Front Burner - Abortion rights under attack in the U.S.

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

On Tuesday, Alabama's state legislature voted for a measure that would outlaw almost all access to abortion. Political watchers say this is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S. Legislation to restrict abortion in the U.S. has been on the rise since President Donald Trump appointed two conservative-leaning Supreme Court judges. CBC's Lyndsay Duncombe has been covering this story from St. Louis, Missouri, and today on Front Burner she explains why pro-choice advocates worry that a woman's right to choose in America is at risk of being overturned.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. As I talk about it, I can feel and smell everything that I did back then. And he looks down at me, I'm looking up at him, and he says, that's my little girl. It's a 30-year-old homicide where we don't have anybody charged and convicted.

Felt like a murderer had gotten away with something. Tell me now, did you have anything to do with the murder? Someone Knows Something with David Ridgen, Season 5. Now available. Go to cbc.ca slash sks. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. On Tuesday night, things got very real in Alabama. It's not our place as humans to extinguish that life. But why you all want to control our bodies, I will never, ever know.

The state legislature voted for a measure that would outlaw almost all access to abortion. 25 ayes, 7 nays, the motion to table passes. I first want to compliment this body on the way they handled a very sensitive, important issue. Alabama's governor signed the bill into law this evening. The law is set to be challenged in court, challenges that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. It would be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion in the United States. And here's the thing. This isn't just happening in Alabama.

Four states have passed so-called heartbeat bans. And a similar one being taken up in the Missouri legislature. Lindsay Duncombe is a CBC senior Washington editor, and she just got back from St. Louis, Missouri, where she's been covering this story. That's today on FrontBurner. Hi, Lindsay. It's so nice to have you back. Nice to be back.

So we're going to get to Alabama in a minute. But first, I want to unpack what led to this. So a lot of people will remember the fireworks around the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Supreme Court justice and his testimony defending himself against allegations of sexual assault from Christine Blasey Ford. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. This whole two week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. But there was this whole other thing going on, too.

And what did his confirmation mean to people who are anti-abortion? Well, there is a real concern that Kavanaugh's confirmation combined with the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch would mean a potential challenge to Roe v. Wade, which is the 1973 decision which legalized abortion in this country. Donald Trump campaigned saying that he would put anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court. The justices that I'm going to appoint will be pro-life.

They will have a conservative bent. That got him a lot of votes from evangelical Christians in particular. And those people really saw those appointments as him delivering on that promise. And so what have we seen since Kavanaugh's confirmation around abortion in the United States? Well, a lot of these Republican-led legislatures have started passing really tough, really restrictive laws that essentially go as far as banning abortion. And they know that these laws will be challenged in court. And that's exactly the point, because they want to bring these laws to the Supreme Court as a direct challenge to Roe versus Wade. Is it fair for me to say that for many, many years, several of these states in the United States and the anti-abortion movement have been focusing on restricting access to abortion, just making it much, much harder to get an abortion?

to abortion, just making it like much, much harder to get an abortion. For example, like you can't open an abortion clinic unless it's 30 kilometers from a hospital, meaning that, you know, all rural abortion clinics are forced to close or clamping down on funding. But right now what we're seeing, like you mentioned, is like a direct run. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And that's because this Supreme Court departments have created an opening to do that at the same time as all of the other state based restrictions that are primarily playing out in states in the Midwest, as well as in the South. It's a different picture in states that are led by the Democrats. And I want to go through what's happening in a few specific states. Let's start with Alabama. What exactly happened there on Tuesday? Well, the state legislature has voted in a law which is essentially an entire ban on abortion. Mr. Butler.

Aye. Mr. Chambliss. Aye. Mr. Chastain. Aye. Ms. Coleman-Madison. No. The only exception would be if there was a threat to the life, an emergency of either the mother or what the law calls the unborn child.

And it's a law that doesn't even have any restrictions for pregnancy that occurs as a result of a rape or incest, which is something that caused a lot of emotion in the legislature. You just said to my daughter, you don't matter. You don't matter in the state of Alabama. What this law would do would make it illegal for doctors to perform those abortions. And the punishment is pretty high. You know, life in prison if they were to be convicted. And it does not aim to prosecute women, though, who seek abortions. And again, this will be challenged in court. And that is the point. You mentioned emotion in the legislature. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

When the exception for rape and incest was removed, the legislature sort of devolved into a shouting match. And you've got people, you know, talking about these incredibly emotional issues. Do you know what it's like to be raped? No, ma'am, I don't. Do you know what it's like to have a relative commit incest on you? On me? No, ma'am. Why would you not want a woman to at least have that exception for such a horrific act? have that exception for such a horrific act? Because I believe that when that unborn child becomes a person, and we need legal guidance on when that is. But that's not your business.

So that whole emotional, personal context is really playing into the debate in this legislature and in others. And I know that you've actually been on the ground covering this story in Missouri. Can you tell me more about how the fight is playing out there? You know, of all the stories I've covered in the United States, and I've been here for eight years now, I think being in Missouri and talking to people on both sides about this abortion issue, I felt the most like I was in a foreign country because, well, obviously, the issues around abortion are emotional.

It's a very different feeling when people really are looking at the laws, laws that they want to change, worried about what's at stake. The situation in Missouri is it's one of these states that is considering a heartbeat bill. And that debate is happening this week. They could even vote on it today. What it would do is restrict abortions to the time when a fetal heartbeat is detected or fetal brainwave activity is detected. And that is around six weeks or as early as six weeks. And that is before many women even know that they're pregnant. So doctors say

what this is, is just what Alabama was doing. It's essentially a ban on abortion. So when you're standing there in the state legislature, and people are, you know, saying, stop the bans, or you're talking to someone standing outside a clinic, trying to stop women from having abortions, the emotion around this issue is incredibly intense. And so the people supporting this bill, the heartbeat bill, why are they saying they want to put forward this bill? They say that their motivation is to save the lives of unborn children in the state of Missouri. So this bill, as you mentioned, is expected to be passed. And this bill, like the bill in Alabama, we're expecting will be challenged in court and could make its way to the Supreme Court.

Yeah, it's one of the bills that could be a challenge to Roe v. Wade. So we've talked about Alabama, we've talked about Missouri. How many states are we talking about here in the United States that are taking a direct run at this? It's a growing number. There's Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky. All of these states are really pushing the limits of the legislation, aiming to get their law in front of the Supreme Court. The purpose of this bill is really to have a vehicle for the United States Supreme Court so that should it be ready to do so, it could revisit some of its prior rulings. Begin the process of recognizing both the interest of women who find themselves in difficult circumstances and the fundamental basic right to life. Okay, so I know that you've been

speaking to people on both sides of this issue. One of them is Sue Thayer, an anti-abortion activist you met in St. Louis, Missouri. Life is worth protecting. It's the right thing to do. What does this moment mean for her? Well, I think someone like Sue Thayer sees a lot of momentum from the state legislatures and the attention that this issue is receiving and the Trump presidency. You know, life is winning.

Vice President Pence has said that, you know, more than once. Life is winning. And as Christians, we know life wins in the end anyway. She's with an organization called 40 Days for Life. And when we were contacting people to talk to about this story, she actually flew from her home in Iowa to meet us in Missouri where we were talking to people. And she'd just come back from some conference dealing with abortion issues in Croatia.

We met her at a convent which the Catholic Church the Planned Parenthood expressly to pray over people going into and out of the clinic, presumably people who were there to have abortions. And in that emotional context, Sue Thayer told her story. She's someone who used to work at a Planned Parenthood, and she has turned and become someone who is now speaking out against abortion. The things that I did there now almost seem impossible. Like, I really do that when I think about some of the stuff that goes on. And she is saying that this is something that she wants to see the end of. Her idea of success in this whole debate is that there would be no more abortions in the United States. And there's a real effort to reach out to women and give them help that they need. And one of the things that many of these organizations do is they direct women to other places, to pregnancy

centers where they can get care in terms of free ultrasounds or free pregnancy tests and to community-based groups that will help a woman through her pregnancy and give that person support, including financial support, in order to give them a reason to keep their baby. People will say, well, you're just pro-birth. You just want to get them here. And then you don't care about them. And I hate that. You know, pro-life people are kind and compassionate and caring and go out of their way to... What's your sense of how organized these groups are? They are organized and they have been organized for a long time. We were standing outside the clinic in St. Louis.

Hey, how's it going today? I just got a coupon to pass along for a free pregnancy test. St. Louis Coalition for Life, which tries to convince women not to go into Planned Parenthood and offer them some of these services, keep statistics of how many people they talk to, how many people change their minds. There's this whole network of people that women can text at any time to get counseling against an abortion and to see what services might be available.

This particular card is for a different clinic, a specific clinic. But if this clinic isn't meeting her needs, well, let me tell you, Lindsay, I've got a whole pamphlet of information with a lot of different places that might be able to help her with what she is facing. This is a heartfelt grassroots movement, and the people that are doing it really feel that intensely. I do not want any woman who lives in Missouri to have to get an abortion or to think she has to get an abortion. Right. Okay. That's their position on it. Yeah. You know, I want to talk to you a little bit about how these groups are getting their message out and how

that's changed over the years. You talked about Sue Thayer and how she used to work for Planned Parenthood. That's also the plot of this new movie that's just come out called Unplanned. The only thing that's changed is you, Abby. Can you even hear yourself talk right now about these procedures? These are little babies. I'm not going to apologize for doing a job that helps women in crisis. Can you tell me a little bit more about this? Well, my producer Marie Claudet and I went to see Unplanned at a theater

in Alexandria. And it is sort of a Hollywood style story about a woman just like Sue Thayer, who used to work at Planned Parenthood and then sees a gory graphic abortion, which has been dismissed by medical professionals as being sort of propaganda. I saw it and it was like it was twisting and fighting for his life. And sort of changes and goes to the other side. It's a tough film to watch. There's a lot of blood and the purpose of it is to really give a visceral reaction when it comes to the experience of abortion. And the goal of the folks behind it is that once it's on DVD, because it has an R rating, and that means some people wouldn't go see it in the theater,

especially young people, that it'll be shown in church basements and among groups to really sort of intensify the emotion around this issue. Okay. Rhonda! Let me tell you what's going to happen if you walk through that door. Congratulations. You make an enemy of one of the most powerful organizations on the planet. What kind of criticisms have we heard about this movie? It's been dismissed by people who perform

abortions and deal in women's health care as being propaganda and that those bloody pictures are certainly not what the experience of an abortion would be like. This anti-abortion movement in the U.S., did you learn anything about what demographics are driving it? What was most surprising to me when it comes to the lawmakers is that the person who sponsored the bill and his colleagues in Missouri is 33 years old. He's a bearded, tattooed millennial who got into politics precisely because of this issue. The goal is to save as many lives as possible, but if it's going to set a tidal wave and ripple effect of different states looking to us for guidance and attacking Roe v. Wade on that basis, I'm all for it.

And he is working with other millennials in the state legislature to kind of overcome that frustration. The people who believe in this have seen that there hasn't been much movement at the federal level. There have been a lot of conservative leaders that haven't been able to deliver on promises related to abortion. And now they're really seeing this shift. On the flip side, Democrats would say that this is an issue that people who want to get elected use in motivating those voters, those single issue voters to get out and vote for them. We talked earlier how organized the anti-abortion movement is in the U.S. I know that pro-choice activists have also been organizing, particularly in response to this latest movement. I had an abortion when I was 15 years old. I'm telling you this because

I'm genuinely really scared for women and girls. They are designed specifically to disenfranchise poor black and brown women. It's not as simple as bad girls get abortions and good girls have families. We are the same women at different times in our lives. I don't regret having an abortion, and I'm not ashamed of having an abortion. Do you get a sense that they are as organized? They certainly are as motivated, but there is some concern that there was complacency leading up to these changes that are happening now, that people who thought that they could get abortions knew that that access was there and weren't necessarily as aware of what could happen in order to take that away on the legal front. I spoke to one senator who's 61 years old in Missouri,

and she said she remembers before Roe versus Wade, and she worries that many of the people who feel the same way as she does. And it's important to note that the majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal depending on certain circumstances. She thinks those people haven't really been as motivated to this point. I think with the change in our administration at the federal level and the change in the Supreme Court, this is now really on the line in a way that it hasn't been before. So we can no longer stand by and allow that complacency to continue. But there is an energy around this issue now. We were in the rotunda at the Missouri legislature in what was called a day of action. And we saw, as we have seen in Alabama and in other

states, the protests involving the handmaids based on the handmaid's tale, wearing their bonnets and their robes and and everyone had signs saying, stop the ban. Stop the ban! Stop the ban! And one of the things that's been happening in terms of abortion as a result of fears that access is going to go away is that women are telling their stories. What used to be a very private issue that you might only tell your closest friends is now something people are feeling compelled to share.

One of those women that we spoke to is Evania Woods, and she stood up there in front of a whole crowd of people in the middle of the rotunda and said, at 28 years old, I had an abortion. I was here about two months ago testifying against these bills. When I was researching my options and looking at, you know, how much I could get through public assistance, even that wasn't even enough for one child to get through. And so I was like, there's no way I can do this on my own. You know, the circumstances were actually pretty typical. She was 28 years old. She didn't have a

lot of money. Her boyfriend was out of the picture and she couldn't see an option for herself in order to continue her studies beyond terminating the pregnancy. And, you know, that's a pretty normal story, but they're all so, you know, that's a pretty normal story. But there are also, you know, heartbreaking stories about issues such as rape or incest that people are now feeling comfortable saying because the stakes are so high. And the truth is that the statistics show that one in four American women are going to have an abortion. And the other message around all of this is that regardless of what happens at the Supreme Court, doctors and people who study this issue say that women seeking abortion, those numbers won't change. What will change is the access.

One very real consequence of Roe versus Wade being overturned would be that it goes back to the states. And some states would have legalized abortions. Other states would not. And then in those states, women run the risk of having to perform abortions on their own or to go underground to get abortions. Absolutely. And the people that would be most likely to go that route would be those that don't have access to the money these states is going to wind its way up to the Supreme Court and that it could threaten Roe versus Wade, this landmark ruling that a lot of people up until recently might have just thought was settled, that women have a right to choose. And we mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that this hinges on Brett Kavanaugh

and Neil Gorsuch, these two conservative judges that have been put on the Supreme Court by the Trump administration. But do we know at all where they stand on this issue? Have either of them given any indication on which way they could vote? Well, in confirmation hearings, both had said that they would adhere to settled law. This is a question of precedent. And under questioning, Brett Kavanaugh said that he believes in precedent. And under questioning, Brett Kavanaugh said that he believes in precedent. And 40-year-old law, such as Roe v. Wade, certainly would fall into that category. Once again, tell us why you

believe Roe is settled law. Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It's been reaffirmed many times. It was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood versus Casey in 1992 when the court specifically... However, a warning sign from the Supreme Court came this week from one of the Liberal justices because of a ruling that overturned a different precedent on a different issue. In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said he was concerned about this court overturning precedent. And that's raised a lot of questions about what could happen if Roe versus Wade were to be revisited. Okay. Lindsay, thanks so much. We're going to be keeping an eye on this. We're

also seeing some movement here in Canada, which we'll talk about in a second. Thank you so much for this conversation. You're welcome. So that's what's going on in the United States. Here in Canada, we also had some abortion-related news this week. Ontario's top court dismissed an appeal to overturn a court decision that says doctors must give medical referrals even if they clash with their moral or religious beliefs. Basically, this means that doctors who disagree with things like abortion, medically assisted death, and birth control must refer patients to other doctors who would give them access to care. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the the danger the object of the email was please read this while sitting down it's like a genie came out of the bottle

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