Media Storm - Abortion on trial: Poland and the politicisation of human rights

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Access the episode transcript: https://tinyurl.com/4vphsyps Warning: This episode contains mentions of suicide Justyna Wydrzyñska is appealing a criminal conviction in Poland for sending abortion pills to a desperate woman in an abusive relationship. She joins us in an exclusive interview about feminist solidarity, hope in hard times, and the empty promises of political campaigns.   As almost every country in the world moves to steadily liberalise abortion access and women’s reproductive rights, four male presidents have done the opposite, making radical antidemocratic maneuvers to clamp down on women’s bodily autonomy.   Among them, the USA, where the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and deprived a generation of women of a constitutional right they had always known.   And Poland, where the Law and Justice Party has infiltrated the courts and virtually eradicated legal access to abortion. But October’s historic election overturned their majority, as women and young people flocked to the polls in record numbers. Abortion was centre stage in the campaigns and one woman’s case was at the heart of it all.   As well as Justyna, we hear from Amnesty International UK’s lead for Women’s Human Rights, Chiara Capraro, and US abortion rights activist Renee Bracey Sherman, about worldwide trends and mainstream media misinformation. This episode is brought to you as part of Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign – get involved: https://tinyurl.com/3usebvje   The episode was created by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). The music is by Samfire (@soundofsamfire). Subscribe to our Patreon for access to FOI data, extended video interviews and more: https://www.patreon.com/MediaStormPodcast   Sources Impact of Poland’s 2020 abortion restriction: https://tinyurl.com/2whhc5tf Universal Declaration of Human Rights: https://tinyurl.com/yeykpstx Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise, we're back. We just missed you too much. Did you miss us? Rude. So rude. Anyway, before we start, we just wanted to outline our agenda for 2023 and beyond. As regular listeners know, we just wrapped our third series and are taking a break to begin work on next series investigations.

These investigations will be more ambitious than any before. So if you'd like to and are able to, support us in our off-season period, please subscribe to our Patreon for the price of a coffee per month. We'll put the links in the show notes. We plan to relaunch weekly in a few short months, but in the meantime, don't worry, we have a series of urgent stories like today's, which will be releasing every few weeks. So make sure you turn on your media storm notifications. That'll also give us a chance to weigh in on whatever's in the news agenda and keep you tuned into the most overlooked and most important voices in the story,

the people living it. So if there's anything you see in the news while we're away that makes you wonder, what's Media Storm's take on this? Please email us at MediaStorm podcast at gmail.com and we'll pipe up. Now, on to the topic of today. Today, in partnership with Amnesty International UK, we're bringing you a shocking story about a woman who needs your help, A woman whose experience tells us a lot about the fragile status of bodily autonomy,

the prevalence of patriarchal forces, and the politicization of human rights around the world, and most of all, our need to mobilize and defend them. Something we've seen lately in a few countries, not least the U.S., is bodily autonomy becoming a major political battleground. I believe in the three exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I believe in that. Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win elections. The most stunning example was Poland's parliamentary election a few weeks ago in October.

Polish people turned out this weekend in unprecedentedly gigantic numbers, and they voted out the hard right party that had been the governing party there, the so-called Law and Justice Party. Young voters and women fueled a record-breaking turn. out, and abortion rights were recorded as the second most important reason they were voting after the economy. The result? A fatal blow to the Conservative Law and Justice Party in government. Although President Duda is trying to drag out their final breath as slowly and undemocratically

as possible. Yep. And presuming he fails, which seems inevitable now that the party has neither a majority nor any allies, opposition groups will get the chance to form a new co-economic. coalition government. But at the centre of the abortion debate in Poland, through no will of her own, was one woman, her life and freedom thrown into the political ring. This is an ongoing story with high stakes that requires all of you listening to act and share as part of Amnesty International's Right for Rights campaign,

which aims to harness the power of the people, i.e. you and me, to protect those being persecuted for doing vital human rights. In the next part of this episode, I'll be sitting down with Justina, who'll take us through what she's currently enduring. And then we'll hear from Amnesty International about what it means worldwide and what we all can do to help. Then I'll see you back in the studio as we return to our discussion from Media Storm Series 2 with American abortion rights activist Renee Bracey Sherman to discuss everything around this media storm. The Supreme Court has now overturned Roe v. Wade.

There are very strong emotions on either side of that debate. That's like murdering a person if you think of it. They think that women have an absolute right to bodily autonomy. My personal opinion is that life begins at the point of conception and abortion is markedly in defence. You would make her have that day. They celebrated what they call a win for life. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally

asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's special episode. Abortion on trial. Poland and the politicisation of human rights. Poland, the land of vodka, Marie Curie, and delicious dumplings, but unfortunately, a country that has seen some turbulence in terms of human rights,

rights which have been steadily corroded by the Law and Justice Party and its efforts to exert influence over the courts during its time in power. Poland's Constitutional Court, turning back the clock on abortion rights. And the party has used that influence to launch a sustained attack on sexual and reproductive rights, particularly access to abortion. In October 2020, after failing to do so democratically in Parliament, the government turned to the Constitutional Tribunal, a court effectively under its control, to issue a decision that virtually eliminated legal abortion in Poland.

They removed one of only three grounds on which abortion could be obtained, the grounds that had made possible 90% of all legal abortions in the country up to that point. This decision marked Poland as one of the only countries in the world rolling back on reproductive health rights. Within a year, 34,000 women were known to have sourced abortions illegally or abroad. At least six women have died after doctors. doctors failed to terminate pregnancies that posed a fatal risk to their lives, and one woman has been criminalised for answering a cry for help. A warning, the upcoming interview includes references to domestic violence, suicide and self-abortion. I'm 49. I am a mother of three. I'm also a

chemist, and I've been working many, many years as an engineer. This is me. I'm sitting down with Justina Vidrinska, a human rights defender and doula who accompanies people through abortions in Poland. It's a risky game. She is currently appealing a criminal conviction for helping a pregnant woman access abortion pills. Her reasons for doing this were deeply personal. In 2006, I found myself in unwanted pregnancy. My situation, my marriage was quite tough. I've been going through home violence, and I didn't want my kids to watch the violence and hear the violence. So I decided that if I keep there for pregnancy, I was stuck in this marriage. I was stuck in this home.

It was very quick decision to get abortion. Like, I didn't have any doubts about this. But the problem for me was how to do it, because I didn't have a lot of money to travel abroad and I couldn't leave my house because I have to tell my husband why I'm leaving the house. So I started to look in the internet because I have heard that there is an organization which sends some pills I can use. But nobody knows about this organization.

Is it real? And the cost was quite high. So I was afraid to take this risk. But it was almost 12 weeks. So then I ordered them for myself. I have in my head a lot of fears that I will have a heavy bleeding, I will lose a conscience, I will be in the toilet, laying down on the floor and my kids could not open these doors. And I didn't learn them how to call for the ambulance.

So really, I was very, very afraid. But when I went through all those, I felt, okay, physically it was very easy. There was nothing to worry about. So I started to share this experience with other women who were so afraid like I was. And I met a lot of women like I was at the time, really, a lot of. Yistina escaped her abusive marriage and set up a grassroots feminist network to offer funding and information to women in Poland to access medically safe abortions. We've been talking about our feelings without any taboo.

People sometimes feel joy, they sometimes feel sad. or sometimes regrets and it's okay for us to feel all those. Every feeling is actually okay. It's part of a wider European collective called abortion without borders. At all times, she kept a small stock of the pills she'd used for her own abortion in case of emergency. And as it happened, one such emergency came along. Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.

A global pandemic that saw borders closed, an international post intercepted. At abortion without borders, alarms went off. What would women do who needed abortions now? And a message arrived from a woman will call Anya that would set in motion a chain of events that would change Eustina's life. They received a message from a woman who was close to 12 weeks. She told them that she had a visit in a clinic, but she had to cancel it. And the reason why she canceled this visit was that her husband,

he know about her decision about doing the abortion. He said to her if she leaves the country, he would report the police. So she was afraid about her safety. And she wrote to this organization that she's very desperate. She really wants to stop the pregnancy because of this partner who is controlling her, who is checking her email, everything on her phone. She is so desperate that if we don't help her, she would kill herself.

To Justina, the similarities between her story and Anya's were too much to ignore. She took some of her leftover pills, packaged them up and posted them with urgent delivery. But they never reached their intended recipient. Her husband somehow got this information about her being supported by somebody and he followed her to this post office and noticed that she's having some kind of package. He called the police and the police took by force the pills from her. And on this envelope it was my phone number. I had to put it to use this very fast delivery. This is why the police got to me.

Months passed and nothing happened. Yistina thought the authorities must have just lost interest. But behind the scenes, a warrant was being secured, a political campaign being designed. And then on the 1st of June 2021, things began to accelerate at terrifying speed. I was alone. It was 3pm. I had to take my dog for a walk.

and suddenly there is somebody knocking at the doors. Three people standing, one woman, two men. They said, please give us all abortion pills you have at home. And I told them, I have to call to my lawyer. The police immediately took this phone away from me, and they didn't let me to call to my lawyer. And they also took all the computers I have at home, computers of my kids,

even if I try to explain them, okay, this is the online school. If you take those computers, my kids will not be able to join the lessons, and they were like, we don't care. It was the moment I realized that the situation will get very serious. In November 2021, so the same year, I went to the prosecutor and I got two charges.

One was because of helping in abortion by sending pills and another one that I distributed pills without the proper license. Of course, it was not true because I didn't take any money for this. So we've been very surprised about this, like very surprised. There were actually a few things that raised the suspicions of Eustina and her lawyer. When we noticed what kind of judge was assigned to the case, we knew that there is influence from the government, from this anti-abortion government, anti-abortion ministry of justice. This case really will be political.

I was afraid, especially when we're very close to the election year, that maybe they will have to have an example of a person who is abortion activist receiving a jail sentence because of her work. I knew that there will be no fair trial, there will be no justice in this court. guilty of facilitating an abortion, cleared of illegal drug peddling. And in what Justina credits to a wave of international pressure, from UN special rapporteurs, medical groups, and representatives of several embassies, the sentence did not include prison. Eight months' community service. So was she relieved?

Hearing the verdict, I was like very angry, really like very angry. They actually wanted to show, okay, she's punished, but the punishment is not so big. So, you know, this is not a big deal. The same day, I got a conviction, the judge received a promotion to the court of appeal. This is not a real court. This is not a real justice. This is not a real judge. This is the political game.

Eustina, as you've pointed out, this is all happening in the run-up to a parliamentary election. Well, that election has now happened and the Law and Justice Party lost its majority, opening the space for opposition groups in the civic coalition to form a new government. Did you, during the election campaigns, feel that you were used by politicians, not just those in government, but those trying to bring the government down? I must be very honest, I felt used by the politicians from the civic coalition. In the elections, they've been talking about my case, giving my example, they promised about legalization of abortion, but comparing it right now, it's unbelievable, really unbelievable.

Still, we don't know if the new government will protect abortion activists. We know also that among the opposition, there are two parties who actually are against abortion. And right now, there is no abortion. written in the coalition agreement. Politicians give only promises. If you'd known then what you know now, that you would be prosecuted and convicted for trying to help Anya to get an abortion,

would you do it again? Yes, no doubts. Because I've been in the court, I have heard Anya's story because she gave a testimony. When the police took the pills from her, she bought a folicator. this is the silicon tube on one end there is a balloon and if you put it into your cervix you pump it with water she used it by herself in her toilet so she ends with sepsis and of course she miscarriage but really she escaped from a death

If I knew in the moment that the police took the pills and she has this idea about using the folicator to stop this pregnancy, I would risk again and again send her pills and even brought those pills to her personally and stay with her till the moment she used them. because I don't want anyone to go through the situation of loneliness, no regrets. Oh my gosh, that must have been awful to hear. Yes, it was a very awful story to hear when she was giving the testimony. I was crying those three hours because it was so hard to listen was what this person was going through. Do you think that her testimony swayed the trial at all in your favour? No, absolutely. I don't think so. Do you ever feel afraid of speaking out of the backlash that you could face from those opposing the right to abortion?

I was at the beginning afraid that my kids would be harassed, but my kids were very brave, especially my daughter who was doing a lot of TikToks about my case, and also telling and pointing that if you need help, she's there. Of course there are people who are against, but this is not the first time I meet the, this kind of people. They will still need abortions maybe in some point of their life. Knowing my case, knowing me, knowing abortion without borders, knowing abortion dream team, in the moment of their unwanted pregnancy, they will know whom they should contact to get this information about support. So, okay.

Eustina's case is one woman's story, but it raises alarms about threats to bodily autonomy, compromises to judicial independence and the politicisation of human rights in Poland and beyond. Abortion is absolutely a question of human rights, the right to health, to life, to privacy, to dignity, to be free from torture and true and degrading treatment. It has to do with economic rights,

with the right to family life and with the right to equality before the law and the right not to be discriminated against. And the other thing is that human rights are universal, are indivisible and interlinked and therefore taking away the possibility of vaccines abortion as detrimental consequences for our rights and freedoms. Which is why her case has attracted the attention of Amnesty International, a global NGO whose stated goal is a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights

enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yes, hi everyone. My name is Kiara Capraro. I'm the program director for gender justice at Amnesty UK, which means I lead all of our work on women's rights and LGBT rights. Hi, Kiara. So we've just heard that Poland drastically rolled back on access to legal abortion in the country. How does this compare to trends in other countries around the world? Yeah, it's quite interesting because, of course, Poland was a very high-profile case. But actually, the trend is towards the liberalization. So Poland is part of only just four countries that restricted us access to abortion

since 1994, USA, El Salvador and Icaragua, as well as Poland. But we know that restricting abortion doesn't make it go away. It makes it unsafe. And it might be surprising, but there's basically no different in abortion rates between countries where abortion is highly restricted and where it is broadly available, the big difference is the percentage of abortions that are unsafe. But is there a risk if we paint these four countries as aberrations that we take it for granted in other countries that access to abortion is a given right? Yeah, absolutely. For example, in the UK, I don't think that many people know that

actually abortion is still a crime, except for Northern Ireland, which now has decriminalized abortion, I had a different legislation. But basically, abortion and the procuring of drugs or instruments to cause abortion is still an offence under a law and abortion can carry a life sentence. Surprised by this, so was I. But you can learn all about the state of UK reproductive rights after this episode by scrolling down our feed to the episode post-Rovey Wade. How safe are UK abortion rights? So, for example, last June, a mother of three was found guilty because she took abortion pills beyond the legal limit.

The judge said that she had excellent references for her character. She already had three children who loved her and depended on her. Regardless, he sentenced her to prison. This case should really make people focus their minds on the fact that we cannot take abortion and we cannot take the broader control of our reproductive life for granted. Let's look a bit more closely at the USA now, since the rest of the world does tend to look at the USA, and in this case, they're going against the grain. The Supreme Court has now overturned Roe v. Wade.

In June last year, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which was a landmark piece of legislation that had made access to abortion a federal right across the country. In 11 states, abortion is already effectively banned. This map shows the 17 states that currently have some kind of abortion ban. This paved the way for individual states to introduce severe restrictions and sometimes outright bans on abortion. What does this all tell us about the global threat to reproductive rights? How do we understand the forces at play here? I think it's important to know that 62% of adults in the US think that abortions should be legal in all or most cases.

And this has not changed post the reversal of Robbie Wade. So this decision was made by the Supreme Court and wasn't made for any democratic process. The thing is that the legal environment and how judges and legislator interpret the law is all. sensitive to political context of a country. And we know that there are extremely well-funded actors that are pursuing this agenda of cramping down on people's reproductive autonomy using especially the courts. So, for example, an organization like the Alliance for Defending Freedom.

All I just wanted to do was just share the gospel, you know, share the good news with other people, and they came and stopped me. Which is behind a lot of the restrictions to abortion in the US, but is also active in Europe and Africa as well, where they are promoting and funding the anti-LGB movement. And I think it's something really important to understand who this opposition are, where they come from,

how they are funded, what their tactics are. So these kind of organizations are coming, for women and gender diverse people and that means that unless we organize intersectionally, we're vulnerable. Bodily autonomy, our right to make choices about our own bodies, faces different threats around the world.

Scroll through media storms feed and you'll find a few. Abortion access, yes, but also the right to die and the right to healthcare for trans people. In these episodes, We dive into those questions in much more detail. But this episode is about Justina and undoing the injustice against her, which takes us onto Amnesty's Right for Rights campaign. You'll find a link in the show notes.

Yeah, so Eustina's conviction, of course, was unjust and we wanted to be overturned. So what people can do is to write the prosecutor general asking to overturned Justina's conviction and also to refrain from bringing further charges against her. So that's the lobbying part. And then there is the solidarity part. We know that sharing solidarity and support is really, really important for people like Eustina and other human rights defenders. So you can send a message of solidarity and hope to Eustina.

Be creative. You can use art. You can use short videos. and we encourage you to share it on social media using the hashtags I am Justina and W4R23, which is the right-for-right campaign of amnesty. At MediaStorm, we bring you stories from people at the heart of the debates playing out in our current affairs. But we also look at how the mainstream media report on those debates and ask what those affected think the media could do better.

In our earlier abortion episode that followed the Roe v Wade ruling, we were joined by US activist Renee Bracey Sherman. She offered scathing insight into the misinformation infecting mainstream coverage of abortion and the ways in which the media manipulate debate. We'll play that next. That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. When you support Movember, you're not just fundraising.

You're showing up for the men you love. Your dad, your brother, your partner, your friends. It isn't just a men's issue. It's a human one. That's why Movember exists. To change the face of men's health. From mental health and suicide prevention to prostate and testicular cancer research and early detection, Movember is tackling the biggest health issues facing men today.

Join the movement and donate now at Movember.com. Welcome back to the studio and to MediaStorm, a news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. This week, we're looking at abortion, the situation in the UK and across the pond, and how reproductive rights are reported on, and with us is a very special guest. She is the founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people, who have abortions. The writer and reproductive justice activist has been hailed as the Beyonce of Abortion Storytelling. Plus, she's the co-author of Countering Abortion Splaining. Out soon, so keep an eye open. It's Renee, Bracey Sherman. Renee, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. It's both early and also I've been at the rally, so my voice is a little rough, so sorry to everyone. But I have to say, I love doing UK interviews because I I love the way British people say abortion. Does it make it more palatable to talk about it? No, it just feels so light and refreshing. I just, I don't know, I love it. Yeah, I wouldn't use the words light and refreshing for what this podcast is going to talk about. Yeah, laugh while you can.

Well, let's talk about how abortion is framed in the mainstream media. A big question is, is abortion reported on as more controversial than it actually is? In the UK, nine out of ten people are pro-abortion. By age 45, nearly one-third of all women in the United States will have had an abortion. Do articles fail to mention how common abortion is and how broad the support is for it? I mean, Renee, you coined the phrase, everyone loves someone who had an abortion. Yeah, I mean, this is what my work centers around. Abortion is extremely common and it's actually extremely popular.

Pick any president, abortion is more popular than it. Over 80% of the American public believes abortion should be legal. Can you just explain that statistic over 80% of the U.S. population think abortion should be legal? Where's that data coming from? Because that is not the impression that we would get from the 50-50 debate we're seeing in the media. Well, that's what's wild about it, right? So on Fox News, they asked their viewers, did they want Roe to be overturned? And over half said, no.

Like, this is the Trump TV station. And still, we need a pro-life and a pro-choice. voice discussing this debate on every show. As if it's a 50-50. You'll notice the polling. They asked the question, should abortion be legal in? And then they'll say no cases, only a few cases, some cases, most cases. A good like usually 50, 60% say most cases. And then the other 20, 30% is made up from like those people that are saying some cases. So that's where it's like you get the majority, right? But what I think it's frustrating. The majority of this country doesn't understand who has abortions and why. They think that every abortion is either somebody being slutty or a 14-year-old being raped.

There's like nothing in the middle. And they also have a lot of judgment around those of us who are just like slutty, which shout out to us. It's fine. Like, it's okay. I run an organization with people who've had abortions. We share our stories. And the whole goal was to change the way we're portrayed in the news because when I started doing this work a decade ago, I would watch the news. I'd read articles and it was always people talking about abortion and no one was saying that they had one. What would it look like if we change the conversation to include the stories of people have abortions? And here's how my story is actually going to challenge the preconceived notions that you have about abortion. The stereotypes and stigma that the anti-abortion movement has

pushed the fact that the majority of characters on television and film that have abortions are white, they're young, they're teenagers. The majority of people who have abortions in their 20s, they already have children, they're people of color, and they're poor. You're getting this misinformation, even through well-meaning depictions. And so that's what my work focuses on is changing that conversation. We love that. And that's why we have you here. Because of what you do it, we testify. And what we do at MediaStorm is try and center lived experience voices in the conversation. And with abortion, the conversation is so skewed, it seems, away from the actual experience of abortion, the experience of choice, away from lived experience and towards

politics. You know, is this a conversation that should have fewer political voices and more medical voices and more lived experience voices? To me, it feels really simple. You would never put someone who is a doctor on a heart surgery up in a debate with someone who's literally never opened a medical textbook. And yet that is what happens constantly. The majority of the episodes we've done on these minority groups, they all have some form of that both sides narrative. I have to tell the story. I was working at a national newspaper here in the UK and I wrote a and created a video about these amazing activists who help get women and people who need abortion safely into the clinics

and they shield them from anti-abortion protesters outside the clinics, this is in America, calling them murderers and sinners, etc. These activists, they were really young, they were teenagers and they used TikTok in a really innovative way to do this. When I submitted this story, I got told I had to get the other side. And they said, no, you must interview these anti-abortionists who are calling women murderers and whores. And you must interview them and get their side

and interview them for the same amount of time. that you interviewed these activists and I refused and the piece was pulled but if I was at that time a younger less experienced journalist maybe I would have been forced to include that side and then the problem is then medical voices people have lived experience they often get pushed aside for this both sides debate I recently had a debate with a media outlets in the United States they're a huge morning television show they wanted to put someone who's had an abortion up against someone who had an abortion and regretted their abortion which i want to be clear i believe that people have abortions whether they regret them or not are able to share their stories um that's their experience but i

explained to them in the way they were planning to do it it's just not accurate it makes it look like it's 50-50. And we actually have data and it's 97 to 3. Even in that 3% of people who regret their abortions, it's not necessarily that they still want it to be illegal. So really, it's like 99 to 1. And so you're positioning it as 50-50 and that's actually just bad journalism. Absolutely. It's not just in media. It goes as far as the halls of Congress because in the middle of May, after the leak, there was a hearing the House Judiciary Committee in our Congress. And so one of the storytellers that I work with testified about having an abortion and then we had an abortion provider. The third

witness that sat at the table in the room was the president of a very prominent anti-abortion organization. She testified that she believes that there's an abortion clinic in Washington DC and when they get rid of the products of consumption, like the medical waste, the way you would any blood, tissue, whatever, anything else, like any hospital, sometimes they go to incinerators because it's biohazard. She believes that incinerator company that they, that a lot of hospital in the country use, that is being used to power the lampposts in Washington, D.C. I wish I was making this up. Bodies thrown in medical waste bins and in places like Washington, D.C., burned to power the lights of the city's homes and streets.

Let that image sink in with you for a moment. The next time you turn on the light, think of the incinerators. And so this is the type of person who gets quoted equally in equal amount of time as I do, someone who's had an abortion, who actually understands the medical aspect of it. Yeah, this is the fallacy. the mainstream media of what it means to get both sides of the story. Both sides means both political sides. The tick-bock exercise of impartiality in the media and scarily apparently in Congress is the left side and the right side. But not everything is a political issue and that's what Helena

and Renee, you've both just pointed to with those pretty disturbing examples, is that actually maybe getting all sides of the story as a journalist on abortion means the side of someone who's undergone abortion, the side of someone who is a medical expert, the side of a social worker, but not necessarily the left side and the right side. I think this hyper politicization of abortion does often mean that the language that reporters use, it means that this kind of anti-choice rhetoric does find its way into articles. And a lot of anti-choice language is very emotive. For example, unborn children or they call fetuses babies. Honestly, I think even the term pro-life is sneakily emotive.

Like, abortion is almost always framed as a debate between pro-life and pro-choice. But the term pro-life when you're talking about abortion is quite frankly bullshit. Because if you were really pro-life, right, you'd introduce gun safety laws. So children literally stop dying in schools. or you would have universal health care or you would take action on climate change which probably is going to wipe out a lot of children in the future or you'd make childcare affordable

or when there was a shortage of baby formula you would fix that or you would implement consistent free school meals which was a big topic here in the UK. You'd address the suicide crisis in the trans community and make their lives better. So I would really, really urge mainstream news media outlets to not use the term pro-life without quotation marks around it

or instead to call it, call it what it is, like call it anti-abortion, call it anti-choice. The point of them using pro-life is because what is the opposite of pro-life? It's anti-life as if we somehow hate life. And they will say that. They'll be like, they hate life. They're trying to stop life. So yeah, stop calling them pro-life. But all also ask them the follow-up questions. What does it mean to make something illegal? What are the punishments that you support for people who have abortions?

They don't do anything to make sure people have safe pregnancies. And they also do nothing about the facts that there are so many pregnant people in jail in the United States right now who are shackled during labor. There's no plan to increase access to food for poor families. That hearing I mentioned where the woman went on and on about fetuses lighting the lampposts. That hearing, the members of Congress badgered the abortion provider witness and the

abortion storyteller witness and the legal witnesses for hours. Right after that hearing, they went to go vote on a bill that would increase the supply of baby formula. Every single one of them voted no. Renee Bracey Sherman, thank you so much for joining us on Media Storm. Before you go, where can people follow you and do you have anything to plug or shout out? Folks can follow my organization. We testify online. We testify.org. We testify on Facebook and Instagram and at abortion stories on Twitter. You know, donate to your local abortion fund. Talk about your abortion. Talk about what's happening.

really just show up with love and support for people having abortions. That's all I ask. Thank you for listening. If you can't wait until the next episode to hear our voices, then head over to our feed. We dive into those questions in much more detail. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast, and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helen Awadier, and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover or who you'd like us to speak to.

Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Malinson. It came from the House of the Guilty Feminist and is part of the ACAS creator network. The music is by Samfire. Thank you.