SIO242: Jane Roe's Deathbed Confession

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 242, I am Thomas Smith, that's, uh, oh, my God, I forgot what show I was doing, I almost said Aaron, that is how this has been, uh that is Jamie Lombardi, everybody, that would have been funny, though, do you want to just do philosophers in space, we could do that, sure, how

0:00:45 Jamie: Yeah, I mean, that's how I got started in this whole thing, so, yeah, I'll be Aaron today, actually, that is not fair to Aaron, I will just be Jamie, he does a much better job of being Aaron than I could, you Know, the same play continues, and in a testament to either my improving or rapidly declining mental health, I have gotten very close in taming the Blue Jays in the backyard, they now come within in like a foot or two of me and will take the peanuts directly like as I throw them, so it's it's really going well, so this is either a mark of my improvement or rapid decline, and I'm not sure yet, uh, but I am excited that the blue jays are coming closer, yeah.

0:00:57 Thomas: Are you doing today, Jamie, so You are doing like a Beauty and the Beast type thing, you want want to like make friends with

0:01:34 Jamie: I'm basically like Radagast the brown in the backyard, right now a super

0:01:35 Thomas: Oh okay or that I like I forgot you're you're really into wizards, so I should have should have gone to the wizard reference, I thought I thought Disney would be safe, but that's just because I have to watch four Disney movies a day every day, which is not that bad, really like I can't really complain, yeah wait

0:01:40 Jamie: Into wizards yeah yeah that's fine yeah no, know, I think Phoebe would be super impressed, I'm like basically Snow White back here, the chipmunks come really close, robins will come within like six inches of me now, there was a, I have a bird field guide, so I had a gray cat bird that was hopping around right around me and yeah yeah, it is, it's little, it's adorable and did

0:02:13 Thomas: A cat bird, that's a bird I know less than nothing about birds, I can name the ones that the name is the color of them, that's about it, like a blue j no

0:02:24 Jamie: You can I tell you, blue jays aren't even blue, they're not not even blue. They're not even blue.

0:02:27 Thomas: Way my well my well My life has all been a lie, everybody, how are you doing, well, now I know zero birds, I figure, I thought I could identify a bird, so they're not blue, what color are they all

0:02:41 Jamie: They're not even blue. They're brown. So blue jays have no blue pigment in their feathers at all. It's optical illusion because of the way light refracts with their feathers. They're not even blue.

0:02:51 Thomas: Right, but that's like a tomatoes of

0:02:53 Jamie: They're not even blue.

0:02:53 Thomas: Fruit kind of thing, like if I, if it, I still look at it and think it's blue, it's fine with it, well, now we're getting in deep into philosophy, if

0:03:00 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, but so blue jay's aren't even blue. And

0:03:03 Thomas: I've only ever seen colorless birds, but I know everything about color, and then I see a blue jay, will I have learned something, I don't know, I'm just trying to, we're philosophers in space, tie-in, uh, good enough clunky philosophy jokes work on Jamie, okay, noted, uh mm-hmm

0:03:22 Jamie: Yeah yeah well yeah, it's so funny because I sit in the backyard and this is like what I'm thinking about, like, oh, what would Mary the neuroscientist say, am I actually having a new experience of blue in a way that is enlightening in any sense, because quite literally I'm not seeing blue, and yet I am very much having the experience of seeing blue, blue, I'm, oh my god, I'm excited to the color blue, so what does that even mean, the bird is not in itself blue so

0:03:32 Thomas: Yeah yeah I think it all matters what we think it is, that's fine, I have no problem with that, yeah hey

0:03:59 Jamie: Yeah yeah so this is how I'm doing in the plague, I'm learning about birds, um, yeah, so that's it

0:04:07 Thomas: So I, I haven't done as much birding as you, uh, or any, I would say, but, um, I, I, I don't know. I'm really concerned with the fact that we're just like opening back up. Is that happening everywhere?

0:04:20 Jamie: So, yeah, I'm concerned about that, too. I – my semester is over. My boys are still being schooled from home. And so I'm still living life the same as I was a month ago. I'm still not going anywhere except for the grocery store or Home Depot when I had to repair the screen door. So I did that. I was very proud of myself, but otherwise no bird attacks, the birds, the birds seem very fond of me in the backyard thank you very much, um, turns out you can tempt them with blueberries and all kinds of things, but yeah, I'm still living life mostly the same as I was because it seems like we shouldn't be just be going back to normal unless we want to have additional waves of this, but my sense is that that is not how most people are responding to it, and they're sort of eager to get back to doing things again.

0:04:40 Thomas: All the bird attacks. No. Okay.

0:05:18 Thomas: Yeah, it's tough because yes, we absolutely, absolutely, I totally understand many ways in which people can reasonably be very anxious, to you know, they, people need jobs, people need to work, people, there's all kinds of reasons people, by the way, just the mental health challenges of staying cooped up for this long, like that's very real concerns, and like, I obviously I want to get everything open as soon as we can, but I, I also just, it just can't, it seemed to come out of nowhere for me, like I didn't feel like there, there was any reason why it would be better. And then all of a sudden places are like, well, it seems better. We're opening up. And I just, I don't, I don't understand it. I'm going to continue to do the same thing, but that's because I'm very privileged to be able to just continue to not really have to go anywhere or go into a job or anything.

0:06:06 Thomas: But it must be particularly tough for people who don't want to, like, who are very scared out of this virus, don't want to, you know, get sick, but also are going to be forced back into work because if things open up, you know, it's not like we have much protection for people who are worried about getting sick if they go in, you know, I'm sure the government will say, well, you're not unemployed. You just refuse to work or something and cut off benefits. So I'm very worried about that.

0:06:35 Jamie: Yeah, I share that worry. I've also got friends around the country who are teaching in different locations, and it's just so interesting and heartbreaking how regional areas are going to impact people's overall mortality rates. So friends who are teaching, teaching in California, for example, most of their institutions have signaled that they're going to remain online for classes in the fall, where friends who are teaching in places like Georgia or Florida have received word that they should be preparing to move to face-to-face teaching.

And it seems like we're sort of just marching right into a second wave of this, but that's the consensus, us, like, that's just what we're gonna do, and as many Americans that have to die will have to die in order for the economy to be open, and it seems as though we've reached some sort of collective decision making that that's the path that we're, that we're going down, we're not going to try to contain this, we're not going to provide relief for people so that they aren't in danger of losing their homes or their health insurance or the ability to put food on the table, we are just going to let hundreds of a thousand Americans die, it seems to be what the, the decision is.

0:07:49 Thomas: Yeah, it is like we locked down for a long enough time to where if we had any sort of competent people in government, I'm sure we probably could have done enough to maybe make it safe to start opening back up. Like if we had just all kinds of testing, you know, contact tracing, just all the stuff. But it's like we locked down for that period of time. We have a totally incompetent government. And then we're like, well, it's been long enough. You know, it's wait, but we didn't do the things that we probably need to do. So I'm just hoping, I mean, in California, that's what surprised me. I thought California was going to just stay lockdown because, you know, we're trying to have scientists somewhat inform our actions on a pandemic. But it seems like California is comfortable with opening back up. And then I see a headline. Well, this isn't California, but I saw a headline that Disney, I think it was Disney World, was it?

0:08:37 Thomas: The Florida one? I can never keep them straight. But one of them was like, well, it's going to try to open in July. I'm like, what the? Really? Is that right? Am I wrong? Maybe I'm wrong. Is that, cause that seems crazy to me.

0:08:48 Jamie: So it all seems kind of crazy to me, to be honest, I hadn't seen the, the Disney news, but in fairness I've sort of taken myself off the internet as a sort of like emergency, um, mental health triage attempt, because the world is just so aggressively stupid and bleak that some days it's just too much. But yeah, I don't know. It seems like that's what we're doing. We don't have the capacity for testing. We aren't anywhere near close to a vaccine. And it seems we've reached the point where the hospital systems aren't in danger of collapse. In New York, it was really dangerous because of the density of the population. There was the worry that the healthcare system could be overwhelmed, and that there would be additional deaths above and beyond the COVID deaths because we wouldn't have the resources that would enable doctors to respond to car accidents or, right. And so it seems now what has really happened is not that we've made any advances in treating the disease, or preventing the disease, or isolating the disease, we've just freed up enough beds that there's room in the ER for people now.

And so the political decision seems to be, well, so long as we have rooms in the hospital, hospital, or beds in the hospital, and available vents for anybody who might need them, we'll just let as many people die as we can accommodate, because those deaths will be spread out slowly, you don't have the mass transit infrastructure throughout the rest of the United States like you do in in New York City, so the deaths aren't going to spike up as quickly in Alabama, for example, as they do in the middle of Manhattan, and so it seems like we're just gonna let hundreds of thousands of Americans die slowly rather than spend the resources to save those lives, which I think very interestingly ties to what we're to talk about today, because

0:09:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:40 Thomas: And there definitely have been too.

0:09:57 Thomas: Hmm.

0:10:42 Jamie: It just goes to show the hollowness of the Republican Party's pro-life positioning. They don't actually care how many human lives are lost. This is all about power, and in this respect, economic power. Yeah.

0:10:56 Thomas: Well, um, on I just was curious how you felt about that. So good to know that I'm, I'm not nuts. I, I, it felt like I missed something. Like I missed, you know, it was like step one, step two, and then step four, go back and everything's fine. I was like, what's, what was step three? And I,I felt like, I missed it, but I guess step three is we're just going to to have a second wave or something. I don't know. Well, we wanted to talk about, uh, abortion today because in, in small part, because, or, or in some part because of the, um, the new documentary series on the plaintiff and Roe v. Wade, who I'm sure people have seen has gone a little bit viral that, uh. Her name's Norma McCorvey. She actually died in 2017, 17, I believe. And apparently she gave kind of a deathbed confession that she was maybe paid to change her stance on abortion.

0:11:45 Thomas: So Jamie's going to give us the breakdown of all that. And it's an interesting story that I know a lot of people, I'm sure a lot of people were very frustrated to hear that deathbed confession.

0:11:56 Jamie: So this, this deathbed confession is, is wild. As you said, she died in 2017 from heart failure. She outed herself in the 80s, I believe, as as Jane Roe, the woman behind the now famous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that recognized that women had a constitutional right to privacy that included reproductive health care, including abortion. But after that, she had spent a number of her years as an anti-abortion activist.

It turned out she ended up giving the baby that she had originally sought an abortion for up for adoption in, like, 1970, and she had spent most of her adult life as this sort of right-wing anti-abortion figure. And then she was doing this documentary, I guess, at the end of her life. And she made this deathbed confession that actually she wasn't sincere in her anti-abortion views, that she knew she was being had and being used by the anti-abortion movement to put forth their cause, but they paid her very well, or they paid whatever. And so she did this as a way of making money. And the more that I dug into her background, just the more tragic it became, and there's like, it seems to me there's almost like a meta story of the way that women are eliminated from their own lives, because this, this is a woman who has been mistreated at every turn and

0:13:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:22 Jamie: It's just really a tragic story, and it's not at all clear which part of her lives were for her, which part, part of her life was her compromising herself to just eke out an existence. And even in any of the articles about this documentary, it talks about, you know, how this flip-flopping sort of undermines her credibility, and I think that's just related to the way that women are mistrusted as being able to provide the narrative of their own lives generally. And this, this whole story is, is top to bottom tragic, her life story. And then as it relates to where we stand for abortion rights in this country, obviously they've not been doing so well under the Trump administration, but it turns out they've been subjected to some pretty significant attacks because of, of Covet as well.

0:14:10 Thomas: Yeah, just pausing on the McCorvey stuff. I saw this and I saw a lot, lot people sharing it. And I know it's, you know, again, it's probably cause I'm, I run in atheist circles. So it's a lot of people are like, "Ah, look at the religious right, paying off somebody to, to, uh, take this view." Um, I didn't really share it or care that much, cause for me, it's always, it's really about one person's opinion on, you know, on abortion.

Like, I'm sure you can find, it's a, it' a big place. Like there's, you know, 300, whatever, million people in this country, I'm sure you're going to find people who, uh, got an abortion, like, regretted it, or, you know, you're gonna find all kinds of different people. Like, for me, it's always been, uh, about, or for as long as I've been, you know, uh, pro-choice, which is, uh, you know, not my entire life, but the, the last, like, 10, 15 years. Um, I, it's been about, because of the arguments, you know, it's been because, uh, I was, I was wrong before, and then I was convinced that, like, you know, women have a, this should have, or anybody should have autonomy, should have the right to make this decision for themselves. And even if, you know, you talk about the violinist thought experiment, that was really convincing to me, that kind of thing.

And so when I see this, it's like, OK, well, then one person changed their mind about abortion, or, or pretended they changed their mind, or whatever. Like, it doesn't, it didn't really, I don't really care that much. And I don't mean to, I guess, sound like callous about it, but how much do you think this, this matters, like this deathbed confession?

0:15:46 Jamie: So that's a really interesting question, and I think it's going to, excuse me, I'm tongue-tied, it's gonna depend on what exactly you mean by what matters. I, I agree with you in, in the large theme, right? Large scale, I guess, that what Norma McCorvey herself happens to believe in her heart of hearts about abortion is ultimately irrelevant. Who cares what one person out of 330 million people in a country believe on abortion? You're right, I'll find somebody who disagrees with me, I find somebody who agrees with me, who cares what this one person has to say. I think what makes it so relevant is because of the impact that this issue is still having in our country. And I think there's a way of looking at Norma McCorvey's story that helps us understand the way abortion itself is framed, and the way that competing disparities function, or understanding of abortion, who should be allowed to have access to them, whose opinions on abortion should be counted.

0:16:46 Jamie: In fact, this really stood out to me, I didn't know this before I started looking into her story. When she had originally sought to get an abortion in 1969 that led to her being included in the trial for Roe v. Wade, her friends had told her that she should tell the doctor that she was raped by black men, because that was, in Texas in 1969, that was a reason someone could get an abortion. And so you see the way that these different forms of oppression sort of intersect, and the different ways that what's viewed as permissible or understandable changes, changes based on how it relates to other social factors. And I think that's what makes her story really interesting.

0:17:33 Thomas: Yeah, well, that's disgusting and yet not at all surprising that that would be how they did it. Like, "Oh, no, no, you cannot have an abortion, what's, what's that, black people, okay, like, what, come on."

0:17:41 Jamie: Know, exactly. Right. And so it just, and I think that is what is really interesting and helps to lay bare the hollowness of some of the anti-abortion arguments. You know, you can't at the same time say abortion at all times is wrong and bad and women should never be able to have them, unless, God forbid, those, those babies might be black, you know. Then it really, the quiet part comes out loud, of what's really at stake here. And this is really about controlling women's reproductive abilities, and particularly this is about making sure that women continue to make white babies. So

0:17:53 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:18:15 Thomas: Um, but it strikes me as sort of, I, I guess for me it's always priced in that that there are going to be people, and maybe it's because of like an intersection of class, you know, people who, if they're poor, if they don't have any money, like there's always going to be an opportunity to sell yourself in a certain way, you know? In the same way that I think, like, you look at, I don't know, a Candace Owens or something. There's always gonna be people of marginalized groups who then turn around and say, "Well, I can actually have a whole lot of notoriety and success if I become a spokesperson for, like, the other side," you know, and then all of a sudden you're on Fox News and you're everywhere. And I just kind of priced that in, like, yeah, that's, that's always going to happen. It doesn't, for me, it doesn't, like, convince me either way.

0:19:01 Thomas: But I don't know if the right is more about like spokespeople than arguments or not. I can't tell. I mean, does, know, yeah.

0:19:08 Jamie: That's, that's, it's, it's hard for me to answer that question. I don't, you obviously, my biases are going to show here. I don't think the right is particularly good at arguments or logic. I think they tend to get these questions very, very wrong. I think what they're very good at is narrative and selling a story in a way that the left is not good at.

0:19:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:32 Jamie: And the left very often wants to sort of respond to the right wing by saying, well, we have the superior arguments, we have the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists on our side, we have the American Medical Association putting out a statement saying that, you know, abortion is essential care and should not be interrupted during the pandemic, and the right is like, we don't care, look at this grieving woman who is, you know, the the face behind Roe v. Wade, crying about the dangers that abortion poses to women, which is something that Norma McCorvey was saying in the 80s or the 90s after her, you know, conversion, version, which was false, and so I think we we lose ground there.

I don't, so I thought the short answer is no, I don't think the right care is about logic and arguments and the truth unfortunately is, I think that's to their advantage, because I don't think most people are going to change their minds based on arguments and reason, and in fact, like most studies bear this out, people actually don't deliberate themselves or their way to most moral judgments that they hold, we're swayed by stories, we're pulled in by narrative and emotion, and that's what makes Norma McCorvey's story to me so tragic, because this is a woman who was vulnerable her whole life and whose vulnerabilities were exploited for the personal gain of people who were not her, and I think that is so often the case in terms of abortion and motherhood as well, that that's not something thing that often gets paid attention to. One of the things that I keep thinking about during this pandemic is

0:21:08 Jamie: You keep seeing reports, and hopefully we're going to get to talk about this, of increasing domestic violence during times of pandemic, women are locked at home with abusive partners, the the socioeconomic factors that exacerbate abuse are obviously worse because people are losing their jobs, they're isolated, they've lost health care, one sense of of meaning and location in the in the world has been has been lost, and whether or not women have access to to medical resources or psychological health resources has so much to do with their particular vulnerabilities and how they're socio-economically situated.

And this is all present in Norma McCorvey's case, like her dad left when she was 13 years old, her mom was a violent alcoholic, um, and she described these periods of her life when she was in this like therapeutic boarding school as the best years of her life, because she was taken away from her home that was violent and disruptive, and so she would lash out on purpose to get in trouble to be able to be sent back, and then at one point she's sent to live with a cousin who she claims, you know, regularly raped her, and obviously she's accused of being a liar after she says this, and this is just a woman who's never had agency over her own life, and to whether or not she was paid to be an anti-abortion activist or not, this is the story of a woman who's, because of the way that pregnancy impacted her, was denied agency over most of her life, and I think ultimately that's what makes reproductive rights so important. I've

0:22:38 Thomas: Yeah, you know, as you're talking about, uh, you know, arguments versus narratives, I I just remembered there is the uh Shout Your Abortion, uh, which I think is a is now an organization, I I can't remember. It's been a while since I came across it, but I pulled it up just now. And, uh, that, that was all about normalizing the experience of abortion. Um, is that something you're familiar with?

0:23:02 Jamie: Seen that and I, yeah, I've definitely, yes, yeah

0:23:05 Thomas: Cool. I didn't, I was just, if you wanted to talk about it, I didn't want to like mansplain it. So, but it's, I looked on Twitter and it's got like, you know, 4,500 followers. So I guess it's not, it hasn't taken off quite as much as like a, a Candace Owens type thing, but, but But but I guess that that that came to mind is like an attempt to try to tell the story, which I think would be compelling, which is there are all kinds of women. Obviously, there are All kinds of people who get abortions don't regret it. It's a good thing for them. It's health care. It's, you know, like their choice and normalizing that makes sense. So that came To mind. I think that's a that's A good organization.

0:23:09 Jamie: That Sounds awesome. Um, you know, things like that, I worry about things like that only to the extent that to be able to shout your abortion, one must already have quite quite a bit of privilege. It'd be very different for me, right? Like I've had an abortion.

And so it's very easy for me to sort of talk openly about that because I don't have to navigate any communities where having had an adoption is the sort of thing that is going to cost me a job, that's going to cause me the respect and esteem of my peers. In no way is there going to be additional negative consequences that come along with me saying like, hey, I had an abortion. I have no regrets about that.

It turned out to be a great thing for me. I'm so glad that I did it, where there are people who are in different sorts of communities where it could impact their job, it could impact their social relations, like at this stage in my life, for example, this is a very silly example, but like I wouldn't even consider dating anybody, for example, who isn't ardently pro-choice. But it may be, you know, maybe in Alabama or Missouri, you know, that's going to to further have implications for one social circle, or how to date, or how one may be viewed. And so it just gets into really weird, these things get into really weird territory, I think, when

0:25:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:01 Jamie: You put this sort of like performative pressure on like disclosing one's medical history. Okay

0:25:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a, you know, it's a social media thing. I don't think they take anonymous contributions. It's not as though they're saying, like, you have to, like stand up and physically do it, but it's about kind of collecting those stories, I Think, and trying to harness the power of those stories. So, yeah, do we want to talk maybe about abortion in general, kind of getting off the Roe v. Wade, specifically Norma McCorvey story, unless you had anything more on her. Yeah

0:25:37 Jamie: I Mean that's so much her specifically, just how, you know, her story seems to me so similar to so many women's stories of abortion and its intersection with with vulnerability and intimacy. But more so, what I wanted to talk about is the way that COVID that we're experiencing now has seen or has resulted in a number of abortion restrictions taking place. Obviously, reproductive rights are always under attack in Texas. I looked in a little bit what's been happening in Texas, and that's not good. It turns out now, in the aftermath of some of these abortion restrictions, the average distance a woman has to travel to the next nearest abortion clinic in Texas is 260 miles, which is really alarming when you remember that Texas has waiting periods for abortion.

0:26:26 Jamie: So in order to get an abortion in Texas, you need to have two appointments and you need to have a minimum 24-hour waiting period in between those two appointments. But then there Have also been restrictions in like Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Louisiana, Missouri, so this has really been, pardon the pun, a fertile time for abortion restrictions

0:26:35 Thomas: Yeah I love it too, because the, you know, churches are absolutely essential businesses, you need to go in and get your squirt bottle of holy water or whatever, but like abortion services, like fit health services, no, we can't, we can't perform, you know, like health services at a time like this, are you kidding, but Meanwhile They're trying to get churches opened up. Yeah

0:27:08 Jamie: Well So It's so interesting that you say that, I have, there are a couple of people from, you know, my former life, who trend conservative, and I once in a while check their Facebooks just to see what the other side is saying, because these aren't sort of caricatures that end up on MSNBC or that I have visions of in Fox News, these are like real people that I knew at various points in my life. And I'm just curious what like actual human beings are saying. And one of them had posted something like that about trying to expose the supposed hypocrisy in the Democratic Party by saying that they were declaring abortions essential, but not church services. And And I was just absolutely bewildered at how upside down their world was.

0:27:58 Jamie: As you're explaining, the exact same dichotomy to me, right? It seems obvious that health care is essential in a way that religious services are not. And yet there are other people who very sincerely or just as sincerely as I do, I would think, have the complete opposite interpretation of this dichotomy, to me. And it's absolutely mind blowing to me.

0:28:17 Thomas: Yeah And And it's like, you know, I saw a tweet to this effect, but also in my experience reading through the Bible, Jesus would have said the churches aren't very necessary. It's so funny how that never factors in. Like what Jesus said is so irrelevant to Christianity in America. It's remarkable. I don't understand it. But yeah, sure.

0:28:42 Jamie: Yeah, so this is this is just like a fun side fact that I want to throw out there. And I apologize to anybody listening who already knows this.

0:28:48 Thomas: No, we could use it. We could use a fun fact right now.

0:28:50 Jamie: But yeah, it's almost like what is in the scripture has no bearing whatsoever on the move, the Christianity movement in the United States, particularly the evangelical variety of it. For example, in the Old Testament, Numbers 511 actually has instructions for how to induce an abortion should the pregnant woman be suspected of infidelity against her husband. So within the Old testament itself, there is a passage where a priest is providing instructions on how to administer the bitter waters to bring about an abortion on purpose.

0:28:58 Thomas: Yeah, it doesn't.

0:29:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. But again, it's it's in cases of infidelity. So it's like it really does. I think the point you made earlier stands to it's like who they view as people like abortion is murder unless we don't view, you know, the person as a person, then it's fine kind of thing. Like if it's an out group, then we don't care.

0:29:48 Jamie: Well, that's exactly right. Right, even within this passage in the Old Testament, there is no concern about the notions of personhoods, which is, you know, complicated. And I don't want to get into like how Jewish tradition identifies when someone counts morally as a being. But what's really at stake here, what really makes abortion permissible is the supposed or alleged potential imagery to the father.

0:29:55 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah, exactly.

0:30:13 Jamie: Right? So this, this isn't about the woman's health, this is an about the health of the fetus or the embryo, this isn't about personhood, to the extent that this is about anything, this is about the well-being of the father and whether or not the father is being denied what is rightly his through the medium of the woman who's just really reduced to property. And I think so much of that is kind of snuck in, snuck in, sneaked in to our modern abortion debate where this isn't about women, this isn't about babies, this is about men being able to control their own offspring, making sure that their involvement or their investment in any children really is theirs, in a way of making women subservient to that need.

0:31:01 Thomas: Wait, are you telling me that religion might be serving the purposes of powerful men? I will not hear of it.

0:31:07 Jamie: Yeah, I don't know, I don't want to say anything too controversial, but I think it's possible, it may not have anything to do with notions of goodness or truth or or even divine beings. I do have this suspicion that it is about power and control.

0:31:11 Thomas: Well, Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's interesting though. I came across this. So I don't remember why I looked this up, but I would say three to three years ago, I might have been for a talk or something. I was checking on the Pew numbers on like abortion views and stuff. And I was really concerned with the fact that, you know, because when I started becoming more politically conscious and active on these things, it was news to me, as I'm sure it absolutely is not to many, many people listening, but it was new to me that we don't really have abortion rights in many states. You know, we have Roe v. Wade, but then Republicans in the state legislatures and stuff have restricted it to the point and passed these horrible laws. And also the Supreme Court upheld a few decisions.

0:32:08 Thomas: It was a Planned Parenthood v. Casey and like all these cases where they allow more and more restrictions on abortion to the fact where, to the point where it's functionally not there. You know, like so many states, I think there are, there are at least eight states, or there are more, where it is banned at six weeks.

0:32:30 Thomas: And like if you're a dude like me and you haven't had kids or anything, maybe you don't understand that that's like not being pregnant. You don't even know you're pregnant for at least what, four weeks. I remember when we found out it was already at least five, I want to say. So like that, and that was when we were trying to have a kid. So we were like, you know, paying close attention. What if, you Know, you're not really paying that that close attention. You could already, by the time you find out you're pregnant, it's already just about illegal to get an abortion. So it's functionally, you don't have a right to an abortion in many States in our fine, fine country.

0:32:30 Jamie: Yep, that's right. So a lot of people don't know this. I am continually shocked actually by how frequently adult men know nothing about female reproductive systems, genuinely bewildered by how little adult men knows about how reproduction works. But pregnancies are counted from the last menstrual period. So if you are told you are four weeks pregnant, that's four weeks since you last menstruated, which means you've actually only been pregnant for two weeks. Because for two of those weeks, there was nothing there.

0:33:22 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:33:44 Jamie: Your cycle is restarting again, trying to make an egg. And so to make pregnancy, to make the line for an abortion at six weeks is to say you've actually been pregnant four weeks.

0:33:57 Jamie: It's just bewildering. And as you point out, many women don't even know they're pregnant then, unless you're trying to get pregnant on purpose, which is only about 50 percent of the pregnancies in the United States. You don't even usually test until about eight weeks when you've realized you've missed a period. Yeah.

0:34:16 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And, and when we got our first ultrasound, which it's been a while now, I'm not remembering when it was, but safe to say a while after maybe eight weeks, I don't know something they're like, Oh yeah, you're pregnant and then you look at the ultrasound and it's nothing. There's literally like a slight density difference in the place where it is. It's, it's absolutely nothing. So to say like that's a person is particularly, I don't know. It seems non-scientific to me because there's just nothing there.

0:34:48 Jamie: So I think Jennifer Gunter has been great on this. She's got a book out now, The Vagina Bible or something, and then she, so she's an OBGYN and she tweets about reproductive rights and she's just hilarious and brilliant, and super assertive.

0:35:01 Thomas: Yeah. She's great.

0:35:02 Jamie: So I love her, but she talks about this. At eight weeks, what you've really got is a neural tube and some electrical activity. You don't have a meaningful person yet. And by the way, even if you did, just for the record, it doesn't make the, the woman that the neural tube is attached to cease to be a person, and so that very often seems to go missing. And, and that's what stood out to me with Norma McCorvey as well, is that as a person, she herself is, is just missing from the narrative of her life, as so often happens with abortion.

But you're right, there, there are places in this country where though Roe v. Wade is technically the law of the land, it has been stripped away and chipped out so thoroughly and so successfully that this right does not exist in practice. I was actually curious, preparing for this, how close I was to the nearest place that I could get an abortion here, in deep blue New Jersey. And it turns out I could walk there. It's 5.4 miles from my house. I could call today, get an appointment today, walk in, and probably get an abortion by the end of the week if I wanted to, depending on their availability.

0:35:09 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Right, yeah. Oh, interesting. Interesting.

0:36:16 Thomas: Well, that's encouraging. I was actually worried you were going to say even in a blue state, it was like going to be a bunch of bullshit, but that's good. Okay.

0:36:22 Jamie: No, it's 5.4 miles for me. I'm in New Jersey. I can easily get an abortion should I need one. Thankfully, to the wonders of modern medicine, I have an IUD and that's not going to be a problem.

But again, that was one of the things that was attacked in some of these proposed bans and things that were put forth, that inserting IUDs was not to be done, for example, which is one of the most effective forms of birth control and long-lasting forms, forms of birth control that you can get, unless, you know, all of these other criteria were met, which were impossible to meet.

Like, for example, in Arkansas, on April 27th, there was a directive that in order to have any elective surgeries, of which they were considering abortion and elective surgery, you needed to have a negative COVID test to proceed. Well, it turns out there's just not a whole lot of tests to be had. And so if you can't get tested and prove that you're negative, you can't meet the requirement to get the abortion that you need, and then you don't have the abortion. And so what makes this really worrying is what we see within Texas, even with a law that ended up getting overturned because of its unconstitutionality. Between the time that it was overturned, Texas went from 40 clinics down to 22, and those clinics did not open back up. So they're now down to 22 clinics in Texas to serve 29 million people. And it's, so it's just, yes, technically you have the right to an abortion, good luck getting one.

0:37:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:54 Thomas: And this is why, so going back to what I started, I just realized I didn't pick up that, that thread. I, I was looking in the numbers and I was really worried, because as much as I think there's a narrative on a couple of things. So like gay marriage, for example, there's a narrative that when Obergefell happened, then all of a sudden the public largely accepted gay marriage. And that's true to a degree. And then there's also the narrative that, oh, well, when Roe was, you know, law of the land, people just kind of accept it and fine. But it's not really true with Roe. I think it's less true with Rowe than it is with gay marriage, even though I also think a lot of people don't really accept gay marriage. And while there, there is a powerful effect of once this has become law, it kind of becomes normal.

0:38:41 Thomas: And then then all the conservatives see that, like the frogs aren't gay or whatever the hell conspiracy theories they thought would happen once you allowed gay marriage, you know, like their kids haven't all of sudden turned gay or something. I don't. So I think there is an effect of, oh, well, OK, maybe this guy didn't fall when I thought it would. But with abortion, when I looked at the numbers, approval for, or I guess how would you put it, like agreeing with the question of whether abortion should be legal in all cases, has steadily risen since Roe. But if you look at the partisan breakdown, it's almost all because of Democrats and left leaning people, like the right hasn't changed at all on it, it, like it's very flat, disturbingly so. And on the left, in there, acceptance, and it worries me. And one other tidbit I was going to throw out there that I found fascinating about these numbers is there is just about zero gender gap in agreeing with abortion should be legal in all cases.

0:38:51 Jamie: Yeah.

0:39:41 Thomas: It's like, which is the highest. So some people say, you know, know, should be legal in most cases or whatever, but the number of it should be legal in all, just about all cases is 60% for men and 60% for women or something like that. So it's, it's striking that it's that I think it's 60% of women and 61% of men, according to this Pew forum poll from 2019. Uh, so isn't that interesting? Like I would never have thought that in a million years.

0:40:10 Jamie: So I didn't know that. So that's, that's really interesting to me. What, what really strikes me though, is that large majority of Americans, and obviously it changes depending on how the question is phrased, but large majority of Americans tend to support abortion generally, some abortion, right? And I guess it goes over a spectrum. There's people at the extreme end who have a totally permissive view on abortion, which is, you know, that a woman should be able to get an abortion anytime she doesn't want to be pregnant, the end, right. I'm in that camp.

0:40:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's the extreme view. Yeah.

0:40:47 Jamie: To be very clear, Yeah, in case anybody is unsure, sure, I have the radical view that a woman should be able to get an abortion anytime she does not want to be pregnant and there is no other way of removing the fetus from her body. Um, I think, you know, should a woman reach a point where she can, you know, giving birth is required to have the abortion, and killing the fetuses extra and not necessary to remove the fetus from her body, then perhaps she can't have one then. But up until that point, so long as if a woman is, is able to remove a fetus from her body pretty much whenever she wants to for any reason. That's the extreme view. I realize I'm not – there's not a lot of company there. But when you get down to like, you know, women should be able to have early abortions or their life is in danger or their health is in dangerous, there's overwhelming support for this.

0:40:47 Thomas: You extremist.

0:41:37 Jamie: And yet abortion continues to be this very contentious, divisive issue in our country that I think relevantly still raises a lot of money for politicians, and that's what really stands out to me, that despite the fact well,

0:41:51 Thomas: Oh, I think it's the issue. I think it might be more than anything responsible for Trump because if you have a wedge issue where, you know, I've said it a million times where the people in my family, the conservatives in my family view this as a child genocide and so the side that's against child genocide, they will vote for that side no matter what, no matter if it's Donald effing Trump who's like paid for many abortions, you know, like it's so, yeah, this is like the issue, like the wedge issue.

0:42:20 Jamie: And so this is what's so fascinating to me, particularly during our current epidemic, where it looks like the United States government is just like, yeah, so we're gonna lose, like, hundreds of thousands of American lives, who cares. Um, who cares, um, right. But now we're starting to see as this virus spreads that it does impact children just in ways that we hadn't noticed before, because it hadn't been around long enough. And, oh, just for fun, it seems to sometimes leave, leave behind long-standing medical issues. Like, it seems like it sometimes does long-standing damage to nerve tissue, heart tissue.

My sister, who had it, still hasn't recovered her sense of smell, and that's a relatively minor side effect. And so I, I think this just really lays bare how abortion is fundamentally about power and who gets to be in control and who get to count as a person, because it turns out Republicans don't actually give a shit how many lives are lost, so long as it's profitable, and being able to control women and limit their economic mobility by making sure that they have children that they're responsible for, it turns it out, is a really effective way of doing that.

0:42:31 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's fine. They're not fetuses. So, yeah.

0:42:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:30 Thomas: But isn't it weird that it's because this is always viewed as a women's issue, you know, which, which obviously, of course, Like, obviously, in some ways, of course, it is largely a women. You know, of course, people identify as different genders than perhaps their sex sex organs might indicate, so there's, there's that as well, but also just in terms of talking about like CIS men and women, this is also not just a women's issue. But I'm still so surprised that like the gender breakdown is so even, and I wonder, like, is that I was trying to think to myself, I was like, is that more encouraging going forward or less encouraging? Like, would it be it'd probably be, it's probably more encouraging. Like, if this was an issue that was like, you know, 80 per 20, or something like 80% of women agreed and 20% of men, there'd probably be way less hope, because we don't tend to, you know, like, give voice to women's concerns

0:43:36 Jamie: It's because we make babies by ourselves. I

0:44:24 Thomas: That much. Um, so maybe it's better that it's evenly split, maybe there's more opportunity to move people on it, I don't know. Well,

0:44:31 Jamie: Don't know. No, I'd have to think about that a little bit. I'm also curious as to what the gender disparity is in other countries. Because outside of, right,

0:44:39 Thomas: In other countries, They largely just allow abortion. Like, I've, from when I've ever, ever talked to people from other countries on the show, or surrounding the show, whatever, it's, it's amazing, because even when we're talking about like all the religious people in my country, like the religious right, quote unquote, there's still the backdrop of, oh, oh, well, we absolutely have abortion rights, and that's not at all a consideration. Like, in the UK, I'm pretty sure abortion is fully fine, like, there's no, there's not. So I think it's pretty particular to this country. And then I know, you influence, I think American conservatives and the religious right and the evangelical right have had a big influence on other parts of the world, but I think we're the epicenter of this, I'm probably not. Sure. I

0:45:20 Jamie: Yeah, well, now that Ireland even has legalized abortion, I would be curious just to see what thegender disparity is, because I think so much of it has to do with just the really weird way that the United States has held on to these sort of antiquated views.

You don't have the religiosity in other countries that you do in this country, so I would just be interested to see if, if that gender disparity held up in places where both like the gender practices were different and the level of religiousness, if that influenced it, if you saw does that account to, in countries where there's less religion and it's more accepted that abortion is just a normal part of health care, including contraception, for example, do you have a, a significantly higher percentage of women reporting that they also support abortion?

Because it's weird to me, like, even if you say, like, oh, you know, between the genders, it's roughly the same, 60 percent generally support that abortion should be legal, I can't help but wonder, like, well, what about all of those women who are, who are saying no, like, what is, what is happening there. And so I'd be curious if there's a way to flesh out if that has to do somehow with like the unique culture of the United States and the way that religion and our gender role sort of intersect in ways they don't in other countries.

0:45:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting. Other facts I want to talk about briefly, and please let me know. We're getting low on time, so let me know if there's more that you wanted to get to that you haven't. But I was also looking at Planned Parenthood action. And in these states that have the worst restrictions, what's, I think, notable is they also have horrible health outcomes in a lot of of ways, like, cause this is about healthcare too, you know, like specifically Planned Parenthood too, like Planned parenthood does way more. And again, I'm just mansplaining this to people who might not know, but like they do way more than just abortion. I think abortion is a small percentage of what they do. For example, Alabama, uh, is like the most restrictive on abortion and they have the highest cervical cancer mortality rate in the U.S. you know? They have the

0:47:03 Jamie: They also have the lowest rate of high school graduation.

0:47:28 Thomas: Right, Right. They have the fourth worst infant mortality rate in the U.S. Georgia has the second worst maternal mortality rate in the U.S., 10 times higher than California. This is all from Planned Parenthood action. And half of Georgia counties don't have a single OBGYN. Like this is really depressing.

0:47:49 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. Really depressing. And so a couple of things that come to mind, when women do have abortions, they almost never, or not never, but they infrequently cite that they're afraid for their lives or that their health is in danger. Most often women cite economic concerns, relationship concerns. They are already struggling to care for the children that they have because actually it turns out the majority

0:48:10 Thomas: Yeah. Isn't it like a really high percentage already have children?

0:48:13 Jamie: Of women who have abortions already have children. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so what's so interesting and also depressing is it just, again, goes to show how bullshit the arguments are being made by Republicans. They don't actually care about stopping women from having abortions because there are policies that that you could enact to do that. You could make it less financially taxing to have a childhood. We've talked about it on the show. Child care is ridiculously expensive. Health care is ridiculously expensive. Education is expensive. Feeding children, oh my God, I have two boys and it is disgusting how much food they go through and they're not even teenagers yet. These things are, you know, in some ways prohibitively expensive, but people would sooner spend money stripping access to health care, stripping access to contraception, while at the same time denying and cutting SNAP benefits, cutting children's health insurance programs. This is in no way about protecting lives or empowering women. This Is about control and punishment. Absolutely.

0:48:52 Thomas: Children, well?

0:49:22 Thomas: Um, if we're drawing to a close, and and again, feel free to sneak anything else in that you needed to, but for my part, I, you know, maybe you you might disagree with me, but I really think this just shows how much we needed to vote Democrat no matter what. Like, Democrats are far from perfect, but I am, for the rest of my life, probably, uh, I will be voting for the Supreme Court. We don't get to vote for the Supreme Court, we get to vote for the President, who then appoints Supreme Court Justices, so that is our only chance to vote for the Supreme Court. And while Democrats might not be perfect, we can be assured that if we allow more conservative, fundamentalist, 35-year-old Corys onto the Supreme Court and the federal bench, that they are going to be ruining access to abortion for decades.

0:50:11 Thomas: There's another case pending that we're expecting the decision pretty soon that could just totally get rid of all of Louisiana's abortion clinics because of, it's one of those, I'm foggy on the details, but it's one of those where it's like, well, we just want to restrict clinics that don't have, you know, hospital admitting rights, or one of those kind of things where it is obviously a bullshit thing just trying to make abortion not be feasible in states, and it'll probably go the other way. I'm sure that the conservative fundamentalists on the court will take that away, too, and there will be functionally no access to abortion in Louisiana and these other states. And the only way, the only chance we have of changing this is getting more liberal people in the Supreme Court.

0:51:03 Thomas: That is the only, there's no higher court to go to. There's nothing else to do but that.

0:51:09 Jamie: Yeah, I think that's all right. You are obviously more charitable toward Democrats than I am these days. So I, I agree with you that they are not perfect. And I'll leave it there, except to say, you know, you are largely correct. Really, we are voting for President. That's all that's up to us. Except for those of you who are in states that haven't voted yet, I do still think you should vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary because the delegates will have an influence in what's adopted on

0:51:34 Thomas: Sure. I agree with that. That. I will, by the way, I will second that. Definitely do that.

0:51:37 Jamie: The party. Yeah, on the Party platform and to the extent that that's still a place where it's possible to push the Democratic Party further leftward. I think if you care about abortion, you need to care about health care access more broadly. And so, yes, we are voting for president. And I hate this because I hate Joe Biden, who said some outrageously. I don't know. I'm even checking the news anymore. And yet I still somehow know that Joe Biden said something outrageously stupid and offensive again.

0:52:01 Thomas: Yeah. It's a safe bet. Like, yeah. Anytime.

0:52:04 Jamie: So I will say that there's still the possibility of pushing the party platform further to the left. So if you're in a state that hasn't voted in the primary yet and you still can vote for Bernie Sanders, don't worry. Joe Biden will still get to, like, cut all the ribbons and be at all the parades, but we can push the platform a little bit farther to the left. I think that's a good thing.

0:52:23 Thomas: Yep. Totally agree.

0:52:24 Jamie: Where you can, too, there are members of Congress who have actively supported or expressed support for Medicare for All. And if you, you know, are fortunate enough to still have your job and disposable income, you could throw them a little bit so that we can move the bar a little bit, move what's possible a little bit closer to universal health care. That would be great. But perhaps most importantly, I do have a list of places that provide direct access for women in some of these states who want to get an abortion and either need help getting a hotel to stay in overnight because the nearest abortion clinic is 200 miles away from where they live and they have a 24-hour waiting period.

0:52:59 Thomas: Yeah, and by the way, they make them go for multiple visits because of that, which I know, you know, but like just to emphasize like they that's part of the Republican bullshit. They pull is like, well, you have to go. You have to wait 24 hours, then go for another visit. And it's all it's very calculated. It is also that poor people can't do it, you know? And by the way, wealthy, well-off, well to do people will always be able to get access to an abortion.

0:53:03 Jamie: Yep,

0:53:23 Thomas: So this is always about making poor people not be able to get abortions.

0:53:23 Jamie: That's right. This is exactly what this is about, wealthy and generally white women. And I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg said this in one of her dissents, that abortion will always be available for people with means. You can always get on a plane and fly to France to get an abortion if you've got the resources for that. This is about poor people. This is about controlling poor women's bodies. But some of those resources are the Yellow Hammer Fund, Black Women's Health Imperative, the National Abortion Federation. And then in Texas specifically, you have the Lilith Fund, which I just love the name of that. They're My favorite, narrow pro-choice.

0:53:58 Thomas: Well, that's my favorite character on Frasier. So absolutely

0:54:05 Jamie: In Texas, and then there's the Texas Equal Access Fund and the West Fund, and these all provide direct financial assistance to women who need abortions, either paying for the abortion, paying for the gas, paying for the hotel they need. So if you are fortunate to still be employed and have some money that you can donate, if you've got five or ten bucks, these are places where it could really make a big difference in the trajectory of someone's lives.

0:54:28 Thomas: Send those over. I will put those in the show notes, and I will make a donation right after we record this, because that is a very good use of money if you have any extra these days, which you probably don't. But yes, I will put those in the show notes. Thanks so much. Any other final words, or should we call it here?

0:54:48 Jamie: Yeah, I think we should call it here. I'm going to go feed the blue jays some more peanuts. But not blue blue jay's.

0:54:54 Thomas: You know where to find Jamie. She will be standing statuesque, just kind of becoming a birdbath, I guess, or something. I don't know.

0:55:01 Jamie: Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. It's going to be wild once plague is over.

0:55:05 Thomas: Don't know. Well, that sounds fun. Hopefully you're that's helping your sanity these days, on these trying times.

0:55:11 Jamie: Yeah, to the extent I have any left. Yeah.

0:55:14 Thomas: All right, well, thanks.

0:55:16 Jamie: Bye.

0:55:16 Thomas: For listening, everybody. Thanks for supporting, sharing the show, all that good stuff, and we will see you next time.

0:55:29 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.