Endless Thread - Aunties

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

Reddit's Auntie Network, an online community "dedicated to providing information and resources to those in need of abortion services," has been inundated with new members since the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked in early May. Community members can offer rides, lodging, and emotional support for anyone seeking an abortion — especially when crossing state lines. In today’s episode, we hear from two moderators of Auntie Network, as well as the executive directors of the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund in Virginia and the Kentucky Health Justice Network, about how abortion rights advocates — online and off — can work together in a post-Roe America. ****** Credits: This episode was written by Amory Sivertson and produced by Grace Tatter. Mixing and sound design by Matt Reed. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson are the co-hosts.

Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

WBUR Podcasts, Boston. A quick note. It's not often we have to update one of our episodes before we even put out the actual episode. But that's the case with this one, because we learned of a development in this story just before we hit publish. So we'll get you up to speed, too, of course.

at the very end. Okay, here's the show. Amory. Ben. We try to spend a lot of our time giving our listeners something a little outside of the news grind, not your average headlines, the latest from not the hellscape of the bad things happening in the world and how we feel about them, because you probably get enough doom scrolling elsewhere. Yeah, but we're also journalists who are trying to understand the world and how to live in the world with some ounce of kindness and goodness and grace.

And sometimes the news is just too big to admire. Last Friday, the Supreme Court overturned five decades of precedence built by Roe v. Wade in ruling that could change not just the lives of pregnant people, but all Americans and the people who will feel the ripples of this decision outside of America and how our country's policies can create policies elsewhere? For a huge number of people, this is very sad and very scary. For a smaller number of people, it's a victory. And we knew we didn't want to get into the debate,

but we wondered how to talk about it on endless threat. It's a good question. And I think the answer comes, as it often does, from Mr. Rogers. At least I thought it did. In fact, it came from his mother, which is a relevant correction to the record. She would say, always look for the helpers. There will always be helpers, just on the sidelines.

That's why I think that if news programs could make a conscious effort of showing rescue teams, of showing medical people, anybody who is coming into a place where there's a tragedy to be sure that they include that, because if you look for the helpers, you'll know that there's hope. Now, some would say the half a century in which the government protected a person's right

to choose was the tragedy. But today, we're going to look specifically at the other side, the people who are pushing back against this Supreme Court decision. If you believe that anyone with a uterus should have access to abortion, the SCOTUS decision is the

tragedy. And the helpers are people who are now technically breaking the law in many states. The people they are helping, also breaking the law. And whether or not you see breaking this law as right or wrong, they're doing it on Reddit. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson, and you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR Boston's NPR station. Today's episode, aunties. Have we talked about this before? This post? Yeah. Did I ever tell you this story? I think I've seen this post, but we haven't talked about it for a long time. Yeah, like one of the first posts I ever saw on Reddit that I found incredibly moving and difficult to forget was about abortion. It was this teenage boy in Texas asking for help his younger sister, maybe 14 years old,

was pregnant. The parents were completely opposed to abortion. And since the girl was a minor, they had to get out of Texas to get it done. The brother was trying to get her out. And he was asking Redditors, I can't remember which subreddit it was, but he was asking them to help because he didn't know where else to turn. The reaction to his post was massive. People gave him advice on how to get a car, get across the state border, deal with the parents, with police potentially. People offered rides. This was years ago now. I haven't been able to go back and find this post. Actually, I've looked for it. But both the abortion issue and Reddit itself have gone through tons of change. And we're going to talk about how the two have changed together and how people are using Reddit

to try to have an impact on abortion access. As seen in the community, R-S-Slas-a-Ti Network, a subreddit which itself has changed a lot. I found it by accident. This is Lolly, or a person who goes by Lolly for short on Reddit. Lally is the lead moderator of the Auntie Network community. I'm an auntie of several little nieces and nephews in my own personal life, and I was just looking for things related to being an auntie. And then I was like, oh, hey, look at this.

This is something unexpected that I didn't think. think I'd find and I did. So there are several other abortion-related subs on Reddit, but ours just kind of happens to be the one that is the grassroots grounds for all of, you know, people helping others. The community is described as, quote, a place to help anyone who has a uterus. The people offering help are aunties or helpers. The people seeking help are called niblings, which is kind of a fusion of niece, nephew, and sibling. And there are a lot of different ways people use the subreddit to ask for or offer that help. Rides, mailing plan B pills, a safe place to stay for the night, child care during a clinic visit.

Texas niece requesting assistance for Colorado appointment. Delaware Auntie. Alaska Auntie. Uncle in Northwoods, Minnesota. Connecticut Auntie with a couch to stay on, a car to drive you, and a heart to love you. Southern Vermont Auntie. plus uncle, pup, and bees? The one resource you won't hear mentioned in R-Slaughty Network, though, funding.

It's not a subreddit for fundraising. Nibblings can't ask for money, and aunties or helpers can't offer it. And all of the aunties are volunteers. Lally, who's based in North Carolina, says that while she's only been moderating this subreddit for about a year, she's been helping with this kind of access generally for two decades. Sometimes she's an escort in person, helping pregnant people get to abortion clinics, navigating through protesters. But these days, she's mostly moderating aunties, which can be a source of happy things, even inside clear examples of hardship. Some are really joyful and really fun.

Last week we had a lady who came in, she said, I'm 66 years old and I can't get out there in protest anymore. but y'all need me, y'all come and let me know. And that was really just so endearing, you know, this woman who was, you know, outside of the spectrum of protesting or maybe even going to clinics, but she was willing to be there for us. We had another couple, I believe, in West Virginia, maybe. I don't remember exactly now, but they said, if you need to come, you come, we've got a room for you, We've got some puppies who will be happy to snuggle you.

And we have an open bar. I just thought, heck, I want to go visit them just for cocktails anyway. The subreddit was created in 2019 and then abandoned by the person who started it. Last year, Lolly took it over and it was growing steadily. But then, in May, when the upcoming Supreme Court decision was leaked, Lollie says the community exploded. We went from about 25,000 users to 60-some-thousand users. So at that time, I was functioning with no sleep, forgetting to eat,

forgetting to do other human things that humans need to do. I was just on the computer 24-7. Now the community has over 100,000 users, and Lali has helped. from moderators like this one, who is in one of the states with a so-called trigger ban, a law that will ban essentially all abortions as a result of the Supreme Court's decision. Tennessee is a scary place to be. It's very conservative and it is going to be rough here. This is an auntie named Jen, who was up late one night recently scrolling through Auntie Network posts when she saw one that gave her pause.

Something very simple like help me and that was it it was so it sounded so scared and desperate and didn't give a lot of information and so I was afraid that the person was in crisis by in crisis Jen means that something told her this person

might be considering hurting themselves and so I messaged and began a conversation with this person and she was in crisis and she was terrified. The woman Jen was messaging with was pretty sure she was pregnant, and she didn't want to be. She's an adult, and she lives with her parents,

and currently unemployed, and, you know, mental health issues and disability issues, and her parents are very anti-choice to the point where she didn't feel comfortable getting a pregnancy test, and taking it at home. And in the course of conversation, very, very coincidentally, it was just amazing. I figured out that she lives 20 minutes from me.

And so I thought, wow, I don't exactly believe in fate, but I can't pass up this opportunity to be there for her. Auntie Jen asked this woman, or nibbling, if she'd be able to meet her at a nearby store. And I would buy her some pregnancy tests, some snacks, some drinks, some other supplies. And we could go home where it's safe at my place and take the pregnancy test together. And we did. And it was positive.

And she cried and she cried and I held her. And then when she was ready, we started calling abortion clinics. Some aunties in the Reddit community start as nipples. Jen included. I actually think that this story is beautifully connected to the Auntie Network because Lolly helped me through my abortion. Although Jen's story predates the subreddit by about 20 years, she and Lolly were actually best friends in college. And then after university, I got into a whirlwind romance and got married in Vegas. It was very wild.

And the guy turned out to be abusive and terrible. And I got pregnant, not of my own volition. And I had been looking for a way out, a safe way out, because he'd been threatening to kill me and hurt my family. And I thought I could find a safe way out. And then when I found out I was pregnant, I realized there was no safe way out. I just had to get out. And so actually...

Jen's dad picked her up. She says she left everything behind. Lolly and another friend of theirs took Jen to planned parenthood. And then they stayed up with her all night when she had an allergic reaction to the anti-naugia medicine she'd been given. And, yeah, it was beautiful the way that they took care of me and held my hand through it. And I think that that is...

is a large reason why we do this work now. We know how important it is to have someone be there for you, not just, you know, a supportive stranger, but someone who can hold your hand and give you love and support like an auntie would. But Auntie Network, like most online communities, is a group of strangers. And that has some people in the abortion rights movement concerned. I think that in today's landscape,

divulging that information on the internet to what is potentially a per probably a perfect stranger is scary and dangerous. More in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

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Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. slash creative studio. It was Friday morning, June 24th, not even an hour after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had been announced when we were scheduled to talk with Tannis Fuller. How are you feeling?

You're allowed to swear on this, program also, I should say. Yeah. Well, I'm going to quote Senator Lucas then, who is a senator from Virginia. I am mad as a motherfucker. Tanis is executive director of the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund in Virginia. What is abortion access like in your area of Virginia? We have more clinics than some states, and we have fewer clinics than other states. Virginia has 16 clinics, mostly in urban areas. Folks generally call a clinic.

The clinic tells them, here's your appointment, here's the cost of your appointment. A caller will say, huh, I don't have somewhere between $375 and $2,200. Can you help me? And so the next call is often to Tannis' organization, where funding is the name of the game. No questions asked. Very often when people are seeking support money for things, they are asked for their employment history. How much money do you have in your bank account? How much money did you make last year? What is the size of your family? Does anyone else in your family have a job that they can help you

with this situation? We don't ask any of that. And Tanna says the funding isn't limited to the cost of the actual abortion alone. Maybe you need a hotel because you're traveling. Maybe you need some support for gas because you're traveling. Maybe you need child care because you're traveling. And so each caller's circumstance is unique. And we do our best so that money is not. the reason they can't get their abortion. So you have abortion funds like the one Tanis runs offering financial support for resources like lodging and travel. But you also have an online community of 100,000 aunties and helpers offering many of those resources for free. So we asked Tanis what she thinks of groups like the Auntie Network. Abortion funding,

this work that I do, was born from friends who knew someone who needed an abortion in their community and they gathered resources to support that person. I know that the heart of these anti-networks or of these Reddit groups is the same. It is people who care very deeply about this issue and want very much to be helpful and useful and a part of this movement. But I think that if I was traveling for an abortion where the risk of criminalization now exists, the stakes are a lot higher. And the internet is full of really wonderful people. It is also full of people who are not there to be your friend. But our auntie moderators, Lolly and Jen, know this. Oh boy, do they know this? There's a reason we're only using their Reddit name and first name, respectively.

Lollies received threats from an anti-abortion activist who was convicted of stalking a North Carolina doctor back in 2011. And Jen worries about her abusive ex somehow finding her. And you will not be shocked to hear that their abortion resources subreddit faces a fair amount of vitriol from anti-abortion activists. Jen told us that moderating a sub like Auntie Network means going through every post and every comment to every post. So that people don't have to be hit with hate when they're in such a vulnerable position especially. The moderation actually starts before someone is even let into the community. We also have been trying to, when someone applies to be an Auntie or helper, go through their Reddit history and make sure that they seem well-intentioned, that they show a history of being pro-choice. And, you know, that's a pretty labor-intensive process for us.

And there has to be enough of a Reddit history to vet. If someone applying to be a member of the Auntie Network hasn't been on Reddit long enough or hasn't been, and active enough to get a feel for whether they really are an ally to the cause, they get rejected. The auntie's mods are about to get a big assist in this work from a bot. And this Auntie bot will be able to vet everyone in a matter of seconds and do a much better job than we can do. The bot was built by one of the subreddit's newest moderators, an uncle, if you will, and it'll be able to scrub not only a user's visible comment history, but their deleted comments, comments that got rejected by other subreddits.

It'll also search their history for all matter of slurs. Unfortunately, it was not ready in time for the deluge, but it's coming, and we're really happy to have that extra security measure because we are human and we can't always stay on top of which, which subreddits are a little sketchy or say, and this bot will be able to analyze those and kind of give us a safety rating for each individual, Auntie or helper.

Is this level of vetting enough? It's hard to say. Tannis Fuller of the Blue Ridge Abortion Fund wasn't familiar enough with the Auntie Network specifically to weigh in, but she did vouch for the vetting that her organization and the 91 other members of the National Network of Abortion Funds does of all of its helpers. We are trusted organizations, and we can also provide that support. And if we can't provide that specific support that you're looking for on the Internet,

we have networks of people that we can connect you to that are safe, that are trained, that will not be harmful, and who most importantly aren't going to turn you into the police. We put that to Jen. And she said, first, she wants to be very clear that she and the whole, whole Auntie Network love abortion funds. One of the first things that we tell everybody is go check, you know, the national network of abortion funds, check your local fund, see what they can offer you. We definitely want to work in conjunction with them, but there are people who fall through

the cracks when the abortion funds might not have the resources that they need to take care of everyone. Jen wonders if the nibbling she recently helped take a pregnant. test, a woman who needed emotional support more than any other resource in the moment of crisis, would have been able to get that support quickly enough if she had turned to an abortion fund before Reddit and whether she would have even known that that was an option. And a lot of people find us first and then they're able to go to the abortion fund and get what's available because, you know, everybody's on Reddit and maybe they are not

great researchers and they just didn't know that abortion funds were even a thing. And we were happy to be the people that introduced them to the beauty of abortion funds. Meeting people where they are is crucial in any kind of activism. And Tanis Fuller doesn't dispute that. But she wondered if the Auntie Network is able to meet some of the people they're trying to help in one very particular way. I don't know for sure, but I suspect also that the Auntie Networks are run with information disseminated by middle-class white women who are probably heteropartnered.

And we know that the folks who are going to be most impacted by these bands are black, brown, indigenous, and queer community members. Is it safe for them to be seeking support from those networks? I don't know. Is it possible to make those networks safe? I don't know. I don't know. I've told people before, I said, this is going to be a time for L.I.

It's an L.I. This is Aaron Smith, the executive director of the Kentucky Health Justice Network. Kentucky, a state whose abortion ban went into effect the moment the Supreme Court's decision was announced last Friday, which means Aaron needs all the allies they can get. And honestly, it's going to be white women or white allies, white cis, heteroelies to make it through. Because I don't have a lot of privilege. I'm black, I'm queer, trans, not binary person. Like, I do not feel safe or protected.

on a daily basis. So me taking more risk is going to be more harmful to me and my family than it potentially could be for someone else. If I get arrested for aiding, you know, whatever aiding in the betting or whatever the heck they're trying to do, if that happens to me, I can get six years to someone six months, just by racial bias alone. I know that.

Still, Aaron says their organization vets, its volunteers thoroughly. and they share Tannis's concern that the Auntie Network might not be vetting its helpers enough. To which Jen, the moderator, says, I believe in the goodness of our community and the fact that these people are genuine.

There is always a possibility of bad actors anywhere and we certainly caution folks to protect yourself and try to be as cautious as you can while being as loving and open as you can. Jen says the Auntie Network community on Reddit hasn't had any bad experiences that she and the other mods know about. But risk, at least at some level,

does feel kind of inevitable right now. And that goes for everyone playing a role in trying to increase abortion access. Aunties and helpers are taking a risk offering resources, nibblings take a risk receiving them. In both the legal and safety risks for health care providers offering abortion services, and organizations like errands and tannis will only increase nationally

as a pregnant person's right to those services decreases. And yet, and yet. We have had an abortion funds across the country have been flooded with requests from folks wanting to support the work. We are getting influence to people say, I want to help, I want to donate water, I want to donate my time, I want to donate gas cards. We have so many more aunties and helpers, and we have nibblings.

There's so many people that really want to help. And it's beautiful. That's exactly what we need right now. That is exactly what we need at this time. Of course, we're still going to vet them. But to see that and to hear that is absolutely amazing. And just shows, like, we're not done yet. We still have a fight in this.

A flood of helpers, whether there are strangers online or members of your local community, is a good problem to have, especially if they can all work together, as Aaron hopes, to make their efforts even say. safer and further reaching. I would love to see us as well as just other networks kind of partner with some of these groups and work with them through the vetting process. So it's like, okay, cool. We have a whole other outreach of volunteers who want to help.

Hope resides in connection. And so I wake up and I know that there's 92 abortion funds across this country, which is hundreds of people who do this with a singular focus. every day. How do we get people to our abortions? And being part of that community is the source of hope. I would say to anyone who is just really in need just to continue to call us, continue to reach out because despite the way things are, we're connecting, we're networking, we're talking to each other. You know, we can take care of each other. Even when you feel like you're completely alone in the world, you're not. We do not have to fix everything today and we don't have to do it by

ourselves. So there's still access to safe and healthy abortions. We just have to, you know, work together a little bit longer and significantly harder to figure out those solutions and how to get you what you need. This is a long road. We didn't get here overnight. We're not going to get out of this overnight. But we are going to get out of it. And I think the way to hold on to that is just to be connected to people who are doing work that feels good to you. And maybe it's about abortion. Or maybe it's about a free fridge in your community. Maybe it's about a menstrual product pantry, right? Those are all things that are connected to this abortion work, right? How do we take care of our communities and connect them with the resources that they need? And that keeps hope alive,

I think. Okay, as promised, we do have an update to this story because right before we were about to publish this episode, we saw a new post on the Auntie Network subreddit. The Subject of which is, we are suspending Auntie Helper Services. The Post says, due to a great deal of safety concerns caused by a rapidly burgeoning amount of publicity, and with incredible sadness and trepidation, we are going to temporarily shut down Auntie services. The Auntie Network can still serve as a gathering place for information, a source of great organizations to support, and exchange of ideas. But the overreaching concern is for the personal safety of every individual here. We love serving. We love helping. We do not want to be a source of danger for anyone, and the extraordinary demands that have been on us have made us see how very needed discussion, information, and education is. We don't have budget, means, or staff to background check everyone who volunteers. And although 90% of the applications we see are great people, it's a gamble no longer worth taking. We don't know right now how long we may wait. As laws change, as we brainstorm

means to keep you safe, we may reopen that service. We thank you all for your efforts to be here, to volunteer, and to keep nibbling safe. We can still be proactive, share ideas, news, information, empowerment, and hope with one another. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. If you want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, you can sign up for our email list. That is at WBUR.org slash Endless Thread. This episode was written and hosted by me, Amory Siebertson. And me, Ben Brat Johnson. I mostly just talked.

Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. This episode was produced by Grace Tatter with production help from our web producer, Megan Kattel. The rest of our team is Norris Sacks, Emily Jankowski, Paul Vikis, Quincy Walters, and Dean Russell. Endless Threat is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and... Real life. Healthcare. for everyone. If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the

internet that you want us to tell us, hit us up. Email endless thread at wbUR.org.