Factually! with Adam Conover - The Human Cost of Banning Abortion with Shefali Luthra

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Abortion is not just a political story; it's a personal one. In the two years since Roe was struck down by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision, a host of challenges has arisen for women, trans, and non-binary people seeking basic control over their own bodies. This week, Adam speaks with Shefali Luthra, author of Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, about the harrowing realities of the current state of abortion healthcare in America. Find Shefali's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. I don't know anything Hello and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, the era of abortion rights is well and truly over in America. It has been almost two years since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade

in the Dobbs decision and took away a fundamental right from Americans for the first time ever. But you know what? Despite what Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito think, nearly two-thirds of Americans still support abortion in all or most cases. The issue has been a political loser for Republicans, and since the 2022 decision, voters in red states like Kansas and Ohio have actually voted to protect their right to choose at the ballot box. And upcoming initiatives in states like Florida play a role in Democrats' national strategy

to win the national election this November. So the politics here is important and has gotten a lot of coverage. But you know what? The politics is also a distraction from the larger and more important story about abortion in America. Because sure, Republicans might be losing some initiatives in a few states, but the true losers after Dobbs are the women, trans Americans, and non-binary Americans

who are seeking healthcare and the most basic control of their own bodies. These impacts are massive. Around 25 million women, trans, and non-binary people of childbearing age live in states with serious restrictions on abortion. And despite those restrictions, these people still need abortions, they still seek abortions, and they often still get them. It's just that now when they do, the care is more expensive,

it's more difficult to get, it's often more dangerous. Their lives are simply worse as a result of these restrictions than they were before. And their stories are truly harrowing. Abortion is not a political story. It is a personal one that happens to real, actual people. And today, we are going to look at the stories of those people and the challenges faced by folks seeking abortions in the post-Dobbs era. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you

that if you want to support the show, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show, ad free. And if you want to come see me do standup comedy on the road, head to adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates.

Coming up soon, I'm heading to Phoenix, Arizona. Would love to see you there. And now let me introduce today's guest. Her name is Shefali Luthra. She's a health and gender reporter at the 19th. And her recent book is called Undo Burden, Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America. This was an absolutely fascinating conversation

that gave me so much empathy for all the folks in America who are facing these restrictions today. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Let's take it away with the interview. Shafali, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for having me. So abortion has been no longer protected under American law for about two years now.

It's been banned in many states or severely restricted in many states. There's been a lot of coverage of that, of the political ramifications of that. I feel that there's been surprisingly little coverage of how the reality on the ground has changed for women and people trying to get abortions in those places.

So in these states, like what does it look like now? What are the changes that you're seeing? It's really terrifying for people who become pregnant and who either experience medical complications and require an abortion because it is not safe to stay pregnant, but also those who become pregnant and do not want to be. And in that case, we mean minors, people who are already young parents who know they can't afford another

child, people who discover an ectopic pregnancy or who thought that they were going to have a perfectly healthy child and then discover complications, a fetal anomaly, something that means they cannot give birth to a healthy new person. And at that point, you have options, but they are very difficult options. We have seen a rise in people prescribing and mailing pills, medication abortion pills, from states like California, like New York, Massachusetts, to places where abortion is outlawed and patients can use them in secret if they are earlier than 12 weeks of pregnancy. When that is not an option, the only other recourse people have is to travel. And this is something I really explored in the book was the lengths to which people are going to get abortion.

There is a young girl from Texas who crosses the border and goes into Mexico to get pills. There is a young mother who spends all of her money to go to New Mexico. People are taking on really immense hardship to get an abortion because they understand that they cannot be pregnant. And already, even before Roe was overturned, abortion was very hard to come by in a lot of places. Mississippi had one clinic left, Missouri had one clinic left, but now it has become functionally impossible unless you are able to find the resources and really devote everything you have and assume that you will pay the price later, whether that means taking on credit card debt, whether that means trying to

find childcare, losing time at work that you can't make back. It's a real source of financial strain, psychological strain. And it also, the thing that I heard over and over again, speaking to people who have made these journeys, is it creates a world in which they feel less equal. They don't feel trusted by their government, by their country. They feel like they have not been given the power

to decide what is best for them, and they haven't been considered in the laws that govern us. Well, and they're going through such great lengths that it has to feel a little bit like seedy. You know, it's like at the very least, I'm getting my medication from Canada or I'm like ordering mushrooms online from Colorado

or you know, it's one of those activities where I can't do it here, but I can go across the border and do it. That is always, you always know that you're sort of getting away with something. Now, some of those I just gave were trivial examples, but if you are having to literally travel to another country, I mean, that's such a shocking example.

I'd love to drill down into that one, because we're familiar with people traveling from Mexico or places south of Mexico to the United States in order to get some benefit that they could not get in their home country. The idea that people are Mexico to the United States in order to get some benefit that they could not get in their home country. The idea that people are traveling from the United States to Mexico to receive a benefit that used to be,

or a necessity that used to be protected under law in the United States, that's shocking. Tell me what that looks like when someone has to do that. And there's some history of that. If we look at South Texas, the Rio Grande Valley specifically, even before Roe was overturned, there was one abortion clinic left for this massive part of the state

where millions of people live. It is one of the lowest income parts of the country, of the state. It is a largely Spanish speaking part of the country. It is a place where you have a large portion of undocumented people. There was one clinic serving all those people. Even before Roe was overturned, abortion had been outlawed in Texas

starting September, 2021, until you were six weeks pregnant. That was the latest you could get in abortion. I met this young woman, Becky, and she got pregnant after Roe was overturned. She knew she could not be pregnant. She wanted to finish college. She had dreams for herself. She also knew she could not tell her family She wanted to finish college. She had dreams for herself.

She also knew she could not tell her family about this because they had always told her, if you get pregnant, you're keeping it. They had never even taught her about birth control. Wow. And so she tried to figure out what to do. She knew there were no clinics left in the region because the last clinic of McAllen, Texas had shut down.

She had heard about medication, abortion pills, but she didn't really know how to find them. Then she was scrolling Instagram. She saw a post about if you get enough pills of mesoprostol, which is one of the two medications used in a medication abortion, it's also used for things like stomach ulcers. If she took enough, she wouldn't be pregnant.

But she didn't really have any sense for where to go, how to find them. But a friend she spoke to suggested crossing the border, driving over, going to Mexico, buying pills and a pharmacy. And she's very lucky because she is not undocumented like other people she knows. So she had that luxury. She could in fact cross over, buy pills.

Her Spanish isn't very good. She also didn't have the $20 that she knew she would need. So she worked extra shifts at McDonald's, earned back the money, and then she and her boyfriend drove across the border, went to a pharmacy, did their best to figure out, am I buying the right pills? Will I take this correctly?

Came home and she took them and she waited and she hoped that it worked. And the thing about medication abortion is, it is quite effective, It is quite safe. You need to take it correctly, but it takes time to see the signs that you've actually succeeded in, in particular for your hormone levels to go down. She went to the gynecologist and they told her, oh, it looks like you're pregnant. And she was so scared.

She just kept hoping if I wait longer, I won't be pregnant. And this was just a residual hormone from before. And she doesn't feel like she can tell her gynecologist, hey, I went and took these medication pills because she lives in Texas. And she can't say, hey, I just went and did an abortion by myself. And you hit on something that I think is really potent

and really palpable, which is the people who are seeking abortions are deeply afraid. And they are very confused about what their rights are because to be clear, abortion bans do not criminalize pregnant people themselves. That's been a very explicit political choice the anti-abortion movement has made. They don't want to be caught politically trying to throw pregnant women in jail. They know that that would be a political loser for them. They criminalize doctors. But if you are a patient, that's a difficult distinction

to fully process and you do know that there are other ways people could try to come after you. So there's a real culture of secrecy, of fear, even beyond the legal repercussions of stigma. Because abortion is incredibly stigmatized, it's stigmatized in a state with a ban, it's stigmatized in a state where it's protected, like California.

So she had very few people she could trust. What is really striking is that a medication abortion, like the one that she did, is identical in terms of how it appears in the body from a miscarriage. So if she showed up at the doctor later and the pregnancy was gone, they would assume she had miscarried

and no one would know what she had done. And that's what happened. She kept waiting, she kept hoping, she went back to the doctor and they said, it looks like you've miscarried. I'm so sorry, you've lost your pregnancy. And she waited until she left the doctor's office to let her relief show and to understand that she had finally been able to do what she in some ways was very lucky to be able to do was to find that network, find the resource, to figure out how to take this reproductive destiny into her own hands.

And as difficult as that was, as much as she went through to get that, so many other people in her situation would not have that option, which I just think is so incredible. Yeah, I mean, what, it was such a great story to start with, because I think what it illustrates is everything

that she did was actually legal under American law. Like she couldn't be prosecuted, no could anybody else in this story. She was taking a legal drug, and yet because of the broader policy changes and the culture that has now built up around abortion, especially in that part of the country. Everything that she did was under a cloud of secrecy, very little information.

I mean, she finds out about it on Instagram and drives across the border. That is not a health care system that is working. That is not abortion being available as a form of health care that is safe and reliable and, I don't know, appropriate in America. That's not how it's supposed to work. And what I love about spending time in Texas and why a lot of this book is set in Texas is I really believe that Texas represents

our history and our future. The Roe decision was a Texas decision. Norma McCorvey, the woman in the case, the titular Roe, she was a Texas woman. Wade was a Texas decision. Norma McCorvey, the woman in the case, the titular Roe, she was a Texas woman. Wade was a Texas lawyer. These are laws and protections that came from this tremendously important state. As soon as Roe was decided, the anti-abortion movement

really gained traction in Texas. Texas was a pioneer in abortion restrictions well before the Dops decision that overturned Roe. It was the first state to functionally ban abortion for most of pregnancy with this notorious six week abortion bounty hunter law that took effect in September 2021. Again, many months before Roe was overturned. And in some ways, that head start

means that it's kind of like a science project. We can look at it and say, this is what we could become. The rest of the country, because Texas started earlier, they already have had more people have to live without abortion, try and build these mutual aid support networks to find ways around the law. And they've also had to see the health implications,

whether that is higher infant mortality, whether that is in the longer term, more pregnancy related deaths, because pregnancy is a medical condition and it can be very dangerous depending on your circumstances. Whether we'll see higher teen birth rates or other forms of medical and social and economic complications. If it happens in Texas first, that's a good indication for what might happen in other parts of the country. Have we seen any larger changes in Texas, like demographically? I mean, obviously it's a little soon to see.

We have. And it is soon, but infant mortality is up. That was something that was very striking to me when reporting the book. And I want to be clear. Like the rate of babies who die. Yes, and there's a reason for that, which is in the past, if you got pregnant

and you learned, usually you don't learn until after 15 weeks, that there was a complication with your pregnancy, something that meant you would not give birth to a viable child, you would get termination. And that, you know, those are very hard, really sad situations because it's a wanted pregnancy in those cases. And you know that if you give birth, you will give birth to a baby that can't live that might already be dead or that will die within days to weeks. Now, people can't get abortions in those situations. They are forced to give birth and watch their kids die.

And so of course, if we have more people being forced into that situation, which is rare, but not uncommon, or excuse me, is rare, but not unheard of, of course you'll see higher infant mortality. That's just logic. And it is early, two years feels like a lifetime, but it also is a blip. We are going to see more data come in

that shows how people respond to this. We are still seeing a lot of states still decide what they want their post-Roe future to be. Florida's abortion ban, their six week cut cutoff, only took effect this past May. And that is something that will have tremendous implications because across the South, people were traveling to Florida for abortions because it was the only state, South of North Carolina,

that allowed abortions past six weeks. With that no longer tenable, no longer available, we are only going to start to see what happens. What happens to those 84,000 abortions that happened in Florida last year? longer tenable, no longer available, we are only going to start to see what happens. What happens to those 84,000 abortions that happened in Florida last year? What happens to all the people in Georgia and South Carolina and Mississippi and Alabama who went there and now can go to North Carolina or go to Virginia or go to Illinois because that is the closest option?

I think we have these early points of data, of information. We have a lot of reporting and journalism that shows the humans who have had to live through this so far, but we are going to get so much more information and learn so much more about the precise human and health and economic toll that this will have on us. You heard sometimes after the Dobbs decision that maybe the effect wouldn't be as large

as we all think, right? That it's, hey, it's presented as a catastrophe if it would ever happen, but A, only some number of states are going to do it and some of those are going to be overturned and there's going to be referendums and all those sorts of things. B, a lot of the states that are going to ban it already had just one clinic that could only serve a certain number of people a year. And then C, well, there's these medication abortions that people can get now. And well, if all the attention of the pro-choice movement is being poured into those and we can make those widely available,

that's going to blunt the impacts because they're federally legal and they can't be prevented from crossing state lines in quite the same way. How do you feel about that two years later? Because I do think that maybe there's, at the time I was like, all right, that's an optimistic viewpoint,

and yet I don't know if optimism is a point of view I don't wanna give a lot of credence to right now. So how is that sort of viewpoint bearing out? Multiple things can be true. And the point you made about medication abortion is really interesting and really important. And for a lot of us who write about this day in day out, it was surprising.

And we have seen some of the effects of the Dobbs decision blunted because of the rise of doctors mailing medication abortion to patients in states with bans and their ability to take them. An important data point is that abortions did not go down after the Dobbs decision. They stayed level and even went up a little bit because there have been so many efforts to get people around these abortion bans. There have been efforts to help them travel, to help them take pills.

But I would add a few things to that. The first is that those numbers, in some ways, they are just one part of the story because they don't show the financial toll that this takes on people to have to travel. They don't show the legal fear. And what we do know is something like medication abortion is not an option for everyone.

It is most effective in the first trimester. There are people who don't find out until later that they are pregnant, who don't have the resources for an abortion until later. There are people who don't feel safe having pills mailed to their house because they are afraid of the law or they are afraid of a partner finding

out or someone else finding the package and intercepting it. One data point that I spend a lot of time thinking about is that most abortions that happen in this country are for black women and Latino women. They're usually already mothers, they're usually in their early 20s, but they are black women and Latino women. When we look at the data of who are people getting abortions through the mail in particular, they're largely white women. And that's a disconnect that I think is really interesting. And we need to interrogate what is happening to the people who typically got abortions.

Why are they unable to access this service that has emerged as this stop gap? And what does it mean if they're being left out? And how will we see that unfold over the longer term? Getting it through the mail is very much like the affluent person's sort of like, I'll just order it on Amazon. It'll be here in a couple of days.

Don't worry about it. It requires having a mailbox that you can access, which a lot of people don't. It does require a mailbox or a PO box or something. More importantly than having that, I think it requires know-how. It requires someone telling you, oh, look at this website, go to plan C or aid access.

And there are people who don't know that because I don't know about you, but like I don't wake up in the morning thinking someday I'll need physical therapy. Let me learn all the rules about where it's accessible and what it will look like. And similarly, people don't wake up and think someday I'll need an abortion.

Let me learn all the ways I could someday get one because it is definitionally something that is not planned. No one plans to have an unplanned pregnancy. Tell me a little bit about the efforts to get these medications to people because I am a little bit curious about why, if that is the federally protected still way, way that one can still get an abortion

and there's still a lot of money behind the pro-choice movement, people who want to make sure that ensure that there's access to abortions. Why is this not being blasted out as widely as possible? It's in part because this is a legally suspect is the wrong word, but it's a legally novel and somewhat tenuous strategy. We're relying in states like California and New York on these laws called shield laws, which protect the prescribing provider. And they say that if you are, if you're in California and you do your prescribing and you're mailing from California to Texas, you are not liable under California law. That means that in theory, the physician is safe.

But if that physician goes to Texas, if they have a layover at Dallas Fort Worth, a very big airport, if they go on a vacation or go to a conference there, they're not protected and they don't know what could happen. And that's an uncertainty that is a deterrent for a lot of physicians. There are some very, very confident, brave doctors

I've spoken to who feel prepared to take on this legal risk and mail pills in states where the counting on the guidance of shield laws. But there are many others I've spoken to who are no less brave, but are very scared about this because they have a family to take care of. They have a license in California, but also in Kansas because they fly there every month to provide care and they don't want to jeopardize that by being caught in the tailwinds of these efforts to prosecute doctors who provide abortions. And one thing that we do need to consider is that the anti-abortion movement is very frustrated by this development. They view medication abortion and the mailing of it as an existential threat to their abortion

bans and they're trying very hard an existential threat to their abortion vans. And they're trying very hard to find ways to stop it. There is a lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court right now around the availability of Miffl-Pristone, one of the pills used in a medication abortion. If they don't succeed in that case, they have other plans. They are trying to figure out how to leverage them. And of course, this is something they are

thinking about for the election. If they do get a Republican president again, if they get Donald Trump back in the White House, who are the people they can use their influence to have in his administration, who might use the power of the federal government, whether through the FDA, the DEA, at DOJ, et cetera, to put a stop or at the very least significantly deter

the provision of medication. Yeah, just change a little bit of federal regulation, just, oh, here's a new memo that we put out to put a stop or at the very least significantly deter the provision of medication. Yeah, just change a little bit of federal regulation, just, oh, here's a new memo that we put out from the FDA that can radically change what's available. But that's in addition to, I feel like what keeps coming up here is all of the heat on the issue simply culturally

that there's, what are DAs in various states saying, oh, we're gonna prosecute doctors, whether or not they even legally can, if they are stating that they will, hey, you better not have a layover in Dallas, Fort Worth or whatever it is, that's going to be a deterrent to people. Or this, you know, the idea of these bounties

that we will, you know, that there are, there are freelancers out there, you know, anyone motivated enough by the anti-abortion movement to just sort of freelance and try to hunt down a doctor or two, like that's frightening to people. Exactly, and it can go beyond doctors as well to say the person who helps someone find abortion pills, who helps them go out of state.

There have been efforts in Texas to try and pass these bounty hunter laws that would go after someone who drives a person seeking an abortion through their county out of state. And none of those have actually been leveraged. We haven't seen any test cases of them yet. But what they underscore is that there is a really, really frenetic effort to find ways to cut off support

for people because the less support you have have the harder it is to get something that Has already been difficult to obtain and as as mentioned right is so stigmatized And so when you say cut off support that brings me back to something you said earlier Which is that the number of abortions has stayed level if you don't drill into that you might. Oh, well, hey, what's the big deal? Like okay, it's a tempest and a teapot, not that much has happened. Except that it's more expensive, it's more difficult. Life is now much worse for everyone

trying to get an abortion. That we are now punishing these people for wanting to get this basic form of medical care. Tell me more about what that looks like. There was an analysis done in Texas soon after the six week ban took effect. And I thought about it often because they did really great mixed methods research, looking at the data

and looking at a lot of stories and interviews they did. And there was a family that traveled at the time from Texas to, I believe, Oklahoma, because back then Oklahoma still had legal abortion. And they took so much of their resources that they didn't buy groceries for a week. They ate whatever little food they had in the house. They couldn't buy dog food.

And so after they finished whatever scraps was left for them, they would give their dog whatever was too little for them to eat. And I find that so compelling because what it shows is that people who want abortions will very often find a way to get them. But what they will suffer is immense economic hardship. In the meantime, they will not buy food.

They will take on credit card debt. They won't buy a home because the money they were saving up for a house instead goes to this trip. And that is something that it radiates for a long time. It adds to inequality. It adds, in particular, to gender-based inequality and to race-based inequality because all of these are intersected.

And that's something that we will have to live with as a country, we will become more and more unequal because even if you can get an abortion, what you have to suffer to get there. Yeah. How does, I can imagine for a family in that position, also having a child would be economically devastating. If you're having to immiserate yourself that much

just to get the abortion in the first place, it must be that the alternative is much worse for you. And so I know it's very early in these policy changes. So any children that would be very young, right? We're not seeing the effect of that yet, but is there any effect we would expect to see of so many unwanted pregnancies being carried to term? Yes, and I'll answer that with data and with a story.

The data comes from this remarkable study called the Turn Away Study. It was done looking at abortions that people were unable to have even before the DABS decision. For whatever reason, they were turned away because their clinics could not see them. There were other laws that barred them from getting abortions.

And the researchers followed these people over time after they were denied their abortions. And it's pretty obvious what happened. People who were in poverty fell further into poverty. It was harder to get out because having a child is incredibly expensive and they were forced to have one when they knew they could not.

It's a remarkable piece of literature. People who are interested in this should read it. It is by Diane Foster Green. She is really, really smart. I look up to her a lot. The story I wanna talk about is one of the main characters in this book. Her name is Angela.

She got pregnant soon after the Dopp's decision and she lived in San Antonio. And when she was pregnant, her son was not even a year old. She still owed about a thousand dollars in medical debt from giving birth. She was not in school because she had to pay off her debts before she could go back to college. And she lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment

with her boyfriend. They really, really wanted to move because the landlord was not taking care of the apartment. There were ants that would come in at night and get all over her son. The door was falling off its hinges. It was not right for them. And when she became pregnant, she looked at her son,

she looked at herself, and she knew that she could not give her son the life that he deserved and that she wanted to give him if she had another child. And that is why she scraped together all the money she had, did not tell anyone in her family other than her boyfriend, and left the state. They pretended they were going for a weekend trip together for his birthday, and they got an abortion in New Mexico.

She came home. Soon afterward, she happened to lose her job, unrelated, but she was so scared that she had spent all this money on an Airbnb, on the car, on the gas, on the food. She had come home. Now she'd lost her income and she did not know what it would mean to be able to raise her son. And at one point she said to me how scared she was and how much she thought, well, if I'm, if I'm not good for anything, if I, you know, I can't work, should I have just had that kid because at least I'd be good for something. And that is such a dehumanizing

thing to tell someone in particular to tell a woman that you are good for something. And that is such a dehumanizing thing to tell someone, but in particular to tell a woman that you are good for two things, for work or motherhood, and that is it. And things in the end have actually worked out for her because she got that abortion. They have been able to slowly save back their money. Her boyfriend became her fiance.

He went back to college. She is making plans to go to community college and become a nurse. They finally moved into a bigger home. Her baby has a bedroom. I'm so happy the story has a happy ending. And for my mental health, it was great it had a happy ending because I spent a lot of time worrying about her

and her family. But yeah, they moved into a bigger home, they painted the bedroom for their kid a beautiful color and all of that's possible because she had an abortion. And she thinks often about what would have happened in the alternative. And on some level she knows they would have sunk further into poverty and the life that she wants to give her son would not have been attainable. I mean, this is why it is so maddening to hear people who push these restrictions,

you know, characterize it as protecting mothers, protecting children, because it's so clear in the story that you tell that the restriction is doing nothing but hurt both mother and child in this case. And one thing that really struck me in talking to so many people for this book was the people who sought abortions did not view this as an act of politics or protest

or statement of values or whatnot. They viewed it as healthcare they needed to save or affirm their life, to build the family and self that they hoped for. And I think that's really powerful because it does show a disconnect between the language that lawmakers who ban abortion use and the reality of it, which is that this is something that people think about and they choose for a reason. Yeah. ["Factually," theme music playing.]

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Just talking about like what abortion is in society overall, because you know, I understand the anti-abortionists, many of them have a very strong religious conviction about the, you know, the evils of the procedure and their stated goal is to have none be performed, to have zero abortions carried out. But when you describe it, I'm like, well, this is not just like a necessary, a medical procedure people need to have. It's just like something that's gonna fucking happen. People have to have them.

It's going to happen one way or another. And it seems that all that's happening is we're punishing the people who need them, who are going to have them. It's going to happen one way or another. And it seems that all that's happening is we're punishing the people who need them, who are going to get them. That is largely what we can see from the reporting, from the evidence. There are people who are going without abortions as well now because of these bans.

And I think those are stories worth telling as well. They are obviously smaller than we initially anticipated. But one thing that I come back to often is that it's a number that will likely grow. And that is in part because we are still in the relatively early stages of seeing which states pass abortion bans. This Florida six-week ban just took effect. North Carolina's 12-week ban took effect a year ago. There is a good chance that the state moves further, that if they get a Republican governor, they try and pass a six-week or a total ban. The

Republican governor of Virginia really wanted a 15-week ban. He does not have the votes in the legislature, so that hasn't happened. But what this suggests is a real possible in the coming few years continued erosion of access to abortion on a national level. There is also a lot of interest in the anti-abortion movement in finding ways to exert national cutoffs, whether that is national bans on medication abortion. They know they don't have the votes for a national 15 or 16 week ban, but they would love to find other ways to, for instance, resuscitate this 19th century anti-immorality law,

the Comstock Act, and use that to ban abortions, at least medication, if not all of them. We are still in a lot of ways in the very early stages of seeing what is possible here. And these stories are just a snapshot of the world we are entering. But it seems like so many of these laws, the 15 weeks, 16 weeks bans, et cetera,

they're being passed in defiance of like medical reality. And not just what I was saying a moment ago about like, hey, people need abortions, they're going to get them one way or another, but also the vast number of reasons one might need an abortion beyond, we've talked quite a bit about accidental pregnancies that for economic reasons the parent can't have, but just in terms of the various medical reasons

one would need an abortion. So many of these laws do not have any carve outs. And I mean, the number of reasons one might medically need an abortion is like very large. We talk about rape, incest, life of the mother, blah, blah. There's a lot of other good medical reasons as well, right? And as doctors would say, it is impossible to make a laundry list of every medical exception.

Like you simply cannot do it because medicine is too complicated. And that is why they would argue the best law is leave this up to the doctor and the patient. We, for instance, are seeing patients unable to get chemotherapy when they have cancer because they are pregnant. And there is no exception.

And chemotherapy is not always indicated for a pregnant patient. What is so interesting to me about something like the 15-week proposal is, A, that it does happen before a lot of medical screenings, when before you can find out if there is a genetic anomaly, it is well before fetal viability. It is at a point in which someone's pregnancy

can still go horribly wrong. But more importantly, there is no medical reason behind the 15 week cutoff. It is science that is not accurate, that has been thoroughly debunked. It is simply floated because people think, well, that sounds like a nice number. It sounds like people have had enough time. And-

It's a political decision. It absolutely is. And if you talk to political strategists, they will say this is a number that comes from politics because it sounds good. 15 people here, they think, ooh, that's halfway to 30. Awesome. It's a nice round number.

People love fives and zeros, which is just so, so baffling that that is what we have come to. I mean, that's how, look, that's how every number that the government comes up with has come up with, right? Everything in life is a political process to some degree, but what you're describing sounds like,

there's a story about why the Tappan Zee Bridge is so far north in New York City. Have you ever heard of this? I have not heard this story. The Tappan Zee Bridge, which goes across the Hudson River, is like weirdly far north of New York City. So if you want to cross, you have to like go a little further out of your way.

Why is it up there? It's because if it was built slightly south of that, it would have been under control of like a New York City bridge authority. And the governor who built it wanted it to be under control of the state authority or whatever the fuck, right? There was some law that like made,

oh, if we just have it like this many miles north, then it'll be a little bit easier to get it built and we'll get a little bit more money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, that's shitty enough when you're building a bridge. But when you're making decisions like that, you know, political cutoffs,

oh, we can get this many votes if we go to 15 or whatever about people's lives and bodies and medical care, it's perverse. And you made a point that I think is really important to emphasize, which is there are a lot of people who are very, very devoted, true believers who ultimately want abortion totally outlawed. But I think that there is often a very reductive conversation about religion and abortion.

And this is something that the book spends some time on, which is if you look at the polling of most religious groups, the vast majority across religious constituencies, with the exception of white evangelicals, does not support the abortion bans that we are seeing. Even if people don't believe in abortion for themselves, they do not want it banned. They want other people to make this decision for themselves. And when abortion is on the ballot, even white evangelicals will cross over and support at least some level of abortion access. A surprising share, I think in Kentucky, it was one in three white evangelicals came out against an anti-abortion

constitutional amendment because they don't see where this is going as good. They are deeply concerned that we are going in a direction that is too extreme. And that is in fact much more extreme than the direction that a lot of the other world is headed. Other countries are liberalizing their abortion laws and we are the exception by going backwards. Yeah, and we're not even achieving the basic goal of this small fraction of Americans. Remember, two thirds of Americans of one religious group,

which is far from a majority, not white Christians, white evangelicals are very in support of this. But if their goal is to reduce the number of abortions or eliminate it, that's not even happening. It's just life is getting worse for everybody. And they are quite emboldened by the 50 year victory of overturning a road because they fought for this for so long and they are pushing for more. They are quite emboldened by the 50-year victory of overturning road because they fought for this for so long

And it is they are pushing for more. They are absolutely the world series. They're excited, right? I get it was like a big big fucking deal. I too was very excited when the Red Sox won the World Series That was very important to me I Did not then go and think how will I rig the game for the Red Sox to win the World Series every year? That's a great analogy. Thank you. And they do win a couple more times after that. You know what?

It wasn't as fun the second or third time that they won. It wasn't. The first one was really special. But they are emboldened by this victory of a returning row and they are pushing for national restrictions. That's why they are trying to get medication, abortion harder and harder to come by. One thing that we are all keeping an eye on,

those of us who write about this, is there's a Rubicon that they haven't crossed, which is criminalizing pregnant people themselves. And there have been efforts in that direction. We have seen bills floated, we have seen talk about whether abortion should be treated as homicide, whether at some point you should pass a law

criminalizing self-managed abortion, for instance. They are at this point very scared of the political consequences of doing so. But I think it would be naive to imagine that this would not come back again and again in state lawmaking discourse, and at some point potentially national lawmaking discourse once they are less concerned about the extreme blowback

that overturning Roe has generated. So you think that maybe they lie low for a little bit, there's been a lot of blowback in the first two years, they lie low for a little bit. There's been a lot of blowback in the first two years. They lie low for a little bit and then, you know, absent some greater protection for abortion, maybe they're able to get more stuff passed a decade from now. And there's reporting that has found that, that they have literally said, let's wait.

Let's come back to this more aggressively in a few years when we hope people are paying less attention. Yeah. [♪ music playing, no audio for this part of the video. [♪ music playing, no audio for this part of the video. [♪ music playing, no audio for this part of the video. Well, let's talk for a second about the, you know, the national politics and how things have changed. Because, you know, there is the degree to which the end of Roe and the Dobbs decision

was like a historic change. There's also a degree to which it's just one battle in an ongoing war that the same states that banned abortion after the Dobbs decision, those are the same states that have extreme restrictions on abortion. The same forces are still at play. There's been a shift towards the forces of anti-abortion, but how much has the overall picture

politically changed nationally? Does that make sense? I think so, and I'll try and answer the best I can and tell me if I'm not answering your question fully. But one thing that I do think is very interesting is that people's views of abortion in large have not really changed. Um, since the decision. Most abortions are, excuse me, most Americans supported Roe v Wade.

That has been true for a very long time. What has changed is how important the issue is to them. There are many more Americans and many more voters who now say, I will only vote for a candidate who agrees with me on my views on abortion, or this is one of my top three issues. And in particular, that is more common now amongst Americans who support abortion rights than it was prior to Dobs. That is a huge shift because in the past, voters who made abortion their top issue largely opposed abortion. So there is this rise in salience, even if popularity hasn't changed. There is this greater sense of existential concern. What I think is an open question is how that will affect how people vote for political

candidates. We have seen abortion on the ballot many times since the DAP's decision in a lot of these state ballot races about whether the constitution should protect abortion, which to be clear is not an option in every state. Texas does not have a citizen initiated ballot measure. So they can never get rid of their abortion ban through that. But we haven't yet had an election on a politician who says, I support abortion, abortion versus one who says, nah, I don't know. Um, and this presidential election is a test of that. Will people who say they care a lot more about abortion now take that issue and use that

to determine their presidential vote? I think anyone who says they know the answer to that is full of shit. But it is something that will help us really understand how much the politics of this have really shifted. Well, and it's interesting because that is clearly what part of what the Biden campaign is banking on in the election.

And yet you can't accuse the Democratic party of being staunch defenders of abortion rights. You can accuse them of saying it every so often, you know what I mean, making a big deal like on the campaign trail, but you know, they never passed a, when they had the chance a national protection for abortion that was separate from the Supreme Court.

Joe Biden himself was a little bit evasive on abortion throughout his history as a legislator. Can they credibly say that, hey, we're the pro-choice party? It's a good question. And I would answer it in a few ways. The first is, I mean, I do think at this point, there is a very clear difference between the platform

of the Democratic and Republican Party versus which interests they listen to. And it is clear that abortion rights groups and abortion providers and healthcare providers have more influence with Democratic lawmakers. That said, I have thought a lot and spent a lot of time reporting on this question as to what could have been done. And there will be other books that get into this in more detail and more political history books. This is a book about people at its core. But we

can go back to the last time Democrats had those big majorities. That was under Barack Obama. That was when the ACA was passed. And if you look at the history, abortion almost derailed the ACA. They had to remove it from its benefits because even though Democrats had a majority, a lot of those Democrats did not support abortion. They had a super majority.

They did. They had 60 votes to get that half measure law passed. But they did not have a super majority for abortion specifically. Getting birth control coverage into the ACA was a huge uphill battle. They felt very lucky they got that in at all. And the development that we now have

where the number of anti-abortion Democrats is very, very few and the number of abortion rights Republicans is similarly very, very few is quite new. That has only really become the case in the past few years. Yeah. And it's an interesting counterfactual to imagine, you know, what if President Obama had spent more political capital on this?

Would it have changed things? But we'll never really know if those votes were ever gettable. And I do think it's important for us to know that even though those of us who wrote about this and spent time looking at abortion could see that daubs would happen, that Roe would be overturned,

you could look at Texas, you could look at oral arguments, you could say, I have eyes and ears and critical thinking skills, there are several votes to overturn Roe. It is very radical what happened. And I think there was a real unwillingness to process that this was truly impending because of that radical nature.

Yeah. It was really seen as an apocalypse that's never gonna happen, you know? As a boogeyman. And because there is no historical precedent for the Supreme Court taking a right that was protected for almost 50 years and saying, actually, nevermind. Like that is from a legal standpoint, pretty crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Taking, literally taking a right away. That's, I don't think anyone could argue that that anything other than that happened, that a right was taken away. In terms of the Republican politics, Donald Trump made headlines a month or so ago by saying that, publicly saying, I believe he didn't support a national ban and we should leave it to the states and he got blowback from his own right flank on that, from the people who really want a national abortion ban.

So how much of a push-pull is happening on that side? I think that the national abortion ban. So how much of a push-pull is happening on that side? I think that the national abortion ban conversation is so interesting and it's in some ways a bit evasive because as we talked about, there is so much the president can do to make abortion much harder to come by. They can try and revive the Comstock Act. They can try and use the FDA

to bar mailing of Miffah Prestone. They can try and undo its approval if they want to. They could do a lot of things that are maybe legally suspect, constitutionally suspect, but that they would have the power to do, and in all likelihood, a friendly Supreme Court. So simply asking Donald Trump, well, would you sign a 15-week abortion ban? Doesn't really get at the full heart of the issue. What I think is more important to look at are

who are the people who would be in his administration? What are their priorities and what levers could they pull? And if you ask former president Trump, he has not talked about the Comstock Act. He said that his answer would come, my favorite, in two weeks. He always has offered things in two weeks when they're not coming.

That was when his healthcare replacement plan for the ACA was coming, was in two weeks when they're not coming. That was when his healthcare replacement plan for the ACA was coming was in two weeks and we never got it. Like he's late on paying rent. I guess so, yeah. As he has been many times. Famously, yeah. He's like, no, it's coming.

No, I put it in the mail. I put it in the mail. I left the stamp off. We'll get to you soon. What could the, we know what the folks on the far right of the issue wanna do, right? Because I think even in addition to the regulations that you're talking about, that a president could put in place,

they want, if anything, the symbolic victory of we have now written a law that says, you know, that abortion is nationally banned. On the flip side though, what could Democrats do? Or actually forget Democrats, cause it's not really about that. What could, if we were able to get a law passed, right? In response to Dobbs, what could legally be done

that would protect abortion for Americans across the country? It's a complicated question because there is legislation in Congress. There is the so-called Women's Health Protection Act, which would codify a lot of rose protections. It does not have the votes in the moment to pass, but it could get them.

You would have Democrats trying to break the filibuster and get that enacted. There is some concern about what the Supreme Court would do in that case, which is why a lot of the lawmakers who champion the Women's Health Protection Act, in particular Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, also talk about court reform. They also talk about,

do we need to rethink how the Supreme Court works? Do we need to think about term limits, about how many members are on it, and what that looks like because this court has become quite unaccountable to the American public. I think at a certain point, we understand that those are all part of a package, right? Rights are only so secure as the system that can protect them.

Yeah. So, the concern is, if there was to be a law passed that said, hey, you know, under this law, abortion is a federally guaranteed right, well, then Texas is going to bring a suit and make, it could make any one of novel arguments before the Supreme Court saying that law's unconstitutional and get it thrown out and then we could end up in a worse place than we are currently. I see.

But I mean, court reform, that's almost a different episode of this podcast, right? Have done episodes on it, but it's a pipe dream, is it not? I mean. You could throw DC statehood in there as well as part of democracy reform. I would listen to an episode about that.

Sure. And I think we have done episodes. I mean, not specifically just about DC statehood, but about democracy reform more generally. But that was also something that, you know, when Democrats had the majority right after Biden's election, it was sort of like, wasn't there an issue to, you know, HR one or whatever was the, you know, we're going to have a big voting rights expansion,

like, you know, fix a lot of these things and try to tilt the playing field back a little bit. Even if you want to call it tilting the playing field, you know, time to, time to tilt it a little bit now that we're in power. And they couldn't get that done in terms of structural reforms to democracy that has not been something that Democrats

have been able to do either. You're absolutely right. And I think what we have seen is these are systemic issues. They can only be treated in systems. But what we are talking about is democratic responses, lower D Democrat using the power of the franchise, of elected institutions, of officials to try and restore a right. And those work when democracy is in fact responsive to voters. And I just think that from a practical standpoint and intellectual standpoint, we

do have to think about them together. To your point about something like H.R.1 not really being viable, feasible, court reform not being the same. I mean, you can argue that's also true about abortion protections at this point. The votes are not there. It is a very tough Senate map. The presidency is a coin flip. Yeah.

Like to think about what this will mean and what options are on the table in part does mean seeing how people will vote on this in November and whether it does affect their vote and whether that in turn sends a message to Democrats that this is something that voters really care about and that should be prioritized in a way that it wasn't. But don't we already have the evidence that voters care about this? I mean, as you said, people who say this is one of the most important issues to them or going up.

And, you know, I mean, I see Biden out there going Bidenomics and whatnot. What I don't see is abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion. Here's my five point plan to restore this basic right. You know, if you vote for Democrats on day one, we will XYZ. We need this many Senate seats. We need these many House seats, and just like the full court press about that. I mean, even if you can't do it, right?

That's what the right does anti-abortion, right? And it's clear that people are motivated about this, right? Because they're coming out to overturn the bans in huge numbers when it comes to the state bills. I think I would complicate that narrative somewhat. And in part because there are lawmakers who have been very explicit that if you give Democrats this level majority in Congress,

if you vote for these senators, then they will have the votes to codify Rose protections. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been very, very upfront and very focused on this in her campaign messaging. Yeah, but she's been focused on a lot of things that I agree with. And she's very good at going like, we gotta take on this in her campaign messaging. But she's been focused on a lot of things that I agree with, and she's very good at going like, we gotta take on this, and then no one else

really takes up the flag with her and marches, you know, on antitrust, a whole bunch of other stuff that she's done over the years. She's never been the rally, the person who's actually been able to rally the troops as hard as she's tried. But there is, I mean, it is a difficult message to sell to voters that we need the White House, we need a filibuster-proof majority,

and we need the House to pass these reforms that you care about. But that is the argument they have to make. The other thing that I do think is actually really striking is abortion is a key platform in their reelection campaign. And they may not be talking a lot about a strategy or a plan, but when I watched Joe Biden's

State of the Union this year, I was pretty floored because abortion almost never comes up in the State of the Union. And we got a lot of abortion and a lot of IVF in a way that was without historical precedent. I went through all of Biden's old speeches. I went through all of Obama's old speeches. And this was a dramatic shift that I think does underscore that for them, this is a key electoral issue. We are seeing a lot of ads cut largely from the perspectives of people who have been denied abortions under life-threatening circumstances. And they're talking about why this is an abortion election in a way that it hasn't been. I think the real challenge is whether that actually does make its way as a message to voters,

because there are many more who say this is their top issue, but we don't actually know if that is the majority. We don't know if actually that many will say, this is my top issue and it overrides the economy or it overrides immigration, which are issues that seem to come up a lot in the polling as well. Yeah. I think we are going to see a lot more attention on this and there will be more polling and voters will change their minds as we get closer to November.

They'll decide more how much this actually is their top issue. But if Democrats lose, I think a lot of them would take this as a sign that voters didn't actually care about it. Huh. I was just fixating on your use of the phrase, abortion election. I think a lot of use of the phrase, abortion election.

I think a lot of people wish we could abort this election. It's a cheap joke, but it's like, it's almost too apropos. It's wild. Well, you mentioned IVF, which has been a really interesting political dimension that abortion restrictions are interacting with IVF, which is something that people who, you know,

do not intend to get abortions need as a medical procedure. How does that interact? They're actually ideologically very much related because the way IVF works, as anyone who has gone through the process knows, is that you create embryos. You develop them in a culture, you see which ones will actually develop,

you see which ones are viable, you test them, you don't use them all at once, and you always make more than you need because you know not all of them will be viable. That runs against the ideology of fetal personhood, which is an end goal of the anti-abortion movement because they do not support the disposal of embryos in particular. In Alabama, we saw what that meant. We saw the state Supreme Court effectively outlaw IVF for a period because of its embrace of fetal personhood as an ideology.

And that was really devastating for people going through the process. And lawmakers reacted relatively quickly to try and reverse that. A lot of providers in the state argued that their response was actually more of a band-aid because it protected IVF from liability, but did not undo the fetal personhood laws that exist in the state, which is really important because

what it does show is this tension and this sincere belief among abortion opponents that actually IVF as it is practiced, as it is practiced in a way to make it viable and possible for people, is against their beliefs. After Roe was overturned, there were a lot of patients trying to figure out if they should move their frozen embryos to states where abortion was protected because they did not know what the laws would look like

in the long term. Just like put them on a truck. Exactly. And like take them across state lines because like I don't know what the law is gonna do. And I have spoken to people since the Alabama decision who live in states where abortion is banned and they have thought, maybe I should move my embryos

or at the very least for my next round of IVF, I'll store them in a different state because moving embryos is quite risky, but at the very least they can do something to try and protect them as much as they can by not putting them in Tennessee or in Texas or Alabama or what have you. And what this has illustrated for me

is how linked all of these issues are. These are different sides of a 12-sided dice looking at reproductive autonomy and the right to determine what your family looks like and what it means to express sexuality and gender and birth. And if you are not affected by one of them, you will be affected by the other. And I think that's so important as we conceive

of who is affected by overturning Roe v. Wade, it is any person in this country. I couldn't help but notice that you revealed yourself as a tabletop role playing gamer by mentioning a 12-sided die. And I'm just gonna let that lie and we're gonna move on. Thank you. But I'm happy that those things are linked

and that we're making those connections between these linked issues. But here's my fear about it. And you can tell me if I'm right or wrong, which is that, IVF, I do think of that as being, hey, that's maybe the affluent person's problem, right? That's someone who can't get pregnant and they have the medical resources necessary,

the health insurance or the funds or whatever, in order to undergo a very complex, difficult medical procedure as well they should, and everybody should have access to that. But the people who you're talking about who are most impacted by abortion, by the abortion restrictions, are the folks at the very bottom end of the poverty line,

folks in the Rio Grande Valley in San Antonio. And so, and you're also talking about the issue of like, do Americans care about this, right? Do the Americans who vote care about this? Do the Americans who donate care about this? And do you have a concern that, maybe we will take that band-aid approach and we will address the issue to the satisfaction

of a certain vocal segment of Americans, right? But while leaving a huge swath of Americans to continue to live under restrictions, you know? I think I would try to thread that needle. And that's something that I try to do in the book. It's a nuanced message, but I think it's one that makes sense, which is that abortion bans will have an unequal impact.

They have had an unequal impact, but they do affect everyone because many people get pregnant, many people experience pregnancy loss, many people experience complications. Those don't discriminate based on income. They could happen to any one of us. And similarly with IVF, you are right,

it is very expensive. It is often not covered by insurance, but it is actually something that affects a lot more people than we realize. I have spoken to people who took money out of their retirement savings or took out loans to pay for their IVF because they couldn't afford it, but they really, really wanted a child.

And for me, as someone who writes stories, who tries to add context to this, that is an angle that I think is important to element that, or excuse me, to underscore, which is, this actually does matter for anyone and every one of us, even if someone else may experience it more than you, it doesn't mean that you don't experience it at all.

That's very true, and the linking is very important, but I'm sorry for the very pessimistic thought that this gives me, which is that everything that you're describing is reminding me how abortion access is bad, it's getting worse. Access to all forms of medical care in America is very bad and is got a little bit better with the ACA,

but none of us feel like it's been fixed. And there are already millions of people around the country who are taking money out of retirement savings or putting themselves deep in debt to have other life-saving medical procedures of all types. And that is not a problem that we have solved despite the fact that it does literally matter to everybody. It's like the greatest cause,

single greatest cause of bankruptcy. And it's not something that we've addressed. And so that makes me then pessimistic to everybody, it's like the greatest cause, single greatest cause of bankruptcy. And it's not something that we've addressed. And so that makes me then pessimistic to go, okay, here's one that is like a very, very bad case because we've banned it where we haven't banned most other medical issues. But like, is, maybe the question is like, is each other's access to medical care something that Americans give a shit about

like broadly? Like. That's a great question. Yeah. I mean, I would answer that with not an answer, but with something that I thought about a lot in the process of reporting this book. Please.

Which was, I am very lucky in that many people told me their stories about abortion. I have spoken to older colleagues who did not have that in the pre-Dobbs era. People did not wanna talk about their abortions. And the reason they told me their stories was twofold. One was they hoped other people would feel less alone. They shared their experiences that they felt very isolated in.

They might give someone else company. But the other was because they felt deeply moved to share their story because they hoped it would change conversation. And they hoped it would ultimately cause change in policy. And that movement and that shift, I think is really powerful. I think it comes from a place of sincere belief that if we tell enough stories,

and if more people are in fact willing to share their stories, our perception and our values and what we prioritize can change. Yeah. I think there's something about, that's often talked about in climate journalism is it's actually not productive to focus on the worst things that never get better.

What we should instead try and talk about at least as much is there are a lot of things that have changed and if they continue to change, we don't know what's possible, but like Sisyphus kept pushing his rock. And the fact that, I mean, people really do care about this issue. Like we've been questioning whether or not they do

and we're gonna find out in November how much people care. But I have grown up my entire life having people shake me by the shoulders and telling me how important this is to them, you know, how important it was to their parents, how important it is to them now, how important they feel it is to their kids. Um, and so maybe we could see it as if we can actually solve this problem and increase access to this medical procedure, that could be a way that we

could move the, move the boulder of our entire fucked up medical system, right? Because if we can do it here, then maybe we can do it elsewhere as well. That's a great point. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Well, it's good to end on me making a great point. That makes me feel really good as a podcast host.

I mean, is there, let's not end on that. Sure. Is there a takeaway, a call to action of any kind in your book about how you hope that people can be a part of a movement to change this? I think what I truly want people to get out of the book is simply a better understanding of who is affected by abortion

and how much it relates to the broader story of gender inequality in this country and how we do live in a society that has become more unequal because of gender as a result of this. And how, unless we change how we talk about abortion, how we understand abortion and how we think about it in our politics, that cannot be undone.

Jafali, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been one of my favorite episodes we've done in months. It's like such an important topic. I really appreciate it. That's very kind. Thank you for having me. People can of course pick up a copy of the book at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books.

The book is called Undo Burden. It's out now. Where else can people find it and where can they follow your work elsewhere on the internet perhaps? They can find the book at Penguin Random House's website. They can find it at their favorite bookstore, and they can find me on the platform,

formerly known as Twitter. I've loved every guest having to be like, they can find me on, oh, fuck, oh, shit, what do I say? God, we know what you're talking about. What's your handle? My handle is Shefali L. I post very rarely, but I do really love the Jaguars, the Jacksonville football team,

so occasionally you'll find me liking their posts too. Amazing. Shefali, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you again. Well, thank you so much again to Shefali for coming on the show. Once again, you can pick up a copy of her book at factuallypod.com slash books.

If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show directly. You can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name at the end of this podcast and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week I want to thank Kratone, Lindsay Latt, Andrew M. Purifoy, Marcus Mitchell, and Vanessa Russell. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover, if you would like to join them. As always, I would like to thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson,

everybody here at Headgum for making the show possible. Head to adamconover.net for my tickets and tour dates. And I'll see you next time on Factually.