May 20, 2025 • 46 mins
Global reproductive rights and investment in the agencies and organizations that support reproductive rights have often been used as a political football. The bodies of women, girls, and LGBTQI+ persons have been used to push and pull power for decades—and this anti-rights, anti-choice framework has become increasingly exported around the world. Beth Schlachter, Senior Director for U.S. and External Engagement for MSI Reproductive Choices, talks to us about how attacks to human rights frameworks and funding will further endanger global reproductive health and rights.
Some apparatuses the U.S. have been using to redefine human rights, and therefore, redefine access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, include the Commission on Unalienable Rights, the International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and the Geneva Consensus Declaration. These frameworks and tools then get internationally exported. MSI has a host of programs around the world that will be impacted by these tools, frameworks, and funding attacks. MSI’s programs support maternal health and access to other reproductive health services. In addition, these attacks will likely and broadly impact child marriage programs, the PEPFAR program, the Sustainable Development Goals, and more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:03):
Welcome to Repros Fight Back, a podcast on all
things related to sexual andreproductive health rights and
justice.
Hi, Repros.
How's everybody doing?
I'm your host, Jenny Wetter, andmy pronouns are she, her.
So y'all, there has been so muchhappening in the last week or
so.
First, Congress is in the midstof budget reconciliation, and
(00:27):
there's a lot of really badthings that are coming out in
that process.
We're only going to talk aboutone today, but just know there
are a lot of them, so keep aneye on it.
One of them is that they arethreatening to defund Planned
Parenthood, and y'all, that issaid with the biggest of scare
air quotes.
There is no defund PlannedParenthood.
(00:49):
There is not a line item thatsays this money goes to Planned
Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is a granteein a number of states providing
Title X services.
We talked about that last weekwith Claire Coleman, with NIFRA.
If you want to hear more aboutwhat is happening with the Title
X network, go back and check outthat episode if you haven't
(01:11):
already.
It is attacking who can accesscare.
Defunding Planned Parenthoodwould also mean that people who
are on Medicaid would no longerbe able to go see Planned
Parenthood as a provider.
And this is huge.
Not all providers acceptMedicaid funds and Planned
Parenthood does.
(01:32):
And so they play a really bigrole in making sure that people
access sexual and reproductivehealth services when they're on
Medicaid.
And often that is people's onlycontact with the medical system.
They often don't have a primarycare provider, but But they do
go into Planned Parenthood andmake sure that they're able to
get family planning or sexualand reproductive health care.
(01:53):
So this would be reallydevastating if Planned
Parenthood were to be defundedbecause they play a huge role in
the social safety net.
And we need to make sure thatthey are still able to provide
services to all the people whoneed them.
So make sure to call yourcongresspeople and let them know
that you support PlannedParenthood and want to make sure
that they continue to be funded.
(02:15):
Also recently, theadministration issued a
Kemp-Kasten ruling saying thatthey are no longer going to fund
the work of the United NationsPopulation Fund.
This comes on top of all thegrants that had been frozen due
to basically the dismantling ofthe foreign aid system.
(02:36):
And this is going to havedevastating implications around
the world.
UNFPA plays really an importantrole in providing sexual and
reproductive health service topeople all around the world,
particularly those inhumanitarian settings where
UNFPA is often the only peoplethere providing those services.
(02:56):
And just to read a little bitfrom UNFPA's release that they
put out about thisdetermination, just so you have
a broader understanding of whatthis means.
This comes in addition to atermination notices UNFPA has
already received for more than40 existing humanitarian
projects, amounting to some$335million in funding.
(03:18):
Following the abrupt terminationof development assistance
grants, this move will furtheradd strain to the already
stretched global public healthsystem.
It will cut essential supportfor millions of people living in
humanitarian crises and formidwives preventing mothers from
dying in childbirth, work thatis a best buy in development, a
(03:39):
cost-effective investment thatgenerates positive returns over
generations.
UNFPA's decades-long partnershipwith the United States, a
founding partner, has made theworld safer, stronger, and more
prosperous.
Together, we have strengthenedhealth systems, saved millions
of lives, improved the economicprospects of families and
communities worldwide.
(04:00):
Over the past four years alone,with the U.S.
government's lifesavinginvestments, we have prevented
more than 17,000 maternaldeaths, 9 million unintended
pregnancies and nearly 3 millionunsafe abortions by expanding
access to voluntary familyplanning.
It's going to be a huge loss,y'all.
(04:21):
It is going to be a huge lossthat UNFPA is going to have a
hard time making up for thatshortfall.
That means people are not goingto get access to life-saving
services that they need, be thatin humanitarian settings or in
other settings.
It's just further fueling thisglobal crisis that the
administration has kicked offThank you so much.
(04:59):
I could not think of a betterperson to have on to talk about
that than Beth Schlachter withMSI.
We're going to talk aboutbasically how we got from Trump
1 to where we are now.
What are some of the things thatMSI is already seeing and what
this is going to mean for thingslike maternal health and other
ripple effects that we are goingto see.
(05:20):
So with that, let's go to myinterview with Beth.
Hi, Beth.
Thank you so much for being heretoday.
SPEAKER_01 (05:27):
Thanks, Jenny.
I'm really pleased to be heretoday.
Thank you for inviting me andfor including MSI Reproductive
Choices.
We're thrilled.
SPEAKER_00 (05:35):
So excited to have you on.
Before we dig into ourconversation, would you like to
take a second and introduceyourself and include your
pronouns?
Sure.
SPEAKER_01 (05:43):
My name is Beth Schlachter.
My pronouns are she, her.
And I am the Senior Director forUS and External Engagement for
MSI Reproductive Choices.
The organization is based in theUK and has service delivery
programs in 36 countries aroundthe world.
Where we operate, we're thelargest providers of
reproductive healthcare,including contraception and
(06:04):
abortion.
So really proud to be a part ofthis team.
Going way back, I used to be adiplomat with the State
Department.
And one of my roles was as theSenior Advisor for what we then
called population policy.
So I covered reproductive healthas a foreign policy issue and
managed our relationship withUNFPA, which meant that things
(06:27):
that came up like U.S.
legislation kept casting, globalgag rule, defunding of UNFP and
the Helms Amendment, all thosethings were my policy issues as
a State Department official.
And I left there to become theExecutive Director of FP 2020,
FP 2020 for a number of yearsand then transitioned that to FP
2030.
(06:48):
And then I also had a littlestint with IPTF.
So I feel like I've had theglorious benefit of being in
government, in a globalpartnership and then with some
pretty amazing NGOs that havebeen global.
So I've gotten a view of thingsfrom multiple sides that I find
I'm just very, I feel veryfortunate to have.
SPEAKER_00 (07:09):
It feels like a lifetime ago that you were at
State's apartment.
Looking back, I was so early inmy career at PI when I remember
working with you at State.
SPEAKER_01 (07:17):
It's definitely a world apart now in terms
Especially, even the end of theBush administration when I first
started working on these issueswas such a different environment
than where we are now, which ispure chaos and cruelty, but
we'll get into that.
SPEAKER_00 (07:31):
Yeah, and I thought it would be good, you know,
often I do like a background onhow we got to where we're at,
and I was thinking we wouldstart like...
talking about what has happenedsince the new admin took office,
but that doesn't feel quiteright.
Like, I think we need to stepback further and go back to the
first four years they were inoffice and talk about what they
(07:51):
did then and how they usedvarious sexual and reproductive
health restrictions then and howthat relates to what we're
seeing now.
SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
Yeah.
I think Americans in particularand global folks probably know
this better than Americans do.
how reproductive rights as aforeign policy issue, as what
had been a USCID priorityinvestment, have been a
political football, where we'veused the bodies of women and
girls and LGBTQI persons as away of pulling and pushing power
(08:24):
for decades now, since 1984, inparticular, when Ronald Reagan
first introduced the global gagrule.
But it had been a sort ofpredictable kind of back and
forth.
Republicans come in, they defundUNFPA and they apply the global
gag rule.
Democrats come back in, theyreverse those things.
And we kept trying to grow theinvestment past 2010.
(08:45):
We really couldn't get anywherewith that.
But it had just sort of thispredictable, somewhat
predictable kind of nature toit.
And then that radicallyescalated under the first Trump
administration in a lot of ways.
I guess what I'd ask ouraudience to hold in their minds
as we talk today is both whathappens in the U.S., what the
U.S.
(09:05):
funds and drives, and thenwhat's also happening in other
countries around the world, bothfor their own purposes and
because there's this reallyextremist, right-wing,
nationalist in many ways,anti-democratic sort of effort
to use, again, the bodies ofwomen, girls, and LGBTQI persons
(09:27):
to create wedges in societiesaround the world and pull us
apart.
It's worked very effectively.
in the United States.
And one thing we're really greatat is exporting things that we
feel are cut from America thatcan be useful somewhere else.
So a lot of U.S.
effort was built up during thatfirst Trump administration to
(09:47):
create a sort of normalizedframework around an anti-rights,
anti-choice, anti-LGBTQI sort ofworldview.
And it took a little while toget there because, first of all,
they never thought they weregoing to win.
None of us thought they weregoing to win.
Unfortunately, they did, andthen they did again.
But what Once they got theirfeet under them, they started
using the tools of state to sortof push against progress and
(10:12):
progressive values around theworld.
And I would start with MikePompeo, who was then the
Secretary of State.
And his first big move in thisdirection was to create
something called the Commissionon Unalienable Rights.
And what that commission did wasbring together a number of
conservative activistsacademics, legal scholars,
(10:34):
foreign policy experts, andthose who are human rights
experts to review the US postureon human rights.
And this commission issued areport that said a lot of
things, but for our purposes, itboiled down and said that the US
posture on human rights wasover-implementing, and that in
fact, God's law, or what theyrefer to as natural law,
(10:56):
supersedes human rights law, andthat human rights needed to be
recalibrated as a US foreignpolicy initiative beneath God's
law, so that we would start torecalibrate our positioning at
the Human Rights Council, fromwhich we'd already withdrawn,
and other bilateral andmultilateral negotiations,
(11:16):
ensuring that God's law wasalways our primary foreign
policy objective.
And then to implement thisworldview, they created
something called the MinisterialConference on Freedom of
Religion and Belief.
And this brought togetherministers from around the world,
again at the State Department,hosted by Mike Pompeo, In a lot
of ways, this is an issue wheremany people agree that there
(11:39):
should be religious freedomaround the world.
But this conference, one of theprimary objectives of it was
also to ensure that they gavecover to anti-LGBTQI bigotry by
saying that any religion shouldhave the authority to determine
how it receives, condemns,appreciates, does not allow for
(12:00):
issues related to genderidentity and sexuality.
And so it gave cover toanti-LGBTQI bigotry under the
guise of freedom of religion andbelief.
And then the last thing they didwas to create something called
the Geneva ConsensusDeclaration.
And what this tried to do was touse, again, the pretense of UN
(12:23):
frameworks to launch their owndocument that repositions
reproductive rights under theCommission on Unalienable Rights
sort of framework, saying thathuman rights, again, are
secondary to God's law.
And under God's law, the onlyappropriate relationships are
heteronormative relationshipsThere should not be sex outside
(12:43):
of marriage.
And there is certainly nothingcalled abortion.
So it's a very simple, cleardocument.
It's a great public relationsdocument in terms of spreading
your message.
And the US launched it inGeneva, which is where the Human
Rights Council is, to give itthis look of authenticity.
And you could pretend that itactually sort of exists within a
UN framework, right?
(13:04):
And they convinced 36 countriesto sign on to this Geneva
Consensus Declaration.
Then shortly after this happens,Trump loses.
And so all of these things arestill standing.
The Freedom of Religion andBelief Conference happens again
in the UK under the auspices ofthe UK government, some of them
knowing it was going to happenin the framework that it did and
(13:26):
others not.
So that created its own dust upin the UK.
But the people who had beenworking for the Trump
administration to create thesedocuments, particularly a woman
named Valerie Huber, who hadbeen in charge of global health
from the Health and HumanServices offices here in the
United States, she couldcontinued to sell the Geneva
consensus declaration even whenTrump was out of power and in
(13:46):
fact created her own healthsystem framework that she
convinced a number ofgovernments to sign on to,
including Honduras and andUganda, importantly, and
basically saying, if Trump isout of power right now, but if
he comes back in, we're comingback in with these frameworks,
and one way you can show fealtyto us is to continue your
(14:08):
engagement with us and to signon to this sort of Protego
framework.
So a lot of this ended up inProject 2025.
It was a continuation of thatwork where they articulated they
were going to continue to dothese things, and they have done
that.
What we've seen, though, bytaking down all of USCID and
pulling most of the money out,though, is really taking out the
key part of that transactionthat brings value, which is the
(14:30):
cash.
So what we haven't seen yet iswith this new skinny budget that
the Trump administration hasproposed and with this larger
big budget that they're tryingto work on, what money will be
left for foreign assistance?
How much of that will go toglobal health?
And then again, how much will goto reproductive health?
And what will be the frameworkof the deal that they offer
(14:52):
countries?
Because there's been such aprofound damage caused by the
defunding of USCID, where manygovernments were hugely
dependent on U.S.
foreign assistance for their ownjust day to day.
health systems.
Again, you can argue whetherthat was right or wrong.
It was what it was and shouldhave been addressed in a very
thoughtful, collaborative way,which of course is not what
(15:13):
happened.
So let's see what they come backwith when they do come back in
with whatever funding they mayor may not come back with and
see what sort of policy demandsthey make alongside funding
agreements.
SPEAKER_00 (15:26):
Yeah, I remember all of this happening and
particularly the Commission onUnalienable Rights because it
was shocking.
It doesn't feel like the rightword.
Cause it, it, it shouldn't belike surprising at all of any,
any of the things they did.
But I do remember just beingreally shocked when they came up
(15:46):
with their hierarchy of likewhere that they're one, that
there is a hierarchy in humanrights, which there's not, but
to that at the top, um, wasreligion and property rights.
Property rights, I didn't thinkof that one.
Right?
Like, religion wasn't, like,obviously I could see that one
(16:10):
coming and the way they weregoing to interpret it and how
that was going to attack all theother rights that we support,
but the property rights onereally threw me that they were
going to actually argue thatthat came as one of the top
ones.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yeah,
SPEAKER_00 (16:24):
yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (16:26):
You know, who owns what, right?
SPEAKER_00 (16:28):
Right.
wild.
So that's a lot about what theprevious Trump administration
did and thinking ahead of whatthey were doing.
But this anti-rights agenda youhave talked about, we've really
seen it spreading globally.
So how are we seeing this playout kind of around the world
right now?
SPEAKER_01 (16:48):
Well, first, I want to point everybody to a couple
of really great reports, one bya group called the European
Parliamentary Forum, where thedirector, Neil Donah, has been
tracking money flows for about15 years now.
And so he goes way back andlooking at not just money that
comes from the U.S., but moneythat also comes from Europe and
Russian oligarchs.
And that's important becausewe've seen a real convergence of
(17:09):
not just money, but also policyand groups that are willing to
work together to advance thesort of anti-rights,
anti-democratic framework.
The way the U.S.
has also contributed is groupslike the ADF, who we know out of
Arizona have been the realmachine churning out the Dobbs
scandal.
sort of frameworks and all ofthe laws in the United States
(17:31):
that make it more difficult bitby bit to get an abortion in the
clinic, even where it isallowed.
The ADF have been providingthese sort of draft legal
frameworks for countries aroundthe world as well that codify
anti-abortion perspectives andlegislation that make it harder
for people to get care andreally limit things in the ways
that they've been limited herein the United States.
(17:51):
So the U.S.
contributes both money andthought and then just sort of
advocacy effort as well and thereal energy that comes from that
and some of the ways that it'sjust easier as well to connect
the dots from that side is thatthey often do do so through
international church andreligious kinds of networks
which have their own authoritymoral authority in communities
(18:13):
as well so when new policies areintroduced and they start first
with conversations that arebased through church networks,
they already have a pathway oftrust and linkage to people's
moral and emotional lives.
So it's a different pathway ofintroducing anti-rights
(18:34):
legislation that's prettyeffective.
So that's sort of one way thatwe've seen that happening, but
there really has been thisburgeoning both of
authoritarianism in countriesaround the world, not just the
ones we immediately think of interms of Russia and Hungary and
Turkey, but also places like thePhilippines that have gone back
and forth in terms of reallyextreme authoritarian behaviors,
(18:57):
like with Duterte, who's now outof power.
But this has been on the rise,and others are better at
measuring that than I am.
What we're seeing, though, isover and over that it's
reproductive health and issuesaround sexuality that are often
that wedge issue.
They get in and help to drivepeople apart because it feels as
if that organically is justsomething that people are
(19:19):
resisting within their owncommunities because we have
allowed this sort of shroud ofshame around anything to do with
women's bodies or withsexuality.
So it's been pretty easypickings on their part in order
to take these issues And thenthrough a nationalized or
international sort of process,bring them down to very local
(19:40):
communities in ways that havebeen profoundly damaging.
SPEAKER_00 (19:44):
I'm just going to put a flag in for the audience
when we're recording this on May12th.
But just to point out, as I wasComing online this morning, I
saw that last night's episode ofLast Week Tonight with John
Oliver is talking about theAlliance Defending Freedom.
So I am very excited to go learnmore about a group that I
(20:04):
already know more than I wouldlike about, but to see what all
he has had to say, because I'msure it's going to touch on a
number of the issues that youbrought up.
But anyway, y'all make sure tocheck that out.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
So we're just like seeing all ofthis coming together.
And now with this withdrawal ofU.S.
funding, particularly in foreignassistance and seeing we've
(20:28):
talked on the podcast beforeabout how this is going to
impact programs around theworld.
MSI has a lot of programs thatwe're getting U.S.
funding.
Maybe we should turn a littlebit and talk about some of the
impacts that we are seeing orexpect to see.
And maybe one of the places tostart right now is maternal
(20:49):
health, because we are alreadystarting to see some of those
numbers.
So what are some of the impactswe're seeing on maternal health?
SPEAKER_01 (20:56):
Yeah, so for MSI, we...
I say only, but our funding fromUSAID was at$14 million when
Trump came in.
So we were able to walk awayfrom that money.
I think on the third day of theTrump administration, when we
saw the executive order aroundDEI and realized that they were
going to push that in to thesystem and make it so that the
global gag rule was applicablemuch earlier than it had in
(21:19):
previous iterations.
So we walked away from thatmoney and were able to sort of
make up that difference with ourown resources, which means for
us, we are one of the few NGOsthat's fully operating in many
countries.
I have, according to governmentdata in Ethiopia, 85% of NGOs
(21:39):
have stopped their programmingin Ethiopia.
That's a profound loss ofservices, right?
And in Kenya, there have been54,000 jobs lost in the health
sector so far.
According to my MSI colleagueswho are still operating in
countries, part of what they'vesaid is that there's a bit of a
(21:59):
tail to help people lose theirjobs when the funding goes away.
So some of that loss is stillplaying out, and it'll be in the
next three to six months wherewe see the real impact.
of what the actual impact hasbeen.
So when you extrapolate fromthat, and it's really Guttmacher
and others who've done somefabulous research on the data of
(22:23):
what that's going to mean interms of maternal health loss.
Right now, or in 2024, the UShad allocated a little over$600
million for family planning,including 32 million for UNFPA.
But on top of that, UNFPA hadover$200 million because the
Refugee Bureau had provided somuch assistance in addition to
that for humanitarian settingsas well.
(22:46):
So not having that money willresult in over 47 million women
and girls losing access tocontraception.
And that means there's likely tobe 17 million unintended
pregnancies.
And unfortunately, we know thatwhen there are pregnancies, even
with good health, it's stilldangerous for people to be
(23:07):
pregnant and to give birth.
But in low-resource settings,it's even more dangerous.
So unfortunately, we estimatethat there will be 34,000
pregnancy-related deaths justper year from the loss of USAID
funding.
And another statistic thatreally stuck with me, Jenny, is
that Every day, every single daywithout this assistance, over
(23:28):
130,000 women will lose theiraccess to contraceptive
services.
So that's just, I mean, you canjust imagine from there, that's
130,000 women or girls every daywho then can't control whether
or not they get pregnant, whichultimately means they can't
control whether or not they stayin school, whether or not they
are able to continue to functionand keep their business, keep
(23:50):
their families together.
So the cascade, that rippleeffect, we've spent years
talking about the sort ofvirtuous cycle of good created
by access to reproductivehealthcare and contraception.
Now we have to imagine thatvirtuous cycle in reverse.
and the damage that it thencauses as well.
And just the real crisis and thereal sadness is that these are
(24:13):
gonna affect women and girlsthat you and I will never meet.
And that our government took anobligation to, when we committed
this funding, we committed topeople, that the American people
would stand with people in othercountries who were struggling
with so many factors to increasetheir livelihoods.
And so this is just a profoundbetrayal We'll never be forgiven
(24:35):
for this, and we don't deserveto be, quite frankly.
So yeah, the maternal healthimpact is going to be profound.
It already is.
SPEAKER_00 (24:41):
And it's one of those things, like, this has
been a big global commitmentfor, I mean, honestly, I think
almost my entire career thatI've been working on
reproductive health has beenworking, as maternal health has
been part of it, and we had madesuch great globally to reduce
the maternal mortality rate.
(25:02):
You know, we hadn't seen it comeup a little bit with COVID and
other things, but this is goingto be a major setback, not just
on maternal health, but I canonly imagine on any number of
issues that we care about.
SPEAKER_01 (25:16):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:17):
Like all of the Millennium Development Goals,
the Sustainable DevelopmentGoals.
I think we're just going to seehuge steps back.
I'm thinking about like thechild marriage programs and all
how that's going to impactmaternal mortality.
I think that's also an importantpart to think about is all of
this is interconnected and willhave impacts on other things.
(25:38):
And you mentioned rippleeffects.
What else are you kind ofthinking about?
SPEAKER_01 (25:42):
There's legitimate criticism for the family
planning reproductive healthprogram at USAD over the decades
that we can absolutely go into.
But one of the really importantimportant things that they did
was, and a lot of this waslessons that were learned during
PEPFAR in the early days oftrying to build up a program to
that was an emergency crisisprogram, but that brought a way
(26:04):
of working to government systemsthat didn't align.
It was square peg, round hole.
So PEPFAR spent a lot of timelearning how to craft a program
that worked on both sides.
And a big piece of that was thedata piece in terms of what is
the data we need and what arethe systems that governments
need to gather in order to makedata and scientific informed
(26:25):
decisions, and then how to helpwork with governments to build
up that system.
So a lot of what goes away arethe things that most people
aren't going to think aboutbecause we don't even think
about it when we go to gethealthcare in the UK or in the
US or anywhere around the worldis who's measuring what and how
does this actually affectdecision-making?
So the folks who had worked onthose systems, many of them got
(26:47):
together and wrote a paper thatwas recently published in The
Lancet just this last week onthe discontinuing of USAID's
global health program.
And I'll just...
rattle off a couple of thenumbers that they just put out
last week.
Their numbers are based on thenext 15 years.
So this is more of that rippleeffect.
And without the USAID GlobalProgram, they estimate that 15
(27:07):
million, there will be 15million additional AIDS-related
deaths.
So it's 15 million families thatare going to lose an important
person who's no longer thereemotionally, financially, part
of their community.
Those people will no longerlive.
no longer be there.
There'll be 2 million TB relateddeaths.
There will be 7.9 million childdeaths from other causes and 40,
(27:32):
55 million additional unplannedpregnancies and all the other
effects that we talked about aminute ago.
So this is a profoundundermining of the stability of
families, communities, andcountries.
And so, you know, one of thereasons like Congress was never
in the business of appropriatingglobal health assistance because
(27:52):
You know, you could take thatmoment and feel good about it.
But the reason that the U.S.
government invested in it wasbecause it was part of that
three-pronged system ofdiplomacy, defense, and
development.
And we always, one of ourbiggest defenders of the
development budget was the DOD,because they understood that the
thing that drives people towardviolent extremism anywhere in
(28:15):
the world, whether it's WesternIdaho or Somalia, is a loss of
hope.
And the most profound thing thatdrives hopelessness in families
is the loss of a mother or theloss of a loved one.
And so the investment in globalhealth was an investment in
global stability.
And we don't yet know.
(28:37):
It's going to take time for thatto play out, right?
That doesn't happen overnight interms of how that sort of plays
out in people's lives.
But the fact that Congress, whoknows better, have allowed
people this issue to be soprofoundly politicized and
they're so afraid to stand up toTrump that they're willing to
(28:57):
fund the greatest moment ofviolent extremism ever to come
from the US.
And I say that after all of theother horrible things that we've
done.
In addition to many good things,I like to be even keeled on
that, but this is just very badfor global stability and it's
very bad for Americans' safetyin the world.
(29:18):
And as we saw with 9-11, we arenot impervious to attacks from
others who are unhappy with usfor whatever reason.
This is just a gift.
So it's just really the mostshort-sighted decision-making
imaginable, especially frompeople who should or do no
better.
SPEAKER_00 (29:38):
I think the other thing I think about hearing
those numbers and thinking ofall of the lives that are going
to be impacted are already beingimpacted is something we try to
talk about on the podcast whenwe talk about these issues, but
I think the average person maynot understand fully.
is let's say a miracle happensand the administration sees that
(30:05):
they're doing terrible thingsand decides to restart funding.
So all the programs magicallycome back and everything's fine,
right?
UNKNOWN (30:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (30:13):
They thought they did that when they realized, you
know, the U.S.
had made a commitment when itcame to HIV, right?
Especially in Africa.
It's a build-out of PEPFAR.
And for folks who don't know,that's the President's Emergency
Plan for AIDS Relief, mostly inAfrica, but it also included
Haiti and I think Vietnam at onepoint.
But it was the response to theglobal AIDS crisis in the early
(30:34):
aughts, and it has savedmillions and millions of
people's lives.
Our commitment until threemonths ago was that we were
providing the antiretroviraldrugs for over 20 million
people.
We pulled the plug on that, orlet's say Elon Musk and his Doge
boys pulled the plug on that.
(30:54):
They said that when they foundthat out, they tried to turn it
back on.
But even now, when you talk tomany of the providers of
healthcare, that has not beenturned back on.
They They did not turn it on,again, for programs that prevent
mother-to-child transmission forHIV.
(31:14):
Our programs were activelysupporting providing
antiretroviral drugs to 40,000women who were pregnant, who may
have given birth by now, inSouthern Africa alone.
We stopped providing themantiretroviral drugs, and we
never turned that back on.
Doge decided that those liveswere not worth saving, even
(31:37):
though there was an activepregnancy.
So to have religiousconservatives in the United
States say that they're allabout the baby, they're all
about preserving life, and to donothing, nothing to provide...
healthcare to actually currentlypregnant women who want to have
(31:57):
these babies is just the mostglaring hypocrisy that you could
imagine.
Plus, what's more evil thanthat?
I can't think of something morecooler and more evil than that.
And yet here we are.
SPEAKER_00 (32:11):
Yeah.
And I just think about thepeople who went to access
services and couldn't getservices.
They may never come back, evenif the clinics can reopen
because they don't trust them.
And, you know, so it is not thatsimple as thinking funding could
restart and things will get backto the way they were.
Clinics may have closed.
Physicians may have left.
(32:31):
Nurses may have left.
Like it is not just, as we talkabout with global gag rule, it's
not just flipping a switch andeverything comes back.
So much is lost and would haveto be rebuilt so this is like
damage that has been done andcannot easily be undone and the
longer it goes the harder itwill be to bring any of it back
SPEAKER_01 (32:55):
absolutely and you know it's so crazy just to look
at those doge receipts and saythat the only way that you
calculate money saved is byprograms turned off what about
all the money invested in intobuilding those programs and
those very personalrelationships that you just
mentioned, Jenny.
All of that is money andinvestment.
(33:17):
But then that need doesn't goaway.
Just because you stopped payinga bill or you cut off a
commitment to other people,that's not money saved.
There's a cost on the other sideof that.
And I want to see the receiptsfor those and to know that we'll
be gathering that information inthe weeks and months and years
ahead because the damage is justgoing to be so profound.
(33:37):
already is.
SPEAKER_00 (33:38):
Okay.
So we've talked a little bitabout maternal health and some
of the ripple effects that weare expecting to see or have
already seen.
What is MSI already seeing?
SPEAKER_01 (33:49):
Yeah.
It's pretty tricky out there.
And I just talked about thiswith our regional director last
week, and she said that we'restill, again, some places things
are unfolding still.
So the whole story isn't fullyvisible right because there were
still commodities in some placesthat are being spent down or
(34:11):
being allocated.
So those commodity shortfallshaven't fully happened yet.
So again, we're still a littlebit early in that phase, but we
are seeing that there is thatsort of falling out of other
partners at the local level.
And that some partners areturning to MSI to shift over
(34:33):
health care from clients as theycan no longer serve.
But there was a lot of chaos inthe system as well in terms of
what it all meant.
Like women in Uganda, there arereports that they immediately
wanted to get their implantstaken out because they thought
that they were going to beillegal because suddenly USAID
was no longer able to provideit.
(34:53):
So there was a lot of panic atthe personal level and going to
healthcare clinics, like yousaid, that were closed, feeling
as if they were stuck with acommodity, feeling as if they
were going to be in trouble.
So we've seen some of that.
We also saw that or continue tosee that USAID wasn't just
money.
a lot of the impact that theyhad was on training and quality
(35:15):
of care services, things likethe high impact practices, which
codify the kinds of things youcan do to have the highest
impact and how to do thosethings carefully and
thoughtfully and safely.
USAID also convened a lot of thetechnical working groups between
government and civil societyimplementers in countries.
(35:38):
And what MSI is seeing is that alot of those tech working groups
no longer meet.
And if they do go to a meeting,there's only one or two people
there.
So the system itself has groundto a halt in a lot of ways that
are less about whether there's acommodity on the shelf or not,
and more about that sort ofquality kind of processes that
(35:59):
are a little bit more behind thecurtain that are gradually,
incrementally increasing, orthey were, program quality and
reach of over time.
So a lot of that has gone away.
And then there are a lot ofconversations around the
commodities themselves in someplaces where commodities are
stuck in transit.
I think there's like$35 millionin commodities that were
(36:22):
somewhere in the transit processof either stuck in ports or
stuck.
I think nothing's on the oceananymore.
It must certainly have gonesomewhere by now.
And then there were othercontracts as well that were just
cut off with the pharmaceuticalproviders and The last thing
I'll say about that is there area lot of the work that USAID and
other partners, GatesFoundation, UK government as
(36:45):
well, UNFPA, have done a lot ofthese compacts, SIF is another
big player, to make volumeguarantees to contraceptive
product manufacturers.
You don't make a lot of money.
off contraceptives, particularlyif you sell them at a really
reduced rate in countries acrossAfrica, Asia, and Latin America,
right?
So they've gone in together in aconsortium in a lot of ways to
(37:06):
give volume guarantees so thatthe pharmaceutical producers
would agree to maybe even builda new factory to produce more
contraception.
You can't grow contraceptive useif you don't have the products
that people want.
So that whole system is nowunder threat.
What's going to happen if we Weno longer have the guarantees
(37:27):
for purchase and production.
Will that go away?
Will implants, which have beenthe largest, they've seen the
most rapid increase of any typeof contraception across Africa,
they've been very popular.
What happens if you can't getmore in?
What happens if there isn'tmoney for training about
contraception?
putting them in and then takingthem back out again because
women need to come on and offcontraception over the course of
(37:49):
their reproductive lives.
So it's this whole bigger systemthat's really facing a lot of
damage too.
And so we're starting to seethose threads either stress on
them or things that aren'tworking at all, like with
contraceptives coming that USAIDhad paid for.
And the last thing I'll say aswell is that UNFPA Supplies,
their program had a meeting lastweek as well, and they're facing
(38:10):
an additional 30% increasereduction to the funding they
have for commodities as well.
Because remember, there's a lotof intermingled financing.
So when the US pulls out, everyother country has to
reprioritize what theirinvestments are as well.
And there's a lot of pressure inEurope to reduce overseas
development assistance too.
So there's less money, there'smore need, there's more pressure
(38:33):
on all of that.
And so what we're seeing isreally an internal collapse of
the commodity system that hadbeen dependent in Africa on
donated commodities.
Between USCID and UNFP, I thinkat the high point, they were
providing 70% of thecontraceptives to go to Africa,
and most of those were donated.
(38:54):
So what happens to your healthbudget, your health system, an
organization like MSI, who isdependent on donated commodities
in many countries, if thosedonated commodities are no
longer there?
So a lot of those things haveyet to play out.
SPEAKER_00 (39:09):
Yeah, and again, back to the patient level,
right?
The trust in your healthcareprovider, but if you go to your
provider and they don't have themethod you want, or don't have
any methods, or only havecondoms, this becomes a problem
of...
That's right.
(39:46):
breaks that trust betweenpatients and providers.
And when that trust is broken,it can be really hard to get
back, and sometimes evenimpossible.
SPEAKER_01 (39:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, we're seeing inKenya, Nigeria, and Ethiopia,
we've had reports that ouroutreach services to young
people, remote communities, andkey populations, and for folks
who don't know what keypopulations are, they can often
be folks that are...
without resources that don'thave financing.
(40:16):
They can be LGBTQI persons.
They can be sex workers, justfolks who are most in need.
So we've seen that they've beenpaused or that they've had to
scale back and that healthfacilities are having to switch
from individual counselingsessions now to group counseling
sessions.
So just imagine if you went intoa clinic and you needed
counseling, but you had to do itwith five other people that you
(40:37):
might not even know, and thatthat's the best that people can
offer.
Or
SPEAKER_00 (40:41):
if you're a young person and like, want to ensure
privacy like that
SPEAKER_01 (40:45):
and you're embarrassed or you don't know
what to ask your
SPEAKER_00 (40:48):
spouse is unsupportive or your partner's
unsupportive like that's reallyso many factors are hidden in
that
SPEAKER_01 (40:54):
that's right and we're operating on reduced hours
or we're certain we're closingcertain days of the week or not
operating on weekends so likeyou said you know people show up
to get health care and no one'sthere and then in Zambia we're
working with communitymobilizers who were trained
through USAID funded projects toraise awareness about
contraceptive through communitylevel awareness campaigns.
(41:16):
And as turnover happens, thatmeans that there are fewer and
fewer people who are trained todo that work.
There's just no replacement.
So there's this immediate needand then there's this longer
term sort of system degradationthat's definitely taking place.
SPEAKER_00 (41:29):
Okay, that's all really depressing.
Let's turn to action, because Idon't like to leave people on
the sad note.
Let's talk about how they canget involved.
What can our audience do to takeaction to ensure that people are
able to get this care?
SPEAKER_01 (41:46):
Yeah, you know, one of the things, and I've spent
more time in the last year sinceI've been with MSI talking to
Americans than I ever havebefore, and it's really quite
shocking how little Americansknow about foreign affairs.
much less that the U.S.
invests in any of the things andwhy they invested in it.
So I think something that all ofus can do is to not just talk to
(42:10):
our immediate family andfriends, but to make an effort
to get out there and talk tomore people.
So we help them understand bothwhy this was an important
investment for the U.S.
and what the damage is going tobe when this doesn't happen, now
that this money has gone away.
So each of us can make acommitment over some period of
(42:30):
time to reach more people.
I think people are reallyinterested in this.
They just don't know about it.
So I think that's one thing thatwe can all do.
And just help others to connectthese dots as well, that what
we're seeing in terms of ElonMusk and the incredible sort of
cesspool of what X has nowbecome under Twitter.
(42:55):
But that is the conversationthat we're fighting against, and
that's global.
That's a really hard thing toaccept.
But understanding what'shappening in the world, even
though it's hard to look at, sothat we can figure out what to
do together, it's reallyimportant that all of us
continue to track this, eventhough it's hard stuff to look
(43:15):
at.
And then what else can we do?
just take care of your ownmental health and well-being
because those who've beenworking, like Grace, you and me
and Jenny, you know, we're allvalues-driven folks, right?
That's why we're in this sector,which means we take this moment
very personally.
It's really hard.
And yet the only way we're goingto come through it is in
(43:39):
partnership with one another andin that sort of greater
solidarity and realizing, asthey did, that they played a
long game and that rights...
clearly are in flux around theworld and that we have to gird
ourselves as well.
We were on that sort of long arcof progress, you know, bends
towards justice kind of a thing.
And I still believe in that, butclearly it's a longer arc than
(44:03):
many of us were emotionallyprepared for.
And so I do think we have to,except that this is the work of
many lifetimes.
It's not going to be resolved inours, certainly not in the
United States and not in manyother countries.
And to mitigate the damage doneby the United States in this
moment and in the years to come,we're just gonna have to take
(44:25):
care of ourselves and staystrong as a community.
And in that sense, I think maybewe have to give each other a
little more grace because thiscommunity has really high
standards and we have a way oftaking each other down.
on an individual and on aninstitutional level.
And maybe we need to have alittle bit more room because
it's going to take all of us andmany, many more in order to
(44:49):
build whatever comes next, notto build back, but build
whatever's next.
So I hope that we can be alittle bit more open and
gracious with one another aswell, because there's a lot on
us in that.
SPEAKER_00 (45:01):
Beth, thank you so much for being here.
I had such a wonderful timetalking to you about everything
that's been going on.
SPEAKER_01 (45:08):
Thanks, Jenny.
It's a pleasure to be here andalways so lovely to see you.
So thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER_00 (45:13):
Okay, y'all.
I hope you enjoyed myconversation with Beth.
It was a really wonderfulconversation to talk about all
of the things that are happeningright now and kind of how we got
here by backtracking to thefirst Trump administration,
which was a really importantconversation to have.
Next week, we will have our nextin the series on abortion later
in pregnancy.
I'm really excited about it.
(45:35):
We're going to be talking abouta book that is coming out next
month, Beyond Limits by Dr.
Shelley Sella.
And I am very excited for y'allto hear our conversation.
Okay, with that, I will seeeverybody next week.
If you have any questions,comments or topics you would
like us to cover, always feelfree to shoot me an email.
(45:58):
You can reach me at Jenny,J-E-N-N-I-E at
reprosfightback.com or you canfind us on social media.
We're at Repros Fight Back onFacebook and Twitter or Repros
FB on Instagram.
If you love our podcast and wantto make sure more people find
it, take the time to rate andreview us on your favorite
podcast platform.
(46:19):
Or if you want to make sure tosupport the podcast, you can
also donate on our website atreprosfightback.com thanks all
Welcome to Repros Fight Back, a podcast on all
things related to sexual andreproductive health rights and
justice.
Hi, Repros.
How's everybody doing?
I'm your host, Jenny Wetter, andmy pronouns are she, her.
So y'all, there has been so muchhappening in the last week or
so.
First, Congress is in the midstof budget reconciliation, and
(00:27):
there's a lot of really badthings that are coming out in
that process.
We're only going to talk aboutone today, but just know there
are a lot of them, so keep aneye on it.
One of them is that they arethreatening to defund Planned
Parenthood, and y'all, that issaid with the biggest of scare
air quotes.
There is no defund PlannedParenthood.
(00:49):
There is not a line item thatsays this money goes to Planned
Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is a granteein a number of states providing
Title X services.
We talked about that last weekwith Claire Coleman, with NIFRA.
If you want to hear more aboutwhat is happening with the Title
X network, go back and check outthat episode if you haven't
(01:11):
already.
It is attacking who can accesscare.
Defunding Planned Parenthoodwould also mean that people who
are on Medicaid would no longerbe able to go see Planned
Parenthood as a provider.
And this is huge.
Not all providers acceptMedicaid funds and Planned
Parenthood does.
(01:32):
And so they play a really bigrole in making sure that people
access sexual and reproductivehealth services when they're on
Medicaid.
And often that is people's onlycontact with the medical system.
They often don't have a primarycare provider, but But they do
go into Planned Parenthood andmake sure that they're able to
get family planning or sexualand reproductive health care.
(01:53):
So this would be reallydevastating if Planned
Parenthood were to be defundedbecause they play a huge role in
the social safety net.
And we need to make sure thatthey are still able to provide
services to all the people whoneed them.
So make sure to call yourcongresspeople and let them know
that you support PlannedParenthood and want to make sure
that they continue to be funded.
(02:15):
Also recently, theadministration issued a
Kemp-Kasten ruling saying thatthey are no longer going to fund
the work of the United NationsPopulation Fund.
This comes on top of all thegrants that had been frozen due
to basically the dismantling ofthe foreign aid system.
(02:36):
And this is going to havedevastating implications around
the world.
UNFPA plays really an importantrole in providing sexual and
reproductive health service topeople all around the world,
particularly those inhumanitarian settings where
UNFPA is often the only peoplethere providing those services.
(02:56):
And just to read a little bitfrom UNFPA's release that they
put out about thisdetermination, just so you have
a broader understanding of whatthis means.
This comes in addition to atermination notices UNFPA has
already received for more than40 existing humanitarian
projects, amounting to some$335million in funding.
(03:18):
Following the abrupt terminationof development assistance
grants, this move will furtheradd strain to the already
stretched global public healthsystem.
It will cut essential supportfor millions of people living in
humanitarian crises and formidwives preventing mothers from
dying in childbirth, work thatis a best buy in development, a
(03:39):
cost-effective investment thatgenerates positive returns over
generations.
UNFPA's decades-long partnershipwith the United States, a
founding partner, has made theworld safer, stronger, and more
prosperous.
Together, we have strengthenedhealth systems, saved millions
of lives, improved the economicprospects of families and
communities worldwide.
(04:00):
Over the past four years alone,with the U.S.
government's lifesavinginvestments, we have prevented
more than 17,000 maternaldeaths, 9 million unintended
pregnancies and nearly 3 millionunsafe abortions by expanding
access to voluntary familyplanning.
It's going to be a huge loss,y'all.
(04:21):
It is going to be a huge lossthat UNFPA is going to have a
hard time making up for thatshortfall.
That means people are not goingto get access to life-saving
services that they need, be thatin humanitarian settings or in
other settings.
It's just further fueling thisglobal crisis that the
administration has kicked offThank you so much.
(04:59):
I could not think of a betterperson to have on to talk about
that than Beth Schlachter withMSI.
We're going to talk aboutbasically how we got from Trump
1 to where we are now.
What are some of the things thatMSI is already seeing and what
this is going to mean for thingslike maternal health and other
ripple effects that we are goingto see.
(05:20):
So with that, let's go to myinterview with Beth.
Hi, Beth.
Thank you so much for being heretoday.
SPEAKER_01 (05:27):
Thanks, Jenny.
I'm really pleased to be heretoday.
Thank you for inviting me andfor including MSI Reproductive
Choices.
We're thrilled.
SPEAKER_00 (05:35):
So excited to have you on.
Before we dig into ourconversation, would you like to
take a second and introduceyourself and include your
pronouns?
Sure.
SPEAKER_01 (05:43):
My name is Beth Schlachter.
My pronouns are she, her.
And I am the Senior Director forUS and External Engagement for
MSI Reproductive Choices.
The organization is based in theUK and has service delivery
programs in 36 countries aroundthe world.
Where we operate, we're thelargest providers of
reproductive healthcare,including contraception and
(06:04):
abortion.
So really proud to be a part ofthis team.
Going way back, I used to be adiplomat with the State
Department.
And one of my roles was as theSenior Advisor for what we then
called population policy.
So I covered reproductive healthas a foreign policy issue and
managed our relationship withUNFPA, which meant that things
(06:27):
that came up like U.S.
legislation kept casting, globalgag rule, defunding of UNFP and
the Helms Amendment, all thosethings were my policy issues as
a State Department official.
And I left there to become theExecutive Director of FP 2020,
FP 2020 for a number of yearsand then transitioned that to FP
2030.
(06:48):
And then I also had a littlestint with IPTF.
So I feel like I've had theglorious benefit of being in
government, in a globalpartnership and then with some
pretty amazing NGOs that havebeen global.
So I've gotten a view of thingsfrom multiple sides that I find
I'm just very, I feel veryfortunate to have.
SPEAKER_00 (07:09):
It feels like a lifetime ago that you were at
State's apartment.
Looking back, I was so early inmy career at PI when I remember
working with you at State.
SPEAKER_01 (07:17):
It's definitely a world apart now in terms
Especially, even the end of theBush administration when I first
started working on these issueswas such a different environment
than where we are now, which ispure chaos and cruelty, but
we'll get into that.
SPEAKER_00 (07:31):
Yeah, and I thought it would be good, you know,
often I do like a background onhow we got to where we're at,
and I was thinking we wouldstart like...
talking about what has happenedsince the new admin took office,
but that doesn't feel quiteright.
Like, I think we need to stepback further and go back to the
first four years they were inoffice and talk about what they
(07:51):
did then and how they usedvarious sexual and reproductive
health restrictions then and howthat relates to what we're
seeing now.
SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
Yeah.
I think Americans in particularand global folks probably know
this better than Americans do.
how reproductive rights as aforeign policy issue, as what
had been a USCID priorityinvestment, have been a
political football, where we'veused the bodies of women and
girls and LGBTQI persons as away of pulling and pushing power
(08:24):
for decades now, since 1984, inparticular, when Ronald Reagan
first introduced the global gagrule.
But it had been a sort ofpredictable kind of back and
forth.
Republicans come in, they defundUNFPA and they apply the global
gag rule.
Democrats come back in, theyreverse those things.
And we kept trying to grow theinvestment past 2010.
(08:45):
We really couldn't get anywherewith that.
But it had just sort of thispredictable, somewhat
predictable kind of nature toit.
And then that radicallyescalated under the first Trump
administration in a lot of ways.
I guess what I'd ask ouraudience to hold in their minds
as we talk today is both whathappens in the U.S., what the
U.S.
(09:05):
funds and drives, and thenwhat's also happening in other
countries around the world, bothfor their own purposes and
because there's this reallyextremist, right-wing,
nationalist in many ways,anti-democratic sort of effort
to use, again, the bodies ofwomen, girls, and LGBTQI persons
(09:27):
to create wedges in societiesaround the world and pull us
apart.
It's worked very effectively.
in the United States.
And one thing we're really greatat is exporting things that we
feel are cut from America thatcan be useful somewhere else.
So a lot of U.S.
effort was built up during thatfirst Trump administration to
(09:47):
create a sort of normalizedframework around an anti-rights,
anti-choice, anti-LGBTQI sort ofworldview.
And it took a little while toget there because, first of all,
they never thought they weregoing to win.
None of us thought they weregoing to win.
Unfortunately, they did, andthen they did again.
But what Once they got theirfeet under them, they started
using the tools of state to sortof push against progress and
(10:12):
progressive values around theworld.
And I would start with MikePompeo, who was then the
Secretary of State.
And his first big move in thisdirection was to create
something called the Commissionon Unalienable Rights.
And what that commission did wasbring together a number of
conservative activistsacademics, legal scholars,
(10:34):
foreign policy experts, andthose who are human rights
experts to review the US postureon human rights.
And this commission issued areport that said a lot of
things, but for our purposes, itboiled down and said that the US
posture on human rights wasover-implementing, and that in
fact, God's law, or what theyrefer to as natural law,
(10:56):
supersedes human rights law, andthat human rights needed to be
recalibrated as a US foreignpolicy initiative beneath God's
law, so that we would start torecalibrate our positioning at
the Human Rights Council, fromwhich we'd already withdrawn,
and other bilateral andmultilateral negotiations,
(11:16):
ensuring that God's law wasalways our primary foreign
policy objective.
And then to implement thisworldview, they created
something called the MinisterialConference on Freedom of
Religion and Belief.
And this brought togetherministers from around the world,
again at the State Department,hosted by Mike Pompeo, In a lot
of ways, this is an issue wheremany people agree that there
(11:39):
should be religious freedomaround the world.
But this conference, one of theprimary objectives of it was
also to ensure that they gavecover to anti-LGBTQI bigotry by
saying that any religion shouldhave the authority to determine
how it receives, condemns,appreciates, does not allow for
(12:00):
issues related to genderidentity and sexuality.
And so it gave cover toanti-LGBTQI bigotry under the
guise of freedom of religion andbelief.
And then the last thing they didwas to create something called
the Geneva ConsensusDeclaration.
And what this tried to do was touse, again, the pretense of UN
(12:23):
frameworks to launch their owndocument that repositions
reproductive rights under theCommission on Unalienable Rights
sort of framework, saying thathuman rights, again, are
secondary to God's law.
And under God's law, the onlyappropriate relationships are
heteronormative relationshipsThere should not be sex outside
(12:43):
of marriage.
And there is certainly nothingcalled abortion.
So it's a very simple, cleardocument.
It's a great public relationsdocument in terms of spreading
your message.
And the US launched it inGeneva, which is where the Human
Rights Council is, to give itthis look of authenticity.
And you could pretend that itactually sort of exists within a
UN framework, right?
(13:04):
And they convinced 36 countriesto sign on to this Geneva
Consensus Declaration.
Then shortly after this happens,Trump loses.
And so all of these things arestill standing.
The Freedom of Religion andBelief Conference happens again
in the UK under the auspices ofthe UK government, some of them
knowing it was going to happenin the framework that it did and
(13:26):
others not.
So that created its own dust upin the UK.
But the people who had beenworking for the Trump
administration to create thesedocuments, particularly a woman
named Valerie Huber, who hadbeen in charge of global health
from the Health and HumanServices offices here in the
United States, she couldcontinued to sell the Geneva
consensus declaration even whenTrump was out of power and in
(13:46):
fact created her own healthsystem framework that she
convinced a number ofgovernments to sign on to,
including Honduras and andUganda, importantly, and
basically saying, if Trump isout of power right now, but if
he comes back in, we're comingback in with these frameworks,
and one way you can show fealtyto us is to continue your
(14:08):
engagement with us and to signon to this sort of Protego
framework.
So a lot of this ended up inProject 2025.
It was a continuation of thatwork where they articulated they
were going to continue to dothese things, and they have done
that.
What we've seen, though, bytaking down all of USCID and
pulling most of the money out,though, is really taking out the
key part of that transactionthat brings value, which is the
(14:30):
cash.
So what we haven't seen yet iswith this new skinny budget that
the Trump administration hasproposed and with this larger
big budget that they're tryingto work on, what money will be
left for foreign assistance?
How much of that will go toglobal health?
And then again, how much will goto reproductive health?
And what will be the frameworkof the deal that they offer
(14:52):
countries?
Because there's been such aprofound damage caused by the
defunding of USCID, where manygovernments were hugely
dependent on U.S.
foreign assistance for their ownjust day to day.
health systems.
Again, you can argue whetherthat was right or wrong.
It was what it was and shouldhave been addressed in a very
thoughtful, collaborative way,which of course is not what
(15:13):
happened.
So let's see what they come backwith when they do come back in
with whatever funding they mayor may not come back with and
see what sort of policy demandsthey make alongside funding
agreements.
SPEAKER_00 (15:26):
Yeah, I remember all of this happening and
particularly the Commission onUnalienable Rights because it
was shocking.
It doesn't feel like the rightword.
Cause it, it, it shouldn't belike surprising at all of any,
any of the things they did.
But I do remember just beingreally shocked when they came up
(15:46):
with their hierarchy of likewhere that they're one, that
there is a hierarchy in humanrights, which there's not, but
to that at the top, um, wasreligion and property rights.
Property rights, I didn't thinkof that one.
Right?
Like, religion wasn't, like,obviously I could see that one
(16:10):
coming and the way they weregoing to interpret it and how
that was going to attack all theother rights that we support,
but the property rights onereally threw me that they were
going to actually argue thatthat came as one of the top
ones.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yeah,
SPEAKER_00 (16:24):
yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (16:26):
You know, who owns what, right?
SPEAKER_00 (16:28):
Right.
wild.
So that's a lot about what theprevious Trump administration
did and thinking ahead of whatthey were doing.
But this anti-rights agenda youhave talked about, we've really
seen it spreading globally.
So how are we seeing this playout kind of around the world
right now?
SPEAKER_01 (16:48):
Well, first, I want to point everybody to a couple
of really great reports, one bya group called the European
Parliamentary Forum, where thedirector, Neil Donah, has been
tracking money flows for about15 years now.
And so he goes way back andlooking at not just money that
comes from the U.S., but moneythat also comes from Europe and
Russian oligarchs.
And that's important becausewe've seen a real convergence of
(17:09):
not just money, but also policyand groups that are willing to
work together to advance thesort of anti-rights,
anti-democratic framework.
The way the U.S.
has also contributed is groupslike the ADF, who we know out of
Arizona have been the realmachine churning out the Dobbs
scandal.
sort of frameworks and all ofthe laws in the United States
(17:31):
that make it more difficult bitby bit to get an abortion in the
clinic, even where it isallowed.
The ADF have been providingthese sort of draft legal
frameworks for countries aroundthe world as well that codify
anti-abortion perspectives andlegislation that make it harder
for people to get care andreally limit things in the ways
that they've been limited herein the United States.
(17:51):
So the U.S.
contributes both money andthought and then just sort of
advocacy effort as well and thereal energy that comes from that
and some of the ways that it'sjust easier as well to connect
the dots from that side is thatthey often do do so through
international church andreligious kinds of networks
which have their own authoritymoral authority in communities
(18:13):
as well so when new policies areintroduced and they start first
with conversations that arebased through church networks,
they already have a pathway oftrust and linkage to people's
moral and emotional lives.
So it's a different pathway ofintroducing anti-rights
(18:34):
legislation that's prettyeffective.
So that's sort of one way thatwe've seen that happening, but
there really has been thisburgeoning both of
authoritarianism in countriesaround the world, not just the
ones we immediately think of interms of Russia and Hungary and
Turkey, but also places like thePhilippines that have gone back
and forth in terms of reallyextreme authoritarian behaviors,
(18:57):
like with Duterte, who's now outof power.
But this has been on the rise,and others are better at
measuring that than I am.
What we're seeing, though, isover and over that it's
reproductive health and issuesaround sexuality that are often
that wedge issue.
They get in and help to drivepeople apart because it feels as
if that organically is justsomething that people are
(19:19):
resisting within their owncommunities because we have
allowed this sort of shroud ofshame around anything to do with
women's bodies or withsexuality.
So it's been pretty easypickings on their part in order
to take these issues And thenthrough a nationalized or
international sort of process,bring them down to very local
(19:40):
communities in ways that havebeen profoundly damaging.
SPEAKER_00 (19:44):
I'm just going to put a flag in for the audience
when we're recording this on May12th.
But just to point out, as I wasComing online this morning, I
saw that last night's episode ofLast Week Tonight with John
Oliver is talking about theAlliance Defending Freedom.
So I am very excited to go learnmore about a group that I
(20:04):
already know more than I wouldlike about, but to see what all
he has had to say, because I'msure it's going to touch on a
number of the issues that youbrought up.
But anyway, y'all make sure tocheck that out.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
So we're just like seeing all ofthis coming together.
And now with this withdrawal ofU.S.
funding, particularly in foreignassistance and seeing we've
(20:28):
talked on the podcast beforeabout how this is going to
impact programs around theworld.
MSI has a lot of programs thatwe're getting U.S.
funding.
Maybe we should turn a littlebit and talk about some of the
impacts that we are seeing orexpect to see.
And maybe one of the places tostart right now is maternal
(20:49):
health, because we are alreadystarting to see some of those
numbers.
So what are some of the impactswe're seeing on maternal health?
SPEAKER_01 (20:56):
Yeah, so for MSI, we...
I say only, but our funding fromUSAID was at$14 million when
Trump came in.
So we were able to walk awayfrom that money.
I think on the third day of theTrump administration, when we
saw the executive order aroundDEI and realized that they were
going to push that in to thesystem and make it so that the
global gag rule was applicablemuch earlier than it had in
(21:19):
previous iterations.
So we walked away from thatmoney and were able to sort of
make up that difference with ourown resources, which means for
us, we are one of the few NGOsthat's fully operating in many
countries.
I have, according to governmentdata in Ethiopia, 85% of NGOs
(21:39):
have stopped their programmingin Ethiopia.
That's a profound loss ofservices, right?
And in Kenya, there have been54,000 jobs lost in the health
sector so far.
According to my MSI colleagueswho are still operating in
countries, part of what they'vesaid is that there's a bit of a
(21:59):
tail to help people lose theirjobs when the funding goes away.
So some of that loss is stillplaying out, and it'll be in the
next three to six months wherewe see the real impact.
of what the actual impact hasbeen.
So when you extrapolate fromthat, and it's really Guttmacher
and others who've done somefabulous research on the data of
(22:23):
what that's going to mean interms of maternal health loss.
Right now, or in 2024, the UShad allocated a little over$600
million for family planning,including 32 million for UNFPA.
But on top of that, UNFPA hadover$200 million because the
Refugee Bureau had provided somuch assistance in addition to
that for humanitarian settingsas well.
(22:46):
So not having that money willresult in over 47 million women
and girls losing access tocontraception.
And that means there's likely tobe 17 million unintended
pregnancies.
And unfortunately, we know thatwhen there are pregnancies, even
with good health, it's stilldangerous for people to be
(23:07):
pregnant and to give birth.
But in low-resource settings,it's even more dangerous.
So unfortunately, we estimatethat there will be 34,000
pregnancy-related deaths justper year from the loss of USAID
funding.
And another statistic thatreally stuck with me, Jenny, is
that Every day, every single daywithout this assistance, over
(23:28):
130,000 women will lose theiraccess to contraceptive
services.
So that's just, I mean, you canjust imagine from there, that's
130,000 women or girls every daywho then can't control whether
or not they get pregnant, whichultimately means they can't
control whether or not they stayin school, whether or not they
are able to continue to functionand keep their business, keep
(23:50):
their families together.
So the cascade, that rippleeffect, we've spent years
talking about the sort ofvirtuous cycle of good created
by access to reproductivehealthcare and contraception.
Now we have to imagine thatvirtuous cycle in reverse.
and the damage that it thencauses as well.
And just the real crisis and thereal sadness is that these are
(24:13):
gonna affect women and girlsthat you and I will never meet.
And that our government took anobligation to, when we committed
this funding, we committed topeople, that the American people
would stand with people in othercountries who were struggling
with so many factors to increasetheir livelihoods.
And so this is just a profoundbetrayal We'll never be forgiven
(24:35):
for this, and we don't deserveto be, quite frankly.
So yeah, the maternal healthimpact is going to be profound.
It already is.
SPEAKER_00 (24:41):
And it's one of those things, like, this has
been a big global commitmentfor, I mean, honestly, I think
almost my entire career thatI've been working on
reproductive health has beenworking, as maternal health has
been part of it, and we had madesuch great globally to reduce
the maternal mortality rate.
(25:02):
You know, we hadn't seen it comeup a little bit with COVID and
other things, but this is goingto be a major setback, not just
on maternal health, but I canonly imagine on any number of
issues that we care about.
SPEAKER_01 (25:16):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (25:17):
Like all of the Millennium Development Goals,
the Sustainable DevelopmentGoals.
I think we're just going to seehuge steps back.
I'm thinking about like thechild marriage programs and all
how that's going to impactmaternal mortality.
I think that's also an importantpart to think about is all of
this is interconnected and willhave impacts on other things.
(25:38):
And you mentioned rippleeffects.
What else are you kind ofthinking about?
SPEAKER_01 (25:42):
There's legitimate criticism for the family
planning reproductive healthprogram at USAD over the decades
that we can absolutely go into.
But one of the really importantimportant things that they did
was, and a lot of this waslessons that were learned during
PEPFAR in the early days oftrying to build up a program to
that was an emergency crisisprogram, but that brought a way
(26:04):
of working to government systemsthat didn't align.
It was square peg, round hole.
So PEPFAR spent a lot of timelearning how to craft a program
that worked on both sides.
And a big piece of that was thedata piece in terms of what is
the data we need and what arethe systems that governments
need to gather in order to makedata and scientific informed
(26:25):
decisions, and then how to helpwork with governments to build
up that system.
So a lot of what goes away arethe things that most people
aren't going to think aboutbecause we don't even think
about it when we go to gethealthcare in the UK or in the
US or anywhere around the worldis who's measuring what and how
does this actually affectdecision-making?
So the folks who had worked onthose systems, many of them got
(26:47):
together and wrote a paper thatwas recently published in The
Lancet just this last week onthe discontinuing of USAID's
global health program.
And I'll just...
rattle off a couple of thenumbers that they just put out
last week.
Their numbers are based on thenext 15 years.
So this is more of that rippleeffect.
And without the USAID GlobalProgram, they estimate that 15
(27:07):
million, there will be 15million additional AIDS-related
deaths.
So it's 15 million families thatare going to lose an important
person who's no longer thereemotionally, financially, part
of their community.
Those people will no longerlive.
no longer be there.
There'll be 2 million TB relateddeaths.
There will be 7.9 million childdeaths from other causes and 40,
(27:32):
55 million additional unplannedpregnancies and all the other
effects that we talked about aminute ago.
So this is a profoundundermining of the stability of
families, communities, andcountries.
And so, you know, one of thereasons like Congress was never
in the business of appropriatingglobal health assistance because
(27:52):
You know, you could take thatmoment and feel good about it.
But the reason that the U.S.
government invested in it wasbecause it was part of that
three-pronged system ofdiplomacy, defense, and
development.
And we always, one of ourbiggest defenders of the
development budget was the DOD,because they understood that the
thing that drives people towardviolent extremism anywhere in
(28:15):
the world, whether it's WesternIdaho or Somalia, is a loss of
hope.
And the most profound thing thatdrives hopelessness in families
is the loss of a mother or theloss of a loved one.
And so the investment in globalhealth was an investment in
global stability.
And we don't yet know.
(28:37):
It's going to take time for thatto play out, right?
That doesn't happen overnight interms of how that sort of plays
out in people's lives.
But the fact that Congress, whoknows better, have allowed
people this issue to be soprofoundly politicized and
they're so afraid to stand up toTrump that they're willing to
(28:57):
fund the greatest moment ofviolent extremism ever to come
from the US.
And I say that after all of theother horrible things that we've
done.
In addition to many good things,I like to be even keeled on
that, but this is just very badfor global stability and it's
very bad for Americans' safetyin the world.
(29:18):
And as we saw with 9-11, we arenot impervious to attacks from
others who are unhappy with usfor whatever reason.
This is just a gift.
So it's just really the mostshort-sighted decision-making
imaginable, especially frompeople who should or do no
better.
SPEAKER_00 (29:38):
I think the other thing I think about hearing
those numbers and thinking ofall of the lives that are going
to be impacted are already beingimpacted is something we try to
talk about on the podcast whenwe talk about these issues, but
I think the average person maynot understand fully.
is let's say a miracle happensand the administration sees that
(30:05):
they're doing terrible thingsand decides to restart funding.
So all the programs magicallycome back and everything's fine,
right?
UNKNOWN (30:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (30:13):
They thought they did that when they realized, you
know, the U.S.
had made a commitment when itcame to HIV, right?
Especially in Africa.
It's a build-out of PEPFAR.
And for folks who don't know,that's the President's Emergency
Plan for AIDS Relief, mostly inAfrica, but it also included
Haiti and I think Vietnam at onepoint.
But it was the response to theglobal AIDS crisis in the early
(30:34):
aughts, and it has savedmillions and millions of
people's lives.
Our commitment until threemonths ago was that we were
providing the antiretroviraldrugs for over 20 million
people.
We pulled the plug on that, orlet's say Elon Musk and his Doge
boys pulled the plug on that.
(30:54):
They said that when they foundthat out, they tried to turn it
back on.
But even now, when you talk tomany of the providers of
healthcare, that has not beenturned back on.
They They did not turn it on,again, for programs that prevent
mother-to-child transmission forHIV.
(31:14):
Our programs were activelysupporting providing
antiretroviral drugs to 40,000women who were pregnant, who may
have given birth by now, inSouthern Africa alone.
We stopped providing themantiretroviral drugs, and we
never turned that back on.
Doge decided that those liveswere not worth saving, even
(31:37):
though there was an activepregnancy.
So to have religiousconservatives in the United
States say that they're allabout the baby, they're all
about preserving life, and to donothing, nothing to provide...
healthcare to actually currentlypregnant women who want to have
(31:57):
these babies is just the mostglaring hypocrisy that you could
imagine.
Plus, what's more evil thanthat?
I can't think of something morecooler and more evil than that.
And yet here we are.
SPEAKER_00 (32:11):
Yeah.
And I just think about thepeople who went to access
services and couldn't getservices.
They may never come back, evenif the clinics can reopen
because they don't trust them.
And, you know, so it is not thatsimple as thinking funding could
restart and things will get backto the way they were.
Clinics may have closed.
Physicians may have left.
(32:31):
Nurses may have left.
Like it is not just, as we talkabout with global gag rule, it's
not just flipping a switch andeverything comes back.
So much is lost and would haveto be rebuilt so this is like
damage that has been done andcannot easily be undone and the
longer it goes the harder itwill be to bring any of it back
SPEAKER_01 (32:55):
absolutely and you know it's so crazy just to look
at those doge receipts and saythat the only way that you
calculate money saved is byprograms turned off what about
all the money invested in intobuilding those programs and
those very personalrelationships that you just
mentioned, Jenny.
All of that is money andinvestment.
(33:17):
But then that need doesn't goaway.
Just because you stopped payinga bill or you cut off a
commitment to other people,that's not money saved.
There's a cost on the other sideof that.
And I want to see the receiptsfor those and to know that we'll
be gathering that information inthe weeks and months and years
ahead because the damage is justgoing to be so profound.
(33:37):
already is.
SPEAKER_00 (33:38):
Okay.
So we've talked a little bitabout maternal health and some
of the ripple effects that weare expecting to see or have
already seen.
What is MSI already seeing?
SPEAKER_01 (33:49):
Yeah.
It's pretty tricky out there.
And I just talked about thiswith our regional director last
week, and she said that we'restill, again, some places things
are unfolding still.
So the whole story isn't fullyvisible right because there were
still commodities in some placesthat are being spent down or
(34:11):
being allocated.
So those commodity shortfallshaven't fully happened yet.
So again, we're still a littlebit early in that phase, but we
are seeing that there is thatsort of falling out of other
partners at the local level.
And that some partners areturning to MSI to shift over
(34:33):
health care from clients as theycan no longer serve.
But there was a lot of chaos inthe system as well in terms of
what it all meant.
Like women in Uganda, there arereports that they immediately
wanted to get their implantstaken out because they thought
that they were going to beillegal because suddenly USAID
was no longer able to provideit.
(34:53):
So there was a lot of panic atthe personal level and going to
healthcare clinics, like yousaid, that were closed, feeling
as if they were stuck with acommodity, feeling as if they
were going to be in trouble.
So we've seen some of that.
We also saw that or continue tosee that USAID wasn't just
money.
a lot of the impact that theyhad was on training and quality
(35:15):
of care services, things likethe high impact practices, which
codify the kinds of things youcan do to have the highest
impact and how to do thosethings carefully and
thoughtfully and safely.
USAID also convened a lot of thetechnical working groups between
government and civil societyimplementers in countries.
(35:38):
And what MSI is seeing is that alot of those tech working groups
no longer meet.
And if they do go to a meeting,there's only one or two people
there.
So the system itself has groundto a halt in a lot of ways that
are less about whether there's acommodity on the shelf or not,
and more about that sort ofquality kind of processes that
(35:59):
are a little bit more behind thecurtain that are gradually,
incrementally increasing, orthey were, program quality and
reach of over time.
So a lot of that has gone away.
And then there are a lot ofconversations around the
commodities themselves in someplaces where commodities are
stuck in transit.
I think there's like$35 millionin commodities that were
(36:22):
somewhere in the transit processof either stuck in ports or
stuck.
I think nothing's on the oceananymore.
It must certainly have gonesomewhere by now.
And then there were othercontracts as well that were just
cut off with the pharmaceuticalproviders and The last thing
I'll say about that is there area lot of the work that USAID and
other partners, GatesFoundation, UK government as
(36:45):
well, UNFPA, have done a lot ofthese compacts, SIF is another
big player, to make volumeguarantees to contraceptive
product manufacturers.
You don't make a lot of money.
off contraceptives, particularlyif you sell them at a really
reduced rate in countries acrossAfrica, Asia, and Latin America,
right?
So they've gone in together in aconsortium in a lot of ways to
(37:06):
give volume guarantees so thatthe pharmaceutical producers
would agree to maybe even builda new factory to produce more
contraception.
You can't grow contraceptive useif you don't have the products
that people want.
So that whole system is nowunder threat.
What's going to happen if we Weno longer have the guarantees
(37:27):
for purchase and production.
Will that go away?
Will implants, which have beenthe largest, they've seen the
most rapid increase of any typeof contraception across Africa,
they've been very popular.
What happens if you can't getmore in?
What happens if there isn'tmoney for training about
contraception?
putting them in and then takingthem back out again because
women need to come on and offcontraception over the course of
(37:49):
their reproductive lives.
So it's this whole bigger systemthat's really facing a lot of
damage too.
And so we're starting to seethose threads either stress on
them or things that aren'tworking at all, like with
contraceptives coming that USAIDhad paid for.
And the last thing I'll say aswell is that UNFPA Supplies,
their program had a meeting lastweek as well, and they're facing
(38:10):
an additional 30% increasereduction to the funding they
have for commodities as well.
Because remember, there's a lotof intermingled financing.
So when the US pulls out, everyother country has to
reprioritize what theirinvestments are as well.
And there's a lot of pressure inEurope to reduce overseas
development assistance too.
So there's less money, there'smore need, there's more pressure
(38:33):
on all of that.
And so what we're seeing isreally an internal collapse of
the commodity system that hadbeen dependent in Africa on
donated commodities.
Between USCID and UNFP, I thinkat the high point, they were
providing 70% of thecontraceptives to go to Africa,
and most of those were donated.
(38:54):
So what happens to your healthbudget, your health system, an
organization like MSI, who isdependent on donated commodities
in many countries, if thosedonated commodities are no
longer there?
So a lot of those things haveyet to play out.
SPEAKER_00 (39:09):
Yeah, and again, back to the patient level,
right?
The trust in your healthcareprovider, but if you go to your
provider and they don't have themethod you want, or don't have
any methods, or only havecondoms, this becomes a problem
of...
That's right.
(39:46):
breaks that trust betweenpatients and providers.
And when that trust is broken,it can be really hard to get
back, and sometimes evenimpossible.
SPEAKER_01 (39:55):
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, we're seeing inKenya, Nigeria, and Ethiopia,
we've had reports that ouroutreach services to young
people, remote communities, andkey populations, and for folks
who don't know what keypopulations are, they can often
be folks that are...
without resources that don'thave financing.
(40:16):
They can be LGBTQI persons.
They can be sex workers, justfolks who are most in need.
So we've seen that they've beenpaused or that they've had to
scale back and that healthfacilities are having to switch
from individual counselingsessions now to group counseling
sessions.
So just imagine if you went intoa clinic and you needed
counseling, but you had to do itwith five other people that you
(40:37):
might not even know, and thatthat's the best that people can
offer.
Or
SPEAKER_00 (40:41):
if you're a young person and like, want to ensure
privacy like that
SPEAKER_01 (40:45):
and you're embarrassed or you don't know
what to ask your
SPEAKER_00 (40:48):
spouse is unsupportive or your partner's
unsupportive like that's reallyso many factors are hidden in
that
SPEAKER_01 (40:54):
that's right and we're operating on reduced hours
or we're certain we're closingcertain days of the week or not
operating on weekends so likeyou said you know people show up
to get health care and no one'sthere and then in Zambia we're
working with communitymobilizers who were trained
through USAID funded projects toraise awareness about
contraceptive through communitylevel awareness campaigns.
(41:16):
And as turnover happens, thatmeans that there are fewer and
fewer people who are trained todo that work.
There's just no replacement.
So there's this immediate needand then there's this longer
term sort of system degradationthat's definitely taking place.
SPEAKER_00 (41:29):
Okay, that's all really depressing.
Let's turn to action, because Idon't like to leave people on
the sad note.
Let's talk about how they canget involved.
What can our audience do to takeaction to ensure that people are
able to get this care?
SPEAKER_01 (41:46):
Yeah, you know, one of the things, and I've spent
more time in the last year sinceI've been with MSI talking to
Americans than I ever havebefore, and it's really quite
shocking how little Americansknow about foreign affairs.
much less that the U.S.
invests in any of the things andwhy they invested in it.
So I think something that all ofus can do is to not just talk to
(42:10):
our immediate family andfriends, but to make an effort
to get out there and talk tomore people.
So we help them understand bothwhy this was an important
investment for the U.S.
and what the damage is going tobe when this doesn't happen, now
that this money has gone away.
So each of us can make acommitment over some period of
(42:30):
time to reach more people.
I think people are reallyinterested in this.
They just don't know about it.
So I think that's one thing thatwe can all do.
And just help others to connectthese dots as well, that what
we're seeing in terms of ElonMusk and the incredible sort of
cesspool of what X has nowbecome under Twitter.
(42:55):
But that is the conversationthat we're fighting against, and
that's global.
That's a really hard thing toaccept.
But understanding what'shappening in the world, even
though it's hard to look at, sothat we can figure out what to
do together, it's reallyimportant that all of us
continue to track this, eventhough it's hard stuff to look
(43:15):
at.
And then what else can we do?
just take care of your ownmental health and well-being
because those who've beenworking, like Grace, you and me
and Jenny, you know, we're allvalues-driven folks, right?
That's why we're in this sector,which means we take this moment
very personally.
It's really hard.
And yet the only way we're goingto come through it is in
(43:39):
partnership with one another andin that sort of greater
solidarity and realizing, asthey did, that they played a
long game and that rights...
clearly are in flux around theworld and that we have to gird
ourselves as well.
We were on that sort of long arcof progress, you know, bends
towards justice kind of a thing.
And I still believe in that, butclearly it's a longer arc than
(44:03):
many of us were emotionallyprepared for.
And so I do think we have to,except that this is the work of
many lifetimes.
It's not going to be resolved inours, certainly not in the
United States and not in manyother countries.
And to mitigate the damage doneby the United States in this
moment and in the years to come,we're just gonna have to take
(44:25):
care of ourselves and staystrong as a community.
And in that sense, I think maybewe have to give each other a
little more grace because thiscommunity has really high
standards and we have a way oftaking each other down.
on an individual and on aninstitutional level.
And maybe we need to have alittle bit more room because
it's going to take all of us andmany, many more in order to
(44:49):
build whatever comes next, notto build back, but build
whatever's next.
So I hope that we can be alittle bit more open and
gracious with one another aswell, because there's a lot on
us in that.
SPEAKER_00 (45:01):
Beth, thank you so much for being here.
I had such a wonderful timetalking to you about everything
that's been going on.
SPEAKER_01 (45:08):
Thanks, Jenny.
It's a pleasure to be here andalways so lovely to see you.
So thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER_00 (45:13):
Okay, y'all.
I hope you enjoyed myconversation with Beth.
It was a really wonderfulconversation to talk about all
of the things that are happeningright now and kind of how we got
here by backtracking to thefirst Trump administration,
which was a really importantconversation to have.
Next week, we will have our nextin the series on abortion later
in pregnancy.
I'm really excited about it.
(45:35):
We're going to be talking abouta book that is coming out next
month, Beyond Limits by Dr.
Shelley Sella.
And I am very excited for y'allto hear our conversation.
Okay, with that, I will seeeverybody next week.
If you have any questions,comments or topics you would
like us to cover, always feelfree to shoot me an email.
(45:58):
You can reach me at Jenny,J-E-N-N-I-E at
reprosfightback.com or you canfind us on social media.
We're at Repros Fight Back onFacebook and Twitter or Repros
FB on Instagram.
If you love our podcast and wantto make sure more people find
it, take the time to rate andreview us on your favorite
podcast platform.
(46:19):
Or if you want to make sure tosupport the podcast, you can
also donate on our website atreprosfightback.com thanks all
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