The Daily Beast Podcast - How the Texas Abortion Ban Is an Attack on Men

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

Washington Post columnist Karen Atiah came on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to fill Molly Jong-Fast in on what’s going on in her home state since the public learned the bill was passed. And it’s not good, for women or for men. Plus, she shares her thoughts on her late colleague Jamal Khashoggi. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another special bonus episode of The New Abnormal. We like you so much for being here. This week we have Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Atia. Welcome to the new abnormal, Karen. Hi. Thanks for having me. We're very excited to have you. I want to talk to you. You're an opinion writer, but you're also...

Did you start as an editor? I did. I, well, I mean, if we want to take it all the way back, I started as a producer, and I basically was like trying to... Hope the post be a little more online in digital, so doing a lot of Facebook and Twitter, and then moved to being an editor and editing, starting the Global Opinions section. And then, yeah, this year became a columnist as of June. So I want to talk to you about this column you just wrote because you really are on the ground.

You're both in D.C. and Texas. And Texas has become ground zero for everything dysfunctional, sorry. Talk to me about your piece because it's really. I think it's really important what you just wrote about. Yeah, sure. So for a slight context, as you said, I mean, I was in D.C. And then the pandemic brought me to Texas, which is actually my home state. So I grew up in, I grew up in Dallas in a suburb of Dallas. So in the last year, basically, I have been brought just to be, you know, closer to family. But I have been brought to Texas, which is becoming this battleground for all the things. in American society, culture wars, politics, so abortion, immigration, voting rights. So this latest column I did on Texas, and I titled that, you know, who's going to save Texas women and girls, was about the Senate Bill 8, right, which basically, again, has been misleadingly named

as the quote unquote heartbeat bill, but what it does, and I'm sure your listeners know, what it effectively does is bans abortions of embryos after six weeks. Yeah. And what is extra crazy about it, what I'm like to call those sort of vigilante politics of it all,

is that it empowers, yeah, it empowers it empowers people to sue anyone who quote unquote AIDS and abets an abortion for up to $10,000. And that person doesn't even have to live in Texas, doesn't even have to know the individual. It really is just this feeling that

you could be sued by anyone. So, of course, this is really just enacted to an fear. And so we know that the Supreme Court basically said, well, because the state's not enforcing this, we can see it's unconstitutional. It's problematic. But they let it pass, right? So. Yeah. I saw that basically passing the law closed 50% of the abortion clinics in Texas. access. Yeah, and already I've seen reporting saying that people are really afraid to even call in to pledge support, things like that. We have, I mean, ultimately what this law is about, right, is about the intimidation, is about people and abortion providers, people, not only the people who want to get abortions, the women and people want to get abortions, but they're allies,

their supporters, the men and the friends in their lives. I mean, there was a website, right, set up to basically be able to anonymously report people. And in my in my column, I guess what I know that non-Texans saw this past, I mean, this has been on the books for a while, right? So like to a certain extent, there is a sense here in Texas that it's like, we saw this coming. Everybody is shocked. Everybody's dismayed. Everybody, like this, the Republicans, the evangelicals, the evangelicals, the right to life groups have been saying, at least since I was a child, that this is what they wanted to do. They wanted to end abortion, right? And so now it's like, this is, how do you save women and girls? This is not just a political issue, but what they're creating is a, is a culture

of fear, is an atmosphere of fear is we're already seeing right. People are just saying, well, okay, fine. We will, as a business, we will let you go out and stay. We will relocate employees out of the sales force was saying, but ultimately, it feels right now like a quite dire situation. We know that a number of, most of the women, almost half of the women who get abortions, are at the poverty line or below, right? Yeah. And so this is affecting poor women, women of color, immigrants. The ones. The ones. who aren't able often to get the help that they need. Because again, the six-week mark, most women don't even know that they're pregnant. And by the time that you pooled your resources

together, cash together, it's already too late. So this is really something that is quite, it's odious for all women, but quite odious, I think, for poor women. No, I always say, this is not going to affect affluent women in blue states. This is about targeting poor women in red states, you know. Absolutely, which is why I said in the calm, you know, it's, it's nice and great that Match.com, this year of Match.com and Bumble.com, you know, to dating apps that are women-led businesses based here in Texas. It's, it's, they made a statement and they said that they would provide relief funds for

their employees who wish to go out of state to get this care. The thing is, most women don't have the purpose. and opportunity to work for companies like that. And frankly, it's telling that it's women-led companies here that have been the most outspoken so far. I'm actually quite, we should all

be really alarmed and quite dismayed a year of businesses saying they wanted to stand for social justice and equality. They've been really silent about this. Yeah, that was, that actually was what I was going to ask you.

I'm really surprised at how few companies have said anything about this law, which puts really a bull's eye on women? Well, I mean, we're seeing the depths of really, I mean, again, back to the point that there are so, first of all, there's so few companies that are led by women. I mean, this is, this is a very, obviously an issue that, that yes, affects women, but also, I mean, gosh, we can talk about probably the men who, who got to rise to become CEOs because perhaps the women in their lives were able to make choices about their own bodies and their own health and their own lives, which relieved the men from having to take responsibility for that, but that's for another time. But it's really striking.

And I think there needs to be a lot more, a lot more digging into a number of these companies, again, like from last year with whether it was Black Lives Matters or trans rights, the silence about women is really something to unpack. And I think that, I think, honestly, it does reveal the depths of the patriarchy and misogyny in this country. And again, I think back to the fact that this, in particular, targets particularly vulnerable women already. Again, women of color, black women, it just, again, reveals just how this country does not. care about women's lives and health. So yeah, for all the people who tend to say that, well, the businesses will step in, the private sector will regulate this. Yeah. Pump the break from that.

It's not happening. I think that Democrats fantasize that Texas will be like, in this case, like Kansas, where they'll enact so much shitty legislation that it will bite them in the ass. do you, as someone who grew up in Texas and really knows what Texas looks like, are Democrats crazy? I mean, do you think that's a possibility? I mean, a nationwide Democrats are in such a fantasy bubble. It's just like, it's just like, you know, Republicans are bringing like AK-47s and like machetes to the fight and like Democrats are bringing lollipops. It's just, I mean, and I hear this a lot. And again, you know, growing up here, I am, I'm young, but I'm.

old enough to remember the days of Anne Richards and the days when things were normal. I think what is happening here and what we're seeing here today, I mean, if you look at just the insanity coming from Greg Abbott, Kim Paxton, and also people need to remember that, you know, for all the hoping and wishing, Texas is gerrymandered to them. to death. Oh, yeah. Right? So I used to be a little more, I mean, look, there are, there are demographics changes.

And yes, it is true that there are more immigrants, black and brown folk moving here from around the country, you know, immigration. However, this does not automatically mean a win for Democrats. Certainly not. And I think what I saw or noticed during the last election was just like this sense that Democrats just, the vote turnout was fantastic, was amazing. But again, the outreach to particularly evangelicals, a lot of the demographic changes are perhaps more conservative than we think. Yeah. Yeah.

I just, Texas is going to take, it's going to take a lot. We were effectively still a one-party state. Yeah. Oh, what, that sucks. So, you know, you have a state where Louis Gohmert holds office, like, you're going to have, you got to have gerrymandering because that guy wouldn't get elected any other way. I mean, we've got Ted Cruz. Cancru, can't crew and Cruz. I sat here during the winter storm. I lost power, water, heat, like. Yeah. And it's just, I think everyone who's just not in Texas is like, man, y'all's politicians are fucking insane. Like, surely they'll be voted out. But they withstand the challenges, right? And again, with the voting, the Texas Senate with Democrats who basically came back from their, from their protest, breaking form came back. And now this legislation will pass or looks like it's going to make it harder for people in majority kind of Democratic districts to vote. Yeah, it's this is, Texas is a picture of what happens when vigilante politics becomes a norm.

And when basically our systems are used to subvert democracy. Yeah. So it's kind of a warning to everyone else what is possible when one party takes control and the other party tries to hold on and play nice. Yeah, certainly your power grid is really a warning about deregulation. Correct. Absolutely. And the fact that we are, even that we are sitting here and having to discuss

issues of voting rights and all of these sort of culture war, GOP instigated culture war stuff instead of the fuck. We Texans are sitting here half the summer. We were worried that our grids would fall apart, you know, and... And half the winter. Well, yeah, half the winter. Again, people died during this. This is a life or death issue.

We're in a pandemic, obviously, and we have leaders that are choosing to pick battles over mass mandates and vaccines and battling over that. when we're, you know, being powered by this rickety power grid, right? And none of that was a priority during these legislative sessions. So it's really, it's really quite frustrating. I personally have been looking up, like, cute, like, disaster prep kits. And like, being in Texas has turned me into, like, a prepper.

I'm like, do I need to, like, bury gold in my parents' backyard? I'm half kidding. But it's just like, wow. You came of age as an editor. You edited Jamal Khashoggi. Just talk to me for a minute about, you're writing a book about that? Yeah, correct.

Yeah, probably a lot of people will know me as Jamal, Kachukji's editor, the Saudi journalist that I worked with for a good part of the year until he was murdered in 2018. I can't really believe this almost two years ago. Yeah, I mean, this, it's, it's, profoundly the whole experience, not just the murder, but being behind the scenes and having to learn about, you know, I did the best I could to try to push for justice, try to push for awareness. I feel like I saw you every day on television being like, please, please, please

hold these people accountable. Exactly. And I did the best I could or what I thought I could, but really, I think in the end, how much really actually changed, right? Now, so I'm, yeah, so I've been writing a book about about the whole experience. And I think, as you said earlier, Molly, this hope, right, from, particularly from Democrats that, like, well, we'll just have a new administration. If you just cycle the Trumpers out, like, all this will be fixed and there'll be justice. And as we're sitting here today, that is, that is clearly not the case, right? So, yeah, It's something that's profoundly both strengthened, I think. My viewpoints about human rights and about people's need to be able to be free and express themselves,

but also really how difficult it is to make change. So yeah, the anniversary of the murder will be in a few weeks on October 2nd. And it's still something that haunts me in many ways. But at the same time, yeah, at the end of the day, it's, it's, Jamal was a man who was also trying to do his best to make change. So I hope that, you know, in the book and I have so much more to say about it all, I hope I can at least remind people that, like, he wasn't just a victim. He wasn't just a symbol.

But he was a man trying to do his best in terrible circumstances. So thank you, Karen. Thank you, thank you. Please come back when the book comes out. Oh, please. Yes. Yes, I'd love to be back on. on that note we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from the Daily Beast in future episodes we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media culture politics and science will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world we hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode want more great listens check out our comedy podcast the last laugh and our star started the daily beast podcast at the

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