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Even as a Jane Crow regime of criminalization and control spreads, feminist leaders spotlight the fierce, everyday resistance rising up in clinics, courtrooms and communities across the U.S.
In the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, reproductive freedom has been experiencing unprecedented rollbacks. With abortion bans in place in 19 states and new legislation being put forth every day, women’s bodily autonomy and lives are in critical danger.
To get a pulse on the current state of reproductive rights, I moderated a panel at Woodstock Bookfest late last month, “Women’s Rights in Post-Roe America.” There, I had the opportunity to interview three award-winning writers to share their perspectives on the issue:
- Jessica Valenti, one of the leading journalists reporting on abortion rights in the U.S. and author of the New York Times-bestselling book Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win;
- Clara Bingham, former journalist, political insider and author of The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973; and
- Jamia Wilson, a social impact strategist, executive editor of Random House, and author of Make Good Trouble and This Book Is Feminist, among other works.
They provided vital insights and expertise on current legislative trends to be aware of, the stakes of this moment, actions we can take to defend our reproductive rights, and much more. Here are highlights from our conversation.
Watch the full conversation above or read it at Feminist.com.
Marianne Schnall: Jessica, with your newsletter “Abortion, Every Day,” you have been doing such comprehensive, valuable reporting on what is actually happening to reproductive rights and women’s health care across this country, which you also cover in your latest book. What is your assessment of where we are today? What concerns you most?
Jessica Valenti: What I’m most worried about right now is the criminalization of miscarriage patients and media coverage.
I don’t know if anyone saw this story—you probably have not because it has not been covered by any mainstream outlet—but a young woman in Georgia was arrested for how she disposed of her miscarriage. Her mugshot was in the local Georgia crime pages. They just dropped those charges, thank goodness, but that was because of a public backlash that was marked mostly online through viral TikToks, things like that.
The criminalization is bad enough, but it’s the normalization that really keeps me up at night. The fact that this was not covered in mainstream outlets, the fact that this is being treated like business as usual. … It’s become normal for the people in power, and it’s become normal for newsrooms.
That’s not to say there’s not hope—there is. The fact that these charges were dropped, the fact that when people do find out about what is happening locally, they do take action and change is able to happen—that’s amazing. But people can’t do that if they don’t know, right? That’s why I focus so much on media outlets and local and national coverage.
The 14th Amendment is what antiabortion activists are using right now to fight for fetal personhood. Anytime you see the 14th Amendment mentioned, that’s what it’s about.
Jessica Valenti
Schnall: Clara, you have written extensively about the movement for women’s rights, including in your book The Movement, which depicts the ways in which women’s liberation transformed America. How do you contextualize what is happening now within the long arc and struggle for equality?
Clara Bingham: I look back at these heroes of the Second Wave [of feminism] and look for jewels of wisdom from them.
One of them is Pauli Murray—who I consider the legal architect of the Second Wave. [She] wrote a brilliant brief that was published in GW Law Journal in 1965, right after the Civil Rights Act was passed, called “Jane Crow and the Law.” And that is what we’re living through now. What she did in that legal journal was describe all the different laws in America that were very different for women than men. And they were the kind of things that eventually Ruth Bader Ginsburg would tackle in the Supreme Court. But we now have women in banned states who are living under Jane Crow.
It’s too easy for women who don’t live in [abortion ban] states to kind of shrug it off and think, “Oh, it’s not my problem” or “They can always travel.” Just remember that in 1973, when Roe was passed, a million women a year were getting illegal abortions in America and risking their lives. We don’t know the exact number, but between 1000 and 5,000 women were dying because of this.
Every single day we’re going back to Jane Crow, and we’re going back to our humanity not being respected. We are no longer first-class citizens in banned states.
Schnall: What legislative trends should people be aware of right now?
Valenti: First and foremost, equal protection bills are literally bills that would charge abortion patients as murderers with homicide. And in a lot of these states, that could mean the death penalty. And we’ve sort of been told that these are extremists, these are outlier legislators who are doing this. But some of these bills have two dozen co-sponsors.
The 14th Amendment is what antiabortion activists are using right now to fight for fetal personhood. Anytime you see the 14th Amendment mentioned, that’s what it’s about. If you’ve ever seen an equal protection bill in any state, it means that they are trying to charge abortion patients as murderers, literally. There were 11 states since January that introduced legislation like this.
And we’re not talking about them in that way. In Georgia, I think they just killed this bill 441. When the Associated Press covered it, they covered it as a total abortion ban. There was no mention of the punishment piece. And that is very much what they want. They want no one to really understand what these bills would actually do in practice.
The antiabortion movement right now is also putting so much energy, policy effort, and legislative effort into young people. There’s a legislative trend I’ve been following called the Baby Olivia Bill, and there are about 15 states that are considering it, and two or three states have already passed it. It would force an antiabortion propaganda video into public school classrooms, and it would force it into science and health classrooms, because, unlike sex ed, which you can opt out of, you can’t opt your kid out of science and health, right?
The reason they’re doing that is that they know that young people are the most pro-choice demographic in the country. They know that they need to intervene as early as possible. And they also know that, unfortunately, the mainstream pro-choice movement takes young people’s support for granted. We sort of think that young people are always going to support abortion rights. That’s not true if you have legislation like this, if you have the really insidious cultural campaign that’s been happening on TikTok and Instagram reels—they are everywhere.
So those are two big things I’m thinking about: what they’re doing for the next generation and the way they are advancing extremism without anyone noticing. I don’t think people necessarily understand just how endangered abortion access is across the country.
Every single day we’re going back to Jane Crow, and we’re going back to our humanity not being respected. We are no longer first-class citizens in banned states.
Clara Bingham
Schnall: What is truly at stake if we don’t proactively reverse this trend and direction that we’re headed in for our daughters and for future generations to come?
Valenti: My 14-year-old is in the room so, obviously, I think about this quite a lot and what this means for her generation.
It’s not just the right to abortion in banned states, but in every state, the right to birth control is already very much at risk. I think what’s at stake is the ability not to be criminalized for negative pregnancy outcomes, whether it’s a miscarriage, a stillbirth—a lot of these laws are opening the door to investigations of negative pregnancy outcomes.
But in the broader sense, their world’s getting smaller and their humanity is at stake. My daughter is 14 and she’ll go to college in a couple of years, but she’s not going to apply to colleges in half the states in the country. Her world has gotten smaller as a result of these laws.
The fact that her humanity is being discussed as if it’s a political talking point, this is what kills me. The fact that our personhood is being discussed in courtrooms. When emergency abortion was in front of the Supreme Court, there was a moment in the oral arguments where they were discussing how many organs would be acceptable for a woman to lose before the state should be required to give her an abortion. That’s where we’re at. It’s about our very personhood and humanity.
Wilson: One thing that really strikes me is there are countries in this world where the pro-life movement is the movement that is about choice. So they’re surprised when they hear the framing of pro-life being used to dominate and control women’s bodies because pro-life is about our lives. And I think about this a lot because I think that the only choice we have, if we lose these rights, is death.
I was thinking about how I live with chronic illnesses and I’ve had to deal with getting care as a Black woman in our culture and society. And let me tell you, that’s a whole other conversation that we can have. But when I think about the dehumanizing parts of that and the reality that there’s already pattern and precedence for criminalizing women who look like me—it gets very distressing for me to think that this is actually about killing us.
There are countries in this world where the pro-life movement is the movement that is about choice. … They’re surprised when they hear the framing of pro-life being used to dominate and control women’s bodies.
Jamia Wilson
I lost my mother to uterine cancer and I have had to have D&Cs [dilation and curettage] as it relates to my own genetic relationship with the same illness. And when I think about the fact that there are certain states that would want me to have to take pregnancy tests if I have to have a D&C to save my life—states that I was born in—that’s really distressing to me. So I really want to say that the stakes are life or death.
Bingham: I was going to say the same thing: It’s life or death. And, therefore, it’s constitutional. Do we have the same rights that men have? In the banned states, obviously, we don’t. And the question is: When are people going to fully wake up?
I think there will be a wakeup as the trickle-down effect begins to take place, which already has happened in terms of maternal deaths, which are happening; but also the fact that, for example, healthcare for everyone is going to start to be impacted.
In the state of Idaho, there is only one high-risk OB-GYN who works in Boise, Idaho. That’s it. So if you have a high-risk pregnancy, no luck for you.
Also, the number of residents applying for medical schools in banned states has dropped by 20 percent. So this is going to start affecting everybody, men and women, regardless of what your religious beliefs are.
I do think that what is at stake right now is everything. And it’s going to be about getting the word out, organizing, and fighting.
I don’t think people necessarily understand just how endangered abortion access is across the country.
Valenti
Schnall: How can we engage more men on this issue?
Wilson: What I love is that there are men who are supporting people who are doing this work in myriad ways, and I think that’s really important.
The other thing I would say is, I used to teach gender studies at John Jay [College-CUNY] in the city, and some of the men who would come into my class wanted to be “debate-me bros,” as I call it. So we would have these conversations in class. And what I learned was that a lot of the people who came in were actually really misinformed about the realities of abortion, what the laws are, what they aren’t. They were actually victims of an education system that had been taken over by misinformation and disinformation.
So rather than shaming them, it was actually about getting into conversations and sharing stories and data, showing them documentaries, giving them books like Jessica’s to read and to talk about. And the majority of those people at the end of the class realized that ultimately most people agree that we should have the right to make our own medical decisions ourselves.
What I learned is if you really get curious about how people came to these conclusions and educate them about the realities of how these policies impact people in their lives, it actually moves them.
The last thing I’ll say about men, and I’m speaking specifically about the community I grew up with in North Carolina, [is] there are men in my family who really had a problem with the fact that I was working at Planned Parenthood. But some of those men, when I took them to a clinic, and they saw women being harassed on the way to get care, became very pro-choice. So I also believe that it’s important for us to build those bridges and create the invitation to help people grow on their own behalf, and not make assumptions that people don’t want to build and grow with us.
Valenti: I think that you hit on something really important: that we have an entry point even with more moderate men, which is this idea of men as protectors. We’re in a moment when women are dying, women are going septic. If you consider yourself a protector of the women in your life, this is a way that you can show up. I think that is a really terrific entry point.
The second thing is, I’ve heard from a lot of men who are interested and want to get involved, but they’re afraid of mansplaining. They’re afraid of taking up too much space. And what I tell them is, that’ll probably happen. And you sort of have to deal with the discomfort of that, right? Like, show up anyway. Someone is going to say, “you’re taking up too much space,” and that’s fine because you’re there. We need your presence, and it’s important.
We’re in a moment when women are dying, women are going septic. If you consider yourself a protector of the women in your life, this is a way that you can show up.
Valenti
Schnall: What do you think can be done politically and legally to reinstate the constitutionality of reproductive rights?
Bingham: Organizing, organizing, organizing. I think it’s so important to coalition build. We now have such a serious enemy that we can all coalesce against. I’m hoping that will help everyone get over whatever our differences are so that millions of women and men can work together. That’s, I think, our real hope.
We have to look at what happened in the second wave [of feminism] and organize legally. There were a few cases that never made it to the Supreme Court. The most important one, I think, was Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, which was a New York state class-action lawsuit, and 350 women signed onto it. The idea was to confront the constitutionality of abortion laws under the 14th Amendment. That was really about liberty, not privacy, which is what Roe was eventually decided on. And, unfortunately, it became moot because, in April 1970, the New York state legislature legalized abortion.
I do feel like the only chance we really have in terms of constitutionality is with massive class actions that prove that abortion bans are constitutionally illegal based on the 14th Amendment. This has to be about life and liberty. And that was, of course, the Achilles heel of the Roe case. That’s why it was always vulnerable ever since it passed in 1973. The right was very strategic; they knew it was vulnerable and they knew how to kill it over time. And so we have to be equally as strategic legally and figure out what bill is going be the one that will thread that needle.
I can’t tell you which one it is, but I’m hoping it may be bubbling up now because there are a lot of them going on. The Center for Reproductive Rights is doing a heroic job of supporting cases all over the country.
So we need to look at how to build coalitions and how to legally create massive class actions that will have a huge impact and move millions of people to try to [create] change. As Jessica has pointed out in her amazing book, the numbers are with us. The majority of Republicans believe in choice. And so it’s really a question of harnessing our political power and our legal power and doing so on parallel tracks.
We can come together and realize that we don’t have to be fighting over who has control of the message. … We don’t always have to all do the same thing.
Wilson
Schnall: What is your call to action, and what advice do you have on creating change, particularly in a moment like this?
Wilson: Engage your time, talent or treasure—or all three if you have them.
If you can donate to local abortion funds or those in states with the most dire laws, do that. Protect the most vulnerable.
If you can be a clinic escort and stand in front of clinics and help protect people who are getting care, do that.
And if you can support organizations who are doing this work, who are facing challenges to funding like never before, do that.
We don’t always have to all do the same thing. There are people who use their art, their voices, their music, their faith, their community, their ability to bring people together, their ability to recognize patterns and share them with other people—whatever it is we each have, we can be expansive. We can come together and realize that we don’t have to be fighting over who has control of the message. We have enough problems to solve; we need all the strengths to fix them. We can continue to fight for what we know is right for the next generations to thrive.
Share your stories, and uplift the stories of others as well. Because the research also shows that abortion storytelling is one of the most effective ways to move hearts and minds on this issue. So now that we’re dealing with algorithmic challenges and blocks to information, it’s also really important that we’re getting these messages out here with all the tools we have at our disposal.
We all can make a difference if we do one or two things that we are capable of doing.
Bingham
Bingham: One way to share your stories is to subscribe to news outlets. And I think we need to pay for our news right now. We need to pay for local news and for real national news. We need to pay for Jessica’s incredible work and pay for the voices that are helping us amplify these stories. It’s all about stories. It’s all about humanizing the impact of these laws.
I also think donating and working for any of these abortion funds, and there are plenty in New York that are also helping others, is so important. But also being politically active. I mean, the fact that Susan Crawford just won in Wisconsin is incredibly important. I have multiple Zooms with these incredible grassroots women who are writing letters for campaigns all across the country. And just doing that from wherever you are, having any kind of political engagement, is both incredibly cathartic, let’s face it, and also makes a difference.
We all can make a difference if we do one or two things that we are capable of doing.
Valenti: I would say, just be in the room.
A few months ago, right around the time that Florida passed its six-week abortion ban, I was doing a tour of this independent clinic, and because the six-week ban had just passed, it was very empty. Then they took us all the way to the back of the building, this windowless room, and when we walked in, there were a dozen or more young women all on the phone booking bus tickets, making hotel accommodations, talking to people about how they could get out of state. There was one woman who was texting with a patient who had never been on a plane before to give her the emotional support that she needed to get out of state.
Of all the things I’ve been lucky enough to see in this work, that got me immediately really emotional. And it really struck me because it was such a good reminder that as terrible as things are every single day, in every single community and in every single state, there are rooms full of women, and there are rooms full of activists who are working their asses off, who are using their time, their money, their energy to make sure that if someone needs care, they can get it, whether or not we see it. That is something that gives me a tremendous amount of hope. So I would say just find a room and be in it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Watch the full conversation here or read it at Feminist.com.
Great Job Marianne Schnall & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
