June 9, 2022 • 46 mins
In Part 1 of Abortion: The Body Politic, we explore the current state of abortion access. Katie Couric visits who abortion clinics that straddle the Missouri-Illinois border. They are only 15 minutes but — because of Missouri’s state-imposed restrictions — worlds apart. We also find out what types of abortion are available today, how people access them, and what it is like to get an abortion in today’s charged climate. We hear from abortion fund organizers, doctors in restrictive and progressive states, and people from all over the country, many of whom are already living in a post-Roe world. We also find out what is at stake for the upcoming Supreme Court decision that is expected to reverse the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to a safe and legal abortion.
More information on this episode’s guests and resources:
Organizations:
- Guttmacher Institute
- ARC Southeast
- Physicians for Reproductive Health
- We Testify
- Advocates for Youth
Books and more:
- You’re the Only One I’ve Told: The Stories Behind Abortion, by Dr. Meera Shah
- Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present, by Mary Ziegler
- Unpacking the Roe draft bombshell with Mary Ziegler - Next Question with Katie Couric
- The Body is Not an Apology, by Sonya Renee Taylor
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I consider my abortion the greatest act of self love
that I did. I chose my life like I chose Michaels.
And the reason why I get so emotional is it's
just thinking back and like wishing I could go back
(00:22):
and hug myself and um and tell myself that that
it's okay to have an abortion. And that's what I
want every wants to know. It's May eleven, eight ten
(00:48):
in the morning, and we are here at the last
standing abortion clinic in the entire state of Missouri. It's
a great, pretty nondescript building with a very large royal
blue Planned Parenthood sign in the front. What has it
been like for the people working here? What has been
(01:09):
like for the people coming here? That's what we're here
to find out. Hi, ladies, good morning, How are you good.
Nice to see you. My name is Nicky and I'm
a registered nurse at the Planned Parenthood location in St.
Louis also though in Fair Behinds, Illinois. There's twelve recovery
(01:32):
chairs in this area, and there was a time where
it was packed and we were super busy and um,
we would see fifty patients in a day, but because
of the restrictions, it just is not worth it for
patients to jump through this many hoops. I have all
these activist friends in St. Louis that are are in
Missouri that are panicking about you know, the ROVERSUS wade
(01:53):
news in Texas and Oklahoma and whatever, and I'm like, guys,
we're ahead of them. It's like, this is all right,
happened here, Like they just don't know that. They don't understand.
But this has been going on since late so we,
I mean, we effectively are I almost feel like it's
symbolic to do abortions here just to be able to
say we can still provide that service. But it doesn't
(02:15):
make sense staffing wise, it doesn't make sense for the patients.
It's just too many restrictions. The dominoes keep falling in
the push to overturn Roe v. Wait, the abortion flashboard
all across the country, the Ohio governor signing today the
most restrictive abortion law in the country, Alabama passing the
nation's most restrictive abord Today, Missouri became the latest state
(02:37):
to pass what Oklahoma passing a near total Texas law
that would face up to fifteen years in prison nine
years in prison for performing an abortion immediately. Hi everyone,
I'm Katie Kuric and this is Abortion The Body Politic,
a six part series from Katie CURRK Media and I
(02:58):
Heart Media. Fifty years ago this January, the landmark ro
(03:20):
VERSUS Way decision guaranteed the right to a safe and
legal abortion. In just a few weeks, the Supreme Court
is expected to reverse that decision. This could be the
most consequential opinion in decades. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside
the Supreme Court Monday evening afternoons of the Court's draft
opinion broke. While the US is taking away that right,
(03:44):
the rest of the world is riding a wave of
abortion law liberation. Mexico's Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday
that penalizing abortion is unconstitutional action. This is my friends,
(04:06):
This is a time to act that this is not
the time to be silent. How did we get here?
And what will abortion access look like in a post
row world. Over the course of the next six episodes,
we're going to try to answer those questions by digging
into our country's complicated reproductive history, by tracing abortion storylines
(04:29):
in pop culture, and by looking abroad for potential role models.
But first we need to start here in the present,
because for so many we're already living in a post
row world. A lot of the conversations around access right
now have been concentrated on the legality of rome and
(04:51):
so one of the things that I keep like saying
over and over is yes, Rob Wade made abortion legal
but not necessarily accessible. My name is Oriaku and Jaku
Yi and they pronounced and I'm co founder and executive
director of Access Reproductive Care Southeast. We've been funding abortion
(05:15):
since July of and every single year there has been
some sort of abortion ban or restriction in every one
of the states that we work in. About folks in
our region live in a county without an abortion provider. Um.
When we're thinking about the Southeast, the state of Georgia
(05:36):
has more abortion clinics than Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and South
Carolina combined. The reality is that people are traveling hours,
crossing state lines just to get simple healthcare. Oriaki Najaku's organization,
Our Southeast is an abortion fund. Abortion funds have become
(05:57):
a key part of accessing aboardtions in today's increasingly restrictive climate.
In fact, there are more than ninety grassroots organizations across
the country working to help people get the abortions they need.
Abortion funds are like mutual aid funds, and so essentially
we're making sure the material conditions of folks who are
(06:19):
seeking abortions are being met. And so what that looks
like is providing rides, lodging, childcare, translation and interpretation services. Um.
You know, there's like a whole range of things as
far as things that might be barriers for people to
get to the appointment, where abortion funds step in to
(06:40):
support people in their community. According to the Goopmaker Institute,
one was the worst year for abortion rights in almost
half a century. Conservative led state legislators, emboldened by the
Supreme Court six to three anti abortion majority, enacted one
d eight abortion restrictions in nineteen states. That's the most
(07:05):
of any year since Roe was established. The thing is,
restrictions don't stop people from seeking out and getting abortions.
Just look at Texas. After it's six week abortion BAM
went into effect in September, abortions in that state dropped
by only much less than expected. Instead, more Texans traveled
(07:28):
out of state or ordered abortion pills online. Once again,
here's Oreaku. You know, I think that we're prepared for
this moment that we're in. Um, We've gotten a lot
of practice, getting people across state lines, getting people out
of the region to get care. And for me, you know,
(07:48):
I'm not taking a doomsday approach and doing this work.
And it's not to not honor the realness you know,
of the situation that we're in, but it's like, what
are we what are we doing? Like, what are we
building power for? That? Future? To me is like so
dreamy and so amazing that I'm like, I will do
whatever it takes to try to get people to be like,
(08:09):
come on, this is for our collective liberation. So how
far are you willing to go? What risks are you
willing to take? Because personally, I don't want to be
here fifty years from now, still talking about the legality
of Rome, still trying to figure out how to overcome
all of these barriers, and I want to experience reproductive
justice in my lifetime, you know, not only for me,
(08:31):
but for future generations too. Would you be open to
sharing your abortion story? Wow? Like, I love telling my story. Actually,
one of the things that was important to us and
making this series was sharing first person abortion stories because
these restrictions, this Supreme Court reversal affects real people, real lives,
(08:54):
and real families. The stories will share over the course
of this series span generations, socioeconomic status, is gender identities,
and the country itself. When I had told him that
I was pregnant, he was kind of like, Okay, we'll
go get an abortion, like it was going to be
so easy, like one too right. I found out I
(09:14):
was pregnant a week before sp E went into effect.
All I could think when I called planned parenthood was
I will not die because of this pregnancy and because
no one will listen to me and no one will
help me. We went home that day knowing that our
pregnancy likely would need to be terminated, but with no
real clear answer on when we would know exactly what
(09:37):
was causing the issue. But there's a lot of like
big abortion clinics um around me where they disguised themselves
as oh, come here to seek you know, you're pregnancy crisis,
like abortion care, and they're not really there to help
you get an abortion. I just remember walking in and
(09:58):
seeing so many p bull there. So we're still in
the pandemic and there's at least fifty people in that
waiting room, and so that alone gave me anxiety. And
I called my insurance and I was confused, and they
explained that, oh, actually, only medically necessary abortions are covered.
(10:20):
I can't afford an abortion. I was a Medicaid recipient
and because of the Height Amendment that you can't medicate recipients,
can't you know, use their Medicaid to cover abortion costs.
It was also a full time student at the time
a couple of years emancipated from the foster care system,
so I was essentially like on my own. I didn't
have any money at the time. I was working at
(10:40):
like Planet Fitness, so a gym for like ten dollars
an hour. Despite this being the largest public university in
the state, the nearest clinic was over an hour and
a half away. I didn't have a car. Public transit
in Georgia is questionable at best. I almost missed the
twelve week mark down her because of how it backed up.
(11:01):
But there is there's only one clinic in my area that, um,
you know, manages abortion here. She refused to give me
the medication because she was afraid that I would change
my mind. I didn't know if it was actually gonna work.
I didn't know if I was going to lead out.
I didn't know what to expect. Even though I knew
(11:22):
an abortion was what I wanted. I had spent so
many years having shame about abortion like instilled an ingrained
into me that I was too scared to ask any
of my friends for help. I think that was just
like the hardest part of it was the feeling that
(11:43):
like internalized shame when I knew there was nothing to
be ashamed about. More than thirty people and county have
shared their experiences for this project. It's my producer, Lauren Hansen,
who's been on the listening and of most of these stories,
each person's story is unique. Sometimes they're totally uneventful, and
(12:08):
sometimes they're wrapped up in so much trauma and like
this raw emotion. But then a lot of them have
these threads. Like every single person I have spoken to,
no matter if they had a support system around them,
no matter if they were completely alone and scared, they
(12:28):
all felt in some way alone and they felt a
lot of shame. And it's remarkable to me that across decades,
across race and class, that is true with abortion. Stories
and it's crazy. And that's what all those shout your
abortion and we testify groups are trying to do, is
(12:48):
like this does not need to be the case. You
yourself had an abortion and it's something that you're willing
to talk about now, perhaps something that you didn't feel
comfortable talking about before you really explored this whole subject.
What has made you more willing to tell your story?
I mean, it's so funny, it's so true. I really
(13:10):
hadn't told many people, and then I started reporting this
and I literally just started saying the word abortion. It
was like the word abortion made me like talk smaller,
you know, And by just having these conversations, I would
want more comfortable and someone would share their story and
I'd be like, well, actually I had an abortion too,
(13:30):
And I felt like it helped make us be more
on the same page and make it like a safe
space and to some degree I understood what they went through.
So I actually, through reporting, shared my story just one
on one with a few people. And I certainly felt
that if I was asking others to come to the
table and share their story that I should absolutely do
the same. So yeah, I was like, well I might
(13:51):
as well share my abortion story and tell me, can
you share it with me? Now? Yeah, it's well, it's funny.
It's definitely one of those that's not it's not much
of a story because I was so privileged to live
in New York at the time, have insurance, and I
had a support system my boyfriend who became my husband.
We got pregnant. How old were you at the time.
(14:13):
I was twenty four and I've been out of school
for a few years. I had just gotten what I
considered like a real job. Um. I was a publicist
at an art book company and I was being asked
to like fly to London for this publicity conference and
I go to have what I thought was my abortion.
So I'm already like calling it my boss and saying,
(14:35):
I have a root canal. I can't come in because
I know nothing, you know nothing about the process. And
so I go in and I was really early. I
was so early that you couldn't see it in the
the sonogram that goes inside. And at that time, which
would have been two thousand and four, um, I guess
you did have to see it, even in New York.
(14:57):
And so they were like, you have to come back.
So I made an appointment, but in between my I
had a week three weeks, so I was pregnant for
like three more weeks, which felt crazy to me. I
flew to London on that trip that I was so
excited about my first time abroad, and then I was
out at dinner with like the more senior women and
(15:18):
they were also cool, like they're editors of these art
books and I just loved everything about them. And one
of them was like, Lauren, how was that flight for you?
And I was like it was fine. They're like, you know,
because of the the root canal and I was like, yes, yes,
it actually now that you say it, and stopping to
eat and you know, just like falling over my lives
and we get I get back to New York and
(15:40):
my my appointment is coming up, and I went to
the Brooklyn based Planned Parenthood and I had my abortion.
It was unbelievably easy, I think it. I was there
for maybe like an hour, like remember like being given
cookies afterward and sitting in this room and there were
other women in this room and it felt like easy
(16:01):
and safe, and my boyfriend came and picked me up
and we walked. I remember walking back to his apartment
and we watched the OC the rest of the afternoon
and it was so easy. But I what's crazy to
me looking back on how easy that was. And I
felt supported by my boyfriend. There was no question that
this was my decision, and we were both like a duh,
Like I just got this job, I had this whole
(16:23):
life ahead of me. But I never told anyone. I
lived with like four roommates at the time, and I
had to light of them or keep it quiet. And
and it was not for judgment. I mean maybe I
just didn't know. I didn't know how to share it.
It felt weird to share, so we just kept it
between us. And I never told my parents, and then,
you know, in preparation for this podcast, I was like,
(16:46):
I couldn't tell my parents. Like my parents are very
supportive people. So I was on vacation with them just
the other month and talking about doing this series, and
it was after dinner and I was like, well, actually
meeting to tell you guys that twenty years ago I
had an abortion, and my mom goes, oh, I actually
had an abortion too, And I was like what. And
(17:13):
if we just talk about these things, you realize like
how common it is. That thing of you know me,
Like everybody does know someone who has an abortion, and
it doesn't have to be a story or it can
be traumatic, but it exists and it's necessary for that person,
whatever their reason is. We'll be right back. It's an
(17:42):
extremely hot day here in Illinois. I am walking into
the Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood Facility and Regional Logistics Center
to talk to staff members, hopefully a couple of patients,
to really get a look at what life is like
(18:06):
in a clinic that provides abortion care. Let's go. This
is a new facility and it's really beautiful, supermodern, clean
(18:27):
and very cool. I might add, this Planned Parenthood clinic
is buzzing with activity compared to the Missouri clinic we
visited just across the state line. And on the day
we're here, a patient is willing to share her story. Hi.
How are you Hi? I'm Katie. I'm Hannah. It's nice
(18:48):
to Hannah, very nice to meet you too. Who's this?
That's Azrael Hi? He is sixteen months. Anna and I
meet in the clinics family room, a bright, sunlit space
with toys being bag strewn about and a giant blackboard
with chalk and some leftover scribbles from other families who
(19:10):
have also used the space. Hannah and I sit on
one of the gray couches. Her son plays next to her.
Tell me about yourself, Hannah. How old you are? And
you're thirty years old? Yes, God, it took thirty years
to get here, but I guess we're here now. And
you have a little boy obviously sixteen months. Yes, I do.
(19:31):
And I also have twin girls that are eight there
will be nine in June. Yes, so we have. We
got a full house at home, like it's very full,
our family is. So it's not that I don't want kids,
I really do, but uh, this this time around was
just a bit different. We had some big plans and
(19:51):
so that those big plans really didn't include a little
bity one. Do you have a partner? I do? Yes,
I have a boyfriend. We've been together for now almost
two years. And how do How does he feel about
your decision to terminate the pregnancy. He doesn't know, He
doesn't know the plot thickens. He doesn't know what kind
of hardship would it be for you to have another
(20:14):
baby at this point. The more the merrier is what
I've always said. But I don't know. With all the
time that I lost, I felt like I didn't lose
the time because I got to raise him, you know,
for the first year of his life. But I want
my job back. I want a career, and I want
(20:37):
my children to know like mommy went to school and
mommy does this now, and mommy makes money. You're here.
You're here to pick up a till to have a
medication abortion? Yes, why did you choose that? It was
less invasive and it was also less time. I knew
(21:00):
that if we had we had to take care of this.
So to speak in a god this sounds horrible, but
in a in a more secretive way, this was the
best option. And we were early enough. You know, I
caught it at like five weeks, so it was extremely early,
and I was like, I took probably about two two
(21:23):
and a half weeks to think about it, and then
the rest of the time was scheduling it. You couldn't
get this in the state of Missouri, and so you
had to How far did you come? It's a three
and a half hour drive, but we took our time.
We stopped off with a candy story, you know, and
stuff like that. So yeah, I know, so it took
(21:45):
took about five hours. Took about five hours. About that
because we took our time. Did the people in front
of the clinic try to pressure you or approach you? Yes?
So that was as scary I thought they worked here.
What did they say? They were talking about? How? She said,
did you have a an ultrasound yet? Have you gone
(22:06):
and seen the doctor? Every question under the sun. Hey,
I'll adopt your baby. She wanted to adopt my baby.
I was like, you have no idea who I am.
Would it be easier if you could do this near
your home in Missouri? Yes? Oh gosh, yes, so much
easier if I didn't have to travel. I mean, do
you know that I have had eleven dollars okay, eleven,
(22:29):
and it was gonna give me lodging. It's gonna get
the five dollars for the pill, and then it's gonna
get me my gas. I drive a Yukon. It's the nineties.
It's a gas guzzler. So it's it's extremely extremely costly
to have to not be in my own stamped and
to have to not be near anybody that I know.
(22:50):
It like, I don't know anybody here, you know. So
last night, and I didn't get to bring anybody either.
So last night, you know, I had like a probably
about an hour and a half of just bawling. You know,
so not being near my home. That also sucked that
I didn't have my best friend, my god, you know,
so it sucked perfect friding your medicine here for you
(23:15):
are writing my drugs man. Okay, so the doctor has
to be the one to give you the first dose
of medicine. Okay, this is the medicine that you're going
to take home. Put all four tablets in between your
teeth and your cheek, okay, and they need to be
in there for at least thirty minutes, and it's the
exact twenty four or forty eight hours between twenty four.
I'm just making sure I get this, okay, Okay, awesome.
(23:45):
There's two types of abortion. There's medication abortion, and then
there's what we call procedural abortion. I know it's commonly
referred to as surgical but I think that can be
really scary for patients to hear because it's, you know,
a surgery sounds like it's really intense, and we're not
actually doing any cutting. We're not using a scalpel. We're
actually using an opening that already exists in the body
(24:08):
to remove the pregnancy from the uterus. My name is
Dr Mira Shaw and I am a family medicine physician.
I am the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Heads
of Mechanic in New York. I'm also the medical director
of Whole Women's Health Alliance in South Bend, Indiana. So
the other method of abortion is medication abortion. It's a
(24:29):
process where patients take first one pill called Mifie prestone.
And what Miffi pristone does is it stops the pregnancy
from growing and from thriving in the uterus. It is
safe up to eleven weeks gestational age. And what patients
do is they first take the Miffie prestone and then
they follow up with four pills of a medication called
(24:53):
missa Prostel. What missa Prostel does is that it induces
cramping and bleeding and expulsion of the pregnancy from the uterus.
We have patients typically take one set of four pills
if they're below nine weeks, if they're between nine and
eleven weeks, and we'll have them take two sets of
those four pills four hours apart from one another. We
(25:15):
provide them with anti nausea medication because they may already
be nauseous from being pregnant, but sometimes the mesa prostyl
can induce nausea if they weren't already nauseous before um.
And we also give them high dose ibprofen to help
ease the cramping that they that they will feel um
while they're expelling the pregnancy. The way that the f
(25:38):
d A has regulated NiFi pristone is it's kept it
on the REMS list, which means that it is highly
regulated and restricted from being freely accessible to patients, and
it makes it harder for physicians to prescribe the medication.
That said, there's been a few changes in the in
(25:58):
the past few years. So when I first started out,
it used to be that the patient had to take
the medication in the office and we had to watch
them swallow the pill. There's no reason for this medically speaking,
but that was the case, and that you know, we
follow all the rules and so we were doing that.
The FDA changed the labeling around Miffi pristone several years ago,
(26:19):
and New York State interpreted it in a way. That
made it so that the physician could just administer the
Miffi pristone, but the patient could take it home and
start the process when they felt most comfortable. Another more
recent change is that abortion medication can now be mailed
(26:40):
to patients instead of them having to come into their
local health center. This was a temporary pandemic allowance that
became permanent. The patient receives an appointment through a teleconferencing
platform through our protected electronic medical record. We date their
pregnancy based on their last menstrual period, and if we
(27:04):
feel confident in their dates and that they meet criteria
um of less than eleven weeks and they have no
medical contra indications, which you know most people don't, then
we can mail the MiFi Perston and the MISO to
their home. That said, this is the case in New York,
this is not the case everywhere. So in Indiana, for example,
(27:27):
um where I'm a medical director of a clinic, there
there is an outright ban on telemedication abortion, not telemedicine,
but telemedication abortion. In Indiana, the individual still has to
go to a health center in order to get the medication.
So whenever they come in for the appointment is when
(27:48):
the process is initiated. The government has essentially taken that
autonomy out of the patient's hands. It's really hard for
me to see restrictions just get worse over time. But
last time I was in Indiana, I was told that
we now have to give a copy of the ultrasound
image to the patient, whether they ask for it or not.
(28:12):
In some states they have to actually look at it
or hear the sounds of the cardiac activity, but in Indiana,
we have to actually give them a copy of the ultrasound.
I just tell them that this is a law, and
I put the image in a Manila envelope and then
give it to them and say, you can do what
you want with this, but it is required by law
(28:32):
that I give it to you. And I apologize for
that because I don't think that it's medically necessary. Every
time I go to Indiana, I'm shocked it hasn't become
normalized for me because I am able to provide a
very different type of care to my patients in New York.
And you know, the zip code in which you live
(28:53):
should not determine the type of healthcare that you receive,
but unfortunately that is the case, we'll be right back.
All right. So we're gonna walk to the back um,
(29:14):
which is in our recovery area, so you can meet
Dr Bomb, which is one of our A B providers
and he's also our medical director. All right, follow me
this way back at the Missouri Clinic, I met with
Dr Margaret Bomb. Dr Bomb, how are you very nice
to meet? Since there weren't any patients there, we sat
(29:36):
in two chairs in the recovery room. How difficult or
challenging has it been for you to work in the
state of Missouri. Oh, that's a good question. You are
in the only freestanding abortion providing facility in Missouri, and
we are, as you know, right at the Illinois border,
and that is an advantage for us, but not an
(29:57):
advantage for everyone else. Right, the vast majority of Urians
don't live right here in St. Louis. Missouri has some
of the strictest restrictions on abortion in the country. So
we have a seventy two hour waiting period, means patients
have to come twice correct, And in fact what that
means is right now, there are only two of us
(30:17):
that provide abortions here at this facility in the entire state,
myself and my partner, and so we do other things too,
which I'm not available to be here to do abortions
every seventy two hours. So if you want an abortion
in Missouri, you either have to see myself or my partner.
So part of the law is that actually for your
first visit, the consent visit has to be done by
(30:40):
a physician, which is certainly not the case in most places,
and it has to be done by the physician who
will then perform the abortion. So today I have four
patients who are scheduled to see me to just do
a consent process. I don't know where they're coming from.
They could be coming from, you know, five hours away
in Missouri, they could be coming from St. Louis, so
I don't know. And then they will be scheduled for
(31:02):
their procedure in a week. So that means number one,
they have to wait a week to have their procedure
and have their pregnancy progress another week. Well, because that's
the next time I am here providing services. And if
something happens, so if they get sick, or they don't
have childcare, or their work says you can't be off
next Wednesday or I get sick and I can't come in.
They can't have their procedure with my partner. They would
(31:24):
have to recome back and consent with her or consent
with me, wait another week and have their procedure. What
other obstacles have they put up in this um? So?
Missouri has mandated pelvic exams with abortions, and so for
a surgical abortion, we do pelvic exams. That's part of
(31:44):
the procedure. I'm going to be instrumenting your pelvis and
your uterus. I'm going to do an exam before I
do it. Completely normal. They also mandated pelvic exams with
medication abortions, so that is completely unindicated. So if I
see someone in Illinois for a medicaid an abortion, uh,
typically they get an ultrasound. I review the ultrasound. I
talked to them. Nobody takes any clothes off. I give
(32:07):
them the pill, they take the second pill at home.
They have their medication abortion at home. There's no need
to do a pelvic exam. And in fact, we really
have equated this to your dermatologists saying I'm going to
take that mole off your arm, let me do a
pelvic exam first. It's completely inappropriate right to insist that
someone takes off their pants that I touched their genitals
(32:29):
when it is not indicated. So we as a practice
decided that medication abortions will not be offered in Missouri.
You can't get a pill abortion in Missouri. So what
is the rationale by lawmakers to mandate that. Well, that's
a good question. I mean, this is where where you
really see that they do not understand the process that
(32:49):
we're doing. Right, there is there is. I can't imagine
why I would need to do a pelvic exam before
a medication abortion. It would not give me any information
that would make me say, yes, the patient should have
a medication abortion. No, they shouldn't. I should recommend some
alternative alternative procedure. I can't imagine this in a medical
correct scenario in which that would happen. It is a
(33:09):
barrier to care. They are putting up additional barriers to
make it harder and harder for patients in Missouri to
access abortion services. So, speaking of things that make things
difficult in Missouri, this is Missouri's in form consent booklet.
We have to give this to every patient presenting for
(33:30):
an abortion of Missouri. Now what I say is I
have to give this to you. You don't have to
read it, and you can leave it, you know, on
the table, but we have to give this to you.
This is how it starts the life of each human
being begins a conception. Abortion will terminate the life of
a separate, unique, living human being. I mean, that's that's
not medical information, correct, Um. So this is full of
(33:54):
all kinds of misleading facts that we are required to
give to patients. This is the informed consent form that um,
we have to fill out again that the physician has
to fill out most of with a patient seven two
hours at least before their procedure. So some of this,
you know, you have to know the name of the physician,
ask questions, okay, and then the nurse does most of this.
(34:16):
And then I am required to read this paragraph to
every patient that says the immediate and long term medical
risks to me associated with the proposed abortion, including but
not limited to, infection, hemorrhage, cervical tear, or uterine perforation,
harm to subsequent pregnancies or the ability to carry a
subsequent child to term, and possible adverse psychological effects. That
(34:38):
sounds really scary, doesn't it? And it's not true. No,
I mean there aren't with any procedure, there are risks.
The risks are very minimal with abortion. But this maximizes
the risks and minimizes how actually safe that abortion is
and doesn't minimize your your chances of getting pregnant. Now,
some of the some of these are just blatant correct,
(34:59):
And I I always say, I didn't you know, doctors
did not write this. This was written by legislators. But
I am required to read this and give this information
to a patient when this clinic closes, because Missouri has
a trigger law right if ROW is overturned, like I
believe twenty six other states, they will make abortion illegal
(35:21):
in those states. So this clinic will, I guess the
abortion care part of this clinic will have to shut down.
That is correct, abortion services we will only provide at
our Illinois location. What will that mean for the women
of Missouri? So it's it's a little bit additional travel.
And so you know, if you're already coming three or
(35:43):
four hours from Springfield, Missouri, you know is another twenty
minutes into Illinois, you know, so much bigger? Um? Maybe not,
But also I do feel like there is there that's
a barrier, right to say you have to leave your state,
the state in which you live and pay taxes and
and send your children to school, to go to another
state to have again a legal, normal medical procedure, that
(36:07):
that is a barrier. It feels like that we are
not taking care of the patients that I live in Missouri.
I grew up here in Missouri, I have a family here,
and I wanted to work here and provide care, and
certainly this has become a Missouri has made it extremely
difficult to do so. Meanwhile, other states like New York, California,
(36:30):
and Illinois are expanding their services and preparing for the
upcoming influx of out of state abortion patients. Attached to
the clinic that I visited in Illinois is the brand
new Regional Logistics Center. It's kind of like an abortion
fund meets travel agent meets doctor's office. It's abortion Care
(36:53):
of the future. The center's president, joem Elci Rodriguez, shows
me around. This is the our facility that we just
open in January. So this is the hard where we're
doing all of the navigation work on the scheduling, providing
financial assistance traveling, um and other logistics accommodations. So this
(37:15):
is like air traffic control for people who want to
get abortions but don't have the money or don't know
where to go, maybe need transportation, hotel rooms. Before it
was very piecemeal. You just had to kind of try
to put put the pieces of the puzzle together to
allow you to be able to do this correct and
and that that was a whole vision behind this. Right,
(37:37):
what if we can have just one the patient will
just have to make one phone call to one place,
and we could connect them to all of the resources,
not just the abortional appointment, but all of the wraparound
really support that they were going to need to make
it to an appointment. And we build it thinking, you know,
we know that there's going to be a lot of
women from Missouri that are going to come here. But
(38:00):
what we've seen in the patient that the support person
I was talking to just came from Texas, you all
are going to be very busy. We have been very busy.
Certainly after the Texas abortion man. There has been this
ripple effect or patients are been displaced right from their
home state and everybody has been forced to travel x
(38:21):
amount of time because there's just not enough providers out
there this facility. It's expecting fourteen thousand additional patients a
year if row falls. What is the impact of this decision,
(38:42):
It's hard to overstand. This is Mary Ziggler, she's one
of the country's pre eminent abortion legal scholars. We spoke
after the Supreme Court draft was leaked, a draft Politico
called a full throaded, unflinching repudiation of the ninety three
just vision. Oh yeah, there's no question. I mean it's
(39:04):
I don't know how much more full throated or repudiation
you could have, so that that characterization of the draft
is absolutely right. I mean, they're going to be impacts
on on lots of people's lives, people who can be pregnant, um,
just as was the case with the War on drugs.
We would expect those impacts to be felt the most
acutely by people who are in the most heavily policed communities,
(39:25):
who are the people are most likely to be found
out if they're having abortions. There will be people impacts
on people who never seek abortions, because doctors will be
reluctant to treat ectopic pregnancies or incomplete miscarriages or other
things that may be perceived as abortion because they're unwilling
to lose their licenses or go to prison. Um. It's
going to affect people in blue states who are going
(39:46):
to see people traveling from out of state to seek abortions. UM.
It's going to affect doctors in blue states who may
be potentially sued or charged with a crime in red states.
It's going to shake up the two mid terms, it's
going to shake up the presidents elections, and you know
as a historian, and it also is going to have
unpredictable effects. Right. I think the Supreme Court felt very
confident in three that it knew what would happen after
(40:09):
Robie Wade was reversed. And of course we know fifty
years later that they were absolutely wrong. Um. And there's
no reason to think that we can absolutely predict what's
going to happen after this decision in much the same way.
How were they wrong? Can you give us some insight
into that? Yeah? I mean, Justice Blackman had a clipping
in his files that said, essentially, you know, seventy something
percent of Americans think of worsition should be a decision
(40:31):
between a woman and her doctor. The numbers were very
similar then as now, and so he thought, okay, well,
if if the Court says it worshions a decision between
a woman and her doctor, and there's a sound constitutional
foundation for that, people are going to just accept that
and move on. And we know that didn't happen. This
Supreme Court somehow seems to think that if it sends
this back to the States with lots of winks and nudges,
that maybe other precedents can be overturned and maybe if
(40:52):
petal personhood is going to be recognized, this is going
to go away. When that opinion will be running against
popular opinion, it's insane, right, So people are sort of
like this is all over, just really, whether their appro
choice or per life or not paying attention, like this
is going to just be the opening salvo in a
much much longer battle. Um, and people I would imagine
who support abortion rates are going to be in this
(41:14):
for the long haul. Two And we may be looking at,
you know, decades down the road, a Supreme Court decision
reinstituting abortion rates. So if the Court thinks it can
put an end to this one way or another, or
it can remove itself from the conversation. It has another
thing coming. This is called why We Hold Our Tongues Finally,
(41:37):
a poem by Sonya Rene Taylor. To say I had
an abortion is to join the blood covered to be
sister with the worst of our ilk, sister with the
one who strapped hers and seatbelts, sit the car skipping
like rocks, to drop in a lake. Sister with the
hand that pressed her five children to the liquid casket
(41:58):
of a bathtub. This is to say, I know how
people will clutch their grace until I bring them an
amulet of sorrow. How this hive expects my sales turn regret.
If not a baby, at least bring us the seregacy
of your shame. To say the word abortion is to
say I am ashamed thing a womb turned earned. It
(42:21):
is to say I killed, died, and dead. As I
speak to you now. It is to say, even my
teeth wish to flee my mouth, the leper of my gums.
I must be liar, Please be liar. If I say
I'm not sad, to say I'm not sad is to
say I am monster. I am heartless as tile a
physician's claw is to say I am receptacle food made
(42:44):
rancid by my own hands. Can you smell my stink?
The rotting of me? To say I called the clinic
on a Tuesday night, made an appointment for Wednesday morning,
It's never to say I was nineteen. He was nineteen.
Our teenage mothers began dissolving our futures and crack pipes
(43:05):
when we were five. Never that he washed the dishes
of American dreamers till his hands callous. Never my wins
at their touch. Never that a black girls to wish
him for a better life is fourteen hour work days
plus classes. Less the glass slipper fairy tale of a
stripper's pole, an old man Semen find her? Never that
(43:25):
I almost chose an old man Semen To say when
the nurse handed me a photo a marble of tissue growing,
I only asked if I would feel better when it
was done. Is never to say we would have just
been another thing for you to hate. A food stamp, tick,
fat lazy breeder, did be prison number, a white trash
(43:49):
trailer hitch, a rape, a black boy with a gun
and no daddy, A bitter, exhausted nail holding up our
own crucifixion, a thing to pity, promote, donate to a
poverty gutter. To gather your own reigning self esteem in
To say I cried for my best friend as I
took my panties down and laid on the table is
(44:12):
to sever the stitch of shame. To let the milk
of this choosing spill from me until I am fresh vessel.
It is to unlatch my wrist bound in penance to
the unhelpful, to the watchers with only birds to give.
To say the doctor's face was a blur of soft cotton,
but his voice was a crisp still speculum is to
(44:32):
free the pigeon of truth from its cage, so that
it might return dove. To say, in the recovery room,
I smelled the twenty shades of crimson escape fleeing down
all the women's thighs is to say I am seer
and to story and conqueror and scared teenage girl thirteen
credits shy of statistic to say that I have never
(44:54):
spent three hundred and fifty dollars more wisely is to
hang my two degrees and a house whose shoulders refused
to slump. To stare down the brick and backhand of
this world without reproach in the land that would sooner
fuck or forget us, that would rather see me orphan
than owner of my own flesh. To say that I
did not choose to keep that which I know would
(45:17):
have been beautiful and brutal, is to say unashamedly that
I did choose life. To say unapologetically that I did
choose life. I did choose life mine abortion. The Body
(45:48):
Politic is executive produced by me Katie Couric and was
created by small team led by our intrepid supervising producer
Lauren Hansen, Editing and sound designed by Derrick Clements and
Jessica krin Chich, researched by Nina Perlman, and a special
thanks to casey Um producers Courtney Litz and Adriana Fasio,
I consider my abortion the greatest act of self love
that I did. I chose my life like I chose Michaels.
And the reason why I get so emotional is it's
just thinking back and like wishing I could go back
(00:22):
and hug myself and um and tell myself that that
it's okay to have an abortion. And that's what I
want every wants to know. It's May eleven, eight ten
(00:48):
in the morning, and we are here at the last
standing abortion clinic in the entire state of Missouri. It's
a great, pretty nondescript building with a very large royal
blue Planned Parenthood sign in the front. What has it
been like for the people working here? What has been
(01:09):
like for the people coming here? That's what we're here
to find out. Hi, ladies, good morning, How are you good.
Nice to see you. My name is Nicky and I'm
a registered nurse at the Planned Parenthood location in St.
Louis also though in Fair Behinds, Illinois. There's twelve recovery
(01:32):
chairs in this area, and there was a time where
it was packed and we were super busy and um,
we would see fifty patients in a day, but because
of the restrictions, it just is not worth it for
patients to jump through this many hoops. I have all
these activist friends in St. Louis that are are in
Missouri that are panicking about you know, the ROVERSUS wade
(01:53):
news in Texas and Oklahoma and whatever, and I'm like, guys,
we're ahead of them. It's like, this is all right,
happened here, Like they just don't know that. They don't understand.
But this has been going on since late so we,
I mean, we effectively are I almost feel like it's
symbolic to do abortions here just to be able to
say we can still provide that service. But it doesn't
(02:15):
make sense staffing wise, it doesn't make sense for the patients.
It's just too many restrictions. The dominoes keep falling in
the push to overturn Roe v. Wait, the abortion flashboard
all across the country, the Ohio governor signing today the
most restrictive abortion law in the country, Alabama passing the
nation's most restrictive abord Today, Missouri became the latest state
(02:37):
to pass what Oklahoma passing a near total Texas law
that would face up to fifteen years in prison nine
years in prison for performing an abortion immediately. Hi everyone,
I'm Katie Kuric and this is Abortion The Body Politic,
a six part series from Katie CURRK Media and I
(02:58):
Heart Media. Fifty years ago this January, the landmark ro
(03:20):
VERSUS Way decision guaranteed the right to a safe and
legal abortion. In just a few weeks, the Supreme Court
is expected to reverse that decision. This could be the
most consequential opinion in decades. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside
the Supreme Court Monday evening afternoons of the Court's draft
opinion broke. While the US is taking away that right,
(03:44):
the rest of the world is riding a wave of
abortion law liberation. Mexico's Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday
that penalizing abortion is unconstitutional action. This is my friends,
(04:06):
This is a time to act that this is not
the time to be silent. How did we get here?
And what will abortion access look like in a post
row world. Over the course of the next six episodes,
we're going to try to answer those questions by digging
into our country's complicated reproductive history, by tracing abortion storylines
(04:29):
in pop culture, and by looking abroad for potential role models.
But first we need to start here in the present,
because for so many we're already living in a post
row world. A lot of the conversations around access right
now have been concentrated on the legality of rome and
(04:51):
so one of the things that I keep like saying
over and over is yes, Rob Wade made abortion legal
but not necessarily accessible. My name is Oriaku and Jaku
Yi and they pronounced and I'm co founder and executive
director of Access Reproductive Care Southeast. We've been funding abortion
(05:15):
since July of and every single year there has been
some sort of abortion ban or restriction in every one
of the states that we work in. About folks in
our region live in a county without an abortion provider. Um.
When we're thinking about the Southeast, the state of Georgia
(05:36):
has more abortion clinics than Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and South
Carolina combined. The reality is that people are traveling hours,
crossing state lines just to get simple healthcare. Oriaki Najaku's organization,
Our Southeast is an abortion fund. Abortion funds have become
(05:57):
a key part of accessing aboardtions in today's increasingly restrictive climate.
In fact, there are more than ninety grassroots organizations across
the country working to help people get the abortions they need.
Abortion funds are like mutual aid funds, and so essentially
we're making sure the material conditions of folks who are
(06:19):
seeking abortions are being met. And so what that looks
like is providing rides, lodging, childcare, translation and interpretation services. Um.
You know, there's like a whole range of things as
far as things that might be barriers for people to
get to the appointment, where abortion funds step in to
(06:40):
support people in their community. According to the Goopmaker Institute,
one was the worst year for abortion rights in almost
half a century. Conservative led state legislators, emboldened by the
Supreme Court six to three anti abortion majority, enacted one
d eight abortion restrictions in nineteen states. That's the most
(07:05):
of any year since Roe was established. The thing is,
restrictions don't stop people from seeking out and getting abortions.
Just look at Texas. After it's six week abortion BAM
went into effect in September, abortions in that state dropped
by only much less than expected. Instead, more Texans traveled
(07:28):
out of state or ordered abortion pills online. Once again,
here's Oreaku. You know, I think that we're prepared for
this moment that we're in. Um, We've gotten a lot
of practice, getting people across state lines, getting people out
of the region to get care. And for me, you know,
(07:48):
I'm not taking a doomsday approach and doing this work.
And it's not to not honor the realness you know,
of the situation that we're in, but it's like, what
are we what are we doing? Like, what are we
building power for? That? Future? To me is like so
dreamy and so amazing that I'm like, I will do
whatever it takes to try to get people to be like,
(08:09):
come on, this is for our collective liberation. So how
far are you willing to go? What risks are you
willing to take? Because personally, I don't want to be
here fifty years from now, still talking about the legality
of Rome, still trying to figure out how to overcome
all of these barriers, and I want to experience reproductive
justice in my lifetime, you know, not only for me,
(08:31):
but for future generations too. Would you be open to
sharing your abortion story? Wow? Like, I love telling my story. Actually,
one of the things that was important to us and
making this series was sharing first person abortion stories because
these restrictions, this Supreme Court reversal affects real people, real lives,
(08:54):
and real families. The stories will share over the course
of this series span generations, socioeconomic status, is gender identities,
and the country itself. When I had told him that
I was pregnant, he was kind of like, Okay, we'll
go get an abortion, like it was going to be
so easy, like one too right. I found out I
(09:14):
was pregnant a week before sp E went into effect.
All I could think when I called planned parenthood was
I will not die because of this pregnancy and because
no one will listen to me and no one will
help me. We went home that day knowing that our
pregnancy likely would need to be terminated, but with no
real clear answer on when we would know exactly what
(09:37):
was causing the issue. But there's a lot of like
big abortion clinics um around me where they disguised themselves
as oh, come here to seek you know, you're pregnancy crisis,
like abortion care, and they're not really there to help
you get an abortion. I just remember walking in and
(09:58):
seeing so many p bull there. So we're still in
the pandemic and there's at least fifty people in that
waiting room, and so that alone gave me anxiety. And
I called my insurance and I was confused, and they
explained that, oh, actually, only medically necessary abortions are covered.
(10:20):
I can't afford an abortion. I was a Medicaid recipient
and because of the Height Amendment that you can't medicate recipients,
can't you know, use their Medicaid to cover abortion costs.
It was also a full time student at the time
a couple of years emancipated from the foster care system,
so I was essentially like on my own. I didn't
have any money at the time. I was working at
(10:40):
like Planet Fitness, so a gym for like ten dollars
an hour. Despite this being the largest public university in
the state, the nearest clinic was over an hour and
a half away. I didn't have a car. Public transit
in Georgia is questionable at best. I almost missed the
twelve week mark down her because of how it backed up.
(11:01):
But there is there's only one clinic in my area that, um,
you know, manages abortion here. She refused to give me
the medication because she was afraid that I would change
my mind. I didn't know if it was actually gonna work.
I didn't know if I was going to lead out.
I didn't know what to expect. Even though I knew
(11:22):
an abortion was what I wanted. I had spent so
many years having shame about abortion like instilled an ingrained
into me that I was too scared to ask any
of my friends for help. I think that was just
like the hardest part of it was the feeling that
(11:43):
like internalized shame when I knew there was nothing to
be ashamed about. More than thirty people and county have
shared their experiences for this project. It's my producer, Lauren Hansen,
who's been on the listening and of most of these stories,
each person's story is unique. Sometimes they're totally uneventful, and
(12:08):
sometimes they're wrapped up in so much trauma and like
this raw emotion. But then a lot of them have
these threads. Like every single person I have spoken to,
no matter if they had a support system around them,
no matter if they were completely alone and scared, they
(12:28):
all felt in some way alone and they felt a
lot of shame. And it's remarkable to me that across decades,
across race and class, that is true with abortion. Stories
and it's crazy. And that's what all those shout your
abortion and we testify groups are trying to do, is
(12:48):
like this does not need to be the case. You
yourself had an abortion and it's something that you're willing
to talk about now, perhaps something that you didn't feel
comfortable talking about before you really explored this whole subject.
What has made you more willing to tell your story?
I mean, it's so funny, it's so true. I really
(13:10):
hadn't told many people, and then I started reporting this
and I literally just started saying the word abortion. It
was like the word abortion made me like talk smaller,
you know, And by just having these conversations, I would
want more comfortable and someone would share their story and
I'd be like, well, actually I had an abortion too,
(13:30):
And I felt like it helped make us be more
on the same page and make it like a safe
space and to some degree I understood what they went through.
So I actually, through reporting, shared my story just one
on one with a few people. And I certainly felt
that if I was asking others to come to the
table and share their story that I should absolutely do
the same. So yeah, I was like, well I might
(13:51):
as well share my abortion story and tell me, can
you share it with me? Now? Yeah, it's well, it's funny.
It's definitely one of those that's not it's not much
of a story because I was so privileged to live
in New York at the time, have insurance, and I
had a support system my boyfriend who became my husband.
We got pregnant. How old were you at the time.
(14:13):
I was twenty four and I've been out of school
for a few years. I had just gotten what I
considered like a real job. Um. I was a publicist
at an art book company and I was being asked
to like fly to London for this publicity conference and
I go to have what I thought was my abortion.
So I'm already like calling it my boss and saying,
(14:35):
I have a root canal. I can't come in because
I know nothing, you know nothing about the process. And
so I go in and I was really early. I
was so early that you couldn't see it in the
the sonogram that goes inside. And at that time, which
would have been two thousand and four, um, I guess
you did have to see it, even in New York.
(14:57):
And so they were like, you have to come back.
So I made an appointment, but in between my I
had a week three weeks, so I was pregnant for
like three more weeks, which felt crazy to me. I
flew to London on that trip that I was so
excited about my first time abroad, and then I was
out at dinner with like the more senior women and
(15:18):
they were also cool, like they're editors of these art
books and I just loved everything about them. And one
of them was like, Lauren, how was that flight for you?
And I was like it was fine. They're like, you know,
because of the the root canal and I was like, yes, yes,
it actually now that you say it, and stopping to
eat and you know, just like falling over my lives
and we get I get back to New York and
(15:40):
my my appointment is coming up, and I went to
the Brooklyn based Planned Parenthood and I had my abortion.
It was unbelievably easy, I think it. I was there
for maybe like an hour, like remember like being given
cookies afterward and sitting in this room and there were
other women in this room and it felt like easy
(16:01):
and safe, and my boyfriend came and picked me up
and we walked. I remember walking back to his apartment
and we watched the OC the rest of the afternoon
and it was so easy. But I what's crazy to
me looking back on how easy that was. And I
felt supported by my boyfriend. There was no question that
this was my decision, and we were both like a duh,
Like I just got this job, I had this whole
(16:23):
life ahead of me. But I never told anyone. I
lived with like four roommates at the time, and I
had to light of them or keep it quiet. And
and it was not for judgment. I mean maybe I
just didn't know. I didn't know how to share it.
It felt weird to share, so we just kept it
between us. And I never told my parents, and then,
you know, in preparation for this podcast, I was like,
(16:46):
I couldn't tell my parents. Like my parents are very
supportive people. So I was on vacation with them just
the other month and talking about doing this series, and
it was after dinner and I was like, well, actually
meeting to tell you guys that twenty years ago I
had an abortion, and my mom goes, oh, I actually
had an abortion too, And I was like what. And
(17:13):
if we just talk about these things, you realize like
how common it is. That thing of you know me,
Like everybody does know someone who has an abortion, and
it doesn't have to be a story or it can
be traumatic, but it exists and it's necessary for that person,
whatever their reason is. We'll be right back. It's an
(17:42):
extremely hot day here in Illinois. I am walking into
the Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood Facility and Regional Logistics Center
to talk to staff members, hopefully a couple of patients,
to really get a look at what life is like
(18:06):
in a clinic that provides abortion care. Let's go. This
is a new facility and it's really beautiful, supermodern, clean
(18:27):
and very cool. I might add, this Planned Parenthood clinic
is buzzing with activity compared to the Missouri clinic we
visited just across the state line. And on the day
we're here, a patient is willing to share her story. Hi.
How are you Hi? I'm Katie. I'm Hannah. It's nice
(18:48):
to Hannah, very nice to meet you too. Who's this?
That's Azrael Hi? He is sixteen months. Anna and I
meet in the clinics family room, a bright, sunlit space
with toys being bag strewn about and a giant blackboard
with chalk and some leftover scribbles from other families who
(19:10):
have also used the space. Hannah and I sit on
one of the gray couches. Her son plays next to her.
Tell me about yourself, Hannah. How old you are? And
you're thirty years old? Yes, God, it took thirty years
to get here, but I guess we're here now. And
you have a little boy obviously sixteen months. Yes, I do.
(19:31):
And I also have twin girls that are eight there
will be nine in June. Yes, so we have. We
got a full house at home, like it's very full,
our family is. So it's not that I don't want kids,
I really do, but uh, this this time around was
just a bit different. We had some big plans and
(19:51):
so that those big plans really didn't include a little
bity one. Do you have a partner? I do? Yes,
I have a boyfriend. We've been together for now almost
two years. And how do How does he feel about
your decision to terminate the pregnancy. He doesn't know, He
doesn't know the plot thickens. He doesn't know what kind
of hardship would it be for you to have another
(20:14):
baby at this point. The more the merrier is what
I've always said. But I don't know. With all the
time that I lost, I felt like I didn't lose
the time because I got to raise him, you know,
for the first year of his life. But I want
my job back. I want a career, and I want
(20:37):
my children to know like mommy went to school and
mommy does this now, and mommy makes money. You're here.
You're here to pick up a till to have a
medication abortion? Yes, why did you choose that? It was
less invasive and it was also less time. I knew
(21:00):
that if we had we had to take care of this.
So to speak in a god this sounds horrible, but
in a in a more secretive way, this was the
best option. And we were early enough. You know, I
caught it at like five weeks, so it was extremely early,
and I was like, I took probably about two two
(21:23):
and a half weeks to think about it, and then
the rest of the time was scheduling it. You couldn't
get this in the state of Missouri, and so you
had to How far did you come? It's a three
and a half hour drive, but we took our time.
We stopped off with a candy story, you know, and
stuff like that. So yeah, I know, so it took
(21:45):
took about five hours. Took about five hours. About that
because we took our time. Did the people in front
of the clinic try to pressure you or approach you? Yes?
So that was as scary I thought they worked here.
What did they say? They were talking about? How? She said,
did you have a an ultrasound yet? Have you gone
(22:06):
and seen the doctor? Every question under the sun. Hey,
I'll adopt your baby. She wanted to adopt my baby.
I was like, you have no idea who I am.
Would it be easier if you could do this near
your home in Missouri? Yes? Oh gosh, yes, so much
easier if I didn't have to travel. I mean, do
you know that I have had eleven dollars okay, eleven,
(22:29):
and it was gonna give me lodging. It's gonna get
the five dollars for the pill, and then it's gonna
get me my gas. I drive a Yukon. It's the nineties.
It's a gas guzzler. So it's it's extremely extremely costly
to have to not be in my own stamped and
to have to not be near anybody that I know.
(22:50):
It like, I don't know anybody here, you know. So
last night, and I didn't get to bring anybody either.
So last night, you know, I had like a probably
about an hour and a half of just bawling. You know,
so not being near my home. That also sucked that
I didn't have my best friend, my god, you know,
so it sucked perfect friding your medicine here for you
(23:15):
are writing my drugs man. Okay, so the doctor has
to be the one to give you the first dose
of medicine. Okay, this is the medicine that you're going
to take home. Put all four tablets in between your
teeth and your cheek, okay, and they need to be
in there for at least thirty minutes, and it's the
exact twenty four or forty eight hours between twenty four.
I'm just making sure I get this, okay, Okay, awesome.
(23:45):
There's two types of abortion. There's medication abortion, and then
there's what we call procedural abortion. I know it's commonly
referred to as surgical but I think that can be
really scary for patients to hear because it's, you know,
a surgery sounds like it's really intense, and we're not
actually doing any cutting. We're not using a scalpel. We're
actually using an opening that already exists in the body
(24:08):
to remove the pregnancy from the uterus. My name is
Dr Mira Shaw and I am a family medicine physician.
I am the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Heads
of Mechanic in New York. I'm also the medical director
of Whole Women's Health Alliance in South Bend, Indiana. So
the other method of abortion is medication abortion. It's a
(24:29):
process where patients take first one pill called Mifie prestone.
And what Miffi pristone does is it stops the pregnancy
from growing and from thriving in the uterus. It is
safe up to eleven weeks gestational age. And what patients
do is they first take the Miffie prestone and then
they follow up with four pills of a medication called
(24:53):
missa Prostel. What missa Prostel does is that it induces
cramping and bleeding and expulsion of the pregnancy from the uterus.
We have patients typically take one set of four pills
if they're below nine weeks, if they're between nine and
eleven weeks, and we'll have them take two sets of
those four pills four hours apart from one another. We
(25:15):
provide them with anti nausea medication because they may already
be nauseous from being pregnant, but sometimes the mesa prostyl
can induce nausea if they weren't already nauseous before um.
And we also give them high dose ibprofen to help
ease the cramping that they that they will feel um
while they're expelling the pregnancy. The way that the f
(25:38):
d A has regulated NiFi pristone is it's kept it
on the REMS list, which means that it is highly
regulated and restricted from being freely accessible to patients, and
it makes it harder for physicians to prescribe the medication.
That said, there's been a few changes in the in
(25:58):
the past few years. So when I first started out,
it used to be that the patient had to take
the medication in the office and we had to watch
them swallow the pill. There's no reason for this medically speaking,
but that was the case, and that you know, we
follow all the rules and so we were doing that.
The FDA changed the labeling around Miffi pristone several years ago,
(26:19):
and New York State interpreted it in a way. That
made it so that the physician could just administer the
Miffi pristone, but the patient could take it home and
start the process when they felt most comfortable. Another more
recent change is that abortion medication can now be mailed
(26:40):
to patients instead of them having to come into their
local health center. This was a temporary pandemic allowance that
became permanent. The patient receives an appointment through a teleconferencing
platform through our protected electronic medical record. We date their
pregnancy based on their last menstrual period, and if we
(27:04):
feel confident in their dates and that they meet criteria
um of less than eleven weeks and they have no
medical contra indications, which you know most people don't, then
we can mail the MiFi Perston and the MISO to
their home. That said, this is the case in New York,
this is not the case everywhere. So in Indiana, for example,
(27:27):
um where I'm a medical director of a clinic, there
there is an outright ban on telemedication abortion, not telemedicine,
but telemedication abortion. In Indiana, the individual still has to
go to a health center in order to get the medication.
So whenever they come in for the appointment is when
(27:48):
the process is initiated. The government has essentially taken that
autonomy out of the patient's hands. It's really hard for
me to see restrictions just get worse over time. But
last time I was in Indiana, I was told that
we now have to give a copy of the ultrasound
image to the patient, whether they ask for it or not.
(28:12):
In some states they have to actually look at it
or hear the sounds of the cardiac activity, but in Indiana,
we have to actually give them a copy of the ultrasound.
I just tell them that this is a law, and
I put the image in a Manila envelope and then
give it to them and say, you can do what
you want with this, but it is required by law
(28:32):
that I give it to you. And I apologize for
that because I don't think that it's medically necessary. Every
time I go to Indiana, I'm shocked it hasn't become
normalized for me because I am able to provide a
very different type of care to my patients in New York.
And you know, the zip code in which you live
(28:53):
should not determine the type of healthcare that you receive,
but unfortunately that is the case, we'll be right back.
All right. So we're gonna walk to the back um,
(29:14):
which is in our recovery area, so you can meet
Dr Bomb, which is one of our A B providers
and he's also our medical director. All right, follow me
this way back at the Missouri Clinic, I met with
Dr Margaret Bomb. Dr Bomb, how are you very nice
to meet? Since there weren't any patients there, we sat
(29:36):
in two chairs in the recovery room. How difficult or
challenging has it been for you to work in the
state of Missouri. Oh, that's a good question. You are
in the only freestanding abortion providing facility in Missouri, and
we are, as you know, right at the Illinois border,
and that is an advantage for us, but not an
(29:57):
advantage for everyone else. Right, the vast majority of Urians
don't live right here in St. Louis. Missouri has some
of the strictest restrictions on abortion in the country. So
we have a seventy two hour waiting period, means patients
have to come twice correct, And in fact what that
means is right now, there are only two of us
(30:17):
that provide abortions here at this facility in the entire state,
myself and my partner, and so we do other things too,
which I'm not available to be here to do abortions
every seventy two hours. So if you want an abortion
in Missouri, you either have to see myself or my partner.
So part of the law is that actually for your
first visit, the consent visit has to be done by
(30:40):
a physician, which is certainly not the case in most places,
and it has to be done by the physician who
will then perform the abortion. So today I have four
patients who are scheduled to see me to just do
a consent process. I don't know where they're coming from.
They could be coming from, you know, five hours away
in Missouri, they could be coming from St. Louis, so
I don't know. And then they will be scheduled for
(31:02):
their procedure in a week. So that means number one,
they have to wait a week to have their procedure
and have their pregnancy progress another week. Well, because that's
the next time I am here providing services. And if
something happens, so if they get sick, or they don't
have childcare, or their work says you can't be off
next Wednesday or I get sick and I can't come in.
They can't have their procedure with my partner. They would
(31:24):
have to recome back and consent with her or consent
with me, wait another week and have their procedure. What
other obstacles have they put up in this um? So?
Missouri has mandated pelvic exams with abortions, and so for
a surgical abortion, we do pelvic exams. That's part of
(31:44):
the procedure. I'm going to be instrumenting your pelvis and
your uterus. I'm going to do an exam before I
do it. Completely normal. They also mandated pelvic exams with
medication abortions, so that is completely unindicated. So if I
see someone in Illinois for a medicaid an abortion, uh,
typically they get an ultrasound. I review the ultrasound. I
talked to them. Nobody takes any clothes off. I give
(32:07):
them the pill, they take the second pill at home.
They have their medication abortion at home. There's no need
to do a pelvic exam. And in fact, we really
have equated this to your dermatologists saying I'm going to
take that mole off your arm, let me do a
pelvic exam first. It's completely inappropriate right to insist that
someone takes off their pants that I touched their genitals
(32:29):
when it is not indicated. So we as a practice
decided that medication abortions will not be offered in Missouri.
You can't get a pill abortion in Missouri. So what
is the rationale by lawmakers to mandate that. Well, that's
a good question. I mean, this is where where you
really see that they do not understand the process that
(32:49):
we're doing. Right, there is there is. I can't imagine
why I would need to do a pelvic exam before
a medication abortion. It would not give me any information
that would make me say, yes, the patient should have
a medication abortion. No, they shouldn't. I should recommend some
alternative alternative procedure. I can't imagine this in a medical
correct scenario in which that would happen. It is a
(33:09):
barrier to care. They are putting up additional barriers to
make it harder and harder for patients in Missouri to
access abortion services. So, speaking of things that make things
difficult in Missouri, this is Missouri's in form consent booklet.
We have to give this to every patient presenting for
(33:30):
an abortion of Missouri. Now what I say is I
have to give this to you. You don't have to
read it, and you can leave it, you know, on
the table, but we have to give this to you.
This is how it starts the life of each human
being begins a conception. Abortion will terminate the life of
a separate, unique, living human being. I mean, that's that's
not medical information, correct, Um. So this is full of
(33:54):
all kinds of misleading facts that we are required to
give to patients. This is the informed consent form that um,
we have to fill out again that the physician has
to fill out most of with a patient seven two
hours at least before their procedure. So some of this,
you know, you have to know the name of the physician,
ask questions, okay, and then the nurse does most of this.
(34:16):
And then I am required to read this paragraph to
every patient that says the immediate and long term medical
risks to me associated with the proposed abortion, including but
not limited to, infection, hemorrhage, cervical tear, or uterine perforation,
harm to subsequent pregnancies or the ability to carry a
subsequent child to term, and possible adverse psychological effects. That
(34:38):
sounds really scary, doesn't it? And it's not true. No,
I mean there aren't with any procedure, there are risks.
The risks are very minimal with abortion. But this maximizes
the risks and minimizes how actually safe that abortion is
and doesn't minimize your your chances of getting pregnant. Now,
some of the some of these are just blatant correct,
(34:59):
And I I always say, I didn't you know, doctors
did not write this. This was written by legislators. But
I am required to read this and give this information
to a patient when this clinic closes, because Missouri has
a trigger law right if ROW is overturned, like I
believe twenty six other states, they will make abortion illegal
(35:21):
in those states. So this clinic will, I guess the
abortion care part of this clinic will have to shut down.
That is correct, abortion services we will only provide at
our Illinois location. What will that mean for the women
of Missouri? So it's it's a little bit additional travel.
And so you know, if you're already coming three or
(35:43):
four hours from Springfield, Missouri, you know is another twenty
minutes into Illinois, you know, so much bigger? Um? Maybe not,
But also I do feel like there is there that's
a barrier, right to say you have to leave your state,
the state in which you live and pay taxes and
and send your children to school, to go to another
state to have again a legal, normal medical procedure, that
(36:07):
that is a barrier. It feels like that we are
not taking care of the patients that I live in Missouri.
I grew up here in Missouri, I have a family here,
and I wanted to work here and provide care, and
certainly this has become a Missouri has made it extremely
difficult to do so. Meanwhile, other states like New York, California,
(36:30):
and Illinois are expanding their services and preparing for the
upcoming influx of out of state abortion patients. Attached to
the clinic that I visited in Illinois is the brand
new Regional Logistics Center. It's kind of like an abortion
fund meets travel agent meets doctor's office. It's abortion Care
(36:53):
of the future. The center's president, joem Elci Rodriguez, shows
me around. This is the our facility that we just
open in January. So this is the hard where we're
doing all of the navigation work on the scheduling, providing
financial assistance traveling, um and other logistics accommodations. So this
(37:15):
is like air traffic control for people who want to
get abortions but don't have the money or don't know
where to go, maybe need transportation, hotel rooms. Before it
was very piecemeal. You just had to kind of try
to put put the pieces of the puzzle together to
allow you to be able to do this correct and
and that that was a whole vision behind this. Right,
(37:37):
what if we can have just one the patient will
just have to make one phone call to one place,
and we could connect them to all of the resources,
not just the abortional appointment, but all of the wraparound
really support that they were going to need to make
it to an appointment. And we build it thinking, you know,
we know that there's going to be a lot of
women from Missouri that are going to come here. But
(38:00):
what we've seen in the patient that the support person
I was talking to just came from Texas, you all
are going to be very busy. We have been very busy.
Certainly after the Texas abortion man. There has been this
ripple effect or patients are been displaced right from their
home state and everybody has been forced to travel x
(38:21):
amount of time because there's just not enough providers out
there this facility. It's expecting fourteen thousand additional patients a
year if row falls. What is the impact of this decision,
(38:42):
It's hard to overstand. This is Mary Ziggler, she's one
of the country's pre eminent abortion legal scholars. We spoke
after the Supreme Court draft was leaked, a draft Politico
called a full throaded, unflinching repudiation of the ninety three
just vision. Oh yeah, there's no question. I mean it's
(39:04):
I don't know how much more full throated or repudiation
you could have, so that that characterization of the draft
is absolutely right. I mean, they're going to be impacts
on on lots of people's lives, people who can be pregnant, um,
just as was the case with the War on drugs.
We would expect those impacts to be felt the most
acutely by people who are in the most heavily policed communities,
(39:25):
who are the people are most likely to be found
out if they're having abortions. There will be people impacts
on people who never seek abortions, because doctors will be
reluctant to treat ectopic pregnancies or incomplete miscarriages or other
things that may be perceived as abortion because they're unwilling
to lose their licenses or go to prison. Um. It's
going to affect people in blue states who are going
(39:46):
to see people traveling from out of state to seek abortions. UM.
It's going to affect doctors in blue states who may
be potentially sued or charged with a crime in red states.
It's going to shake up the two mid terms, it's
going to shake up the presidents elections, and you know
as a historian, and it also is going to have
unpredictable effects. Right. I think the Supreme Court felt very
confident in three that it knew what would happen after
(40:09):
Robie Wade was reversed. And of course we know fifty
years later that they were absolutely wrong. Um. And there's
no reason to think that we can absolutely predict what's
going to happen after this decision in much the same way.
How were they wrong? Can you give us some insight
into that? Yeah? I mean, Justice Blackman had a clipping
in his files that said, essentially, you know, seventy something
percent of Americans think of worsition should be a decision
(40:31):
between a woman and her doctor. The numbers were very
similar then as now, and so he thought, okay, well,
if if the Court says it worshions a decision between
a woman and her doctor, and there's a sound constitutional
foundation for that, people are going to just accept that
and move on. And we know that didn't happen. This
Supreme Court somehow seems to think that if it sends
this back to the States with lots of winks and nudges,
that maybe other precedents can be overturned and maybe if
(40:52):
petal personhood is going to be recognized, this is going
to go away. When that opinion will be running against
popular opinion, it's insane, right, So people are sort of
like this is all over, just really, whether their appro
choice or per life or not paying attention, like this
is going to just be the opening salvo in a
much much longer battle. Um, and people I would imagine
who support abortion rates are going to be in this
(41:14):
for the long haul. Two And we may be looking at,
you know, decades down the road, a Supreme Court decision
reinstituting abortion rates. So if the Court thinks it can
put an end to this one way or another, or
it can remove itself from the conversation. It has another
thing coming. This is called why We Hold Our Tongues Finally,
(41:37):
a poem by Sonya Rene Taylor. To say I had
an abortion is to join the blood covered to be
sister with the worst of our ilk, sister with the
one who strapped hers and seatbelts, sit the car skipping
like rocks, to drop in a lake. Sister with the
hand that pressed her five children to the liquid casket
(41:58):
of a bathtub. This is to say, I know how
people will clutch their grace until I bring them an
amulet of sorrow. How this hive expects my sales turn regret.
If not a baby, at least bring us the seregacy
of your shame. To say the word abortion is to
say I am ashamed thing a womb turned earned. It
(42:21):
is to say I killed, died, and dead. As I
speak to you now. It is to say, even my
teeth wish to flee my mouth, the leper of my gums.
I must be liar, Please be liar. If I say
I'm not sad, to say I'm not sad is to
say I am monster. I am heartless as tile a
physician's claw is to say I am receptacle food made
(42:44):
rancid by my own hands. Can you smell my stink?
The rotting of me? To say I called the clinic
on a Tuesday night, made an appointment for Wednesday morning,
It's never to say I was nineteen. He was nineteen.
Our teenage mothers began dissolving our futures and crack pipes
(43:05):
when we were five. Never that he washed the dishes
of American dreamers till his hands callous. Never my wins
at their touch. Never that a black girls to wish
him for a better life is fourteen hour work days
plus classes. Less the glass slipper fairy tale of a
stripper's pole, an old man Semen find her? Never that
(43:25):
I almost chose an old man Semen To say when
the nurse handed me a photo a marble of tissue growing,
I only asked if I would feel better when it
was done. Is never to say we would have just
been another thing for you to hate. A food stamp, tick,
fat lazy breeder, did be prison number, a white trash
(43:49):
trailer hitch, a rape, a black boy with a gun
and no daddy, A bitter, exhausted nail holding up our
own crucifixion, a thing to pity, promote, donate to a
poverty gutter. To gather your own reigning self esteem in
To say I cried for my best friend as I
took my panties down and laid on the table is
(44:12):
to sever the stitch of shame. To let the milk
of this choosing spill from me until I am fresh vessel.
It is to unlatch my wrist bound in penance to
the unhelpful, to the watchers with only birds to give.
To say the doctor's face was a blur of soft cotton,
but his voice was a crisp still speculum is to
(44:32):
free the pigeon of truth from its cage, so that
it might return dove. To say, in the recovery room,
I smelled the twenty shades of crimson escape fleeing down
all the women's thighs is to say I am seer
and to story and conqueror and scared teenage girl thirteen
credits shy of statistic to say that I have never
(44:54):
spent three hundred and fifty dollars more wisely is to
hang my two degrees and a house whose shoulders refused
to slump. To stare down the brick and backhand of
this world without reproach in the land that would sooner
fuck or forget us, that would rather see me orphan
than owner of my own flesh. To say that I
did not choose to keep that which I know would
(45:17):
have been beautiful and brutal, is to say unashamedly that
I did choose life. To say unapologetically that I did
choose life. I did choose life mine abortion. The Body
(45:48):
Politic is executive produced by me Katie Couric and was
created by small team led by our intrepid supervising producer
Lauren Hansen, Editing and sound designed by Derrick Clements and
Jessica krin Chich, researched by Nina Perlman, and a special
thanks to casey Um producers Courtney Litz and Adriana Fasio,
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