Someone Knows Something - S7 E6: Mississippi

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

David heads to Mississippi, a key state that is currently attempting to restrict access to abortion through legislation. David visits the only abortion clinic in the state, known as "Pink House," and speaks to the workers and activists on the frontlines of the fight to protect reproductive rights. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/someone-knows-something-the-abortion-wars-transcripts-listen-1.6736516

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Watch both episodes now on cbc.ca slash Via Rail. Paid content with Via Rail Canada. This is a CBC Podcast. The following episode contains mature subject matter. Please take care. I don't see my uncle ever walking away from a fight. He hated the idea that people were trying to bully him out of doing his job. And so I think if there was any way for him to continue providing abortions,

he would have continued doing it probably the next day. I mean, just to show him. Talking to Amanda Robb about her uncle, Dr. Bart Slepian, had Bart not been killed, he might have returned to work, though the Canadian doctors who were shot and injured all struggled with that because of their injuries. Bart's murder left abortion providers everywhere afraid for their safety. Meanwhile, the anti-abortion movement began to change their strategies. The same wing of the anti-abortion movement, the people that are strategic and thinking about waste and legal access to the procedure, thought about doing it in the states, state laws. And they're different, state to state.

State laws are also faster, easier, and cheaper to change than federal laws. And increasingly, red, Republican states are more likely these days to move forward anti-abortion legislation. Now there is a spot in this country, I mean a huge one, that stretches from North Dakota in the north to the bottom of Texas in the south to Kansas, maybe Missouri in the west, and Indiana in the east. And it is, in some of those places, impossible to get an abortion. Right now in Texas, you can't get one after six weeks. And in Mississippi, they've outlawed it at 15 weeks,

but that's before the Supreme Court. To find out what exactly is going on in the U.S., how we get from violence and shootings 20 years ago to looming Supreme Court decisions, I decide to drive south. Maybe understanding where the movement is today will help my investigation into its past and where it might be headed.

Two kilometers, keep left onto I-59 south. I'm David Ridgen, and this is Someone Knows Something, Season 7, Episode 6, Mississippi. It's heading into Mississippi through Meridian. It's a rainy February, 2022, 14 degrees. Seems like I'm bound to this place somehow. I'm here to visit the last remaining abortion clinic in the state. It's about a 19-hour drive from Toronto to Jackson, Mississippi.

Once you enter the state, traffic gets notably quieter. And at night, when I arrive, I note again to myself that the highways are some of the most lightless that I've experienced in the US, but the stars seem to shine brighter for it. Six hours sleep, and I'm up the next morning and head to what is known here here as the pink house. Just pulling into the clinic. Pink stucco with white stripes. Prominent no trespassing signs around the building. Black plastic. Big lights, cameras. Gonna go in and meet with Shannon Brewer,

who's the director. Hello, I'm good, is Shannon here? Okay. Hi. Thanks for doing this. You must have seen me come in. I've come after hours, and Shannon's standing in the now-empty waiting area of the small clinic next to the reception desk. She's wearing a leopard-print blouse with a silver dragonfly pendant hanging from her neck. She waves me over, and I follow her into a nearby office.

The room is covered in bright colors and art, but what dominates is the enormous flat screen that hangs on the wall beside the desk. On it, static views sent from 11 security cameras mounted around the building, inside and out. As we talk, Shannon can't keep her eyes off the monitor. Yeah, I don't know how to not watch it because that enables me to know what's going on at all times. Before I get into anything else, I want to understand what happens at the clinic level. How does the process work for patients? Normally they'll schedule an appointment and then there's a two-visit process because

Mississippi has a 24-hour waiting period between your first visit and your second visit. When they come for their first visit, they have to have an ultrasound done to see how far along they are. And they have to get their lab work done and there's a counseling session with the doctor and then they do a one-on-one session with the doctor. Well at the first visit they decide if they're going to get the medication abortion or the surgical abortion. On the second visit if you're coming back to get the pill which is the medication abortion they literally come here for the doctor to hand them a pill and leave.

And if they're going to have a surgical procedure, they come back after 24 hours, and the actual procedure takes about 5 to 7 or 8 minutes. Oh, really? And then recovery? Yeah, then they're in recovery about 30 minutes while they monitor their blood pressure, their bleeding, just to make sure everything's stable, and then they are released to go home. In Canada, the abortion pill or the surgical option are paid through health care.

In the U.S., the cost for either option is about the same in the first trimester, about $600 U.S. The first trimester is when most abortions in the U.S. happen, about 90% in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. Shannon says they have five or six doctors who rotate at her clinic, but it's her next statement that still, after everything I've heard about the violence of the past, catches me off guard.

None of our doctors live here. They come in from out of state? All of our doctors fly in, because the protesters stop the doctors, harass them. No local doctors will work here. Where do they come from? How far away? Different states. We got Florida, we got Atlanta, we got several from Boston. We've had local doctors who wanted to help before, and as soon as the protesters find

out who they are, they will go to their houses, their neighborhoods, the hospitals, or anywhere else they work, and they start calling their offices or their employers, and they put pamphlets in the neighbors' mailboxes, and do you know you live next door to such and such. They've called their parents' houses, anything they can find on them, and they just harass them constantly to the point where the doctor is like, I want to do this, but I can't. It's too much for my family. I can't understand these people that can bring the word God and church and all of this out of

their mouths that can do things to the degree that these people can do. The similarities to the anti-abortion movement of the 90s as I've been investigating are obvious and don't stop there. We've had different things to go on here. You know, with the people coming onto the property or people trying to prohibit patients from coming onto the property, blocking the entrances and getting into altercations with the patients and stuff like that. Has the frequency of those kinds of things increased or decreased? Within the last year, actually, it's increased quite a bit, actually.

The protesters have gotten a little bit more aggressive. Is that right? Yeah. More radical, rowdy people now than what used to be. These rowdy people are approaching cars and standing in the middle of the streets. They have amplifiers. They have these big speaker systems out there. They stand on ladders.

There's violence in our hands across this land. Yeah, that's something, y'all. And we kill, murder 3,000 or 3,500 innocent people. Just so you guys know. Oh, they'll scream, you know, you're a whore, you're going to hell, you're Jezebel, you're just whatever. They think we'll get your attention or we'll make you mad. I see people who feel like they've lost control over something and they want to be able to control something again.

They're not fighting for women, They're not fighting for babies. They're not fighting for any of that. What do the police do? Lately, it seems nothing is being done about it on the local level. Shannon says Jackson police can take up to an hour to arrive if they come at all or do more than a drive-by. And she says there are no arrests being made. You always have a sense of feeling endangered.

Especially when you're watching the way that it's being handled by city officials and stuff. That's what makes you feel endangered. When you lose faith in the judicial system and stuff, that you don't have this protection that you're supposed to have. What's caused the increase in these altercations that you talked about? I think because they feel like they're winning when it comes to the abortion fight. I think they have gained a lot of ground right now, and that's given them the extra boost that they need.

Shannon says the state courts are also working against the normal operation of the clinic. The clinic itself is currently at the center of the reproductive legal battle in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The case picked up traction in 2018 and has been called the most consequential abortion rights case in generations.

We've been having to fight ever since it's been here. We've been in and out of courts a million times because of this particular state constantly chipping away, constantly chipping away, constantly coming up with these bogus trap laws. Trap laws are specifically designed to literally trap abortion clinics into violations so that ultimately they can be shut down. Structural, malicious warping of the legal system to circumvent Roe v. Wade. Shannon says they've faced laws stipulating the size of a clinic's doors, difficult requirements for transfer agreements with hospitals, and more. Shannon says she complies with all these regulations

and that her clinic is now busier than ever, but only busier because of a controversial new law in Texas that bans abortion past the six-week mark. How much of an increase would you say since that Texas law? About 30, 30 to 40 percent. Wow. And so you can only imagine the numbers. That's what I keep telling people. I'm like, that's just one state. We're seeing patients not only from Texas,

we're seeing patients from Louisiana, Oklahoma, because they're backed up. So imagine that times 20 states. This backup is caused by patients who are beyond the six-week window in Texas and who are forced out of state to places like Shannon's Mississippi Clinic. So Texas gets around Roe v. Wade and its law may ultimately undermine it for good.

I ask Shannon how she thinks the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade is going to go. I don't think it's going to go well. I don't think it's going to go well for us. Shannon's anxiety is justifiable. An unprecedented leak of the U.S. Supreme Court's initial draft opinion on the case, originally obtained by Politico, indicates that the majority of judges may intend to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Justice Alito, writing for the majority in the leaked draft, states, Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. But Supreme Court drafts undergo many revisions, opinions change, and no decision is known or will be official until the final decision is delivered.

You know, you hope for the best and prepare for the worst. That's kind of how it is. If you could talk to those people and have them listen to you, what would you say to them? What people? The people who stand out there? Yeah. What would I say to those people? Hmm. I don't even know anymore. I used to come up with different things that I would say to them.

I don't even know anymore. I don't even know that I would even waste my time. At one time, you think you can say something, or you can say something that's logical that would kind of spark something in them, but it's like, don't even care. I don't care to spark anything in them. Nothing. Nope. Wouldn't say anything.

Shannon's at the point where she feels that engagement with the protesters is meaningless. In the face of aggression from anti-abortion protesters and legal assaults from the state, who could blame her? Is dialogue even possible anymore? Entering the Greenwood Cemetery, which is opposite the Supreme Court building in Jackson. I'm here to interview Jameson Taylor, who helped draft the Gestational Age Act, which is currently before the Supreme Court of the USA.

And that's an act that bans abortion after 15 weeks. And I think the intent of drafting that legislation can only be to assist in the toppling of Roe v. Wade. We'll find out from the guy who helped draft it. Oh, hey there. I'm Andrew Fung, and I want to tell you about my new series with Via Rail. Join me as I ride on from Toronto to Ottawa and London aboard Via Rail's new fleet of trains. My journey was a breeze. No traffic jams, just smooth sailing.

The seats are super comfy, and with complimentary Wi-Fi, I can work and play with ease. Plus, with meals and snacks on board, I arrived refreshed and ready to explore. From a boat cruise in Ottawa to the Grand Theatre in London, these cities are packed with amazing experiences. For your next trip, do yourself a favor, skip traffic and take Via Rail. Watch both episodes now on cbc.ca slash Via Rail. Paid content with Via Rail Canada. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice.

And we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. I'm Jameson Taylor, and I am president of the Center for Political Renewal. Jameson's in a blue suit and shirt with a pink tie and a crisply folded silk pocket square. The Gestational Age Act he helped draft that came into force as Mississippi law in 2018 seems cold and inflexible by comparison.

I just wanted to know about the legislation, Gestational Age Act, from your perspective, what it means to you, like what the intention of it was, where it came from. So the Gestational Age Act, to begin with, voters in Mississippi are very pro-life, both Republicans and Democrats. So a lot of times it comes down to just a question of strategy and what way are we going to be pro-life. Is that going to be through a policy that, for instance, supports women and children, maybe by, for instance, providing health care coverage for pregnant mothers, things like that. And the other way in which lawmakers in Mississippi are pro-life is through challenging some of the presumptions that underlie Roe v. Wade.

And so kind of what that suggests is that this whole abortion debate is really about competing rights. So kind of what that suggests is that this whole abortion debate is really about competing rights. So it's about the rights of the unborn child and the rights of the mother. So in Roe we had that competition was very much tilted toward the mother. The laws that allow access to abortion in the U.S. currently prohibit the banning of abortion before the U.S. currently prohibit the banning of abortion before viability. That means a person should be allowed to have an abortion at any time before a fetus might survive on its own

outside the womb. That moment occurs somewhere around the 20 to 28 week mark of a pregnancy. This window of timing is hotly debated, and Mississippi and other states like Texas have created their own definition of what viability means, and under what circumstances that it means it. So by changing the time frame, state legislation writers like Jameson in Mississippi open the door to a Supreme Court ruling on the federal law that, at least in the turbulent time being, underpins all of it, Roe versus Wade. So what's Mississippi's definition of viability? So when we look in particular at the 15-week law, what's really been driving the debate here in Mississippi, but also I think around the country, is the science.

And so what that science is showing, the 3D and the 4D ultrasounds, is the personhood of that unborn child. As one of the Supreme Court justices said, it seems like this child has the form of a human person. So, you know, that's what the ultrasounds are showing, that this looks a lot like a person. And so... Right, fingers, eyes, toes. You're saying child by rote, right? And so the pro-choice people will say fetus, right? So your language is important in how you're talking about it too, right?

So has it been scientifically shown that the fetus is... I guess the definition of viable really is the sort of standing ground, right? Like, how do we discuss viable? Jameson cites science in determining viability, another hotly contested notion. I think what the Mississippi law in case is showing is that that whole framework of viability is arbitrary. The science is moving in a direction where that viability line is being pushed further and further back. But that's not even what the Mississippi law does. What the Mississippi law does is catch us up to the international standard on abortion.

This alignment with the international standard is a common argument utilized in the U.S. political sphere, and on paper it seems clear. Many countries where abortion is available by request have a cutoff of about 15 weeks or earlier. But exceptions matter, and access matters. Abortion in Canada is legal at all stages and treated like any medical procedure, though subject to availability across Canadian regions. In other countries, such as Ireland, abortions can be performed up to the 12th week of pregnancy, but can happen later if the patient's life is at risk. In Saudi Arabia, abortion is only permitted to protect the life and mental health of the patient. And in stark contrast to some recent U.S. state legislation, other countries like India, Finland, and Zambia have exceptions based on socioeconomic grounds. So how do you see, I mean this legislation is before the Supreme Court,

if it results in the toppling of Roe v. Wade, will red states basically prohibit abortions? Will abortions be possible in red states after? I mean, is that how you see it going? Is that where you want it to go? Well, those are two different questions. What I expect the court to do is to uphold Mississippi's law and say, yes, states can regulate abortion after the first trimester. Now, there's a... Regulate it, meaning? Meaning limit it. Yeah, meaning limit abortion. The Mississippi law, for instance,

does not allow abortion in cases of rape or incest. It only allows abortion for the life of the mother. So you'll see a kind of gamut, but I think the court is going to give a green light to say that states can prohibit and regulate in different ways abortion after that first trimester. The Mississippi law before the U.S. Supreme Court does not include exceptions for rape or incest after 15 weeks. These exceptions were often commonplace in the U.S., but recent abortion bans are getting stricter by excluding these exceptions. Also, what will happen is we're going to have a raging debate on abortion in every state.

Some states will say, yes, abortion is illegal now in our state. And those states may well have exceptions for rape and incest and life of the mother. But as Jameson explains, some states, like Mississippi, have what are called trigger laws in place that will come into play automatically in the event that Roe v. Wade is actually overturned.

What a trigger law is, is that if the Supreme Court should ever overturn Roe v. Wade, then Mississippi automatically will prohibit abortion. So I think you'll have other states that will do the same thing. Currently over a dozen states have trigger laws that would ban all or nearly all abortions if Roe is overturned. But talk about the women's health who aren't able to get an abortion. that would ban all or nearly all abortions if Roe was overturned. But talk about the women's health who aren't able to get an abortion. In the case, say, in Mississippi where fewer women have access to abortion,

does that not lead to another kind of health crisis in their lives? How do you, policy-wise, see dealing with that? So I think it's very important to look at what is best for women in this case and kind of looking at policies that are going to help women, especially women that are in a crisis pregnancy. Jameson cites state health insurance and welfare programs like food stamps as ways that those who cannot get an abortion might somehow be assisted. According to the most recent U.S. federal data, an analysis by the Associated Press indicated that states with some of the nation's strictest abortion laws are also some of the hardest places to have and raise a healthy child,

especially for the poor. And so the violence that we saw in the 90s, I see a change in the tactics, basically. We don't see the shootings, we don't see as much of the violence, but we see a different approach in people like yourself. I think, frankly, it's been a kind of conversion on the part of pro-lifers, so to speak, that they have recognized that they look like hypocrites

when they talk about the personhood of the unborn child, but then fail to recognize the personhood and the humanity of the people that disagree with them. I think the pro-life movement itself has kind of had a learning experience, come to Jesus moment, so to speak, where they realize that they have to minister to these women that are facing an unplanned pregnancy and that just yelling at these women,

for instance, not to mention shooting people, that that is not going to further their cause. Legislation like Jameson has written is funded by think tanks and private individuals and parties with broad interests well apart from abortion access. Interest in votes and getting into or keeping power. Words on a legislative page can seem straightforward, but they can hide their real-world consequences, and the violence of the past hasn't gone away as we've heard from Shannon. Thanks very much, sir. Take care. We'll see you again. Jameson and I finish our conversation and go our separate ways. As I walk out, I notice the new Mississippi flag flying above their Supreme Court.

Until very recently, the Confederate version of the state flag flew here. Mississippi legislators finally voted for its removal. The new flag has a white magnolia flower on it. Just driving into Birmingham, Alabama here, heading over to Diane Dirtz's place. Your destination is ahead on the left. Diane's a long time worker and advocate in the area of abortion provision and has a lot of experience in the area and dealing with various anti-abortion violence. You have arrived at your destination on the left.

I've pulled up in front of a two-story house with an eclectic front yard of barely controlled overgrowth and bottle trees. Hey. You hear those dogs? front yard of barely controlled overgrowth and bottle trees. Diane herself is in her 60s, in pink sweats and white t-shirts with light hair. She owns three abortion clinics in the U.S., including the Mississippi Pink House, where I met Shannon. She has one in Georgia, one in Virginia, and she used to run a clinic here in Birmingham until it was bombed. You'll hear him. Come on in. Make yourself comfortable. I asked Diane to start with the bombing, January 29th, 1988.

I lived in Virginia, and I got a phone call that morning about 8 I guess and the administrator was crying and she said, do you hear the sirens? They're coming for us. They've bombed the clinic. And then she hung up the phone. I turned on CNN and it was just breaking. Sanderson, who was the officer on duty, and Sanderson saw a potted plant that wasn't there and he bent down with his nightstick

and just blew him apart. The bomb had been hidden in the plant and was detonated remotely. But he saved numerous lives. The nurse was running late. She was at the door getting ready to open it. It was chilling. So they had been in the clinic, and I felt horrible guilt.

I wasn't there, and my nurse was nearly killed, but she was maimed. She's had 70 or 80 surgeries since then and has two or three a year now. Lost an eye. You know, her whole body was just, I mean, destroyed. Lucky, she's lucky to be alive, but it ended her career. The bomber turned out to be Eric Rudolph, who was age 31 at the time. Before this, he'd bombed another abortion clinic, an LGBTQ nightclub in Atlanta, and was also responsible for the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics. In all, he killed two and injured over a hundred.

After blowing up the Birmingham clinic, Rudolph went on the lam. And he parked his car and someone saw him getting in the car and they called that in, so they had his license, but I think they screwed up and they called him a person of interest. By the time he got home, he already knew they were looking for him, so he went off, and you know, for five years, he's out, and of course they're helping him. I mean, we know that he didn't, I mean, he was a survivalist, but we know he had help. James Kopp obviously wasn't the first anti-abortionist to kill for his cause, and Dr. Barnett Slepian wasn't the first doctor to be murdered. The first doctor killed was David Gunn and he was our

physician in Montgomery. He had had polio as a child and so he had the metal crutches or he walked with a cane. He'd been followed. He was working in Pensacola and he was working in Columbus, Georgia and they'd started following him, started harassing him. I know there are good decent people out in front of the clinics that truly believe that we are committing murder and they believe their presence there is making a difference. I don't have a problem in the world with that. If you change someone's mind, she didn't need to be there.

But when you've got these guys who think they're going to kill and they'll do whatever it takes because we're killing babies, but there's something a little off with these guys to them it's women making decisions killing their babies you know it's killing their offspring I think that's a lot of it it is misogyny but I think it's fear and that control for me it's you're telling me that I have to continue a pregnancy that that fetus or that fertilized egg has more rights than I have? For me, it's like a sci-fi film. I mean, that's, for them, we're just walking uteruses.

So that's why this is so important to me. You know, when it really gets down to the crux of the matter, it is that. It's remembering myself how horrified I was when I found out I was pregnant oh my god that means the end of my life as I know it I got married when I was 19 years old got pregnant when I was 20 years old because I was just stupid I mean you know we were both virgins it was just stupidity I mean we should have been we were both virgins. It was just stupidity. I mean, we should have been using contraception. The whole thing. At that time, there were no clinics, and there was a private physician in town that did them for $125. I can tell you, I can still see

that waiting room. My husband was with me. There were people from all over the South. I felt absolute relief. Thank God. My husband was excited I was pregnant. But, you know, I was 20, 21 years old, and it was like, you know, I've got things to do. But I got a safe abortion, and that's what I went for. And I went home, and the next day, there was some woman running on the right-to-life ticket, and there were fetuses and dead babies all over TV.

And I remember, I guess that's when I was activated. Soon after the abortion, Diane began working at a clinic as a counselor. What are some of the concerns that women bring when they come into the room? Will God punish me? And I think in many instances, if women then have problems later on conceiving, that's always uppermost. You know, is this my penalty for doing what I wanted or needed to do instead of putting the fetus first the other other things would be you know what if I can't get pregnant again and that's something we always talk about is

you know there's no there's no guarantees in life and that's why you have to look at this pregnancy and know what you need to do. Only you know what you need to do. What percentage would you say of women after the first visit don't come back? Negligible. So what do you make of the claim from anti-abortionists that the science is showing that it's a human being in there that's being killed at 15 weeks? You know, they have to believe that. I think the, I just saw this, Alabama now holds the record for the youngest baby born that has survived.

And that one was 20, 19 weeks. It's been in the hospital almost a year. You know, the reality of this is their lungs are not formed completely. There's no way that it can survive without medical intervention. For many who are opposed to abortion, life begins at conception, when the sperm and egg first unite. But that's not what the science I've seen says. Anti-abortionists say that heartbeats can be detected in pregnancies at six weeks, but medical experts say that's not the case, that the heart isn't developed at this point,

and any sound heard on the ultrasound prior to the heart's development is actually noise created by the ultrasound machine itself based on electrical activity in the fetus, not from functional or functioning heart valves moving. Scientific data also shows that the risks of dying in childbirth are far greater than the risks of dying from an abortion. For me, you come down to two things here, and that's you've got two competing rights. And for me, that woman is a real, live, breathing human being. And God gave us free will to make these decisions, you know.

There's no way that a fetus can survive at that point. It's not science, but that's what they believe. It has nothing to do with science. I asked Diane about the changes she has seen and how the anti-abortion side approaches the issue. Yeah, same MO. They're just smarter now. Much smarter now. You know, we're going to do it legislatively. These people have worked for this for 50 years.

I mean, you have to give them credit. They've done it patiently and smart, very smart, you know. So what's going to happen with the Supreme Court decision on the 15-week? They're going to overturn Roe. And within 10 days, the clinic will be closed. You think that the clinics will be closed down for good? No question. No question.

And then you're talking about losing 26, 27 states. And those that have will be able to get an abortion. Those privileged, if you've got money, you can fly to New York and be back home for dinner. But if you're black and brown and you're poor, you're going to be having a child. The states Diane foresees will lose clinics align with the number of red Republican states. It's unknown how many states, red or blue, may move to pass legislation restricting access to abortion.

Without it, Diane says that some may even turn to more risky methods to end their pregnancies. Women will die because, you know, they'll do whatever it takes to not be pregnant. What are you planning to do? Like, what will happen? We're going to a safe state, and we're going to build a clinic, and we're going to make sure that women in Jackson, Mississippi, and throughout Mississippi have options. And it's going to be a nightmare. A nightmare. Women flying, women trying to come up with the funds.

But there's a lot of funding groups, too, that have come together, a lot of people who work to make sure those women do have an option. But it's going to be a nightmare of many women that don't get there in time. You know, some women don't have periods that are regular. Some women don't even think when they miss a period. And so they're farther than they think they are. don't have periods that are regular. Some women don't even think when they miss a period, and so they're farther than they think they are. And then you're talking about getting somewhere 1,000 miles from here or wherever they're going

and finding out that they're too far even to be seen there. Yeah, we're definitely talking a lot of pregnancies, continued pregnancies, no question. I wonder how access to the abortion pill might be affected. 70% of our patients use the pill. Oh, is that right? Definitely, it's good that it's there, especially if you're early in the pregnancy.

So you think the pill will be outlawed as well? I think they're going to try, for sure. They've already put legislation in Georgia making that, so now they're trying to make it a three-day process. A three-day process just makes the window of opportunity for using the abortion pill that much more difficult, and accessing the abortion pill itself is being made difficult or banned in some states already,

prohibited from being used or even mailed in some cases. I think women in this country, when they start trying to do it, they're going to end up in jail. And then you're going to be charged with murder. I mean, this is not, these people don't play. I mean, you know what I was, they were, this is going to be far worse than it was before rap. Trigger laws like the one Jameson brought up on the books in Mississippi will come into play if Roe v. Wade falls. And some of these trigger laws in place in some of the states will make abortion a crime. And they never took it off the books, so it's still murder.

It's still a crime. The new Texas so-called heartbeat law makes no exceptions for rape or incest. This Texas law also partly gets around Roe v. Wade by not having police enforce the abortion ban. Instead, ordinary citizens are authorized to sue anyone aiding and abetting an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, from the doctor who performed it to the taxi driver who drove the person to the clinic. The punishment is $10,000 U.S. for each count. But that's smart, because you want to go up to the doctor. Strangely, the people who ate in a bed are people like James Kopp.

They're free and clear, and they're heroes, right? They've tried every technique they could. And would they do it again today? Absolutely. You know, and think that they're, because those are the same guys that did the Capitol. Same people. They speak for God, right? It is frightening. Media reports note that several prominent anti-abortionists were present at the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. One of them, Derek Evans, was a West Virginia lawmaker

who had just won a 2020 state election. He joined the mob breaking into the Capitol building and was also a well-known fixture at West Virginia's only abortion clinic. There he would harass patients and staff, calling them death squirts and baby murderers, and filmed himself for his tens of thousands of Facebook followers. I think it's important that people understand to what lengths people will go when they believe they're right and you're wrong. I mean, isn't that really what we're looking at now in this country? Because the parallel's there.

Diane believes there could be more killings of abortion providers than we're aware of. Deaths that were attributed to something else, like a robbery. Like Dr. George Wayne Patterson in August of 1993. Wayne Patterson was a sleazy... I knew him. He worked at the clinic in Mobile. He's not the kind of guy you'd want to be hanging around. He was a gambler. He loved porn. Dr. George Patterson was returning to his car after allegedly leaving an adult theater when he was shot and killed. Police maintain that it was a robbery gone wrong. But yeah, he had done abortions for years.

And there was never, yeah, that's what they always said was, no, that was just a robbery. But they never followed up on that either. What do you think? I mean, do you think that he was... I think it was too much of a coincidence. Not a coincidence because Dr. Patterson owned the clinic that Dr. Gunn, the first provider shot, worked at. Patterson took over Gunn's duties after Gunn was murdered, and five months after that, Patterson too would be shot and killed. It's something I'd like to ask Amanda about. Hello?

Hey, can you hear me all right? Of course you can. How are you? On my way out of Alabama, I tell Amanda about Shannon and Diane and what we talked about. Amanda stops me at the part about Dr. Patterson, the doctor that Diane thinks could be one of the first shootings of an abortion provider by anti-abortionists rather than a robbery. Two weeks after the murder, Winston McCoy Jr. was arrested. His motivation, prosecutors said, was robbery, but nothing had been taken from Dr. Patterson. Still, the Patterson case went to trial three times, ending in a deadlocked jury twice before McCoy was acquitted of the murder.

How many of these cases are there where the provider or a clinic worker, you know, the case has been misidentified or not properly looked into, would you say? Six. In December 1991, this was the first one. has been misidentified or not properly looked into would you say six in december 1991 this is the first one an unidentified gunman tried to reach an abortion doctor at a clinic in springfield missouri that he only manages to get inside the building and shoots the office manager who was paralyzed as a result. Was it called something else? Attempted robbery. It was called attempted robbery. Okay.

Except they'll be took anything. Right. It's really weird. And the following month, Douglas Carpin in Houston was shot in a suspicious robbery. Again, nothing taken near his clinic. He was at his car. That was also considered a robbery. Okay.

Dr. Paul Hackmeyer was shot in 1994 at his North Hollywood home. And the police say, I'm reading from a news report, may have been planning to rob him again. They didn't take anything. Right. The next one is Chris, and this one is in Overland Park, Kansas. And this one is the one that's sort of like Jim. They shoot him in the house.

They shoot him through a window or something? Yeah, they shoot him through a window, front window, at night in a house, but not with the same kind of high-powered weapon Did they shoot him through a window or something? I believe the shooter was standing about 40 or 50 feet from the window, under a tree about 40 feet from the street. That's from the police department. Then Amanda tells me that on a section of the Army of God's website, they've claimed credit for the first two shootings, the one in Missouri and the one in Houston.

This is well before Dr. Gunn, the doctor widely believed to be the first abortion doctor shot in North America, was killed. Amanda reads an entry from the website from November 1992. The activists and the us referred to here are anti-abortionists. Douglas Carpon, a baby killer of Houston, had been shot. Two of his accomplices were shot in Missouri, also had been shot. Bob survived, and no activists were credited for the shooting. David Gunn was the first direct hit attributed to us.

Why are they writing this in their manuals? That's from the Army of God manual. Was the Army of God responsible, or is this just a claim to help stoke the membership into action? Amanda is planning to investigate further, her obsession with fanaticism and anti-abortion cases continuing. And publications come to her looking for articles on the same, so it's a bit of a vicious cycle. She says what we're doing is helping her. For my part, I'll continue to investigate the shootings in Canada. I'll continue to try to track down those who may have participated or helped in some way. And I'll continue to correspond with James Kopp, in the hope that I'll finally be able to convince him to talk. This call is from a federal prison.

Begin speaking now. Hello? Thank you. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.