The Femtastic Podcast

A raw, unedited, unproduced reaction episode to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Includes advice for how you can support abortion access and fight back, in both the short and the long term. The episode ends with a moment for reflection, featuring a song called "Animal" by Jean Rohe. In Jean's words, "'Animal' is a song about my own abortion experience, but ultimately much more: the things we can choose (or should be able to choose) in the garden of our lives, and all that lies beyond our control as mortal humans." May this song serve as a moment of un-silence, as together we mourn Roe and grieve for the millions of people who will now suffer as a result of being denied legal access to abortion.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, murders linked to domestic violence have risen dramatically, up 58% in the last decade. Guns are the most common weapon abusers use to kill their partners, and victims are usually women. And many of these perpetrators are not even allowed to have guns in the first place.

Under federal law, people convicted of a felony, a domestic violence misdemeanor, or who are subject to family violence protection orders are not allowed to have guns. But these laws usually are not enforced, and intimate partners pay the ultimate price. Federal gun laws and the vast majority of state statutes have a glaring loophole: they don’t address how to keep guns away from people who aren’t supposed to have them, nor do they create the legal infrastructure to keep victims, their families, and their communities safe from violent offenders. Instead, around most of the country, these gun laws are enforced on an honor system that puts the onus on people who are prohibited from possessing firearms to disarm themselves, with virtually no follow-through to ensure that they’ve done so. Often prosecutors don’t even go after these offenders once they know they’re in violation of the law; even more often, law enforcement doesn’t realize the perpetrator illegally possessed a firearm until it’s too late. 

Jennifer Gollan, an award-winning reporter for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has spent over a year investigating and reporting on a series called When Abusers Keep Their Guns. From 2017 through 2020, Jennifer identified at least 110 intimate partners who were killed by offenders who were barred from having guns under federal and, in some cases, state law. This is certainly an undercount, as the federal government does not track the number of people prohibited from possessing firearms who go on to kill their intimate partners. 

Jennifer is on the podcast to dive into where the gaps are in the enforcement of these gun laws and how we can close them. We discuss both federal and state solutions to enact this common-sense gun reform.

LINKS:

Transcript of the podcast

Read the centerpiece of the investigation, Armed and Abusive: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims

Read the story, which Reveal published in partnership with The Guardian: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims 

Listen to the Reveal podcast: When Abusers Keep Their Guns

Watch the documentary, produced in collaboration with Al Jazeera English’s “Fault Lines”: Unrelinquished

Reveal is staying on the story, and they need your help. Please tell them if you know of someone who was shot by a domestic violence offender who was prohibited from having a gun or if you are an official with information they should know.

Recently, Politico published a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case on the future of Roe v. Wade. Unsurprisingly for many in the reproductive rights community, Alito calls for the overturning of Roe. 

We know that overturning Roe will mean that millions of people of reproductive age will be without access to abortion care. But what does it look like when someone who otherwise wanted an abortion is forced to carry a pregnancy to term?

We don't have to imagine it, because the landmark Turnaway Study has already studied what happens when, due to gestational age limits, people who sought abortions were denied them and forced to carry their pregnancies to term. On today's episode is Dr. Diana Greene Foster, director of research at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health and author of the Turnaway Study,  which examines the effects of unwanted pregnancy on pregnant people's lives.

Dr. Greene Foster describes how the study was conducted and explains its main findings: that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of pregnant people, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health, and family outcomes. She describes the study's evidence that when people are unable to get wanted abortions, there are profound risks to their health and economic security, as well as a shift in the trajectory of their lives with negative effects on their relationships, aspirational plans, and the wellbeing of their children (because two-thirds of people seeking abortions are already parents).

As Dr. Greene Foster explains, "People across the country will still need abortion care but this Supreme Court leaked decision means that those who cannot circumvent a ban on abortion by travel or other means will experience long-term harm." 

LINKS:

- Read a written transcript of the episode here (remember that it's AI-generated, so it's not perfect)

- Read more about the Turnaway Study here

- Read Dr. Greene Foster's book, The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion 

In Part 2 of our 2-part series on the misleading practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, we delve into another misleading, yet surprisingly underreported, aspect of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (aka CPCs aka "fake clinics).

As we covered in Part 1, CPCs masquerade as if they are real health clinics - but because they are not, they're not subject to privacy laws like HIPPA that protect your personal health information. Of course, by design, their clients do not know this. CPCs then use information given to them by clients seeking their services to violate privacy and confidentiality for many reasons, including to use that info to harrass and surveil the client or abortion providers, to create "profiles" of those most likely to see their services in order to fuel their anti-abortion movement efforts, and - most terrifyingly - to potentially use private information clients have given them against them in lawsuits. This latter scenario is something that's becoming more and more possible as states pass super-restrictive and criminalizing abortion laws. 

Here to discuss this on the podcast is Kim Clark, senior attorney at Legal Voice and seasoned legal advocate for reproductive rights, health, and justice.

LINKS:

- Transcript (AI-generated!)

- Op-ed written by Katie about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (includes more on how the Trump admin and its Supreme Court propped up CPCs): How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers

- Must-watch video: Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

- Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in 9 states

- In February 2022, Gender Justice along with their The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality partners released an urgent warning about the role the crisis pregnancy center (CPC) industry is poised to play in a post-Roe United States – as a surveillance tool for the anti-abortion movement: The CPC Industry as a Surveillance Tool of the Post-Roe State

- Experts Say Crisis Pregnancy Centers Could Spy On And Report Women Seeking An Abortion (Buzzfeed News, January 2022)

- More on NIFLA v. Becerra: Supreme Court Sides With California Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers (NPR, June 2018)

- Supreme Court Backs Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers in Free Speech Case (New York Times, June 2018)

- Thirty-One Attorneys General Challenge New Title X Restrictions on Women’s Reproductive Health Care (Press Release from office of Maryland's Attorney General Brian Frosh, 2019)

- States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here’s What Pro-Choice States Can Do. (New York Times, March 2022)

- A World Without Roe: The loss of the fundamental right to reproductive freedom will only lead to more state surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people (Inquest, March 2022)

- Additional podcast that may be of interest from Reveal: "A Strike At the Heart of Roe." Across the country, conservative foes of abortion rights have pushed “heartbeat bills” that would ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Journalist Amy Littlefield and a team of law and journalism students from UC Berkeley investigate how this law went from being dismissed as a fringe idea, even by traditional right-to-life groups, to getting enforced in Texas. 

Crisis pregnancy centers, or “CPCs,” are anti-abortion organizations that target pregnant people with predatory, deceptive marketing. They hide in plain sight by operating under the guise of offering comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Instead, they are religiously-affiliated, anti-abortion, and often unlicensed “medical” centers that, as stated by the California legislature, dissuade pregnant people from abortion through “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse, misinform and even intimidate” mostly low-income clients from making informed choices.

Eighty-three percent are affiliated with evangelical Christianity, and nearly all are tax-exempt. Their deceptive practices are well documented, and range from including words like “choices” in their names and locating themselves next to abortion clinics to trick pregnant people into walking through their doors, to wearing medical scrubs and having untrained personnel give and interpret ultrasounds even when they are not licensed medical facilities (and operate outside of privacy laws like HIPPA), with potentially dangerous consequences. It is also well-known that in addition to providing dubious and sometimes dangerous "medical" advice that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has publicly declared is unsupported by science, they lie to patients about how far along their pregnancies are in an effort to prevent clients from seeking abortions. The American Medical Association has declared that they "violate principles of medical ethics."

LINKS:

- Transcript (AI-generated!)

- Op-ed written by Katie about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (includes more info on their funding): How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers

- Must-watch video: Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

- Mentioned in the episode: In Virginia, University of Mary Washington fellows conducted an undercover investigation into the local fake clinic that targets students on campus, exposing their disinformation and shaming tactics to help protect and educate vulnerable students.

- Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in 9 states

- Further info on the dubious practice of "abortion pill reversal" and how the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is "not supported by science"

- Check out this map of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the U.S.

- Check out the National Network of Abortion Funds; they can tell you whether a clinic is a real clinic. You should also donate to them, as abortion funds will be tasked with providing even more critical access to abortion care as states pass more restrictive anti-abortion laws (or ban abortion altogether should Roe fall this year).

- Abortion Care Network: Independent abortion providers care for the majority of people seeking abortion care in the United States. Founded in 2008, Abortion Care Network (ACN) is the national association for independent community-based, abortion care providers and their allies. They work to ensure the rights of all people to experience respectful, dignified abortion care. Donate to them.

- And as a teaser to Part 2 of this series on CPCs: In February 2022, Gender Justice along with their The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality partners released an urgent warning about the role the crisis pregnancy center (CPC) industry is poised to play in a post-Roe United States – as a surveillance tool for the anti-abortion movement: The CPC Industry as a Surveillance Tool of the Post-Roe State

- Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal but Unethical (American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 2018)

- Crisis Pregnancy Centers Lie: The Insidious Threat to Reproductive Freedom (Report by NARAL Pro-Choice America, 2015)

- More on NIFLA v. Becerra: Supreme Court Sides With California Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers (NPR, June 2018)

- Supreme Court Backs Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers in Free Speech Case (New York Times, June 2018)

- Thirty-One Attorneys General Challenge New Title X Restrictions on Women’s Reproductive Health Care (Press Release from office of Maryland's Attorney General Brian Frosh, 2019)

Back in early December 2021, you may have heard some rumblings celebrating that the FDA had changed some of its draconian and scientifically unsupported regulations around medication abortion. Medication abortion, a safe and legal method of first-trimester abortion, accounted for 54% of US abortions in 2020 but has been subject to decades of politically-motivated FDA regulations that placed strict and unnecessary controls on it to limit access. In late 2021, amidst the most hostile environment to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, some of these limits were lifted. However, the news stories reporting on the updates didn't exactly make it clear which problems the changes would solve and which they wouldn't.

As the Supreme Court is poised in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, and states are leveling increasingly hostile attacks towards abortion rights in the meantime, any expansion of access is a good thing, and this FDA update is definitely a good thing - but is not a panacea. 

To explain the implications of the update, we are rejoined on the podcast by Elisa Wells, Co-Director of Plan C Pills, a website and organization that provides information about how to access abortion pills in all 50 US states.

Elisa explains why this is a win and for whom it's a win for abortion access - but also for whom these changes make no difference at all. As the potential end of Roe nears, it's more important now than ever that we understand - and work to lift - the obstacles to abortion access that millions of Americans of reproductive age face.

[Please note that this episode was recorded on January 14, 2022. Additional states have passed incredibly strict abortion bans since then, including Idaho, Florida, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.]

LINKS:

- Transcript of episode (AI-generated)

- Check out all the fun (and often easy!) ways that you can Get Involved with Plan C Pills to take action to support self-managed abortion

-  In 2020, medication abortion accounted for 54% of US abortions (Guttmacher Institute, 2022)

- States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here’s What Pro-Choice States Can Do. (New York Times, March 2022)

- A World Without Roe: The loss of the fundamental right to reproductive freedom will only lead to more state surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people (Inquest, March 2022)

- A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine supports the safety of prescribing the abortion pill without requiring a pelvic exam or ultrasound. 

- Additional podcast that may be of interest from Reveal: "A Strike At the Heart of Roe." Across the country, conservative foes of abortion rights have pushed “heartbeat bills” that would ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Journalist Amy Littlefield and a team of law and journalism students from UC Berkeley investigate how this law went from being dismissed as a fringe idea, even by traditional right-to-life groups, to getting enforced in Texas. 

Relevant Femtastic Podcast Episodes: - Lifting Restrictions on Medication Abortion (July 2021)

- Podcast featuring Plan C Pills and Elisa Wells (Sept 2021): What's Up with the TX Abortion Ban and How Can People All Over the US Access Abortion Pills Online? 

- A Clinic Making Mail-Order Abortion a Reality (Nov 2021)

Today on the podcast is the Baltimore Abortion Fund (BAF), a grassroots nonprofit that provides financial support for people traveling to and living in Maryland who need abortion care, and as the Supreme Court decides in June on a case that threatens legal abortion like never before, they’re working to remove the financial barriers for those seeking abortion care. 

As of late 2021, 30% of BAF’s callers were already from out of state, and the majority of people that BAF supports are 13 weeks or further into their pregnancy. BAF discusses on the podcast the implications of further state restrictions on abortion care - both for people seeking abortions who live in states with severe restrictions, AND those seeking abortions who live in less restrictive states (like Maryland) which increasingly have out-of-state residents coming to them for abortions.

BAF's Board Co-President, Brigitte Winter, and Director of Development & Communications, Lynn McCann, join Femtastic to discuss the impact they're already seeing of restrictive laws in the south (like Texas' SB8), the costs and obstacles involved for patients seeking abortions (even in relatively "friendly" states), how that affects abortion care and availability for people both in-state and out-of-state, and how things may get worse after the Supreme Court hands down their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson in June 2022. 

BAF also discusses developments in the reproductive justice movement that are aiming to respond to the possible overturning of Roe, including uniting regional abortion funds and, with the FDA's recent loosening of rules related to medication abortion, the possibility of medication abortion as a means to increase capacity of clinics and accessibility to patients. Lastly, BAF discusses the role that abortion funds play in reducing stigma and creating a culture shift in the way abortion is talked about.  This episode was recorded in late December 2021. By the way, you can support abortion funds via the event that is HAPPENING NOW: The National Abortion Access Fund-a-Thon is an annual season of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events where community members (like you!) come together to raise money for abortion funds. View a list of all the Fund-a-Thon events by location and date or search for a specific abortion fund or fundraising team by name.

Links and Resources:

- Baltimore Abortion Fund website: www.baltimoreabortionfund.org

- BAF's confidential helpline: If you live in Maryland or are coming to the state for your procedure, please call BAF's confidential helpline at (443) 297-9893. - Donate to Baltimore Abortion Fund

- Maryland Medicaid and abortion: information on how to use Maryland Medicaid coverage for abortion care

- National Network of Abortion Funds: www.abortionfunds.org

- Donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds

- Transcript of this episode (please note that transcripts are computer-generated and therefore not error-free or 100% accurate)

- States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here’s What Pro-Choice States Can Do. (New York Times, March 2022)

- A World Without Roe: The loss of the fundamental right to reproductive freedom will only lead to more state surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people (Inquest, March 2022)

- Additional podcast that may be of interest from Reveal: "A Strike At the Heart of Roe." Across the country, conservative foes of abortion rights have pushed “heartbeat bills” that would ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Journalist Amy Littlefield and a team of law and journalism students from UC Berkeley investigate how this law went from being dismissed as a fringe idea, even by traditional right-to-life groups, to getting enforced in Texas. 

- Relevant Femtastic Podcast episodes:

A Clinic Making Mail-Order Abortion a Reality (November 2021)

What's Up with the Texas Abortion Ban and How Can People All Over the US Access Abortion Pills Online (September 2021)

You've probably heard of the gender pay gap - the fact that, according to the most recent Census Bureau data from 2018, women of all races earned, on average, just 82 cents for every $1 earned by men of all races. Last week, Equal Pay Day was recognized on March 7 - this is the number of days into 2022 women would need to work to earn the equivalent of men in 2021.

Do you know how the gender pay gap may impact your earnings over the course of your career? Do you know that the gap is a LOT bigger for women of color? In fact, the wage gap for women in some racial minority groups is not only wider than the overall gender wage gap, but it is also closing more slowly. 

While MUCH needs to change on a cultural level to truly close these gaps, there ARE ways you can increase your negotiating power and confidence to chip away at it for yourself.

Today on the podcast is Lora Rosenblum, advisor to and champion of 81cents, a paid service that helps women negotiate higher compensation by convening a group of experts to advise on their compensation and make an action plan for negotiation. Lora discusses the wage gap, what can be helpful when prepping for a compensation discussion, and how 81cents is fighting the racialized wage gap via 81grants - providing its service for free to people of color and other underrepresented minorities who experience wage gaps.

LINKS: - Transcript of episode ((AI-generated so she ain't perfect)

- 81cents paid service 

- 81grants scholarships for people of color

- Quick Facts about the Gender Wage Gap (Center for American Progress)

- Gender pay gap in U.S. held steady in 2020 (Pew Research)

- Women of Color and the Wage Gap (Center for American Progress)

- Wage Gaps by Race (Investopedia)

- Race and the Pay Gap (AAUW)

You may have heard that Texas enacted a six-week ban on abortion in 2021, and that other states have begun attempting to pass copycat laws. You also may have heard many people remarking that 6 weeks is "before many people even know they are pregnant." But do you know why that is? 

Dr. Lauren Ralph, Associate Professor in the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program at UCSF, recently published research that found that 1 in 3 people discover pregnancy past six weeks or later, and almost 2 in 3 young people discover pregnancy past six weeks or later.

She is on the podcast today to explain WHY many people don't know they are pregnant until after 6 weeks, and which groups of people are most disproportionately harmed by laws that ban abortion early in pregnancy. 

She also explains the confusing math that the OB/GYN field uses to count weeks of pregnancy, which means that "6 weeks pregnant" actually means 6 weeks from the first day of your last period - so if your subsequent period is just a week late, you're already technically at 5 weeks pregnant. 

Dr. Ralph's breakdown of this funky math will show you how state bans like this act basically as TOTAL bans on abortion, because it would be extremely difficult to be able to schedule and obtain an abortion in a state that passed this type of law before the 6-week mark. 

As we approach what may be the end of Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court decides to overturn it in June 2022, understanding the current impact of 6-week abortion bans gives us a glimpse into the the catastrophic effects that a probable overturning Roe would have on the health and wellbeing of people with uteruses across the country.

LINKS:

- Transcript of episode (computer-generated, so not perfect but good enough!)

- Dr. Ralph's research published in the Journal of Contraception (November 2021): Home pregnancy test use and timing of pregnancy confirmation among people seeking health care

It's Black History Month, and we're also in what may quite possibly the last few months of Roe v. Wade's existence as we know it. So it seems an important time to talk about what exactly Reproductive Justice means, the history of this Black women-led movement, and why it's so very important. 

Joining the podcast is Monica Simpson, Executive Director of *the* organization for the Repro Justice (RJ) movement, SisterSong. Monica explains what RJ is; its history and founding by Black women; how we do everyone a disservice if we shy away from talking about sex when we talk about reproductive justice; and why Black people and other historically marginalized groups are disproportionately impacted by restrictions on reproductive health.

Further, as we discuss what may be Roe's final moments, we discuss what Roe meant and means to the Black community, how SisterSong preparing for what may be the end of Roe in June 2022, and how YOU can help.

LINKS:

Transcript (Note that all transcripts are AI-generated and may contain slight errors.)

SisterSong website

Donate to SisterSong

Katie's recommended reading on reproductive justice: "Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty" by Dorothy Roberts