base all this upon, and also maybe the least messed up foundation we could have gotten at the time. And I think there's this temptation, I think, across the spectrum to not acknowledge what the Supreme Court did when they overturned Roe v Wade was wipe the board clean. We are back to zero in every sense of the word. And I think a lot about this moment and this book I just read called We Don't Know Ourselves by Fintan O'Toole and it was about Ireland; and he talks about the IRA and the community surrounding the IRA. And because certain aspects of the media rightly called them terrorists, the violence they perpetuated was heinous. However, when they did that, they shut down any outside perspective within the community that would be open to criticism. When you call me a terrorist, I'm not going to list anything else you say. And I think there is an aspect of that on both sides, but particularly in the pro-choice side. There's no willingness to say, "This was not working. We made a mistake when we did this. This doesn't meet people where they're at." Because the paradox of the heap and why it is so difficult is there is clearly a very definitive belief among the majority of Americans that there is a point in a pregnancy-- not six weeks, not in a heartbeat, but there is a point in the pregnancy when most people are uncomfortable with abortion.

[00:37:07] And I think we can tease out the ethics of late term abortion. I think the more people understand that and understand at what point that happens, they get more comfortable with trusting people in that situation. But still nobody can tell you when it becomes a hit. But there is a point in a pregnancy where the majority of Americans go, "No, I don't want it to be open to just anybody at that point." I read a really interesting article about a doctor who moved from America to Israel. And in Israel, every abortion goes to a committee but they approve almost everything. And the way it's structured, later in a pregnancy if there's any sort of medical anomaly, the default is do you want to go an abortion? And a committee will approve it. And this doctor was like, "I'm meeting the edges of the outside boundaries of my pro-choice belief, because I'm telling people this is an option when really this is a small concern. It might not be anything." And it was just interesting the way she teased this apart. And I think looking at the ways other countries have structured this, and the way other countries have dealt with the paradox of the heap is really helpful because I think we're just so consumed with the American perspective and the American legal system and the American health care system that we can't say because the board has been wiped. Okay, well, the board has been wiped, what are some other ways we could do this now?

[00:38:25] No one believes in a state like ours in Kentucky, the Republican state legislators are really open to brainstorming. Of course, I don't think that. But that doesn't mean there's not a place for that conversation, because that's where we're at. And I think there's all these different realities that medically, legally, we have to start over and rethink this in the activist circles. Even in fundraising-- both of you and I listen to Death Sex and Money and there was this great moment with the woman who runs an abortion access rights group in Mississippi. And she said this moment when this happened, everybody flooded the states that still provide abortion and left the states that didn't without any help or resources. These women still need help. The women of Kentucky still need help even though we don't have an abortion clinic in Kentucky anymore. And I thought, man, she's right, because it is tempting to just send all your money to Marion, Illinois, because they've got 50% more abortions coming their way now. But the women that are stuck still need help. And just rethinking all that, I understand it's overwhelming, it's chaotic, but that's just where we're at. Everything needs to be rethought at this point.

Beth [00:39:37] And continuing to think about how we prevent unwanted pregnancy and how we support people who find themselves in impossible situations, I listened to the founder of Rosemary's Baby, which is a wonderful philanthropy in Cincinnati. And I want to be clear, she was not talking about abortion at all. She was just talking about how her organization serves children from nine to 19 who are pregnant and who intend to carry the baby to term. And she talked about all the different ways they wrap support around these women and girls to help them transition from child to parent and from child to adult at the same time. And one of the most powerful things she said that I will not soon forget is that she encounters still a lot of people who have the attitude that if these girls just wouldn't have had sex, they wouldn't have ended up here. And she said, "What I try to help people understand is that when you have a girl having sex, either that sex act was trauma or some trauma preceded it." And she said, we have got to get out of that mentality of projecting our own sense of how someone got to where they are and allowing that sense to drive a judgment about whether the circumstances they find themselves in are just punishment for something that we think was wrong. I'm paraphrasing, but I just really appreciated the way that she made that point. And it kind of takes me back to the people on the submarine. When people are in a situation, regardless of how they got there and what you think of it and what from your own life experience you bring to how they got there, I think it's just important for us as fellow humans to say, "How can I meet you here? What is your understanding of what's happening to you and what do you want to do about it and how can I help?" That's how we all want to be treated in every facet of our lives. And I wish that we could find a way to get there in the reddest states on the map around abortion care.

[00:41:56] We always end our show by talking about what's on our minds Outside of Politics. And we spent a little bit of time catching up before we started recording because this is the first time that you and I have been on Zoom together in three weeks?

Sarah [00:42:09] A month.

Beth [00:42:09] Yeah, four weeks. So it's good to see your face.

Sarah [00:42:13] Same.

Beth [00:42:13] And I don't want to do like a laundry list of what I've been up to in June. I will just share that I went into June with a list of things I wanted to accomplish, and the top of that list was being very present with the people I care about. And what I realized is when you're trying to be very present with the people you care about, that can be the only item on your list. Everything else just has to fall away. You just have to be very fluid about everything else.

Sarah [00:42:40] Yeah, I had the opposite experience in June because I sent the people I care about away. It sounds bad when I say it like that. But Felix went to diabetes camp from June 4th to 22nd and then Amos and Griffin were at camp for two weeks. So I had a lot of child-free time. So we had very different experiences in June. Tish Harrison Warren wrote a really interesting piece in New York Times about sabbaticals, and I thought, that's probably closer to describing what we do over the summer. It's not really vacation, especially the way we've structured it this year with one of us taking off and then the other one taking off. So I was working sort of, but it did feel like a break. A real break. I'm sure that felt similar to you because it's not like you left and went on this big vacation during the time off. But I just love the idea of like a sabbatical where you're really getting rest to contemplate. And I had a lot of time to think about everything- parenting life, how I structure my time, my relationship with my phone. I found some boredom in June, which is not a sensation I experience very often being the mother of three children and working full time and having a cell phone. But I did. I found some boredom and it really worked on me in some good and hard ways.

Beth [00:44:00] I was not bored in June. I do think the sabbatical feels right to me in the sense that stepping away from work always gives you a different perspective on work. I noticed at the beginning of the month, especially as the indictment came out against former President Trump, I felt much more anxious about that than I would have if I had been working and reading the details and discussing them with you and with our community of listeners. And that was a good point of reflection for me to just understand yet again that we have to have some way to process this because just consuming it is really bad. It's like you take it in and it's like you eat a meal with no digestive system. And so understanding that I really need the work that we do to be able to stay in touch with what's happening in the world in a sustainable way was a good reminder for me, for sure.

Sarah [00:44:56] Yeah, I agree. The difference between processing it regularly. I was still doing the News Brief, so I was getting a fair amount of that. And it was fun to stretch out and have some different kind of conversations and conversations with different people. But it's also just so much more work because you and I have such a pattern in chemistry and history at this point, it's much easier to do everything with you. And so that was definitely an important insight and learning. But it was nice. It was nice to break it up this way and to feel like I wasn't running, running, running, running, running, and then bam off. Soak it up, soak it up, soak it up, and then back on. It felt gentler. This felt like a gentler sabbatical experience than previous summers.

Beth [00:45:50] And I think the other big insight that I took from this sabbatical was just a sense of real gratitude, because June was hard on our family in a number of ways. And none of it was the chaos lottery, the way that you describe it. It was all just life. People have chronic diseases that lead to difficult situations and surgeries. Dogs get old and die. Births happen and they can be very, very hard. And so all the things that we sort of went through as a family that took a lot of time and emotional energy were just normal life things. And I felt so lucky having so many of them come together at once to realize this is hard and we have everything that we need to deal with it. And I do have this space from work. I am not counting how many hours I have left to deal with this problem or that, or to drive here or there. I am not worried about how much the gas is going to cost to unexpectedly go to where my loved ones are and need me. And I just felt enormous gratitude, maybe a sense of guilt about some of that, a lot of empathy, and a desire to figure out how to maintain that perspective when I'm back at work and I have distraction from life, to remember that everyone's living life all the time and some people much more acutely than others and that impacts how they come across at work. I hope I've always had that perspective about work, but how they come across at work and how they come across at Kroger and in social situations and when they're voting.

Sarah [00:47:32] Well, that's definitely what I mean by chaos lottery. It doesn't have to be like a tornado that falls out of the sky. When I say that, I just mean shit happens. And you really know what it does, it happens all the time. You just don't get a break. Your ball is always in that thing getting spun around. It could just get pulled up. Multiple balls could get pulled up at once. You know what I mean? Like we just talked about the chaos of the post Dobbs reality, but the chaos is also an opportunity. And I think that's what those moments in life always present. It's not that everything happens for a reason or any of that bullshit, but it is an opportunity to see that like none of this is earned or deserved. Like, this is just what happens when you are a human being in the flow of chaos that comes from being exposed and connected and loving and living with other human beings, which is just the reality of everyone's existence. I don't care how secluded you are. And I think that when you accept the flow and can see, like you said, recognize the gratitude, recognize the guilt, recognize how it works on you as opposed to trying to make sense of it and justify it or explain it, that to me is a certain amount of freedom within the chaos lottery. It's when you just sort of go a little Buddhist as opposed to the classic Protestant approach of trying to explain it so you feel better that something bad happened to somebody else or get stuck having to explain why something bad happened to you.

Beth [00:49:10] Early in the month I was sitting outside with Jane and kind of out of the blue she said, "Hey, I was wondering something, Mom, how do you deal with it when you all have to talk on the podcast about school shootings?" And we talked a little bit about her school and how do I feel just as a mom in those situations. And I said, on the podcast it's really hard. I never know what to say because there aren't words for situations like that. So my default is just to say we have each other. That's the only way we get through these things, is other people are the problem and the solution always. And that has really been true in the month of June for me, just to recognize I have so much support from other people. And so, even as I have had moments this month where I have been as sad as I have ever been, other people have been there. And moments when I have been very scared, other people have been there. And I think I, over this sabbatical period, doubled down my commitment on ask for help, take people's help when it's offered. Continue to be willing to say I'm not doing this life alone, because alone is is not enough resilience to face what life what life throws at you. And in the midst of a very hard month, I had some extremely fun days because of those relationships with other people. Some really good times. It was very much like the best and worst June. And I am so grateful for all the people who allow that to be true for me. And I'm very grateful to be back with all of you. I'm glad to get my digestive system back for the news here, and I'm glad that we had this week together. We'll be back together on Friday to talk about a lot of headlines. So many things happened during the month of June that we haven't had a chance to catch up on. So we're going to do a big catch up on Friday before Sarah takes her sabbatical time with her family. And I'll look forward to staying with all of you in the month of July. Everybody have the best week available to you.

[00:51:28] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.

Sarah [00:51:33] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.

Beth [00:51:39] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Danny Ozment. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago.

Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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