The Daily Beast Podcast - NARAL President: We’re Prepping for End of Roe v. Wade

Episode Date: January 3, 2021

Trump did a lot to roll back women’s healthcare—from enacting a global gag rule, which prevents non-American health organizations from receiving monetary aid from the U.S., to stacking the courts with anti-choice judges all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Add the threat of losing Roe to the mix and Biden will have his work cut out for him after he takes office in January. Should he appoint a “women’s health czar?” Molly Jong-Fast asks Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal? She was half-joking, but also serious. Hogue is all for it. “It would send such a clear message that that terrible era that Trump ushered in is over,” she says. But even so, it won’t be over just yet. Hogue says reproductive rights “absolutely could” be taken away and that the organization is even preparing for the possibility. “A lot of our work over the last few years has been about making sure that we have what we call ‘islands of access,’ [like] Blue States that are caudifying the right to abortion, making sure that we have like practice in place where women can go,” she says. In the meantime, Molly asks her what Biden should do as soon as possible when it comes to the anti-choice legislation in place from the Trump/Pence era (which, by the way, is not driven by morality, says Hogue, but by control). “It has always been about targeting women and women of color. And it's always been about forcing women to adhere to a very narrow period view of where they think our role in society is,” she says. To combat it, Bden can start by rescinding the global and domestic gag rule, and appoint people who believe in science. Even then, the key is to not get complacent, lookin’ at you white women: “We have to rebuild the muscle that any time we are not fighting for something, we are losing it any time.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. 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 of the new abnormal special bonus episodes, and we're so excited to have you. Today, we have a very special guest with Nairal President Elise Hogue, who's going to talk to us about reproductive rights and feminism in a post-Trump world. Hi, I'm so excited to have you because we actually know each other and our friends. Yes, we definitely are. You make me laugh on a daily basis, which I need. Thank you. Tell me, and this is a very broad question, but because we're in, situation that is so beyond the realm of comprehension, what the fuck is going on? I mean, you know, in the world in our country or with regard to justice, for women, you know, look, it's really fascinating to me.

In some ways, I don't want to put a positive spin on it because the scorched earth approach that has been elevated to the highest level of the land through Trump and Pence has had tremendous and incalculable damage to women across this country. At the same time, it's so important to understand that this is who they have always been. This is who the radical right has always been. This is who the anti-choice movement has always been. And they just found someone in Trump who would say the quiet part out loud. So it has always been about control. It has always been about targeting poor women and women of color. And it has always been about like forcing women to adhere to a very narrow, period, view of where they think our role in society is. Yeah.

Because I grew up in the world of white feminism and I am like pretty committed to a broader view of feminism, because I feel like we're in this very interesting time where we're seeing just exactly how much all of these misogynistic legislation. are hurting women of color and low-income women. And so I'm curious to know, I see in my own personal life an enormous disconnect between these two matters. And we see it with the pandemic.

We're like living in two different Americas. And I was wondering, like, what can we do? And what does Naurau do? And how do we expand white feminism, you know, and end it and have real feminism? You know, people talk about complacency. vis-a-the-abortion right specifically, but reproductive freedom more generally. And there has never, ever been complacency among communities of color. They couldn't afford complacency, right? So when we talk

about complacency, we have to talk about white women complacency and white people complacency, by the way, because I don't think that reproductive freedom and justice should only be a women's issue. But I don't know when I came into the movement eight years ago, and I think you know, Molly, I didn't really have a background. I've always done social justice work and organizing, but I didn't have a background and repro, I was really astonished by the number of people I talked to who were like, well, we still have row, you know, so it's totally fine. And it's sort of, as you're saying, this very removed theoretical relationship to what was actually playing out on the ground, but also to this idea of a right. Now, you know, being generous, what I would say is that

for women's struggle, and you come from multi-generations, of feminism, I don't really, honestly, I've learned a lot as I've gone. But what, you know, what we know is that advances for gender justice really stopped with Roe, right? Like shortly after that, the ERA was defeated. And like, you know, outside of the Violence Against Women Act, which like, which expired. Well, but also like, that, that is not a victory. That is a baseline. And I'm not beat women up, you know. But outside of that, really, we stopped federally. We stopped with Roe. And so Roe took on this like not only substantive reality for women. Thank God, you know, women were not dying in back-hally abortions, but it took on a very symbolic role of our place

in society. Now, that being said, I think, you know, it's crucially important to understand that Roe was never real for women in the country outside of middle and upper class white women, and that in fact, what we know is that reproductive oppression takes many forms, not just denying women access to abortion, but like, how about prenatal care? How about being able to parent safely, right? How about addressing maternal mortality? The mother mortality stuff is insane. The statistics are crazy. Yeah. So, you know, for at Nehrol, you know, part of the Part of our work has been in expanding the sort of way we think about legislation to be wholly encompassing of what women and pregnant people experience in their reproductive destiny.

Ayanna Presley introduced this great bill called the mom-nabus that we were hugely supportive of. But I think, you know, the thing that I wanted to stress is we had to take a breath and working with an amazing woman named Loretta Ross who helped found the reproductive justice movement. we really took on the mantle of educating our largely white. We're diversifying, but we're a historically white organization, audience about the history of this movement because it is absolutely 100% grounded in racism and white supremacy. And so we wrote a book called The Lie That Vines.

We did a podcast about it because our average supporter had no idea that the radical right as it exists right now, the anti-choice movement, as it exists right now, didn't even oppose abortion when Roe came down. What actually spent their time and energy doing was fighting school desegregation. And abortion became a tool and a tactic for them in a broader campaign for control of white Christian men over all systems of power in this country. And sort of using that as a foundational narrative, it became easier for us to do advocacy that was grounded in how racist these regressive policies are. One of the things that I think is so interesting is we are coming out of like the worst shit sandwich of misogyny that this country has probably lived through in a long time. And so we have now,

Democrats have the presidency, they have the House, they theoretically could get the Senate. And we have this terrifying Supreme Court. It's true. I mean, this is, you know, this is the conversation in Georgia, right? All of you people who came out and voted for Biden and particularly women for whom threats to row was a driving force don't like sit back and think that any one person, much less Joe Biden can do this on their own. Like they got what they wanted. They stacked the courts, right? And so we have a ton of work to do in terms of rebalancing the courts. But let me be clear about one thing, Molly, because this is so important. They have. have never actually had popular opinion on their side.

Right. No, no, and they still don't. And so what do they do? Right? They actually assert minority control through things like court capture, through things like voter suppression. And that has been really important for us to sort of both internalize and make sure we're communicating to our supporters is like the fight against abortion rights is very much grounded in the fight against a wholesome, diverse, and you can't separate them out. Right. No, I mean, it's clearly, we're in this insane period now where, but ultimately, like, I feel, and you tell me I'm wrong, I hope I am, but I don't think I am, is we could really lose Roe.

Yeah, I mean, we absolutely could, and we are certainly preparing with our partners in the movement for that. a lot of our work over the last few years has been about making sure that we have what we call islands of access, right? Blue states that are codifying the right to abortion, making sure that we have like practice in place where women can go. And at the same time, we have to walk and chew gum. So we have to do two other things. We have to make sure that we are advancing federal legislation, right, that actually secures this right. That never happened. because Roe was handed down from the court. And we have to keep on the courts, right? We have to have a real conversation in this country about court reform. And my friend Dahlia Lithwick, who obviously

is a great court watcher and writes first late, always says, you have to remind the court you are watching them. They do actually care about public opinion, right? So that is why you see all of the advocacy, we call it trying the cases in the court of public opinion, like, you have to make sure that they understand where their legitimacy lies. And that is in not undercutting blatantly the will of the majority. That being said, Roe doesn't exist in many states as it is. So, you know, we've got to do all these things at once. There's no question. I can't get over that these people don't give a shit about maternal fetal health. And the fact that African-American women are dying at huge multiples, right, in childbirth and white women are not. I mean,

and then they're obsessed with taking away the right to choose. When they show you who they are, like, believe them, right? I mean, Mike Pence literally held an event celebrating life yesterday, life. I'm using air quotes. You can't see me. Amid, like, I think, I think I saw this on your Twitter feed, like the day that we recorded more COVID deaths. in a single day. You know, so like, we've got to actually speak truth about what they're about. And again, that's stripping them of any of the faux moral high ground that they use. They're not about life.

This is absolutely about control. And the minute that they start marching in the streets with us for nutritional assistance and addressing maternal mortality and stop separating kids from their loving parents, that's when I am going to start to believe they have some moral or ethical approach, but they don't do any of that. Like what has been taken away during the Trump administration that's sort of small that we don't necessarily know, like the morning after pill or over the counter? Like have you, what have you seen that you really need, we need to focus on getting back for women?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, we're looking at the first hundred days as a way to just restore normal. And there are a number of things that the Biden administration can and should do, including rescinding both the global and domestic gag rule, which literally strips money from clinics and health professionals that even talk about, mention the word abortion, right? That was their end run on defunding Planned Parenthood, which they couldn't achieve legislatively. We absolutely want them to put in place someone who cares about science at the FDA. One of the big things that has been held up is the advancement of the very safe medication abortion that especially during COVID would allow people to terminate pregnancy without

exposing further risk. That is because we've had ideologues at the FDA and not actually people who put public health through a lens of science and facts. And those pills are available in Europe. Absolutely. I mean, they have been through every trial known to humanity. So those are some really easy things. And then, you know, one of the things that we know that the Trump administration has done is expand the definition. Again, I'm doing air quotes. You can't see me. Religious liberty.

So you could, it's meaningless anymore, right? So, you know, we've got like employers who could even potentially fire a woman for having a child out of wedlock or having an abortion. right? Like, that's got to go. We actually know that religious liberty in this country means you can't make me do anything because of your religion and I can't make you, but that is not what is happening right now. Yeah. Like we also have the Violence Against Women Act has expired. Yeah. I mean, I think generally we really need to take this moment as an opportunity to not just think about gender equity and gender justice in terms of policy. But like, how do we make it a value in every single agency and every single piece of legislation and understand that it's been proven everywhere you go around the world, that where women can survive and thrive, everything does better. Economies do better. Governments, GDPs go up, right? And so that has to be a guiding force. But I'm absolutely worried

about these crazy people in red states who took Trump's, not just presidency, but at as a green light to really just vilify women. So some of the things we were seeing in this state legislation that we hadn't seen previously is jail sentences for women, right? That my home state of Texas held a hearing on the death penalty for women who have abortions. And we're seeing this play out. I mean, there was a very high profile case in Alabama a couple of years ago where a woman, a pregnant woman got shot in the stomach during a fight. And she was sent to her. to jail. Right now, her sentence was commuted, but like, in what world does that actually happen? So I am really worried about the forces unleashed by Trump continuing to dominate in some of the

states where, quite honestly, women and people of color simply already have less rights, less freedom, and less pathways to justice than other people. So I'm constantly concerned that because Trump makes so much noise about himself that we don't see the big picture of what's been happening to reproductive rights in America. Erica, what do you think we mostly have to rebuild in a post-Trump Biden administration? We have so much to rebuild in a post-Trump Biden administration. You know, mostly we have to rebuild the muscle that any time we are not fighting for something, we are losing it. Anytime we are not clearly stating our values, we are losing, right?

And I think that we are seeing a really important and robust conversation around this. Absolutely with regard to reproductive and freedom and justice, but also racial justice, right? Like, if we are the party that actually cares about people in this way, then let's talk about it. Let's actually, because when we talk, they depend on our silence, right? When we talk about it, they actually lose because they can't answer questions that pass muster with most people about, really? So, like, you really want to investigate miscarriages? Really? You want no exceptions? But it's our silence that allows them to skate through on that. And so I hope that that, thing that we learn is like when we stand firm in our values and we actually lead with them,

then we win. Why don't we have like a sort of women's health czar? You know, I can't answer why we don't. Should we absolutely? We should also have an office of, you know, gender equity. You know, these things are very much in conversation. And I hope experiencing what we've experienced with so many attacks on reproductive freedom, but also, also just on women over the last four years that what feels like a symbolic act of really creating those positions, it captures the imagination of, you know, the Biden administration because it would send such a clear message that that terrible era that Trump ushered in is over. I hope it, I hope it happens because it is, it does feel like we, and especially after this pandemic,

we're going to have so many people who are going to be sick. Physical health and mental health are going to be such huge issues in the next four years. And we have a women's recession, right? Women were the ones that were absolutely driven out of the workforce as a result of COVID. And rebuilding that is crucially important, not just for individuals, women who need the income, but actually for our economy and our progress as a country. Great. Thank you so much. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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