Abortion+Reproductive Justice:An Essential Guide for Resistance

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Davy Ward Ericson and I'm Alena Salks and
you are listening to sex is Medicine, your number one
resource for holistic sex education. Elena and I are bringing
you over twenty seven years of combined expertise in the
field of holistic sexual wellness to help you integrate your body, mind, spirit,

(00:21):
and sex.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
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Now let's get started.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hello and welcome. You are listening to sex is Medicine,
the sexual wellness podcast for sexual rebels and spiritual warriors
and your number one resource for holistic sex education. I
am your host, Davey Ward Ericsson, and I'm Alena Selks,
and we are I'm so honored and delighted to have

(01:02):
you here with us once again. I want to take
a moment and thank all of you who have been
sending us your questions, your comments, your appreciations. We so deeply, deeply,
deeply value your words of appreciation. They are seriously nourishment
for our spirit. It's part of why we keep doing
what we're doing. And we deeply appreciate your vulnerability when

(01:25):
you send us your questions and ask us for our
guidance and our insight and how to support you in
better love, sex, connection, intimacy, and healing. So thank you
for being here. If you haven't haven't already done so,
please like and subscribe on all your favorite listening platforms.
And without further ado, I would love to introduce our

(01:47):
very esteemed and amazing guests for today with us today
are Marlene gerber Fried and Loretta Jay Ross, who are
legends in their own name, so to speak, and we
are so honored to have them here. Marlene Freed is
a professor and Marita of Philosophy at Hampshire College and

(02:12):
co founder of the National Network of Abortion Funds. I'm
sure I said that wrong. And Loretta J. Ross is
a MacArthur Fellow Associate Professor of Women and Gender at
Smith College and co founder of Sister Song Women of
Color Reproductive Health Collective. They are co authors with Jaeel
Silliman and Elena Gutourez. Apologize for pronouncing that incorrectly of

(02:35):
Undivided Rights Women of Color Organized for Reproductive Justice. So
thank you, thank you, thank you both for gracing us
with your presence, for being here with us today, and
we are here to talk about your new book, Abortion
and Reproductive Justice that came out in September. Is that
correct September of this year. Yes, wonderful.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Thanks so much for having It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So in beginning to read
your book, and I'm going to say that I'm beginning
to read it because I want to also share that
it is for me. It is a it's a beautiful book,
and it's also very emotionally challenging to read because I
see myself in the stories of many of those women.

(03:28):
I was one of those women, low income, living in Detroit,
in need of reproductive support and finding myself at planned parenthood,
which was my only resource because of my economic situation,
and then enduring things like non consensual pelvic exams and
non consensual cervical biopsies and being used as a test

(03:52):
subject without my consent. So this, this story, this concept
of reproductive justice, is one that I have that I
live that many of us, as women and people of
color live, particularly in the United States, and particularly when
we're lower income. So yes, So I was sharing with

(04:13):
Elena earlier that this is a book that I feel
like I need to tie trade.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
I can dip into it and absorb some of it,
but then I really need to sit and be present
with all that it stirs within me. And so part
of what I love about what I've read so far
is the distinction between that you all make between abortion
rights and reproductive justice. And so that's a nuance that

(04:39):
I believe that not many of us take into consideration.
So could you share a little bit more about that
distinction between abortion rights and reproduct reproductive justice.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Well, as you know, for so long, some total of
what most mainstream organizations that work in this area understanding
of reproduction was about abortion. It was that an abortion
as a single issue, as if it is not related

(05:13):
even to sex. But do you know what I mean,
and not related to the economics, not related to where
you sit in your family and in the world. So
that in some ways that's really a mistake. It's a
mistake in so many counts. It's a misunderstanding of how

(05:36):
holistic our lives are. Yes, you know, how's your reproduction going? Well,
I didn't have an abortion, do you know what I mean?
It's not And also that it's a mistake in terms
of all the different entry points into these issues. It's
a mistake in politically in trying to think about who
are your allies, who are the people who are in

(05:59):
this fight with you? And so you have this construct
of the so called people who are for choice but
apparently not life, and the people of her life but
not choice. That's just such an it's not a construct
that really resonates with who anybody is. Well for us,
opening up reproductive justice opens it up, I mean, it

(06:21):
opens up the understanding of the world, It opens up
your experience, It opens in so many different ways.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yes, so it's more of a holistic and inclusive concept
as opposed to just abortion rights. And I've often said,
like the whole thing about pro choice or pro life, like,
to me, that's gaslighting the concept of really, I mean,
and I think that's sad, Like the whole concept of
pro life has been to gaslight, to make it like
an impossible choice. Right, So I love that that that

(06:52):
referencing reproductive justice just removes that argument of pro choice
or pro life like it, you know, it removes the
for duality.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
And it also centers different people. So when you take
a justice lens, you're thinking about who are the people
who are most not getting justice on any front, whose
lives are structured by this, you know, tapestry of oppression,

(07:22):
of so many different oppressions. And you're also not appreciating
the degree to which race and racial configurations in white
supremacy has structured our entire country from the beginning. So
it's not just today, it's not just these people who seem,
you know, completely out of control. This is you know,

(07:44):
they're they're carrying on the tradition.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah. And and again, something that stood out for me
because I get I remember this very viscerally, is when
you when you talk about in the book about how
again abortion rights, like, we may have the right to abortion,
but that doesn't mean that we have access to abortion.
And I remember very clearly when that law occurred that

(08:13):
removed that Medicaid and Medicare government subsidy. Should we say
our government payments that would go to abortion? I remember
that argument happening in and I don't remember how old
I was, maybe middle school or high school when that
was happening. But I remember that conversation and how even
though you have the right to abortion, without the resources,

(08:33):
you don't actually have access to abortion. So your book
teases that out and describes that very, very succinctly.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
So you're just talking about the High Amendment that was
named after Henry Hyde and was passed in nineteen seventy
six and affirm by the Supreme Court in seventy seven,
And basically it represented a taxpayer revolt where taxpayers suddenly decided,
you know, following a whole lot of other taxpayer revolts

(09:01):
that were based on white supremacy and race, saying I
don't want my money paying for those people, basically, and
has started with first property tax revolts about not wanting
to pay for the education of children of color. And
there's perception that poor women are getting their abortions paid
for it by my tax dollars, and poor women is

(09:24):
read as women of color, and so it really continues
the whole white supremacist theme. We wanted to emphasize in
the book that if you don't understand white supremacy, you
don't understand reproductive politics, because it's never just about gender.
It's about who has the right to produce and is encouraged,

(09:47):
and who is actually inhibited from reproducing and discouraged. And
even though it seems counterintuitive to say, well, if they
don't want more black children, why don't they support abortion rights.
Don't even like seeing black women as human beings who
have any human rights, And so that even trumps whether

(10:09):
or not they would like us to have abortions. The
whole question of us claiming our human rights is anathema
to them.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
And so, like the broader conversation of reproductive justice is
really the awareness of white supremacy, because reproductive justice is
you know, kind of in resistance to white supremacy.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Is that accurate if you're not identifying white supremacy in
neoliberal capitalism, wisdom problem, it ain't reproductive justice.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yes, yeah, yeah, And that's why the justice piece is
so important, because it's about who has access and who
not just legal access, but economic access and social access
and you know, emotional access and you know physical access.
And so, Elena, what were some of the things that

(11:03):
stood out for you in engaging in the book from
your perspective?

Speaker 5 (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, So some of the things that you named
were really present for me as well, I too had
kind of known the abortion issue in the pro choice
and pro life argument realm, and so I had heard
of reproductive justice, but I had yet to investigate it
more deeply. And so I too resonated with the definition

(11:33):
of reproductive justice as being the right to have or
not have children, and the rights to be able to
raise those children right.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Healthfully and happily.

Speaker 5 (11:46):
And yeah, I also really deeply resonated with the stories
that were presented there as well, so that I could
get into the mindset and really understand some of the
experiences that people have had in their lives, which really, really,

(12:07):
I found to be a beautiful way to present this
content and a beautiful way to anchor myself and your
readers in, you know, the truth of the lived experience
of the people who are affected.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
And it's also justice is a bridge. It's a bridge
to other people, to other movements, to other forms of oppression,
and so often the choice life thing has been a
like burn the bridge. I'm not talking to you, I
can't deal with you, so I think it and insofar

(12:47):
as it does that, it lets us listen to other people.
I mean, like, whose story are you telling? Where does
this story begin. It doesn't begin with Roe v. Wade,
it doesn't even begin with the High Amendment. It's a
very long story which hopefully will not go on in perpetuity,

(13:07):
but it's at this moment in time it's not looking great.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
And we felt the need to tell the story and
the history of reproductive politics through a different lens, because
so many times when you talk about reproductive politics in
the United States, it's through the lens of what happened
to white women, which is a legitimate story, but it's
only a partial story because at the same time specific

(13:36):
oppressions directed towards white women were occurring, there was a
racialized a and gendered oppression directed towards women of color,
particularly with the reproductive disappearance of indigenous women because of
the Center colonial project, and then the fourth breeding of

(13:57):
enslaved black women because of racial capitalism. And so if
you failed to tell those stories and the stories of
immigrant women who were forbidden to come here even though
they needed the labor of immigrant men from China, for example,
you have an incomplete history of reproductive politics in the

(14:18):
United States and how it's so deeply intertwined with how
capitalism developed in the United States. And who benefited from that,
and who consistently orchestrates policies in our society so that
a certain part of the population benefits and everybody else suffers.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
And you don't even see everybody else. I mean, in
more recent history, at the time that rov. Wade was
being decided, and the movement for abortion rights was quite robust,
it was exactly at that time that women of color
or ringing alarm bells about sterilization abuse. But that was

(15:04):
not part of the Roe v. Wade story. And it's
just kind of I mean, it's sort of breathtakingly clueless
or is something that you're like looking in such a
narrow way that you can't see much of what's going on.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
I mean, but that's the commitment of white supremacist society, right.
It's like it's like, what isolated events and this very
narrow view, And so to expand the view to include
the whole history is to the whole picture. Like white
supremacy functions to separate and to compartmentalize, and to narrow

(15:41):
the lens and narrow the view to target just its
own interests. Something that stirs in me about the concept
of reproductive justice is not just about whether or not
we want to give birth, but how we want to
give birth. And so what comes to mind for me
is the criminalisation of midwhiffery. That's also been happening very actively,

(16:04):
I would say, I'm aware in the last five years,
but probably for longer than that, But like laws that
are actually criminalizing midwhiffery, which again for many women of color,
is a way more supportive you know, avenue for giving
birth than in a clinical hospital and having to navigate
medical Apartheide, right, So that also plays a picture in

(16:26):
reproductive justice, as you talk about in the book, is
a concept of medical apartheide, and how black women are
disproportionately negatively black and other women of color are disproportionally
negatively affected by you know, particularly in birthing, like black
maternal death is like you know, is huge, and so
in order to save our lives, we want to be

(16:46):
you know, we want to work with a midwife instead
of in a conventional conventional you know avenue, and our
ability to do that is being impeded and criminalized quite frankly.
So I love how the conversation of reproductive justice again
it's not just this narrow focal point on abortion, it's

(17:07):
the entire experience of reproductive health. And I'm wondering, does
the concept of reproductive justice is that inclusive for people
who identify as men, not necessarily transmit, but cis gender men.
Is that something that's woven into the concept of reproductive justice.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
Well, of course, when we retail a history, we talked
about the sexual abuse that occurred towards enslaved men where
they were forced into breed or you know, buck breaking that,
you know, actual rape of men to force them to
become more compliant with the breeding schemes and stuff like that.

(17:48):
What I am disappointed and though, is since the nineteen eighties,
black women have been demanding that black men's start a
human rights based reproductive health justice movement for themselves, and
yet the patriarchy still makes black men relegate all responsibility

(18:13):
for dealing reproductive health matters to women, and they don't
see their own stake in it until you frame it
a particular way. I remember being in Mississippi organizing against
a personhood amendment in twenty eleven, I think it was,
and they would have said that a fetus is a

(18:34):
person from the moment of conception, and so they were
trying to undermine abortion rights with that kind of amendment
to the Mississippi Constitution. It didn't get men, and particularly
black men, to pay any attention till I said, would
you like to start playing child support from the moment
sheets pregnant? And then they're like me, now you've got

(19:01):
my attention. And so I think there needs to be
a men's health movement that speaks in a register that
men can understand and and to call them out for
delegating and relegating responsibility for the continuation of our community

(19:22):
only on the shoulders of women.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yes, thank you, but it is the pecking order of
power in white supremacy. You'll hold on to what little
power you have. So for for white men too, there's
no not been a men's health movement or a men's
rights movement. I mean, the men's rights movement is usually
anti women, so it's it's not I When I think

(19:48):
about it in terms of power, then I understand it.
But when I think about it in terms of the
logic of where your self interest is, where your future
is going, it just doesn't make sense. Which I think
it's life for me. In the end, I do think
we're on the winning side of history, because I think
you can't fool people forever. You can't just make everyone

(20:09):
sit there and watch Fox News their entire lives. It's
just not it breaks down as it is breaking down
in this Epstein moment, you know, it's just sometimes reality
comes through.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yes, yes, yeah, for Epstein, eh, I mean, not for
him specifically, it isn't it. I mean, yeah, we're actually
rooting for the truth exactly exactly, That's what I mean. Yes,
not him specifically, but the but the truth, the exposure. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the shadows coming to light. Yes. So in terms of

(20:48):
you know, the reproductive justice movement, how does that intersect
with other movements like the Black Lives Matter and the
LGBTQ and you know, the social justice right. Reproductive justice
is social justice, so I would imagine that intersects with
all social justice movements.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
And it's been that not exactly easy to have other
movements embrace reproductive rights, because that's that's been the Achilles here.
I mean, even though it's not abortion only, abortion is
a place where the white supremacists and the anti abortion

(21:26):
people and the right wing have poked you know, they've
said that, oh, we can divide people along this access.
But having said that, there's there have been a fair
amount of bridges built to Black Lives Matter, to Disability Justice,
to LBGTQ movements. So and several of the organizations have

(21:52):
actually changed their names to embrace the So now it's
disability justice, not disability rights, because some of what the
reproductive justice movement has done is exposed how meager the
right constitutional rights are as opposed to human rights?

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
If you look at our analysis that was gifted to
us by Forward to gather formerly Asian communities for Reproductive Justice,
they're the ones that showed the three pillars of our movement.
There's the reproductive health sector, the individual doctors and nurses

(22:35):
and midwives and people who provide health services to individuals.
Then there's the second pillar is the reproductive rights movement,
also synonymous with the pro choice movement, who tend to
fight for sexual rights within the confines of the US constitution.

(22:56):
They're the ones like the Center for Reproductive Rights or
NAYRAL are of US Planned Parenthood that's fighting within the
US Constitution and this limit going to the courts and
all of that. Reproductive justice is seen as the human
rights organizing base our job is to build bridges to

(23:18):
all of those other movements because we use that intersectional
analysis that allows us to do so. And I'll tell
you a quick story about Black Lives Matter. After I
had left Sister Song, it's current executive director, Monica Simpson
called a meeting of the black women who were leading
Black Lives Matter to meet at the Sister Song House

(23:39):
because they had done their plan of action with no
mention of reproductive politics. And so once Monica brought it
to their attention that how can three or four black
women talk about Black Lives Matter and not talk about
reproductive justice, the women, to a person said, oh my god.

(24:01):
I've been a personal feminist all my life, but I
never knew until this moment what being a political feminist means.
That I have to talk about the vitality of my life. Yes,
not just have police violence separated or pigeonholed over here

(24:22):
and reproductive violence separated and pigeonholed another place. That that
was the kind of insight that reproductive justice seeks to
bring to environmental justice, disability justice, racial justice, etc. Etc.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
And that makes so much sense because I mean, reproductive
justice is like, that's the core I mean, we come
from mothers, and if our mothers are not cared for
and well, like you know, birth trauma is a thing,
and that then you know, ripples has ripple effects throughout
the rest of our lives, Like how how we are
born into this world. Effects are our brain, It affects

(25:01):
our nervous system, it affects every aspect of our being.
And so if there's traumas that occur, those are going
to replicate and reverberate throughout the rest of our lives.
And again, as I was saying, the mother is the foundation, right,
our are reproductive. How we come into this world and
how we pro create is fundamental to our experience of

(25:22):
ourselves as human beings. So I mean the fact that
it's like those dots haven't connected is astounding. Go on,
But I.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Also want to push a little bit further because one
of the beauties of the reproductive justice framework and its
intersectionality is that we look at both biological and non
biological oppression. Yes, so while there may be medical apartheid
in how you treated, there's going to be housing scarcity, yes,

(25:49):
and feeling like facing evictions is also going to determine
your birth outcomes or whether there's violence from your partner
it's going to develop affected, or whether or not your
child is gonna duck guns on the way to school.
Gun violence on the way to.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
School absolutely going to affect.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
All of those things are leaning, uh, Geronymus calls it weathering.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yes, the impact of all of.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
These concussive oppressions mean that our you know, our health
is worse. We have shorter lifespans, we're more inclined to
diabetes and heart disease and all of these, and so
all these mild biological things, the way they the way
they show up physiologically in our bodies also has to
be connected into what a real human being experiences.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
What even as the pregnancy, where the pregnancy, how did
it develop right? Was it? Was it for spreeding? Was
it great? Was it so? You know, you almost you
can't isolate that that. I think that's that's the lesson
of intersectionality, which is a lived concept. I think it's
important to say these concepts, reproductive justice, intersectionality, they didn't

(27:06):
come from academia. They're in academia now, but that's not
what happened. They came from people's experiences of living and
of organizing and so it's not abstract. It was interesting
as someone who's in the pro choice I was in
the pro choice movement for a long time fighting from
the edge, you know, like it's not just abortion, and

(27:28):
it was always like a big thing to try and
explain that to people. For women of color, it was
never a big thing, you know. It's of course, these
things are all connected. And similarly for international which in
a way we've brought the justice was inspired or Loretta
was inspired by the international context. And again these societies

(27:50):
where the histories of fighting colonialism, dictatorship was all connected
to who could have children, who couldn't have children, How
you had children, did you have children? Are you prevented
from having children? So I feel like we are. I
think that we have in this country done a disservice

(28:15):
to all of us in terms of developing our thinking
and the breadth of our imagination. And in some ways,
reproductive Justice is trying to give it back, like think big.
It's hard in this moment when even the smallest thing
you can't you know, get, but it's such a critical thing.

Speaker 4 (28:38):
And I also go beyond discussions of our book for
something else that has captured our imaginations, and that is
the reproductive justice framework was written in the twentieth century
thirty one thirty thirty one years ago, and there is
an urgency to dated it for dealing with twenty first

(29:02):
and twenty second century challenges like genomic technologies and the
fact that some billionaires are playing with the entire human
genome as they sculpt a techno future, what we call
neo eugenics for themselves that doesn't necessarily include us as
fully human beings, because they're even talking about growing people

(29:25):
of color just to harvest our organs and stuff, but
not necessarily again reckoning us as fully rights bearing people
as in the past. They want to continue that in
the future. So we need to criticize and really examine
philosophies like effective altruism and long termism using the reproductive

(29:51):
justice framework. So we call that body of work reproductive
justice futurisms, where we are not only looking at past
practices and present practices, but projecting what is a black
feminist analysis of what we have to deal with as
eugenics gets upgraded itself using new technologies, but all thinking

(30:18):
around white supremacy and patriarchy.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
H Yeah, and that's what's horrifying to me with this
whole like AI thing and all the upcoming technological developments
is where they're coming from, the lens through which they're
being developed. It's horrifying to me. I mean, it's yeah, yeah.
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weaves through all of this from our perspective, so we
work heavily in trauma, in the understanding of how trauma

(31:30):
affects the body, the brain, the nervous system, and how
trauma is passed down intergenerationally, both through our biology, our physiology,
but also relationally and so that's a thread that's strung
as we're talking about reproductive justice and how it intersects
with Black lives matters and LGBTQ and disability rights. Is

(31:51):
really the conversation is in some ways a conversation about
trauma and how the systems of oppression and lack of
resources and lack of access are actually traumas. And then
how when I, as a mother am traumatized, how that
changes my DNA literally and then how I pass that

(32:14):
trauma down onto my children and their children and their children,
and so their health outcomes are going to be you know,
more more detrimentally affected. Their you know, income, poverty, like
you know, quality of life are all going to be
negatively impacted by my experience as a mother and having
to navigate systems of violence in order to access you know,

(32:37):
maternal health care and reproductive reproductive health care. And so
that that's just something that stands out to me in
this conversation is is the understanding of being trauma informed
seems like a very necessary aspect in the conversation of
reproductive justice, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
And trauma in the service of keeping it keeping the
systems of oppression that caused the trauma going. So it's
not it's not accidental. I guess that's as you pull
that thread, what you see is that somebody is pulling
the string on the other side.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's intentional. And again, like you know, you
you speak to in your book, and we alluded to
in this conversation here, it's by design. It's from the
inception of the United States. The way the United States
was established as a functioning entity is rooted in white supremacy.
People don't like to hear that, you know, but it's

(33:39):
the truth. And then how that system of white supremacy
replicates itself throughout history, and then those who are adversely impacted,
because it's easy to ignore it when you're not being
detrimentally impacted, but when you your life is you know,
is is being legislated and were not viewed as fully human.

(34:03):
We don't. We don't have a choice but to engage
with it actively.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
And part of what we hope intended our book would
do was give people tools to identify in each era,
like the great replacement theory, what is that you know,
that's old thinking in a new whatever. So it's important
to not to understand that that these issues keep cropping

(34:32):
up and they take new forms, and you know you're
just like, oh, look there it is again. But I
you know, I think for for us being able to
see that and to look back, but then also to
look forward and see, well, what's coming up on the
horizon and trying to get out ahead of it.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
What's the rebrand exactly? Rebrand exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
And you see a lot of it, you know, like
this whole trad wife thing. I mean, it's just you know,
everything old is new again. Everything it's just the same thing.
Although again, for one of the things that's very clear
to me in this moment is how people really don't
we don't know our own history. We don't know the
history of this country. And if the forces of authoritarianism

(35:26):
have their way, it's going to get worse. You know,
as we get rid of every book that talks about enslavement,
that anything that talks about feminists and LBTTQ liberation. You
just so you know, fighting at every possible level, fighting
at your local library so they don't take those books away.

(35:48):
It's critical.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, And I will say, you know, something that arises
for me is the is the overwhelm and the agony
of the constant, unrelenting fight for humanity. Yeah, like we
just shouldn't shouldn't have to fight.

Speaker 4 (36:11):
But it's also our particular responsibility of black women. There's
something sacred about knowing that Midichandril Eve was a black woman.
We birth humanity, and so it may be our particular
destiny to be the saviors of it as well, because

(36:36):
that might be something that we were gifted to as
a responsibility. I tend to see the entirety of humanity
as our cousins. Yeah, you know, we got good cousins,
we got bad cousins. We got light skinned cousins, we
got white cousins, we got dark kids cousins, we got
stupid cousin, we got smart cousins. We family, and we're

(37:00):
gonna show up in all the different crazy ways families
show up. But those of us who are rooted give
that chain of freedom that knows it goes back from
our ancestors and forward towards our descendants. We know we
have a special privilege to see the chain and delight

(37:21):
in the responsibility for making sure that chain doesn't break
in our link.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Beautiful, don't let the oppressors off the hook. Beautiful as
a white person in this.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
You know, we also need to talk about the role
of anti Semitism in.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
All of this exactly.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
That's totally mixed up in this and does not get
enough written about it in reproductive politics as well.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
So let's talk about that. Let's talk about anti semitism
in reproductive politics.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Well in the way that they're talking about anti semitism now.

Speaker 4 (37:56):
Well, the part, the part that I pay a particular
attention to under this great replacement theory bs that they're running,
they are accusing Jewish doctors of leading white women into
having abortions as an attack on the white race. But

(38:16):
that goes back to their earlier theories that the black
liberation struggle was being manipulated by Jews because black people
don't have enough brains to successfully launch a civil rights
movement and overturn laws and get civil rights laws past
and stuff. And so that of course goes back even
further to how in the dark Ages in Europe, long

(38:42):
before they discovered quote the New World, they built anti
black racism on a template of anti semitism. When they
decided to change the European relationship to Africa from one
of trade to plunder. And so for the Jews, what

(39:04):
was a religion became a race, the same thing that
happened to Muslims. What was a religion became a race,
and what was a religion called Christianity became a race.
The earliest iteration of whiteness as divine and everything else
as barbaric.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
And I mean, I'm sorry. And also then thinking about
how Jews were considered white like Irish, I mean, the
whole idea of who's white is again in the purview
of the powerful vacn decide. So to resist those distinctions,

(39:48):
which are disempowering, they're only in the service of keeping
most of us down. All this is serving.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
And divide and conquer. And what I love about presidencing
the history is A, we need to know it and
B that is the history that lives in our DNA. Yes,
and so that's why it's important to presence it, because
it's operating within us, whether we're aware of it or not.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Another piece of this conversation of reproductive justice that really
stands out for me is sexual health education for teenage,
particularly boys and girls, for teenage you know, kids, And
I know for me again, my history you know, reverse
thirty years ago and a low income, biracial black woman

(40:40):
living in Detroit, zero sex education, was clueless. I didn't
even know how to track my menstrual cycle, right, like
just absolutely completely ignorant on purpose, Like that was you know,
by design. We didn't get it in school or you know,
the little bit that we got was uncomfortable and embarrassing.
You know, mom working single moms, she didn't have time.

(41:02):
It's just kind of you could throw out to the
wolves and you know, sink or swim, figure it out
for yourself. And sure enough, I end up pregnant and
in need of you know, an abortion. And you know,
this was before you could have the pill type so
medical abortions, you know, which were terrifying, terrifying, terrifying experiences.
But then it was just the cycle because you know,

(41:23):
have the abortion and then my option is the pill.
Well then the pill makes me sick and so so
having access to sexual health information that also is not
doesn't necessarily conform to the status quo. So for me,
you know what I what I evolved into is studying
herbalism and learning about herbal methods of birth control and

(41:46):
learning about you know, fertility management. And tracking my cycle
and these things that are kind of that were at
the time outside of the norm of conventional birth control
because at that time they weren't even really pushing IUD,
it was mostly the pills, right, So being able to
step outside of that and educate myself about different ways

(42:07):
that I could manage my fertility and not have, you know,
a non consensual pregnancy that changed my whole life, right
that that was empowerment for me. So I think that
that conversation of sex education starting for you know, teenagers,
when you become when you're able to reproduce, that's when

(42:28):
you should be getting this information, if not sooner, and
having comprehensive that's the word I'm looking for, comprehensive, pleasure
based and then you know, realistic sex education like here
are some options, but here are some other options, like
inclusive sex education. I would say, what are your thoughts
on that?

Speaker 5 (42:46):
Sorry, go on on, Leah, I was just going to
add to that, David. That's a point that really stands
out for me as well, the kind of the paradox
of rallying against abortions while also suppressing sex education and
access to contraception and healthcare and resources that like, truly,
if you if your hope is to reduce abortions, that

(43:10):
it seems like the fastest route to that would actually
be providing people with resources rather than you know, punishing
them through laws.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Well, you know, shame about sexuality is one of the
threads that goes through and you know, I was looking
at a lot of your podcasts and the degree to
which it's important that you're shifting the frame to pleasure
and to being able to appreciate this as an important
dimension of living and in terms of the repression of

(43:45):
sex and sexuality. So most sex said still is abstinence based. Yea,
as long as the focus is don't have sex and
certainly don't have out of wedlove children. And again the

(44:06):
the not having children sort of at the core of
all of this is what kind of children should be had,
who's of value, who's in the mix, what's the country
going to look like? And then how we're going to
use everybody else we don't really want in the mix.

(44:26):
But we can enslave them, we can decimate them, we
can make the lives miserable, we can starve them in
order to build ballrooms. You know, it's it's the connection
to to in general, even knowing about your sexuality, as

(44:48):
if we don't tell you, you won't figure it out,
you know. I think that's it's such a strange understanding
of how people are, you know, like we explore more.
I noticed that feels good. It just feels.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Shamed, well exactly, And so that's that I call a
psychological chastity belt. Right. So that's the thing. We're so
conditioned from the time we're children, from the time we're
first caught by you know, an elder touching our genitals
when we're toddlers, because all toddlers do it, and we're
shamed about touching our own bodies, and that imprints in

(45:25):
our body and the imprints in the nervous system and
makes us quite frankly, less curious. It makes us less
inclined to explore. And then when we do want to explore,
we're fed mainstream porn, which is also in many cases
life alienating and dehumanizing and oppressive, right and and fulfills
a specific narrative and agenda for for many people. I'm

(45:47):
talking about mainstream poorn, not not all porn. So so
it's you know, it's a it's a again, it's by design.
But it's but it's a it's it's all these little,
you know, micro instant of being separated from our sexual
selves that begins in childhood and then again that ripples

(46:11):
and replicates and perpetuates for the rest of our lives.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
I would just add though, that if you're trying to
explain the illogic of banning abortion and birth control and
yet having a pro natalist, white supremacist ideology, the way
that that shows up is if you look at the
teen pregnancy rates around the country, and teen pregnancy has

(46:40):
been declining even with the bad abstinence programs and all
of that, for every population of teenagers except one, highly religious,
ill educated white teenagers, they're the ones where their teen
pregnancy rates are going through the roof. And so there

(47:04):
is an intentionality about teaching about shame, failing to give
them education, but knowing that biology is biology, people are
going to play around and find out any way. And
then you end up with the consequence of an increase

(47:24):
in white team pregnancies, which also leads to the commodification
of white babies that are very valuable on the market.
And so if you use a land to understand how
white supremacists thinking operates. You can connect the dots and
make sense out of what looks like illogical touch points,

(47:48):
because it's logical to think, well, if they don't want abortions,
why don't you provide effect of sex education and birth
control to prevent unplanned pregnancies. But it's a lot complicated
that linear line.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Because there's an overarching agenda, and that agenda is the
upliftment and continuation of a white supremacist social structure.

Speaker 4 (48:14):
Exactly, but also an ill educated one. Don't forget the
lack of education, because what they don't necessarily want it.
What is a highly educated, burgeoning white population, which your
core is a get attached to the attack colleges and

(48:34):
universities and thinking and all this other stuff, because that
also would threaten them.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
It used to be that your views on sexuality and
abortion correlated very highly with your education, that if you
had college education of any kind, if you went to
a Catholic institution, a Luseman institution, that your views would
be more liberal. Now I haven't checked this out lately,

(49:05):
but it is a sort of it makes sense right
in a way, that these are institutions that, despite perhaps
their best efforts do encourage thinking and asking and questioning,
so I think it's critical. And the other piece in

(49:26):
what you're saying, Loretta is you know the racial lens.
I mean the racial lens always in terms of who's
getting pregnant, whose pregnancies will take care of, whose pregnancies
we won't even notice, so we don't even care if
you're getting good healthcare or not. And you know, I

(49:47):
wanted to say something about the midwifferd thing that you
had raised Davy a while ago. That too, is a
historically old story in terms of the criminalization and the
negative images of black women who were midwives. The granny
midwives took care of They took care of everybody, not

(50:10):
just black people. But to sort of have people believe
that midwives were dirty, that they weren't, they weren't up
to the technology, that they didn't know what they were doing,
is really embedded in this story. And for the reason

(50:31):
that you said, which is that they using midwife improves
birth outcomes or people of exactly day as it did
in the nineteenth century.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Well, and then the whole thing of criminalizing midwife is
exactly an example of white male patriarchy. It's all like,
it's like all these a they're women and be they're black.
I mean, what the heck can they know? Be worse?
They're inferior. They're absolutely and they're inferior humans. And our
superior knowledge that came from experimenting on these black women,

(51:07):
that's much more superior you know, knowledge than than whatever
you know, whatever lives in their bones, so to speak.
So yeah, I mean the whole history of of of
that dynamic is an example of the dominance of white
male patriarchy.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
But I also want to pick up another echo that
you had debby, because you were talking about increasing your
knowledge of nerves and contraception and you know, WOUNBD wellness
and stuff like that. But if you go back to
black history, you could find documentation that there were whole
plantations of black women who refuse to have babies and

(51:45):
slavery yep. And that was because they had bought over
with them knowledge from Africa yep, where they were practicing
effective constiraception and using a border patience. And the reason
we know about that is the fragments of documentation that
white doctors committed to when they were asked to investigate

(52:09):
why despite all of the sexual abuse and stuff going on.
Whole plantations are not having babies, and it was because
of those midwives and those women who had what what
doctor called secrets about gestation that we don't know about.
So you're also tapping into very ancient wisdom. Because those

(52:32):
enslaved women weren't able to write it down, that doesn't
mean it didn't exist.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yes, stories that come that we can uncover, I think
they are very They're inspiring for people, They're energizing there,
you know, like look, even under the most oppressive conditions,
people found ways to resist. And right now, finding those

(53:00):
sources of hope is really important.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
And so where do you suggest we seek for those
sources of hope? I know your book is one of them,
your new book. Also, I'm also yes, definitely read this book,
and I'm going to say, like for me, as I said,
it's phenomenal, fantastic, and I must ty trade it because
of what it stimulates inside of me, because of what
lives inside of me. And I'm also Loretta, I'm also

(53:26):
reading your book Calling In which is it's a necessary concept,
a necessary concept of building bridges and finding points of
union with all these different you know, political and lived ideologies,
and I had an experience of that this weekend I
was I had wanted to share of I was at
a little event and it was a little painting party

(53:49):
with some of our neighbors. And one of the women
and I, a white woman, and I started talking and
you know, we had some good rapport and then she
started talking about politics, and she's very much a Trump supporter,
and I'm like, fine, you know, but I don't want
to like be a party pooper. So I was like, okay,
that's interesting. And I said, well, what do you think

(54:09):
about this and what do you think about that? And
she said, I think it's really bad. It's really bad
when government, because she was talking about the Democrats. I
think it's really bad when government, you know, makes people suffer.
And I'm like that we agree on And I personally
believe that none of the parties are worth.

Speaker 5 (54:26):
We lost your audio daty.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Sorry I tapped it. Can you hear me? None of
the parties okay, yeah, the parties. I personally believe that
none of the parties are are are effectively supporting our
well being as human beings, and that they're you know
that they're not none of them are working in our
best interests, and she agreed. And so even now we're
on these quote unquote opposite sides of the political spectrum.

(54:50):
Though I don't consider myself a democrat, I am one
hundred percent an anarchist, we're on the opposite sides of
the political spectrum. We could agree on the fact that
we believe that the purpose of government was to support
the well being of the people and that it was
failing miserably. So we agreed on that. So that came
I wanted to share with you Orreta that was a

(55:11):
real life experience from listening to your book and the
awarenesses that stimulated inside of me, and then I was
able to carry that into my next interaction, So thank
you for that.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
Well, we have shared suffering, but we don't have common solutions,
and that's where we have to use I think calling
in techniques so that we can share those solutions to
our suffering and stop succumbing to blaming each other. Because
the divide and conquer is very, very real, and so

(55:46):
I tend to believe that my job is to focus
on the puppeteers, not the puppets. Yes, thank you, I
call out the puppeteers. There was manipulating the paid yes,
of the mag of people, the Trump people. But I
tend to give you know, a listen and sometimes the
benefit of the doubt to the puppets whose pain is

(56:07):
being manipulated, because their pain is real. It's just that
the solutions they're being offered are all false.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Yes, yes, thank you for that, beautiful, beautiful.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
And also it was as you stuck with it, David,
you were able to go deep, like go beyond the
but this is where we disagree. But underneath that is
a value. Yes, we agree on that we share shared value.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
And I think that that's the not being able to
have the conversation preemps getting there.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Yes, exactly exactly, and the reaction, right, I could have
in that moment just been like closed the door and
written it off, exactly right. But instead, and partially because
we were there in person and we had already established
a little just a little bit of a human can
like oh, yeah, you're from Michigan, I'm from Michigan City,
you know, so we're just like vibeing on each other.

(57:05):
And then when the politics came out, because we had
already had a human connection established, I wanted to I
wanted to maintain that connection, right. I didn't want to
destroy that connection or pollute that connection, right, And so
it's a lot you know that That speaks to how
being in person with each other really helps dissolve, can
help dissolve those barriers because online it's easy to scream

(57:27):
at each other. Online, it's easy to like, you know,
vomit outrage at each other because there is no human connection.
And I believe that that online world really you know again,
manipulates that and really promotes that type of toxic dispute,
whereas being in person with each other, we feel each
other's humanity, or at least there's the potential to feel

(57:51):
and experience each other's humanity. So it makes it easier
to want to preserve that than it does online. That's
been my experience.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
Oh, I like us finding are common love languages with
each other because like, as a Southerner, my love language
is grits. I can talk grits to anybody who grew
up on whether they're sweet, whether they're salty, whether they're buttered,
whether they're soupy, And you establish that human the human connection.

(58:20):
Up here in the Northeast, it might be lobster roles,
you know, maybe out of the Midwest, and whether you
call it soda or.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Pop, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (58:31):
Find that common human love language and start from there,
and you'll be odd by how you can make human
to human connections despite the superficial divisions of politics and
race and identity and stuff, because underneath that, we're all
human beings in search of love, in search of peace,

(58:52):
in search of joy, in search of fulfillment.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Yes, yes, and we'll say it's not that easy because
everything's weaponized. Eat what kind of food you eat? What
kind of you know that it's all in the service
of keeping these divisions going. So you know, for I
look for inspiration to wherever the resistance is, wherever I

(59:18):
see it, and there's a lot of it. Now, uh,
you know, it's and and you have to swallow a lot.
You know, you can't be putting too fine a point
on well, that isn't exactly the kind of resistance I
wanted to see. Just affirm it and see it for
what it is.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
The problem is what people's motivations for resistance? Yes, because
if they do it from a place of anger and bitterness,
then they're going to become just as oppressive as what
they're fighting. Yeah, absolutely, you know, oh yes, if you
don't do it from a pace of joy, love and peace,

(59:56):
you're going to go about doing the right thing the
wrong way.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Beautiful, And we we just host an event called Pleasure
is Resistance talking about it. Yeah, pleasure is a resource
filling us up, you know again, cellularly, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually,
so focusing on pleasure to fill our cups so that
we can you know that that is our resistance there,
but then also being full to enact resistance in the world.

(01:00:24):
So yeah, yeah, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Wow, well it is.
It's it's an honor and a privilege to sit with
you both and and share our humanity together. Elena, is
there anything else that you want to contribute or or
interject into the conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:00:45):
I just want to say thank you so much for
being here. Yeah, it's been an absolute joy.

Speaker 6 (01:00:50):
And uh, Loretta, yeah, that your last words really resonated
with me of keeping hope and join connection presence as
the root of activism.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
So thank you, Yeah, thank you for this back at
you and all of it. It's been a great, rich,
and in many different ways conversation We've got quick. We
followed those tentacles.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Yes, follow those threads to weave a tapestry.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Yeah, wonderful. Well, you can get their book Abortion and
Reproductive Justice and Essential Guide to Resistance. Where can folks
buy your book? Find your book online? Amazon?

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
I'm guessing yeah, But for those who don't are trying
not to, you could go to the University of California
Press and do it, or you're any of your independent bookstore,
your local and if you have one independent bookstore, it's
good to you can buy the book and support that beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And you can go to Loretta's website at Lorettajross dot com.
And you can also find Loretta Jay Ross on Instagram.
I found you on Instagram the other day and started
to follow you, so I'll be giving you a shout out.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
She's much better at the social media. But we bring
a combine.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
I mean, think about it, Marlin. We've got over one
hundred years with social justice activism together, and I love
task is to share it with others. So, like they say,
instead of making old mistakes, let's learn how to make
new ones.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Beautiful. One hundred years of social justice activism. Wow? Wow again?
What a privilege and what a gift and what an honor.
Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank
you so much, audience for listening to us. And we
do hope that if you found this conversation and enriching
and juicy, that you head on over to Lorettajross dot

(01:02:45):
com and buy that amazing book. Also hit up Loretta
j Ross on Instagram and make sure that you drop
us a comment if your heart was as filled as
ours was from this conversation. All right, everyone, thank you
so much, and we'll see you next week for another
episode of sex is Medicine.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
You've been listening to sex is Medicine your number one
resource for holistic sex education.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Make sure you like and subscribe to Sex's Medicine on
all your listening platforms, and follow us on Instagram, YouTube,
and TikTok where you can get your daily dose of
sexes Medicine videos and episode recaps. Also, make sure you
register for your weekly dose of sexes Medicine at Holisticsexologyinstitute
dot com and send us your questions please at Questions

(01:03:32):
at Holistic Sexology Institute dot com. Thank you so much
for listening too, sex is Medicine

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