You're Wrong About - The “Pro-Life” Movement

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

During what should’ve been Roe v. Wade’s 51st birthday week, Sarah and reproductive health policy reporter Megan Burbank take a look at the movement, decades in the making, to tear down abortion rights in America, starting with the hypocrisy at its root. Is what we know as the pro-life movement a religious effort or a political movement? And how did a veneer of sincere belief conceal a toxic combination of racism and fear of paying taxes? Join us as we take out the trash — and look for the helpers who are cleaning it up.You can find Megan online here! 100% of net our January net proceeds will be donated to the following organizations:Jane's Due ProcessSister SongYellowhammer FundNorthwest Abortion Access FundListen to our episode Your Abortion Stories here. Support You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are GoodLinks:https://burbank.industries/https://www.sistersong.net/https://abortionfunds.org/fund/yellowhammer-fund/https://janesdueprocess.org/https://nwaafund.org/https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270/11515738-your-abortion-storieshttp://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodSupport the show

I kind of suspect that no one in the history of the world has ever been self-aware for more than five seconds, you know? Welcome to You're Wrong About, I'm Sarah Marshall, and today we are learning about the quote-unquote pro-life movement. Our guest today is journalist Megan Burbank. We last had Megan on five years ago in an episode about Roe v. Wade. Some things have changed since then. Some other things have stayed the same.

And I wanted her to come on to give us a biography of a movement that claims to have certain goals but whose unstated goals are far more telling, and also to kind of give us a state of the union about abortion access and reproductive justice. This is a topic that's been important to me for a long time. I love finding ways to talk about abortion on the show. We also did an episode in October of 2022 called Your Abortion Stories where we had listeners send in their own experiences with abortion to kind of create a patchwork of what it's like to get an abortion, what it's like to need an abortion, just the voices and the people out there whose lives abortion has changed for the better. After

Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, something that despite so many of us feeling it was inevitable for so long was still no less awful, I think it was especially overwhelming for many people to stay updated on a developing story that seemed to be going nowhere good faster and faster. And so if you, like me, need a friendly voice to update you on where we are, what's been happening for the past few decades and how we can try and build a better future, this is an episode for you.

We hope you like this episode and we're also going to be donating this episode's net proceeds to four charities. The Northwest Abortion Access Fund, Jane's Due Process, Sister Song, and the Yellow Hammer Fund. And if you are looking for actions in your community where you can help protest for a ceasefire in Gaza, one of the places you can find them is at ifnotnowmovement.org. And if you want to donate to Direct Aid for Palestinian citizens, you can go to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, pcrf.net. And whether you have time,

money, or a little bit of energy, we hope you're able to contribute some as well. Wherever you are, whatever community you're in, there's a need for you. Thank you for everything you can and will do. Here's your episode. Welcome to Your Wrong About The Podcaster. We talk about how the myth of American progress is often just that. And in fact, in many ways, things are getting worse. With me today is Megan Burbank. What an intro. I'm sorry. I love it.

It's perfect. You know, this is like a time of resolutions and we're all like, I'm gonna drink water. I'm gonna make my bed in the morning and I'm so happy for all of us doing that. And also like, I think it's good to, as I suspect we're gonna do today, be like, things have gotten worse than they were 50 years ago.

We have to give up on the myth that in America, things are just gonna keep getting better and better, that throughout history, people get smarter and smarter, because they don't. Yeah, no, I was thinking back to the last time I was on this show, during which I think I was like, Rovers is Wade, yeah, that's bad, but like, things are already bad, so you shouldn't feel so bad about it.

And now I'm just like, well, they did get worse, it turns out. Yeah. Well, and so you, yes, you came on the show in like 2018, 2019, the very early days, it felt in many ways like an episode about telling Michael Hobbs about the state of the union regarding abortion. And we're here to talk today. I've asked you to give us basically a biography of the American pro-life movement, which behaves as if it's been with us forever, but is probably actually younger than, it's definitely younger than Jeff Bridges, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Although with roots that go back much further. I want to actually start by being almost ridiculously basic, but I think this will be a good way to approach it. And so I'm going to ask you, Megan, to start. What is an abortion? Excellent question. And also the answer to that question has changed a lot over the past couple years.

So an abortion is a termination of a pregnancy. It happens anywhere from five weeks of pregnancy onward. You can have later abortions. They exist. They're rare, but they exist. onward, you can have later abortions. They exist. They're rare, but they exist. And when someone doesn't want to be pregnant,

and they are, they have an abortion. And the way that they do it is you can have a procedural abortion, which would be going to a clinic and having a quite uncomplicated procedure performed by a practitioner. It might be a doctor. Oftentimes it's an advanced practice clinician like a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner.

It takes like five to 10 minutes. It has a very low rate of complication. And then of course we have medication abortion which is becoming a much more common option, which is where you simply take two kinds of pills, mythopristo, which of course is the controversial one, the subject of that lawsuit that's been in the news everywhere and needs a prostell, and they induce an abortion at home. So you can have an abortion the privacy of your home.

To me, an abortion is just a pregnancy termination, but within that, we also have to acknowledge that abortion is a treatment for miscarriage and other medical conditions that can come up during pregnancy. One abortion procedure is known as a DNC dilation and curatage, and that is something that happens when someone has a miscarriage and it's incomplete, but it's medically identical to an abortion procedure. And one of the things that I think comes up when we talk about abortion is there's this idea that an abortion, an elective abortion and miscarriage management are two different things, but they are medically identical procedures.

So we're talking about a whole swath of different types of reproductive healthcare. Yeah, we spend so much time talking about the fight for abortion access that we kind of lose sight of what it actually can be like for people. And of course, then there was also Norma McCorvey, the row and row v. Wade, saying first that she had become pro life. And then I think the very end of her life being like, yeah, no, that wasn't, I guess did that for the money. Yeah, that was a death bed confession. I mean, I guess it wasn't quite a death bed confession because she did it in a documentary. That's really good. It's called a K Jane row. And

it's available on Hulu. Everyone should watch it. But yeah, she she was Jane row and row versus Wade. And then she had this conversion, this like alleged conversion where she was like, well, you know, I know that I was Jane row, but I have in fact changed my mind about this. And she was this incredibly like useful character for or like a celebrity almost of the pro life movement where she was sort of trotted out to say like, you know, I really have changed my mind about this. She was a really powerful symbol for them. And then of course later on, she revealed that she'd been paid for what she had done. And she had really just done

it for financial gain. But it's very interesting to look at what the true motivations are for a lot of people who are claiming to have had these powerful conversions. Because what's more incentivizing than money, right? Yeah, and I will, certainly the left has plenty of ethical compromise and Well, you know, certainly the left has plenty of ethical compromise and, you know, charismatic leaders and grifts. I do think that like compared especially to any kind of movement involving or focusing on fundamentalist Christianity in America, like there's so much more money in being on the right and being a figure ahead of a movement for the right. It seems to me, like if I really wanted to just like

make some quick cash, I would become a conservative demagogue, not a leftist one. Yeah, yeah, you'd get red-pilled. You'd pull a Katie Herzog. You would. Love you, Katie, you know it's true. No, I'm gonna get Katie. Anyway, whatever, not to bring famous Seattle transphobes into this, but, um,

but you know, it comes up, but right, there's incentives, you know? Yeah. I mean, my understanding of all this is that abortion doesn't have to be particularly tough on your body or your mind, but that we socially have made it really hard for people in both those ways potentially. Yes, I also wanna give space to the complexity that people can feel around abortion.

I think we've talked about this before. Like my personal opinion is I literally don't care how people feel about abortion on an individual level. Like if you feel complicated about it, that's fine. Life is complicated. I think where the issue comes in is that we actually have these huge systems in play that are using the complexity of a potential experience around abortion to do things like mobilize behind legislation.

That's really harmful, right? That's where the problem for me comes in. And I think within this, what makes it complicated is that opposition to abortion can be a really sincerely held belief. Like I have pro-life people in my family, you know, and I don't think that they're trying to make any cash off of this. Like I think they really feel complicated about it. And I think there's room for that. But in some ways, the people who have really sincerely

held beliefs around this issue end up occluding the real motivations that are behind the movement itself more broadly, which has much more to do with celebrity and power and political influence than with any sort of like interesting theological conversation about terminating a pregnancy. And one thing that is so left out of the picture, except in Maud, notably, is that so many people

who have abortions already have children. Yes, more than half. And that is something that figures into the decision to terminate a pregnancy for sure, because it's we don't really live in a country that's super nurturing or helpful or has much of a social safety net for raising children. So if you are living in poverty and you already have two kids and you're pregnant, you can't really afford that. And one of the things that I would encourage people to look into if they're curious is there was actually a study done

on women who presented for abortions. This was before Roe vs. Wade and were turned away because of the gestational age of their pregnancies. They were too far along to legally meet the requirements of the state they were in. So this study followed them, the women who had received abortions and the ones who were turned away. It's called the turn away study. And what it found was that the economic and psychological outcomes for the women who were turned away for treatment were significantly worse than the ones who actually received the treatment that they had sought in the first place.

And so those factors, like having other children, having other responsibilities, having caregiving responsibilities that you have to do, perhaps having a limit on your income, those really can be factors that if someone has an unplanned pregnancy, having an abortion becomes the difference between being able to continue living your life at baseline versus getting sucked into an ongoing cycle of poverty. Well, speaking of the biography of the quote unquote pro-life movement, abortion has been with us for a very long time, but the pro-life movement has not, really, at all.

And I would love to know where you begin our tale. I think the pro-life movement itself, as we know it today, begins in 1973, because you don't get it without the decision of Roe versus Wade. However, its roots go back much, much further than that. The other thing that I also wanna clarify is when I talk about the pro-life movement, I'm talking about the convergence

of evangelicals and Catholics on abortion, because when we talk about the reality of this movement, there's often this idea that like before 1973, nobody opposed abortion and that's not true. Like the Catholics are pretty on record as being opposed to abortion. Famous for, you know, having a lot of children. So. Yes.

So there's, you know, Catholic opposition to abortions well established. However, what makes the pro-life movement as we know it into the sort of like political force that it becomes is that we get the involvement of evangelicals, which is really what brings it to a critical mass to have the influence over American politics that it has. So I think if we don't get the activation of the evangelical wing of the pro-life movement, we don't get the pro-life movement such as it is today. movement, we don't get the pro-life movement such as it is today. So that's why I say 1973, but like people have had wacky opinions about abortion for a long time before that.

But what's interesting is that its origins, at least on the evangelical side, have nothing to do with abortion or talking about when life begins or anything like that. But it all kind of goes back to taxes. Wow. And not wanting to pay them. We really, we've been obsessed with taxes as a country since before we were a country. It's really something. Yeah. I love it. All right. When is this? This is before 1973. This is when the country is going through a process of desegregation. And we are desegregating schools. The evangelical schools like Bob Jones University want very much to stay segregated. They're like, we understand the rest of the country is doing this, we don't like it,

we'd like to remain segregated. But if they remain segregated, what's gonna happen to them? They're gonna lose their tax exempt status. Horrors. So they basically lose this battle and they realize that if they wanna have more control over things like maintaining their tax exempt status despite having horrifically out of step views, they're going to have to have more political influence. And what's interesting is if you look back on the positions of evangelical communities before 1973,

positions of evangelical communities before 1973. There's not really like a lot of consensus on abortion. There actually are a couple situations where there is support for repealing abortion bans, like laws against abortion that proceeded in 1973. Probably the most like visible evangelical is Jimmy Carter. Like that should kind of tell you what we're working with Basically what happens is they're like well shit like we're not winning hearts and minds with segregation Now we're gonna have to pay taxes like this is so upsetting

Classic, you know who among us and so They're like well, we have to find some kind of issue that we can just like get our teeth into and like get some more influence with the government so we can have more control. And they land on abortion. It's an issue that they see as being a potential wedge issue. Because remember, this is a time before we're in the polarized political moment we're in now. So abortion is not really a Democratic or Republican issue at this time. You have pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats. So it's a way to curry favor with people on both sides of the aisle.

It's also a way to kind of sow discord. What ends up happening is that they also begin to layer onto it this like deep emotional appeal to bring more people into the movement. And of course, the Catholics are already there. So if you bring in the evangelicals, then you can have this really gigantic voting block and you can have more control over what happens politically in your country. So this is to me is why whenever I'm like having giving a small speech about how I think that it's a political movement, not a religious one, this is what I mean, because it's not about having any kind of complicated theological conversation about abortion. It's literally about what gets us from point A to point B, point B,

being political power. Yeah. And the 70s are such a funny time because we have my understanding of it anyways, that women's lib has weirded its head and freaked people out a little bit. And then the development that we have that also is hard to remember wasn't always the case is evangelicals entering mainstream politics?

The evangelical involvement in politics that we've seen over like from when you and I were children to now is, yeah, it's new. It's like a new phenomenon and this is part of it. It's because they were able to land on this issue that becomes very inflammatory and it's a way to bring people in. And it's interesting to me because when we look at politics now,

it's like a mainstream Republican position to be pro-life, but without the events of the past couple of decades and with the efforts of the pro-life movement, like that's not happening. And also, like you're right, like if we look at the 70s, like that's coming off of a period where states are beginning to repeal their old abortion laws, and there's becoming just more and more public support

for abortion access. And so then when we have the wholesale ruling in Roe versus Wade that this is legal nationwide, then that's what sets up this political battle to carry forward. And it's interesting to me because I think sometimes we get really caught up in the details of like, it's not really about babies.

Why are they saying it's about babies? And it's like, no, it's not about babies, but it's like, of course it's not about babies because it never was. It was always about political control. And so if you can look at it through that lens, you couldn't have chosen a better issue to just be like a vehicle for political control and power.

And that because this movement is rooted in bad faith to begin with, it becomes this way for people to kind of like come in with pretty iffy motivations and profit off of it and actually have this like profound impact on public policy that's like the impact is people not getting the healthcare that they need. But it's because it's not, it's not really about that to begin with. And could you talk for a second just about what is Evangelicalism in America because this is a term we use so frequently just because we need to use it to describe what's happening

politically but I feel like it's easy to forget what we're literally talking about here. Yeah, and I also think it's like sometimes really hard to extricate like what Evangelical is from how Evangelicals have impacted American politics. But essentially, the basis of evangelicalism is you're taking the Bible literally. So it's a literal reading of the Bible. Evangelical communities, they actually tend to have a lot of like deep reading of the Bible, but it's a movement within Protestantism. And there's this idea, one of the key tenants is this idea of being born again. There's this emphasis on like

personal conversion and like a personal relationship with Jesus. And you know, I think having personal spiritual experience is a huge part of many different faith traditions. But one of the things that we see in evangelicalism is also this strain of conservatism where you see things like, I think a lot about the 90s sort of purity culture that comes out of evangelicalism. There's a lot of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and a lot of sort of emphasis on traditional gender roles. One of the things that that Robert Shank writes about in his memoir is like literally being a patriarch in this church and preaching against birth control while like using birth control with his wife, right? Wow. One of the things that you encounter when you look at this is there is this sort of strain of hypocrisy that flows through a lot of these communities

because they have these sort of like hard line, traditional gender roles, stances, and then yet a lot of this is really about centralizing power for the people who control these church communities. And I think it's also important to say like, there are lots of evangelicals. This is a big group of people within American Christianity

and there are different views on abortion within evangelical communities too. And like honestly, one of the things that's been interesting is there's been a lot of deconstruction among evangelicals, I would say over the past decade, and there are now sort of more groups within this particular religious community who are like pushing for more progressive changes and who have different views on abortion and gun control and things like that. So it's not a monolith, you know, nothing is, but that's who

we're talking about. And I feel like it's fair to say that we're living in an era of these past few decades of long game having actually come to fruition. And I know that I never shut up about this, but I'll say it again because I really believe it. The obsession in part with alleging a gigantic satanic conspiracy to control the country that we had in the satanic panic and continue to have now, I think is some kind of a projection of the fact that, you know, not all Christians, but certainly Christians within a certain stripe have plotted to take over the country and largely succeeded and

have done it all out in the open and have homeschooled their children with the explicit goal of sending them forth and making them into doctors and senators and lawyers and continuing to influence society and writing laws and changing districts. And we are living inside of an organized takeover and I'm not trying to make that sound more dramatic than it is. I just think it's true. Yeah. I think what you're talking about is just that it's a massive political movement. And we are seeing the effects of that today. Like, we're seeing that

in terms of the massive dissonance between what's going on with the Supreme Court and what the makeup of that court looks like versus what popular opinion on abortion policy actually looks like across the country. I don't know that I would call it a takeover, but I would say it's like an infiltration, let's say of American politics. Right. Like we used to use communists of doing. Yes. Not unlike that. And that's exactly what it is. And I think that sometimes I think people have this idea that the pro-life movement is like silly or goofy or dumb. And I think that people have that impression because of things like pro-life across America billboards or the Irv of Kurt Cameron.

Yes, exactly. It's like a little campy, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think Kurt Cameron exists to make us feel less scared. Yes. Because we're like, anyone who makes art this bad couldn't truly be smart enough to be dangerous.

Okay, but that's it. Like I think that's the impact that those things have is they give it this valence of unsurlessness, even though like it's so serious and it has been serious for a long time. And it's been so serious that like, now you can't get an abortion in Idaho. But yeah, like I think a lot of that goofiness is distracting. And I wouldn't go so far as to say, well, I think it's intentional like this is. We don't believe that people, you know,

do conspiracy theories with a great amount of intent in our leftist think tank. We just think they kind of muddle through and do things that are effective even if they're not self-aware about them. Yes, exactly. That is how I feel about it. I actually think most people,

when they do bad things are not. I don't think anyone is really a criminal mastermind. I kind of suspect that no one in the history of the world has ever been self-aware for more than five seconds, you know? Yeah. But, talking about being self-aware, like, I do think that this movement, this political movement, is smart on a policy level. And one of the ways that they are smart is through sort of a centralization of policy decisions that they're trying to propagate across the country. So of course, the pro-life movement's goal, which it's now achieved was to overturn Roe versus Wade. But while Roe versus Wade was in place,

one of the things that pro-life groups did was to propagate pro-life legislation in states that would effectively erode access to abortion while remaining within the legal sort of barriers of Roe. So one of the things that you would see would be like what are known as trap laws, which are targeted regulation of abortion laws. So those would be things like,

your abortion clinic needs to meet the same standards as an ambulatory surgical center. They're almost never medically necessary. They're generally pretty arbitrary. And what they're intended to do is to be burdensome on clinics so the clinics won't be able to operate. That's one kind of route that they take.

They also set up these waiting periods. So if you go to a clinic to get an abortion, you would have to go home for 48 hours and then come back. And then of course they have certain things. They're very into a 15 week abortion ban, which is actually that 15 week abortion ban, which is actually like that kind of abortion ban is the basis of the Dobbs v. Jackson women's health case. So there are all of these things that you can do to make abortion, if not illegal, then like really inaccessible

or inconvenient or difficult. And so they start to do that. And the way that they do that is through disseminating model legislation. So they craft legislation or come up with policy ideas centrally with groups like National Rights of Life, and then they distribute them among the states. And so the legislation that you're seeing pushed in say like Louisiana or Kansas is like the same legislation. So it's really smart. There's an efficiency to it. And I've even encountered this like in my reporting, like I did a story last year about a law in Idaho known as like an abortion trafficking law, which like to be clear, abortion trafficking is not a real thing.

Where would the money be in it for one thing? Well, I'm just like, it's very satanic panic vibes. It's like, if you think about it at all, it doesn't make sense. And what is, what are they claiming is going on with that law? They're suggesting that minors who are pregnant, who don't want to have abortions are being trafficked

into states where abortion is legal by abortion traffickers and forced to have abortions are being trafficked into states where abortion is legal by abortion traffickers and forced to have abortions. Oh yeah, well I mean I did spend last weekend doing that, but you know, right. And there is so much, especially I feel like in like conservative political cartoons, a lot of rhetoric around like young pregnant women who clearly want to continue a pregnancy being forced to abort, which I just, to me, the greatest threat in that regard and kind of the only threat I can think of is if you're coerced by someone you're in a relationship with. Right.

Like that does happen. Reproductive coercion does happen in relationships as a tool of abuse. Yeah, it's just not happening. But anyway, this was the basis for this law that of course is set up to be copied elsewhere. And I did a story on it and I looked into its origins and the origin of this policy can be traced back to a letter that was sent to National Right to Life from a conservative law firm. And they were basically outlining ways that states could keep people from having abortions if even in banned states, prosecutors were not

like following the law. And so banning abortion trafficking was one of the suggestions. And then like lo and behold, it happens where it's like they launched it in Idaho. A lot of these laws are launched in states like Idaho. Yeah, this is really crafty and targeted and organized. And it's a massive undertaking that's decades in the making. Yeah. If you're going to choose an issue kind of out of thin air to make your issue, that this really is a good one because especially if people are brought up on this being their issue then like you know you can be very easily persuaded to get attached to this idea of sort of the eternal baby that you're protecting you know like the tomb of the unknown baby because actually a joke from Citizen Ruth and that it's like it's easier to love the vague idea of every baby than like

any actual person. Yeah, and I think that's the way that we get to one of the weirder parts of this whole thing, which is that even though this movement is rooted in bad faith, it doesn't start as any sort of sincerely held religious belief. Because it's so successful, it's become a sincerely held religious belief for many people. The sincerity is not where it started, it came later. What's the story with that? Well, it's just what it sounds like.

You know, a few, So I read Shank's book. He's like a big source for me on this because he's one of the few former leaders who speaks about it pretty openly. The pro-life movement early on did a lot to kind of bring people in using emotional peels. Some of the things they did were pretty wacky. They were big into pamphlets, kind of like chick tracks. So that was one way to do it. And it was all about that

messaging of like, this is murder, it's murder, it's murder. And so repeating that often enough, it becomes something that people really respond to. Because like, if you really thought that like, babies were being murdered down the street from where you live and this is not, you don't have the internet, you can't fact check it. And maybe you're having a bad day and you feel like I don't even want to like justify why people think this. But I think that it is compelling for a certain person in a certain situation. And so I think that they sort of capitalize on that. And then the stakes are set pretty high

because that's what they begin with is like this is murder. And so that becomes a way to kind of bring people in. And then one of the things that is interesting about this whole situation is the importance of like narrative and storytelling within it. Because this was a movement started by men, but it concerns an issue that affects women and people who can get pregnant. They actually kind of needed to recruit women to join them in the movement because otherwise

how would they have any credibility? So they start to do that. They bring people in. They have people testified to the experiences that they've had that have been damaging. And they use those stories to incite a very specific emotional response in people that then gets them to kind of like join the movement. And that's how the movement grows. It's through identifying people who have stories and having them share them publicly in almost like a theatrical, confessional way. Yeah, which does remind me of the Stranger Danger

Panic of the 80s, which is, you know, you take something that actually happens very occasionally in America, which is a child being abducted by a stranger. Or, you know, to take a more timely example, Trump and people within the broader Trump anti-immigration movement trawling for people who had had relatives killed by people who were in the country without the necessary documentation. As Michael Hobbs has said in the past, it's a big country. Like you can find examples of whatever you want.

Yeah, it's very much like that. And it works, you know, this is, and they also compensate people. Like they pay people to do that. There are other incentives too, like people who share their stories can become famous within the movement. They can become leaders themselves. And so there is this motivation to take part. And that allows the movement to grow. And then there's also the development of early pro-life tactics like clinic blockades, where people would go and like stand in front of clinics and huge groups and like try to keep people from going in, there's actually a law against that as a result of that

because it was such a problem. Love that. Yeah, the face act. One of the things that early leaders of the pro-life movement do is they carry around real fetal remains, almost as a performance art thing. Yeah, it's really gross. And it's also just like,

doesn't seem very respectful to do that with anyone's remains. I just, there is also like such a strong culture within like very conservative Christianity in America. I think of like, you've got to be exposed to extreme gore and horror because it's cautionary. And that's like how you get to do that. And it's like, just go see a saw movie, it's fine.

Yeah, there are better ways to explore the macabre than using like literal human remains to make a point. It's one of those things where even if you understand the political thrust of the movement, it doesn't make sense. It's like a very bizarre behavior. It's not how I would choose to spend my one wild and precious life. You know, like there are some alternatives.

Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I feel like there's this idea in conservative culture in America that fantasy will damn you to live out what you once thought about one time. And in reality, it seems like a lot of their culture is about not having enough fantasy life and therefore doing really weird stuff just on main. Yeah, being weird on main. But I think also part of it is that it kind of works and it does get them publicity.

And it's like they get arrested for their clinic blockades I think also part of it is that it kind of works and it does get them publicity and you know, it's like they get arrested for their clinic blockades and that becomes kind of a point of pride. And I think part of it is you're showing how deep your conviction is. Yeah, it's like, well, I'm willing to carry around baby parts and get arrested and have to go to court. It's because I believe this so much, you know? Yeah. Yikes. And you get to be, you know, an avenging angel, hero, holy warrior, whatever. One of the things that really began to strike me as amazing the more I read about, you know, the history of anti-abortion stuff in America and how at the extreme end of it you have clinic bombings and people who perform abortions being murdered

is it's remarkable that we have not branded this terrorism at any time, but we don't think of it as terrorism if Christians do it. Well, it fits the FBI definition of terrorism. Yeah. Domestic terrorism, I should say. Yeah, and I'm sure it's called that occasionally, but it just like stuff in the 90s,

things you would hear as a kid on the news about like, I think we called it political extremism, but the idea that like this was terrorism is something that feels to me like it hasn't clicked for us. The way, you know, anyone with melanin in an airport is still a terrorist as far as America is concerned today. If animal rights activists were like going around committing mass murders, would we think about it differently? Like I just, I think if any other movement in America had the body count that the pro-life movement has, I think it would be really hard not to call it terrorism. Because, you know, we have a whole series of assassination attempts and

successful assassinations and clinic bombings and all of that. And I talk to people who work in abortion clinics and run clinics for my work and security is always a concern. Officially the pro-life movement, like leaders of the pro-life movement have disavowed that kind of violence publicly. But I look at it in sort of a sense of like, well, if you are using really inflammatory rhetoric and saying that this equates to murder, and someone in the wrong headspace at the wrong time hears that, like, what do you think is gonna happen? But they've done a very good job of really sort of distancing themselves from the violence of it.

I don't know why we don't call it terrorism. I think it's because the way that we approach abortion more generally is very much like, this is a two sides issue and like, we can't appear to support one side over the other. It also, yeah, like I'm really tempted in a way that I feel I know I am almost positive is entirely about nostalgia. You know, I want to say that like, you know, 20 years ago, everything was a shit show, but maybe the right was more in touch with basic human decency. And then I think when has anyone with real political power in America ever been in touch with basic human decency. And then I think when has anyone with real political power in America ever been in touch with basic human decency? It's just not our thing, you know?

And it could be our thing, but it hasn't been yet in any kind of, in a cross-the-board way, you know? There's like always people who exist in every period who are leading the way morally and then The rest of us and we just have to deal with that Yeah, I think that when we look back on like the political era that that launched the bizarro Trajectory that brings us to where we are And it's rooted in not wanting to pay taxes. Like I think that says a lot. I think that we in America have a lot of this, I don't wanna pay taxes energy. And when it's concentrated at the top of like a political

or religious group with a lot of control, that sort of like narrow-mindedness, like self-serving behavior can have really drastic consequences. And I think it's pretty funny in a not ha ha, but like tragic way that we now find ourselves in this position where like we have rolled back like a fundamental human right

because of a movement that began because a group of people wanted to stay in the past. Yeah, and when you put it like that, I think if you have a crucial group of people wanted to stay in the past. Yeah, and when you put it like that, I think if you have a crucial mix of people who truly believe in the cause and will do anything for it, people who are out for themselves and know how to maneuver things accordingly

and then people who maybe wanna get stuff for themselves but can believe that they're doing all this out of virtue, then that's very powerful. It is. And it's what's gotten us to this point. And I think part of what, you know, if anything is going to get us through is like understanding that. When I talked to Rob Schenck about this, and he was like, he basically said that he feels

like his religious community has done like huge long-term damage. And so like part of figuring out what to do now is like repairing and looking at that damage. And I don't have a solution for that, right? Like I'm a journalist. I like to look at this stuff and like figure out what's happening and help people understand it in the moment and look at the mechanics of the problem. But I think part of any sort of forward movement is going to require being really truthful about the motivations that bring us to this kind of a situation because we see power being considered more important than human dignity and privacy, which we should all or things we should all have

access to. I also went to the National Right to Life conference the year it was held in Milwaukee because I wanted to see what everybody was talking about. And something that actually came up a lot was letting people die in hospitals. Like I went to an absolutely unhinged talk by a guy who was claiming that geriatricians, which by the way my mom was before she retired, are like intentionally killing patients in hospitals by not giving them enough water, which is insane. So this talk basically about there being an organized plot to

like kill off seniors in our nation's hospitals. And there's something, you know, at this conference, the values that I could see were like, never accept death, force everyone to live. And how that actually, in my opinion, is not a very humanist value, you know, because it's the question of how do we get the largest quantity of life, both in terms of, you know, how many babies we're encouraging people to have potentially, both in terms of, you know, how many babies we're encouraging people to have potentially, and just this belief that death in any instance is an evil to be warded off. But, you know, if people want to die on their own terms, that to me is pro-life in the realest sense, you know, and allowing people to access abortion so that they can give themselves the lives that they want and be able to grow and to take care of themselves and the people in their lives and potentially

their other children. Like, that's actually pro-life is what I think. Yeah, all of this is complicated. And I think the dynamic you're describing, as well as the origins of the pro-life movement more broadly, are preying on the discomfort people have with complexity. And we come by it, honestly, it's hard to be a person. Death is scary, time is short, and there are ways to make yourself feel better than I think that these types of political movements really prey on. But I think what I've found is like, so I cover abortion policy. So I think about this a lot. And I have spoken to people who have all kinds of opinions about it.

I've spoke, people disclose their abortion stories to me all the time. I've heard a lot of them. The more I learn about it, the less simple it becomes. The more complicated it becomes, the more difficult it becomes. And the more clear it becomes to me that like that decision is something that can only be left up to the person whose body is involved because it's it's an and it's not because it's simple, but it's because it's complicated. involved because it's, it's an, and it's not because it's simple, but it's because it's complicated. And I think the appeal of a movement like the pro life movement is not that it allows for that complexity or even that it wants to engage in that complexity. It's all about sort of erasing that complexity in favor of a much more comforting lie.

Yeah. And what is the lie? How do you see that? Oh, you know, I think that's a big question. I think the lie is that pregnancy is simple and that everyone who has a baby is gonna be a good parent and they're gonna have enough resources and it's not hard to make that decision. But the thing is like, if we lived in a world that had a lot more support for parents and where we didn't have the huge financial striations we have in our society, maybe it would be

easier for people to just have tons and tons of children. But the reality is that we don't live in a society that has those supports at all. And of course there's like the life and death question. It's like my mom and I were having a conversation about this recently and she was like, you know, when you get pregnant, it's going to end up somewhere. Like you're going to have a baby, you're going to have a miscarriage or you're going to have an abortion. And I think the lie that the pro life movement is selling is that that's not the reality of it. That it's just like

if you're pregnant, you're going to have a baby. And that would be great, especially when we talk about like people who really wanted to have their pregnancies. I'm 36. I by the time you get to be our age, like age, you know people who've had miscarriages and it's very common and it's a really isolating experience or it can be. And part of that I think is because we don't have a really nuanced space to talk about this stuff. And I think part of the reason that we don't have it is that we have set the terms of the debate, like I said, at this like default, where it becomes

a conversation about like, should abortion be illegal or not? And not like, how can we support people in their pregnancies and in their experiences of miscarriage and abortion moving forward so that like, everybody is happy and healthy and supported? And I don't think that's a question that the pro-life movement really wants to And I don't think that's a question that the pro-life movement really wants to ask. I feel like there's some kind of basic misconception about what people are like at playing all this because it seems like one of the basic ideas

behind taking away abortion access is, well, if people can't get abortions, then they won't get pregnant. If they can't fix the mistake, they won't make the mistake. And it's like, but that's like saying that if you don't sell, it's a very dated metaphor, but this is like saying that if you don't sell liquid paper,

people won't misspell things, but like we do, you know, it's just there's life. And to quote the title of a Degrazi episode that wasn't allowed to be aired in this country, accidents happen. I remember that Degresse episode that wasn't allowed to be aired in this country, accidents happen. I remember that Degresse episode. But yeah, right? Like life is messy.

People have wanted pregnancies that have horrific complications. Like people are on birth control. Sometimes it doesn't work, you know? Like people get pregnant with IUDs. That can happen. So it's just like, I think part of what becomes so complicated with this conversation is like, abortion fits within that context, where it's like, when you are pregnant and you can't be or you don't want to be,

having an abortion is what allows you to continue living your life. Yeah. Those are the real stakes we're talking about here. And where does that leave us? Where are we today in beautiful January 2024? There was polling before Dobs to suggest that most people, like a majority of Americans, supported Roe vs. Wade. There was some sort of idea that there was popular support

for abortion access. And what we've seen is that not only is there popular support for it, there's electoral support for it. Actually, most people are pro-choice, and pro-choice encompasses a lot of people. I mean, I think people feel all kinds of ways about abortion, but are still support basic access to it. And that's not an extremely progressive

or leftist position. It's just kind of normal. And I think that we now have very clear evidence of that. And I think we also have very clear evidence that the position that became this wedge issue for the right wing, for the pro-life movement, actually is relatively unpopular. That doesn't really help us with who is on the Supreme Court at all. But I think that it helps to know that because it shows where our values are as a country,

that that is actually how people feel about it. And I think it's forced people to clarify their own beliefs around the issue because I think that there was a lot of complacency. You know, like I cover this issue, I report on this issue. And I can tell you that like before Roe vs. Wade, not very many mainstream legacy outlets were covering abortion policy.

It was unusual to do it. And now, well, it It was unusual to do it. And now, well, it's still unusual to do it, but now there's much more support for it. People have really caught up. And I think that it's pretty clear that it's an issue that is important for people to understand. And I think there's value in that.

But I also think we're talking about a movement that, while younger than Jeff Bridges, extends back to well before both you and I were born. So like this was really a long game. And I think that dismantling it will also take a very long time. That's annoying news, but it makes sense. But I really do find it extremely heartening to think about this being

first of all a manufactured issue where it almost feels like a bunch of fundamentalists could wake up tomorrow and say we are against breast implants. You know, we're gonna make this our issue. We're gonna find people who've had traumatic breast implant we're going to find people who've had traumatic breast implant experiences and get them to speak and write tell-alls. We've realized it's a way for women to gain more autonomy than we're comfortable with and we're against it. And I really do think that you could take that issue. It's not as good of an issue, but it connects with a lot of other stuff. It gets into some fraught territory and whip people into a fervor about it and kind of get them to forget that how they really feel is basically like that even if they would never want to get breast

implants for themselves, they really don't care what other people do because it's kind of normal for us to simply not care that much what other people do unless we're yelled at about how we need to do it. This is a bigger country with more people in it than any of us have time to personally meet. And so we rely on statistics and more usually the way the news makes us feel statistics are happening to understand where people around us stand on the issues we care about. And it is truly shocking to me to be told that only a quarter of people are actively against abortion access in this country. Like it feels like more. It feels

crushing and giant. And to be told that it's even a crumb smaller than I imagine it to be feels really good. Yeah. After the DOBS decision happened, the Pew Research Center found that 62% of Americans said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And 37% said the opposite. But within that, a much smaller minority of just 8% said that abortion should always be legal with no exceptions, which is really the worldview that's animating this type of legislation. And I think it's also worth noting that after the Dobs decision,

57% of Americans disapproved of that decision, and then 41% approved. But again, even within that group of people, only 25% strongly approved. It is like the media diet that we get, or at least that I'm used to getting, I think partly because it's impossible to conceptualize over 300 million people and what they're thinking and feeling and believing that, you know, as with everything else, those that shout the loudest get heard the most, but it's incredibly heartening that we have an 8% minority in the strongly agree camp. That's not very much, is it? It's not. It's not a broadly popular mainstream position. And I think that like part

of the work of the pro-life movement that's been so impressive is that they've made it actually seem like a more mainstream position than it is. But it is, it gets back to what you're saying about who is the loudest and who is in this case like the most theatrical and the most like long running, but not as long running as we think. If people want to stay more engaged in the day to day, I'm just asking for myself. If hypothetical listeners or me, you know, want to stay engaged with this issue and know what's going on, but also, you know, keep up stay engaged with this issue and know what's going on, but also, you know, keep up with it in a way that doesn't just make us want to hide under the covers.

How do we do that? And also, what can we do? How can we help? I think you should just always be curious about it. I think the issue with abortion is that it's been pretty like undercovered historically. And it tends to get a lot of attention around specific news events that make coverage necessary. So like the reversal of reverses weight is a great example of that. There was a ton of added attention on that issue during that time. But it wanes after that happens. And like actually when I talk to people who work within reproductive rights and abortion care, they often will tell me, oh, we get a spike in support, but then it gradually goes away

because people become less and less engaged. So I think the best way to really engage with it is to make sure that you're paying attention to it all the time. And you can do that by like looking into the policies going on where you live. And that actually, if you very reasonably don't want to become clinically depressed by like exposing yourself to this stuff over and over again. If by some fluke you're not already and want to continue not being. Listen, who among us has not spent some quality time with the angsty depress?

But anyway. The depress mode, if you will. Depress mode, yes. I get that. I think it's totally like, we all need to respect our limits as people and not go around carrying the trauma of the world in our bodies. I think that's a good thing to avoid. But just, I would say

like seeking out coverage that's local to where you live that's focused on policies around abortion is a really good way to do that. And like, you're in Oregon. So you probably have like a ton of excellent local policies to look into. Actually, I know you do because I've covered some of them, including things like public funding for the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which is the regional abortion fund for Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. And that's something that happened in Oregon

after Rivers' Wade was overturned. And so I think, you know, it's like very Mr. Rogers look for the helpers, but I think that finding ways to engage with the issue that focus on people who are doing the solutions-based work around it can be helpful. It's a way to make sure you still are informed without just reading

all of the really depressing stories that are coming out of banned states. There are a number of organizations that are doing really important work in banned states right now. Like there's one called James Due Process, which is helping teenagers in Texas like get connected with abortion resources. There's another one called Buckle Bunny's Fund, which I think is it's also in Texas. It's a similar it's an it's an abortion and practical support fund. portion and practical support fund. And I think finding those groups in your communities and just supporting them is a good way

to feel like you're not part of a problem. I feel like there are so many stories that are just like, well, we sent out a reporter to find the most tragic story we could possibly find. And the headline is like, a woman dies after being denied treatment for her pregnancy complications, or like a 10 year old girl was denied an abortion after being raped. And like, I actually think focusing on those stories, I think it's important right to document them when that's happening. But sometimes I think that that kind of reporting can almost get into like a tragedy porn situation where those stories are not really shifting policies or making the material situation of the people that they're about any better. I mean, it depends on the story, right? But I think

that they can be really numbing to read over and over again for people who just want to stay informed. So I think, yeah, giving yourself a little permission to step away from that coverage and sort of lock in more to what's going on for you locally can be a really good way to engage in a boundaries way that feels good and isn't going to make you want to go cry in a corner. Yeah. Any movement that claims to boil things down to right and wrong and to sort of declare itself an epoch and seize control in that way, like it's just standing on a foundation of dust and it feels good to point at that and say it. Right.

I mean, if there's nothing underneath it. It can just fall down. It can just fall down. And actually, like I think that we are starting to see that, because I think one of the things that's come out of the past couple of years is this greater awareness of popular support for abortion rights, which means that politicians don't really have that

as such a tool anymore. It's not as effective. And I think also, that's in a tool anymore. It's like not as effective. And I think also that's, I mean, that's in a bad way. That's why we're seeing the pivot to all of the sort of like attacks on gender affirming care and things like that. I mean, there, that it's a desperate grab from a group that is losing power. It's a pretty empty victory. And I think if anything, it shows us how important it is to have like something true and meaningful at the core of our politics. When you don't, it causes outsized harm.

And when you do have, you know, like you're talking about systems of mutual aid and support, that actually is what allows people to continue surviving and, you know, having like doing okay under these really oppressive circumstances. Yeah. And that we, we are here for each other like we always have been, you know, that if we're combating this logic of we have to be heroic, we have to go out and save people, we have to wage this battle that like the appropriate response to that is not to marshal your own soldiers and your own force for the battle, but to say we're not going to save anybody, we're going to take care of the people around us, you know, and take care of the

babies and take care of, you know, all the other humans who, although they might not be quite as cute as babies, are equally deserving of love and care, shockingly. No, I think that's true. And I think that what you just described, I think, is a more radical and potentially spiritual grain to start from than anything that's just about power. Like it's hard to be a person, it's hard to go through life. Babies need a lot of help. Have you seen a baby?

Babies can't do anything for themselves. I don't know if you know. Have you seen a baby? Those fuckers are pathetic. Have you seen what they're like? Absolutely no motivation. Don't even bother lifting their own heads, I mean. It takes a village, you know? To help a human being grow up and become well adjusted, that takes everybody. And I think that that is such a much more meaningful place to begin than

to talk about something that in a way has nothing to do with that, which is policing pregnancy. It's like to me those two things couldn't be further apart. Yeah. Megan Burbank, thank you so much for being with us and giving us this history and these instructions for the future. Where can people find your work? What have you been up to?

What are you looking forward to in 2024? So people can find me, unfortunately, on Twitter, where I remain. I don't know why, because it's a syncing ship. But you can find me there. My handle is Megan Irene Bee, because I'm a millennial. You're like Tommy Ryan. You're bashing down gates and saving the people in steerage.

That's right. I got that fire axe out of the container it was in. It's gonna be fine. And I also have a newsletter that I send out twice a month. It's called Burbank Industries, which is misleading because it's just me, but I like the idea that it sounds like a big conglomerate. It sounds like a tax shelter.

I love that. That's exactly the vibe I'm going for. Yeah, it's Megan Burbank dot substack dot com. Megan spelled the normal way and Burbank like the city in California. And you can find me at various outlets throughout the Northwest and nationally. And you can read my coverage if you wanna know how things are going in terms of abortion policy without Roe, hopefully in a way that makes you feel more informed and less terrified.

I'm so excited about getting to do that this coming year and just thank you for all of the work that you've done covering reproductive justice for all these years. And thank you for all of the work that you've done covering reproductive justice for all these years and thank you for being a helper, Megan. Thank you for being a helper, Sarah. This has been really delightful. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much to Megan Burbank, our illustrious guest. Thank you so much to Miranda Zickler for editing. Thank you, eternally, to Carolyn Kendrick for producing. If you liked this episode, and especially if you're one of the people who over the

years has asked us for an episode on Mary Kay Leterno, you should listen to this month's bonus, where we have Megan Burbank back again and where she and I are discussing the movie May-December. And if you happen to be in the Bay Area and would like to see a live You're Wrong About, You Can Catch Me and Chelsea Webbersmith at San Francisco Sketch Fest, February 2nd, at the Great Star Theater. We are going to be talking about alligators and the sewers. It's going to be a good time. That's it for us.

We'll see you in two weeks. See you next time. you