Guerrilla History - Reproductive Rights Under Attack: SCOTUS & Roe v. Wade

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

In this Dispatch episode of Guerrilla History (and crossover with Revolutionary Left Radio), we discuss the newly leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States what would overturn Roe v. Wade and strip the right of access to safe abortion to millions of Americans. We try to frame this historically, and discuss the politics of this draft, which is set to be finalized and voted on in just over a month. A critical topic for us all to focus on right now, and to think together about what steps to take next.  The full text of the draft opinion can be found here: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/read-justice-alito-initial-abortion-opinion-overturn-roe-v-wade-pdf-00029504    Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail].   Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media! Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory. Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed!   To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995. Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/. Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod. Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.   Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. and welcome to a guerrilla history and revolutionary left crossover episode. Guerrilla history is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of the co-hosts of guerrilla history, Henry Huckimacki, joined by both of my co-hosts of the program, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing? Hi, Henry. I'm well. It's good to be with you. Yes, nice to see you as always. And also joined by my other guerrilla history co-host, who is, of course, Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast.

Now, I mentioned that this was a guerrilla history, Rev Left crossover episode. And we're talking about some breaking news that just came out today. So without further ado, Brett, since this is a crossover episode, let me just turn it over to you now and you can take it and run with it as far as you want. Sure, yeah. So just to set up the situation, we have a leaked document from the Supreme Court, which is very rare. Leaks in general are sort of commonplace, but leaks out of the Supreme Court are exceedingly rare. And this leak is basically a 98-page draft opinion from the conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, basically laying out the full conservative judicial argument to dismantle Roe v. Wade. And what Roe v. Wade does. does is, of course, secure women's bodily autonomy and their reproductive rights as a constitutional right. And that now is being attacked and dismantled. Now, while this is only a draft and no law has been made yet, no strike down of the constitutional right to an abortion has happened yet, we've known this is building for a while. We know the entire point of conservative

judicial world is to get enough conservatives onto the Supreme Court so that at some point they could overturn Roe v. Wade. This has been a very long process in the making. But it seems very likely that in the next month or two, the official decision will come out. Today, just as the draft leaked, they put a huge barrier fencing around the Supreme Court itself. And I think that that tends to speak volumes. So we're having a situation in which a right that we've had our entire lives that we've functionally taken for granted as a constitutional right that cannot be dislodged is being dislodged, is being dismantled. And that puts tens of millions, hundreds of millions of women over a generation or two in a really precarious position.

What would effectively happen is that the constitutional right would be eradicated and the states would be left to decide what to do. Now, many red states have trigger laws, meaning that the moment the constitutional right to an abortion gets dismantled, laws will automatically come to the governor's desks, be signed, and go into law. So you don't have to wait for the entire legislative process to take its turn. And, you know, so functionally in red states, virtually all the deep red states, including the one I'm living in and surrounded by, it will be illegal for women to get an abortion. And so this is going to set off an interesting. state of events, state of affairs, and a cascade of events. The big question for me is what will

the response be? Is the response going to be divided, weak? Is the left going to just post about it online, maybe hold some signs up at some rallies while they laugh in our face and take away women's rights? Or is the resistance going to be a little bit more robust? I think I'll toss it over to each of you after that summary, you kind of get your opening thoughts. I clearly have much more to say. But that's the basic situation taking place right now. And so we wanted to jump on the mic and kind of think through this event as it's unfolding. Yeah, I can go in now and just lay out a little bit more of the background of the current situation before we turned to Adnan for his initial thoughts on this. So of course, as Brett mentioned, Roe versus Wade was the court decision.

It's been around for 49 years now at this point that has codified the right to an abortion in the United States. There was also a subsequent decision in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that also, in large part, maintained all of those rights, but really we're talking about 1973 being the modern era of abortion rights in the United States. Interestingly, one of the arguments that was made in this leaked, and again, as Brett mentioned, it's not usual for leaks to happen. This is actually the first draft decision in the modern history of the Supreme Court that has been leaked while the case was still pending. So one of

the justifications that has been given for this decision that they're going imminently to be making why they're going to be overturning it is that the right to an abortion was not written in the Constitution, which is a very interesting explanation, because by that explanation, like, anything that was not written in the Constitution when the Constitution was written would not have any sort of protection given by the Supreme Court. It's a very strange argument. But also, given that when the Constitution was signed, abortion was not illegal, it makes it even more strange.

Like, this is something that a lot of people don't understand is that when we think about, you know, the good old days of the late 1700s, that people were incredibly anti, you know, abortion in every potential sense of the word, like in all cases, absolutely appalled at the idea. But it wasn't illegal. Like, it wasn't codified in any laws in the United States that abortion was illegal. You couldn't, you wouldn't be criminalized for conducting an abortion, for having an abortion performed, it was really only in the kind of early to mid-1800s that we started to see this push for anti-abortion legislation. So even if you want to say, well, they didn't actually write

into the Constitution that there's protection for abortion, at the same time, there was no laws against abortion, either in the Constitution or outside of the Constitution. Like, these things did not exist in the United States at this point. But there are a few points of this draft that I wanted to read through very quickly because I think that they're quite interesting and they really say a lot into the mind of Samuel Lilito who is, of course, one of the most psychotically conservative members of the Supreme Court.

So I'll just go through this briefly and I have some polling things that I want to talk about and then I'll turn it over to Adnan and Brett, but I think that this might help us get a little bit of a grounding into the situation. So in this opinion of the court part of this, leaked document. We see that it says Roe's abuse of judicial authority. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak and the decision has been, it has had damaging

consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have inflamed debate and deepened division. Now, just hold on there. Listeners for one second. More about that in a little bit, I promise. It is a It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives, quote, the permissibility of abortion and the limitations upon it are to be resolved, like most important issues, in our democracy, by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting, Casey, 505 U.S., etc., etc. There's also one other section that if I can pull up my highlights, it would be very good. but my computer is being slow. In any case, we'll skip that other highlight for now because my computer is on its last legs at this point.

But I wanted to say about this point of how Roe has deepened divisions within the United States. This is also another completely false argument. Support for Roe versus Wade has been broad for a very long time, decades, in fact. If we look at the latest polls, we see that the support for abortion rights in any cases, all or most cases, which is in all cases as well as in cases of rape or other coerced sexual activity or incest, things like this, the support for it was at 80% in a Gallup poll in May 2021. But it was already at 76% in 1975, which was only two years after Roe versus Wade came out. Like the vast majority of people wanted at least in these exceptional situations, abortion to be legal.

Even in the case of a new Pew Research Center poll that looked at what people think about all the right to have an abortion in all situations, they found it to be 59% now. And in 1995, it was 60%, which is to say statistically insignificant. So the year I was born, the same amount of people supported the right to abortion as today. This is not a deepening of division over the right to abortion over the decades. We're seeing continued support for it. And this goes across, surprise, surprise, across political parties, like, of course, there's more support among Democrats and independents than there is among Republicans. but even many Republicans support the right to abortions. We also see that there's age factors at play,

like young people, people that are of reproductive age, have the highest level of support for Roe v. Wade and for the right to abortion, which perhaps is not surprising, but that is what we see. We see that people that are 18 to 29, we see 67% believe that it should be legal in all cases,

whereas it goes all the way down to 53% of people that are between the ages of 50 and 64. In other words, people who are done having kids anyway. So just a little bit more background information that might help set us up. I'm going to pitch it over to Adnan now, unless Brett, you look like you might have something to say. Just really quickly, in any case, was that last polling was under any circumstance? Yes, in any circumstance. So like a lot of reasonable people will support the, basic right, right? But then they'll say like, well, in maybe third trimester, I'll drop off or I'll

become more suspicious, you know, whatever. So the fact that that's the high ratings of like in any situation ever, I bet if you added in some reasonable nuances that would even go up even higher, but in any case, no matter how you slice the bias majority. I would say that it would probably be within the legal framework that we have right now. So when they say within any case, it would be like not just in the exceptional circumstances of incestor rape it would be like person wants to have abortion they can have abortion but not late third trimester abortion which is already illegal even with row versus wade um because you know at that point the child is basically viable uh outside of the womb on its own so my my assumption and i haven't read through the actual polling uh

questions that were given out with that poll but my assumption is that when they're talking about any situation. They're talking about rape, incest, and just people wanting to have an abortion without having those what we would consider exceptional circumstances. Fair point. I see. Okay. Adnan, what are your initial thoughts? Well, I guess while it is shocking and it has come out and it's really galvanizing a lot of attention and hopefully as Brett was remarking, you know, we'll be watching to see, you know, what kind of response there will be, will there be, a really significant, organized, you know, response and movement to protect women's freedoms and equality in society. You know, I think this is something that I'm not surprised that the

court, given its current constitution and the effect of several new very conservative justices in the Trump appointed by the Trump administration. that this is on the docket. You know, there have been these cases, trial balloons. This one has risen as far as the Supreme Court, this Mississippi versus Jackson's Women's Health Organization. I'm forgetting the exact title of the group, but this case has come before them now as an opportunity

when they have neither the presidency nor either of the two houses of Congress in conservative hands. the court is the place where proactive action will be taking place. So this, to me, is not a surprise. This is, of course, these people lied in their, you know, judicial hearings and all of these, you know, we get that, that, you know, those reasons to be outraged. But we, I think I suspected that this would be a goal in the near term to roll back this right. But I think if we look at it historically, I think, you know, what strikes me about this is how rearguard this action seems in some ways.

What it shows is that far-right conservatism is feeling a lot more confident right now as we head, you know, into our political future, things that, looked like they might be off the table or were just used cynically for political organizing and fundraising. I have to say really by both political parties is now actually a target on the agenda because patriarchy is a fundamental plank of far right conservatism. And so the modern conservative movement really established itself. I mean, of course, it has its roots. deep roots in American history and culture. There was the Goldwater era, you know, but it really had kind of organizing strength around Roe v. Wade, which even though it wasn't an unpopular opinion in the majority of American society, there are certain constituent groups around which the modern right

built itself organizationally in terms of funding, in terms of grassroots organizing. And that was impelled by Christian conservatives outraged, both Catholic and Protestant evangelical churches around Roe v. Wade in the fraying of basically what they considered the moral sort of fiber of American society in the post-60s cultural revolution. And so this is really the decisive shift away from a conservative movement that was principally, you know, around economic kinds of policy, small government and all of that, into the territory of the culture war, which is really the foundation, it seems, for the modern right.

So it'll be very interesting to see what the outcomes of this, you know, will be. You know, is this going to galvanize people on the right to come out? And, you know, or is it going to galvanize people? people, you know, on the left. It definitely, I think, will be important on the left. You know, this is going to galvanize, I think, a real response. The question is, is whether this, you know, rather, you know, how can we say it, like audacious, you know, kind of decision that just shows such contempt, you know, for what had really become a settled right in society, you know, how that's going to play. I think, you know, it could be, it could be problematic, you know, for, you know,

I think Republicans who are slightly liberal, you know, this could push, you know, more people into voting, you know, against, you know, against cultural conservative candidates, the Trump, you know, they could hasten, you know, on some level, some of the divisions within the Republican Party that has increasingly formed itself around the Trump sort of base, but there could be more splits off in like, you know, the upper middle class suburbs, you know, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays, how it plays politically. So those are just some initial, you know, initial thoughts. But I think it is, it's quite momentous, I think, to think that, and I actually, it's interesting also, why was it leaked? Who leaked it? There's going to be inquests into this.

You know, Justice Roberts has said that this isn't going to affect it and that they're going to investigate. But I think it will affect, you know, the outcome. I guess the second kind of point that I would say is that the decision, which I haven't had a chance, it's like a draft decision that's 98 pages, and we don't know the final shape of any decision because this is just a draft, but it clearly shows the outlines of the thinking of conservative justices. I haven't read the whole thing, but one thing I got, you know, from this is very much trying to use democratic ideals to say that, you know, this is going to go back to the states and we should allow democracy. I think it's an interesting point and an interesting, you know,

problem for us on the left is that we have depended on, you know, the court and these court decisions. One positive element out of this terrible tragedy is that perhaps it will galvanize democratic movements and organizing at the local and state levels. If this is going to be fought out there, it's something that we haven't seen, you know, real strength at the state and local levels on the left. You know, we've paid too much attention in some ways to national party politics and we've been sucked into the games that, you know, are played at the national and federal levels, but the basis for a revived left and social movements, whether it's going to be women's

movements and feminist movements, anti-racism, you know, movements on behalf of, you know, people of color and labor is labor unions and unionizing. and workers' movements is that it's going to have to take place at local levels of organizing. That's what we're starting to see in terms of labor is a rejuvenated effort by workers to reclaim democracy in the workplace. And if that's what we have to do to secure our rights and a transformed society, then the one thing we should do is get organizing at those levels. because these are popular positions. And the entire left agenda is popular, broadly speaking,

when it comes to health care, when it comes to economic policy, when it comes to a lot of these social kinds of issues, we're actually in the majority. It's just we haven't made that majority into a force on the ground and to give it political expression. So that's just the one lesson I would take from this is that if they want to talk about returning this to the states and democracy, then let us fight democratically as well.

Now, Brett, I know that you have a lot that you're going to want to say, but before I just unleash you and let you, you know, raise hell for however long you want, let me just throw out a couple more things that might help rev you up a little bit for that. So I did find my other note in this initial draft that I had highlighted. And I referenced that earlier, we hold that Roe and Casey must be overturned. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution,

but any such right must be, quote, deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition, end quote, and quote, implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, end quote. So I already referenced that before, but since I found the quote again, I wanted to bring it up. Now, here's something else that I think might get your blood boiling a little bit more before I, you know, let you go off, Brad. Which is that this has Democrats, you know, the people that are right now saying, why haven't you voted harder? You know, if only it would voted harder, then this wouldn't be the situation that we're in right now. For decades, Democrats have had the opportunity to codify it into law that there is a right to an abortion, a right to abortion. And of course, for the majority of those decades, there was not the political capital and there was not the political ability to do so because of the obstruction that would have taken place from conservative Democrats as well as, of course, Republicans.

However, and this is something that we had put on our Twitter earlier today, I have a clipping from an article, says Democrats have attempted to codify the right to abortion before. In 2007, Barack Obama promised Planned Parenthood that the first thing I'd do as president would be to codify Roe versus Way by signing the Freedom of Choice Act. But it fell by the wayside in 2009 when he said it was not his, quote, highest legislative priority. Now, you have to remember, at the beginning of Obama's first term, not only did he have the majority in both the House and the Senate, he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for five months. Now, five months might not seem like a lot, but he had been campaigning that this was going to be one of the first things that he did. It was right to an abortion and health care. We got Obamacare, which, you know, is what it is. and I know that the listeners of this program have their thoughts about the ACA, Obamacare, most of which we share with you, of course. But also the other pillar, well, I guess he had two other pillars,

close Guantanamo, which of course also didn't happen. But he also was campaigning quite heavily. Day one, I signed Roe versus Wade into law. And then immediately after being in office, he says it's not his highest legislative priority. That opportunity then falls by the way. and ever since then, the Democrats have just been telling us every election that the next election is the most important election in history, because if we lose that, we will lose the right to have an abortion despite having the opportunity to do so in 2009. Okay, Brett, go

ahead. Yeah, so lots of points to make. On that point specifically, we have to understand why this is the case, because that is an issue that they can use to turn out their voters. It actually is a great, not even being hyperbolic. It's a great thing for the Democratic Party machine to have Roe v. Wade overturned because what they can do, just like what they did with Trump, is take a thing, put it in front of you and say, you have to vote for us if you care about this issue, whether it's, you know, in years gone by getting Trump out of office and fighting fascism, or in this case, it'll be like, we have to protect abortion rights. So we're not going to deliver anything materially for you. We're not going to give you health care, child care, action

on climate change anything unions high wages anything at all but you have to vote for us if you care about women right and so they've used that forever it's one of the reasons they didn't act on it because having it out there is a possible issue that could be overturned is very helpful for them when they campaign and its complete dismantling will be even more helpful for them to campaign and you can already see the rhetoric um gearing up from the democratic party machine while you have to vote for us we'll never deliver anything for you not even we'll never even save your reproductive rights but you got to vote for us because these guys are monsters so that that we're going to hear that all the time from here on now um so keep that in mind

and keep an eye out for that um the other thing is the question of democracy and you know i always talk about this because it's so central to the rhetoric of both the right and the left but the liberals in particular save our democracy we have to save our democracy this precious democracy Trump is a threat to democracy. January 6th is a threat to democracy. What we have here is a unelected, unaccountable set of judicial elites that have absolutely no responsibility to any citizen on lifetime appointments, meaning they cannot do anything that would get them kicked out of that position, put in there, three of them put in there by the most unfavorable, now Biden's giving them a run for his money, but up to that point, the most unfavorable president in an amendment. American history, put three people stole one from Obama and then put the other two on the court to take away a right that 70% in poll after poll, depending on how you word it, 60 to 80% of

Americans across the political spectrum, as Henry said, support. There is nothing democratic about it. This is a fundamentally anti-democratic institution the Supreme Court is. And I think we should make those points very clearly that a bunch of theocratic freaks and black robes get to strip tens of millions of women of a human right. You know, we can talk about constitutional rights and passing laws. I would frame this as a human right because that is fundamentally what it is. And then I want to touch on this point about violence. Because, you know, I think in these days, violence gets overused. Like, if you say something mean and it hurts my feelings,

that's violence. But it's literally violence to forcefully strip women of this fundamental right. And their right to basically women's health care is being taken away from them. That is a violent act that will absolutely result in the brutalization and possibly even death of countless women if this is dismantled and it goes illegal in most red states. So that is an act of violence. What will our response be as an act of really self-defense against violence against women in our communities and our families, et cetera? You know, it can't just be, as I've said so many times flag or you know sign waving signing petitions and rage posting online they laugh in our face if that's what it is in 2020 the radical left chased police out of the minneapolis police

headquarters and burned it to the fucking ground um and the the the uh the right they they stormed the capital because their preferred millionaire con man lost a bourgeois election what is the left's response here because it's we have the the people on our side um it is a hundred percent like an average person on the street would be like yeah this is actually insane and so it really is really going to say a lot about the american left um regarding what we can do in the face of this violent attack on women which is how we should frame in and talk about it um there's also this deep fear on the on the supreme court in general of the delegitimization of that institution there's been you know they've they've come out liberal

centrist and right wingers on the court over the last year or two, trying to solidify. This one institution really still works for people. This is still important. We have to support this, right? This is the, but the conservatives on the court are also, they're held by the throat because they came up through these processes and these institutions that meant to get them on the court specifically to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So one of the other conservatives on the court, you can overturn Roe v. Wade, and they probably will, but you're going to dramatically de-legitimize that institution. Or you could strike that down, secure the rights of women, and re-legitimize. Conservatives are going to go in that direction because that's what their whole life is really geared toward. And so it's going to actually contribute to the delegitimization of yet another American institution. And you're talking about the prelude to radical activities or revolutions or collapses or civil wars when institution after institution after institution becomes delegitimized in the average American's eyes. you know, and that's happened on the right because they thought, you know, Trump got the election stolen from them on the left, even before, or not the left, the liberal center, blaming Trump's election on Russia. They're conspiracy theorizing. It's all in service of the dilatimization of the very institutions that put those people in front of our faces and make them elites in the first place. So that's going to be an interesting process to see finally play out. And then the last thing I want to make is a point about class struggle, which is that, and this has been said in many times, is not a unique thing.

thought, but it's one worth reiterating, rich women are going to be fine. You can travel to a different state. You can go to a blue state. You can get on your private jet, fly over here, go to a different country if you fucking want. This is an attack on working and poor women who don't have the opportunity to leave work for a week to travel across the country to get one of these things, let alone the money to be able to do it. And those class dynamics are absolutely essential and need to be reinforced constantly. Even on this issue, it is a, there's a deep class divide. Okay.

And the one last thing I want to say, the first country ever in the history of the world to legalize abortion and make it free was the Soviet Union in 1920 under Lenin. And it took decades and decades and decades for the countries like America to catch up with that. And so again, on this socialist front, women's liberation has always gone hand in hand with the socialist experiments. And there is no socialism without women's liberation. That's been re-articulated from Sankar to Mao and everywhere in between.

And so socialist and communists need to be the loudest, most militant and vociferous voices on this issue in defense of women's human rights. And I think we should harken back to the legacy of the socialist tradition, show how we've always been on the right side of this issue, even when liberals and conservatives and everyone else was on the wrong side of this issue and strip this as much as we can, I think, away from. the liberals and their grandstanding because as we've already pointed out in so many ways, the liberal elites and the Democratic Party got us here. They've used it cynically as a weapon to campaign on and now their actions have consequences in the form of tens of millions of women losing a human right because they wanted to win some shitty elections that they didn't do anything with anyway. And so this is not a liberal. It's the left. This is the reason this is happening. Reject that. Fight against it. This is 100%. You know,

could have been stopped by the Democrats and the Liberals. They chose not to for cynical opportunistic reasons. And here we are. So do not let them take the moral high ground on this issue either. I think that's a really important point. That analysis is excellent, in my view, Brett. And just to return to that issue of the Democratic Party's cynical use of the issue. And, you know, the fact that as Henry pointed out that had many opportunities to put it on the agenda and to embed this right in federal law, you know, through democratic means by, you know, signing, you know, passing and signing that bill. And part of the reason why is because just as you identified the way that they were planning to use this in upcoming elections and the cynical

use of it to force us all to accept corporate establishment Democrats as a result of leveraging just this one kind of right that we must defend, but to leverage it in such a way that it allows them to fundraise, it allows them to galvanize, you know, all kinds of support and to suppress other aspects of a genuine left agenda, you know, for the sake of securing this particular right when they have abandoned really doing anything serious or significant about it and putting it on a different level in law when they had many opportunities to do so and that they ran on it. And they've been running against the conservative court for many years. Now, in some ways, the chickens are you know, coming home to Roos, but they may, you know, try and exploit this and particularly

to fundraise around it. Now, I think... Adnan, let me cut you off for a second. Go ahead. Yeah, I'll let you continue your thought in a second, but you mentioned fundraising. It's very interesting that you mentioned fundraising because I have two specific examples of that right now. So I opened my email. I look in my email. What do I find? Earlier today, there was a mass email that went out from Nancy Pelosi. Hello, this is Speaker Pelosi, and this is my most important email to you ever. We're asking for money because of the attack on Roe versus Wade. Now, the latest email that I just opened my email now, the most

recent email that I have is not from a politician, but is from, you know, your kind of liberal progressive media, democracy now. I have an email from Amy Goodman, dear friend, dissent is essential to the functioning of a democratic society. You count on democracy now for voices. You won't hear anywhere else, those raising deep questions about war and peace demanding an end to our reliance on fossil fuels, fighting for reproductive rights and calling for racial and economic justice around the world. Today, your tax deductible donation to democracy now will be tripled by a generous donor. You know, they're not an establishment outlet, but this plays really well for broad swaths of the liberal left, both within the Democratic Party, as well as

those adjacent to the Democratic Party. So I just wanted to throw that out there because I thought that it was interesting. You mentioned fundraising and two of the more recent emails that I have, one's from Nancy Pelosi saying that Democrats need your money now more than ever, despite the fact that, of course, they're one of the richest institutions in the entire stinking country. And also we have media sources that are, you know, not affiliated with the Democratic Party. And in some ways are also critical of the Democratic Party, but have a, you know, liberal

audience that it plays well to, to say, by donating to us, we will do what we can to protect the right to an abortion in our own way. Now, of course, you know, folks, you can donate to us, but we're not asking for your money as a result of this. Like, we know that people aren't going to be donating to guerrilla history today because of this obscene decision that has been leaked from the Supreme Court. But yeah, just an interesting aside. Anyway, Adnan, sorry for side. It just not at all. I mean, that's just a perfect illustration. of how quickly all of this will fit into the partisan electoral politics that we, you know, need to reframe in many of the ways that Brett was just talking about.

And I think he's onto something here as well. I was thinking, like, you know, this could be a very unpopular decision by the court, given, you know, majority, you know, agreement, consensus on a women's right to choose. And so it does affect the legitimacy of the court in mainstream. opinion. There are already, as we know, recently in the last rounds of federal elections had been discussions about how the court could and needs to be reformed and to make it more democratic, I think it does open up in a more substantial and significant way, you know, possibilities for redefining, you know, the judicial system potentially. It certainly at least

definitely affects the sense of legitimacy of the institution as a whole, and that in itself can also fuel counter-radical revolutionary politics. But I guess one other issue here that I'm interested in is that you keep hearing the sort of opinion poll tested. You know, I forget what are they, you know, they've got those groups where they test sort of marketing phrases and things like that, these kind of political, you know, consultants are always doing these kinds of things. And I think they have figured out that saying that abortion should be legal, safe, and rare is a kind of formulation that they think, you know, plays very well in marketing broadly, the politics of supporting women's rights to choose. The Democratic Party, you know, has done absolutely

nothing, especially about the last component of it. If they were really interested in a women's agenda and wanted it to be rare in the sense that it's up to a woman to choose, why wouldn't you support Medicare for all, college for all, living wage, free child care, pass the equal rights amendment? I mean, there's a whole host of things that take the material. question out of, you know, if we want to support women, how about we equalize women in the workplace and we make this genuinely a decision of conscience? It's not a question of material support. This is the problem is that we think of rights as these abstract questions outside of, you know, this is the whole problem with bourgeois, liberal, democratic politics

is because, you know, what our human rights, as Brett, you know, mentioned, are treated as isolated separate components outside of the social conditions in which choices are made. Like, you are not free to make, you know, true freedom. You don't have freedom if you have to work for a living, you know, in a low-paying job and you can't afford to raise a child in, you know, the circumstances that they deserve as a, you know, as the human right of yourself, of the child, et cetera. Like, you know, we just treat this as an abstract right. But if we had a real politics, it was to support women's right to choose, it would be to give everybody the stable supports the other human rights that they also have and see this as a complex of conditions that work together.

And that's the kind of politics that I think we need to have now, if we're going to be confronting this issue, because the Supreme Court is going to go and make this precipitous move to erase this constitutional right, is that we have to fight in that class politics way to say, we want a women's rights to choose, and we want every woman to be able to make that choice, not because they are under pressure, because they will never be able to get a career, they will never achieve their aspirations for an education, and because they have to, you know, make this decision just out of the sense that it's financially not possible. We should be able to support everybody to make an appropriate choice for them and give them that possibility. That has material conditions, social conditions, as well as these other kinds of abstract dimensions of choice. Choice isn't real if you are not allowed and not able to, you know, to act without a sense of, with independence. And so I think that's maybe the way in which we can broaden the effort and keep it from just being exploited in this isolated way that,

you know, reinforces partisan established party politics to say, you're for, you know, you have to, you know, vote for this terrible corporate Democrat because we need to fight for a woman's right to choose. Like, well, you've got to do more than just fight for that, okay, in order to really get to achieve a solution here. I think that might be one of the things we need to do to reshape the dialogue and the discussion in response to what is definitely a disastrous, you know, move. It is horrible. It's imperiling women, but we want to fight for women in every capacity, not, you know,

not as workers, as mothers, as, you know, in every capacity and not just in this one. But we will not sacrifice this issue, but we want to expand the realm in which we think of, you know, women's rights, a real feminist. agenda is supporting women in all of these aspects. We know that there's so many, you know, inequalities in the workplace. We know that women, you know, on average, earn less. And so, and, and, and, we know, you know, the reasons why, we know that child care, providing free, you know, child care, you know, is one of the greatest things that we can do to support women. So, let's do all of those things. And let's have a broad-based agenda here, you know, in confronting the politics of the

conserved right. There's the same reason why they're against all of those things, too, you know, is because they have a patriarchal, you know, politics of inequality. So we need to confront the entire agenda. Yeah. I'm sorry, to piggyback on that analysis, I think it's really good. And to reiterate that point, like, we have to tie the economic stuff with this thing. And, you know, we're not going to vote for a corporate Democrat because the economic policies that you create put women in in these unforgiving and sufferable situations that are impossible to have any real choice. It's the same argument of like, well, you don't like your shitty low wage job. You have the freedom to go choose another one.

What? Go across the street to McDonald's instead of Bergking. It's the same shitty wages, same shitty pay. That argument needs to be put on the forefront. And after we've kicked liberals down and beat their asses, we should also do it to the right because what you see on the right is the rise of this new right or the family oriented right, this argument that, you know, we should have, we should be able to have a one income family. We've got to support families and all this stuff. Okay, if you really believe that shit,

then pursue policies that economically allow people to have families, to have kids. When you have an economy with inflation through the roof, historic levels of inequality, every working class person burden to the gills with debt, student debt, credit card debt, car loan debt. You have an economy that is hostile in every way to regular working class people. Shut the fuck up. about, I want to make this a country where we can have families again, then back it up with economic policies. So both the corporate center of the, of the Democratic Party and the right are complete fucking hypocrites on this issue. And what both of them do is try to, as Adnan said, divide and separate that larger economic discussion from this one and isolate it into a thing.

And so both the liberals and the conservatives are 100% wrong here. And the conservatives are fully hypocritical because when the Democrats abandon the working class, the Republicans are now trying to, through rhetoric, not through policy, appeal to the working class and pretend like we're the working class party now. But all they're going to do is criminalize abortion, not deal with any of the underlying issues of why families are dissolving, why people aren't being able to create families and have kids in a healthy, sustainable way. They're just as much hypocrites as anything else. And then I also want to give listeners some ammunition on this argument that you've already seen and is going to continue to come your way, which is this is

why the left should have voted for Hillary. We've already touched on some of those arguments, but let me make it very clear that that is a shifting of their burden of responsibility. You know, Hillary lost not because a few people on the left didn't get behind her and vote for her. She lost because she was a historically terrible candidate that most Americans did not like and they have dog shit policies that most Americans do not like and you lost to one of the most cartoonish figures in American political history. It is not the fault of the left for not voting for your shitty candidate. It is the fault of you and your party for putting up such a shitty candidate. And so never, ever, ever let the liberal centrist and the Democratic Party hacks

push the burden onto the left. This is the left's fault. Absolutely not in every single way as described for the last several minutes, this is a product of choices that the Democratic Party has made for years coming home to roost finally. So shift that burden back onto them and say, I'm not playing this game where the left is the one that's to blame for this shit. Conservatives are the one doing it and the liberals are the one that have for so long, opportunistically allowed for it to happen and refused to address the economic situation that would make life easier for women in the first place. So yeah, don't deal with that at all. You know, it's really strange that having a feminist icon like Hillary Clinton in a party that

cares about women's right to choose more than anything. It's really strange that she chose an anti-abortion Democrat as her vice presidential candidate in 2016. Like, I don't know. That's totally baffling to me. I mean, feminist icon, right? Hillary Clinton, feminist icon. Maybe if I say it enough times, you know, it'll stick.

Feminist icon, Hillary Clinton. Okay. I want to backtrack a little bit before we get to the closing out part here, which is, Brett, earlier you had mentioned class character of the people that are going to be affected by this. And I think that this is a critical point. We know that the people that are going to be disproportionately impacted by this are people that are in the lowest economic classes and also particularly people that are from minority groups. And we not only know that because of, you know, logic, we also have seen this in historical instances where this has been basically the case where abortion wasn't legal. So let's look in the case of the United States before 1973. So, of course, before 1973, Roe v. Wade was not in place. Abortion was illegal in most of the United States.

However, just because abortion is illegal does not mean that women are not getting abortions. They are just getting unsafe abortions, right? They're going into a back alley. They're finding anybody who will be willing to give them an abortion at whatever cost they can afford and whatever the cost the person will accept. And they're getting whatever the person is willing to do in order for the, you know, to get the pregnancy terminated. And in many cases, this ended up with women being sterilized, crippled. or dead. There is hundreds of thousands of women who over, you know, the decades in the centuries, who were affected detrimentally, either through, you know, sterilization or death,

as a result of botched abortions. Why did these botched abortions happen before 1973? Because they were not legal. If they were legal, they would have had access to safe abortions, but they were not. And who are the women who are going to be desperate, are the women who cannot, As Brett said, go to a different state, you know, pack up their bags, hop in their car, drive for a few hours, take a couple days off of work, get their abortion, recuperate, and then drive back and, you know, act as if nothing was out of place. It is not the lowest class that is able to do this. So turning our focus back to pre-1973, women were having abortions, just dangerous abortions. now i i know many listeners are probably already aware of this but there was an i guess organization an informal organization an underground organization let's say the jane collective so i'm sure that

many of our our listeners have at least heard of the jane collective in passing it started in chicago essentially what it was is um a group of of people that were willing to perform abortions, so they had doctors, like actual doctors working with this organization. The organization would direct them to doctors who would be willing to perform abortions for women. Of course, it was totally illegal. But the results of this organization were that people that went through these channels to try to get a hold of Jane, right, call Jane. When they called Jane and were put in contact with the doctors that were operating through them, the mortality was significantly lower, like women were not being maimed or killed at the

high rates that we were seeing in other forms of illegal abortion at the time. But the reason that I bring up Jane, the Jane Collective, is because what did Jane notice when they started operating their services, which were active between 1969 and 1972. They stopped when they were raided by the FBI and a bunch of the people, I believe FBI and local police, but they were a bunch of the people were arrested and sentenced to prison terms. But what did the doctors and the organizers of the Jane Collective notice about the people who were coming in? Almost universally, they were poor and disproportionately they were of minority background.

This is because it was not illegal to have an abortion everywhere in the United States. And as Brett very rightly said earlier, the upper class women that made a mistake, they got pregnant. They didn't want to carry the pregnancy to term. They had the ability to go to other places and have abortions legally. It is the lower class women who are disproportionately from minority backgrounds that were not able to do this. And the Jane Collective documented this very nicely. They showed, you know, the people who are coming to us are all poor, not all, but almost all poor and disproportionately minority. If we're looking at today, we can see this as a historical paradigm, a period of time where there's large swathes of the country that abortion

is not legal in. If Roe versus Wade is overturned, there will be, again, large portions of the United States where abortion is not legal, particularly in the South as well as up in parts of the Midwest. In that case, we will see lower class women seeking abortions locally, illegally because they cannot afford to do anything else. And when that happens, we are inevitably going to see an incredible increase in mortality among otherwise completely, you know, normal, innocent girls just getting killed because they don't have that access to abortion because of this obscene decision. And then the only other thing that I want to mention before I turn it back over to you guys,

And I guess we've been going for a while. So closing thoughts for each of us after I make this final point. Brett, you also mentioned that the Soviet Union was the first country that legalized abortion all the way back in 1920. It was one of the first things that they did, really. They were still fighting the civil war at that point when they legalized abortion. But if we look globally, what do we see when we have socialist states or socialist parties governing states? We see that those states have the strongest abortion rights, and we see that they have earlier adoption of abortion rights when compared to other areas of geographical proximity and cultural background. Because, of course, if we're going to compare the Soviet Union in 1920 to, I don't know, like Chile in 1920, like what's the point of comparing these two contexts?

It's more important to compare a socialist state in Eastern Europe to a capitalist state in Eastern Europe or a socialist state in Latin America to a capitalist state in Latin America. These are the sorts of comparisons that actually makes sense. And when we make these sorts of comparisons, we see that almost, almost universally, the socialist states and the socialist parties that govern states have stronger protections for abortion and they have earlier adoption of rights of abortion. Pretty much the only exception that comes to mind is Chichescu in Romania who had absolutely draconian policies regarding abortion in an effort to boost the population of the country. I think that that came in in like 1966 and it went on for decades, absolutely horrible policies there. But beyond that exception of Choshescu, basically everywhere else we see much better rights in the socialist countries, compared to relatively similar countries in every other way besides the form of government that's governing the country.

So I guess let's go around final thoughts. Brett, why don't you take it away? Sure. And just to add to that is like not only was the socialist states the most progressive in the actual legalization of the act itself, but also they did exactly what me and Adnan were just talking about, which is also provide that broader network of social and economic policies that help women become more independent. And we've talked about that on Rev. Left with Kristen Godsey, the ethnographer of Eastern Europe and talked about how women in particular flourished under socialist states, even imperfect ones, and how the reinterents of capitalism and the destruction of the social and the privatization of those social services devastated women in those areas after the fall of socialism.

So that's important too. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention really quick is my sort of final thing to say is not only, as Henry is saying, are these tragedies of women losing their lives, of abortions being pushed underground, going to have. happen and all of the health implications that that has, there's also, as we've seen with some of these prelude laws like in Texas, this brutal criminalization of women as well. So those that don't die, those that don't get bodily damage or whatever are still going to run the risk of being ratted out by their pro-life neighbor or their conservative uncle or whoever the fuck and then maybe have to face prison sentences. So you are destabilizing life for women, really making it hard on every level just to exist and have control over your own body and your own life.

So not only do you have to worry again about the health implications, but the carceral and, you know, criminal implications of these acts are going to be ratcheted up because nothing that the reactionaries like more is to see people they don't like suffer. And women who go out and try to get abortions are going to, if they survive, are going to be thrown into a prison cell if the right has their full, you know, choice on the matter. And so that should be woven into calculus as well. Yeah. I don't have much more to add on that. Brett and you both made, I think, some key, key points. All I would say is just further extending the last thing Brett was saying about the cruelty that's involved here is a conscious cruelty. Modern far right politics actually takes pleasure in the pain of others. This is the most reactionary anti-human, anti-compassion. kind of politics. And it gives the lie to many who tried to walk back or, you know,

where Trump said, you know, out loud what is known in the movement by just talking about the, you know, legal consequences of the policy positions that they hold. He said during the campaign, you know, that, you know, perhaps, you know, women who do have, you know, abortions, if we make it illegal, should face, you know, consequences, legal consequences. And we're seeing this coming into law in the laws that you were just talking about in Texas, these kinds of movements to criminalize, you know, women protecting, you know, their rights, making difficult choices.

And that's just indicative, it seems to me, of the whole overall. politics that we have to stand against, you know, we are for life. We're for good lives being lived the way that they should be, you know, with dignity, with respect, with social supports so that we can all flourish and achieve our potential. That's what we stand for. And I think it's the cruelty that is so disturbing to see. And but we've seen it in every aspect of their politics. Look at what, you know, the kids in camps, you know, at the border. This was paraded in front of them. They took joy in some sense out of seeing this.

It was a politics of cruelty. Now, you know, let's blame the liberals, you know, that they, they've done nothing to dismantle, you know, ice and, you know, the horrible situation at the border. They just try and ignore it, you know, when it's inconvenient politically. But there is a, you know, the far right actually takes joy out of witnessing the pain of those they disagree with. This is disgusting, and we have to put a stop to it. But it's not going to happen just by, you know, falling in line as we've been discussing with liberal bourgeois style imagining of political rights. We need a social program of transformation that encompasses us all in our full human selves, in our social realities. men, women, black, brown, and so forth.

So I don't really have anything specific further to say on this. I think the agenda is clear. We've got a fight on our hands, but this is the fight that we're going to have to embrace. And it's not the fight of liberal, corporate, you know, democratic establishment. It is the social basis for true revolutionary and radical politics that is happening, really democratize our society. so you know let's get ready this is going to be a fight yeah love that from both of you guys I don't have anything else that I really want to say because I feel like I've been less articulate than usual which is really saying something because I am so filled with rage right now like

it's taking every fiber of my being to not just explode right now but if I exploded the listeners would have a very very ugly recording on their hands so I've done what I can to keep myself somewhat in check. What I will say as I, before we do the readout, is that what can we do about this? Do not donate to the Democratic Party. That's what you're going to see. We talked about fundraising. See, I'm starting to explode already. Okay. Calm down, Henry. Do not donate to the Democratic party. When Nancy Pelosi sends you an email saying, look, we're the Democrats. We stand for abortion rights, send us money so that we can protect you and your rights. The Democrats have had the opportunity to do so for decades and they've done nothing. They're using this cynically

as a ploy in order to get more money into their party's pockets. We'll be diplomatic and saying to their parties' pockets. But don't donate to the Democrats. Don't donate to anything that's affiliated with the Democrats. The Democrats have had their chance. They're not the ones that are going to be making the difference in this right now. What we can do right now, because it looks almost certain that Roe versus Wade is going to be overturned right now, right? It hasn't officially been done yet because this is just a draft, but it is upcoming, right? This official decision is upcoming. What we can do is not rely on the Democrats. The Democrats have the House, they have the Senate, they have the presidency, but they can't do anything about it right

now their time has come and gone. What we need to do is to raise hell in whatever way that we can wherever you are. So my opportunity to do so is pretty limited. I'm living in Russia where even though it's a super conservative socially and also pretty economically as well, a very conservative country, the right to abortion is really, really strong here. Like basically the only impediment to you getting an abortion here is you have to listen to a very old conservative woman scolding you in a consultation before you get your abortion done. Like, that's literally the only impediment to abortion here. There's not much I can do.

Like, what, I go out into the streets in the middle of Kazan Russia and say, darn you, US, what are you doing? Like, I can't do that. Look where you are. Look for organizations that have strategies in place for what they can do materially, both within your community, as well as activism, to get the word out outside of your community. band together with these organizations and do your part.

I'm doing what I can here, but I'm limited. Do not donate to the Democratic Party. Let me reiterate that point one more time. Find something that you can actually do in the real world to raise hell and let everyone know what you're feeling because that is the only way that there is going to be any sort of seed change. This decision, the time for blocking it is come and gone, but we have to raise hell now. in order for the counter-offensive that we must make in the near future.

So that's my attempt at maintaining somewhat diplomatic tenor. We'll see how the listeners respond to that. Anyway, Brett, how can the listeners find you and all of the excellent work that you are doing on all of your podcasts? And I will mention that your local NPR affiliate interview that you did recently was excellent. The listeners really need to check that out. Thank you. Yeah, for everything I do, you can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, and that has everything that we absolutely do. And, you know, this is a scary time. So I just want to send, you know, heartfelt love and solidarity to everybody out there who is worried about the new precarity that's going to be forced upon them and into their life.

The only way that we can get through this is with solidarity, with sticking together. And I hope to see that the left really can rise to the moment. Because if we can't do it now, when the fuck are we going to be able to do it? So love and solidarity to everybody out there. Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other podcast that you do? Well, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein. And also check out the Mudgellis podcast, M-A-J-L-I-S. And I highly recommend the listeners to do that. Adnan, what do you have coming up on the Mudge list? Do you know what the next episode will be about yet?

We've got a couple of episodes upcoming. I think maybe one of interest people will be about Urdu poetry and culture. People may have noticed. Pakistan has been somewhat in the news because of recent tumult in their electoral situation. The president lost his majority and Imran Khan, a populist sort of anti-imperial figure with problems. but, you know, and their loss of massive protests right now taking place, and there have been allegations of U.S. interference in their election or in their political process. So people might be interested to learn a little bit more about Pakistan that you might not

know very much about, Udu poetry, and culture. Looking forward to that. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995-H-H-U-C-1-995. You can follow the show on Twitter. We've been putting out some interesting things on there by going to at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-Skore pod. And, well, I just was complaining about asking people for money. So you can donate to us if you want at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, but don't think that that's solving the problem. That's my caveat for this episode.

You can support the show at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, but we don't do this for the money. And donating the money to this program is not going to be what we need to do. You need to get out and raise hell wherever you are. So on that note, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.