Abortion is on the Ballot
TOPICS DISCUSSED
The Political and Personal Stakes of Post-Dobbs America
Rachel Sweet & the Kentucky Abortion Referendum
Gabrielle Blair & Responsible Ejaculation
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EPISODE RESOURCES
Louisiana woman carrying unviable fetus forced to travel to New York for abortion (The Guardian)
Jamie B. Golden’s Instagram Stories on Abortion (Instagram)
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
[00:00:26] Hello and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to survey our post Roe v Wade reality. We're going to talk about what that looks like in individual lives. We're going to talk about what that looks like when it comes to politics, including discussing the ballot referendum in our home state of Kentucky with the campaign manager of Protect Kentucky Access, Rachel Sweet. And we're going to continue that conversation at the end of the show with Gabrielle Blair and talk to her about her 2018 viral Twitter thread, which really flipped my thinking on unplanned pregnancy. And I know I'm not alone. But first, we wanted to make a note about language.
Beth [00:00:59] You will hear us use the words women and men a lot throughout this episode, especially when we talk with Gabrielle Blair at the end, because she really, I think, opens up a new avenue for discussing abortion, not just as a women's issue, but particularly as a men's issue, and shifting from abortion care to unplanned pregnancy in a way that I think is so helpful. We do not intend in any way to disregard the experience of transgender people, of non-binary people, and anyone who said somewhere on the gender spectrum that they don't feel is captured by the words women and men. We also are having a conversation fluidly and organically from the lens of our own experience and thinking about the average experiences that are taking place across the country. So please know that everyone is welcome in this space, and cared about in this space, and included in our thoughts as we move through it. And we just will not have all of the language in every sentence to show that. But that is certainly our intention throughout the episode.
Sarah [00:02:05] So up next, our conversation about the landscape surrounding abortion across the United States. We are now living in a country where abortion is not a constitutional right, and that has led to lots of fallout, both heartbreakingly specific, and individual women's lives, and politically wide ranging as we approach election day. And we're going to talk about some of those individual stories, that individual fallout. And before we do, I want to say that we are going to talk about this on a high level. But some of y'all out there who can hear my voice are living this. Are being put off by your doctors. Are having to face impossible decisions. And I just want to acknowledge that. I just want to acknowledge that like this is playing out in headlines and they're heartbreaking to read. And if they're heartbreaking to read, then they are impossible to live through. So we understand that and we are thinking of all of you who are struggling with these decisions, and your reproductive health, and your reproductive options right now today as we are recording this podcast.
Beth [00:03:27] Yeah. And we use the word women. A lot of the heartbreaking individual stories that I'm aware of are about what can only be fairly described as children. And the lack of options available for girls who are very young, who find themselves pregnant and trapped in states where they can't get care around that, are just brutal. They're just brutal. If you are new to Pantsuit Politics, we're talking about this as two mothers. Sarah has three children. I have two. We both attend church every week. We are people who have wrestled with the topic of abortion many times over the seven years that we've been doing this podcast. And I think as we've had those conversations, we've learned a lot, we've grown a lot. And when the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs opinion, which explicitly overturn Roe versus Wade, we knew that it was going to result in a level of chaos and heartbreak and tragedy that was both entirely foreseeable and also unfathomable. And that seems to be what has taken place.
Sarah [00:04:47] You called out in that conversation that so much of this was theoretical. It really wasn't, honestly. The people who were crying out from the beginning weren't living in the theory of reproductive health and the politics of reproductive health. They were living in the day to day of reproductive health. So that's why you heard that crying out of this is not going to go how you think it's going to go. And so now that's real. Now we're not thinking of, well, should there be an exception for rape and incest? Now we're reading about an 11-year-old girl who was pregnant in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana. And Indiana's response from their government is, well, we better make that illegal, too. I had a friend who looked up the results in Kentucky and last year a nine-year-old and a 11-year-old got abortions in the state of Kentucky. I will never as long as I live forget Jamie Golden's Instagram story where she says I've stood in the backyard of a home where an 11-year-old sat in a swing with a ponytail and a lollipop while also pregnant with her father's child. Proximity will change you. And that's where we all are right now. We are all in that sentence. Proximity will change you. It's not theoretical for those of us who had the luxury of debating this. What will this mean? Now the proximity is here. It's looking you in the face every day. You're going to have to hear from women who say, "I needed a DNA because my fetal sac was empty and I was put off and put off." Or you're going to have to listen to doctors who take care of pregnant cancer patients saying, "I have to wait for her to get sicker in order to avoid jail." So the proximity is going to change all of us.
Beth [00:06:29] It's not that a question like when does life begin becomes irrelevant. Those are still big and important questions. Where I've been from the beginning on this issue, is that because those are big, relevant, hard questions that people of different faiths and life experiences and values will answer very, very, differently, we cannot write a law that answers and meets us in those questions. So we have to write laws for a situation where you present to a doctor with an empty fetal sack. We have to write laws that allow for the flexibility of all the various ways that the human body shows up seeking care. We have to write a law that allows for a nine-year-old who's been impregnated by her father. And what the physical reality of what a pregnancy will do to a nine-year-old body is we have to live in what some people will say, "Well, you're just pointing out the extreme cases." Well, health care providers are telling us that those cases are not extreme. Health care providers are telling us that they regularly need to be able to provide these services. And not just health care providers, if you talk to ministers-- specifically, if you talk to women ministers-- about the situations that they've seen and provided support around, we're just nowhere in the debate in the realm of the people most impacted by these very restrictive laws that states like ours in Kentucky have implemented. Here we sit in a state where you cannot receive abortion care without your doctor taking on incredible risk. And if you look around, Indiana now is very restrictive. Ohio is banned after six weeks. Tennessee is banned. You're talking about having to travel a tremendous distance to get just care, just health care. And it's scary. Honestly. I don't use that word very often because I don't feel a lot of fear in my heart. To borrow a phrase that you've said that your mom taught you, Sarah, I'm not a fearful person. But I look at this situation and wonder what it is that we have created and how long we're going to live this way.
Sarah [00:08:47] Yeah. If you want to hear and understand the journey of ministers, I highly recommend the criminal episode where they talk about the underground network of ministers that provided abortions in the sixties and seventies. Its an incredible podcast episode. It will change the way you think about this debate and how it plays out in everyday lives. And I'm not a fearful person, but I am an angry person. It is an emotion that I can easily access. And I'm just pissed off right now. I just want everybody who thinks they've sorted this out to sit with the woman in Louisiana who had a skullless fetus. Her fetus did not have a skull. And I don't want to be graphic, but I want you to think about what that would look like if you gave birth to a skullless fetus. As someone who's had to deal with the reality of a lost pregnancy, I am furious that people are being put in this position. Furious. There's just this sense I feel this sort of disgust. This sense that I want to turn away. How dare you bring this to me? You're just trying to be hyperbolic, and it makes me want to set it all on fire. I am so sorry that the lived reality of reproduction grosses you out and makes you uncomfortable. If you wanted it to stay private, then you shouldn't have passed these damn laws. If you don't want to deal with the private reality that women across this country have to deal with every day, them and their doctors, you should have kept your fingers out of it. And that's just how I feel. It just feels like, well, that's not what we meant. Well, I'm sorry. That's what we were telling you was happening. It's not like there was a loss of expertize of people who deal with this-- both doctors and women and reproductive rights activists-- saying this is how this is going to play out. And it's like it's not just these lost pregnancies. It's not just these difficult genetic situations. The Washington Post had a great roundup where they literally just tallied the miles and the money women had to spend to receive abortion care.
[00:10:44] One woman was, like, it was great I had my tax refund because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to do this. And I already have five children. It just makes me want to burn it down. It just makes me want to burn it. And I think about this conversation we're going to share with Gabrielle Blair in a few weeks. She's going to speak at the end of this episode, but we had another conversation with her about perimenopause. And she talks about like, well, this is the tool of the patriarchy. Is we silence these stories. We keep them private. We don't share wisdom, we don't pass them down. And I just feel like that's a little bit of what's happened. Roe v Wade allowed a lot of women's experiences to be protected, to be kept private. But there was a loss of power in that. And I think the intersection of the two things we want to talk to today is not just these individual stories, but this surge of individual participation of women in the political process now that they're being forced to, because of the decision. The sense of, like, you're going to listen to my story, I'm going to register to vote. I'm really pissed off about this and you're going to hear it from me. And that's, to me, the other wave of energy and experiences that we're seeing across the country right now, is not just the health care reality but the real political reality of what's going on right now in states across this country. And not just Kansas, not just Kentucky, which we're going to talk about in the next segment, but just everywhere.
Beth [00:12:17] We're on a real kick in my house of talking about how feelings are important and are also not in charge. And when you read the Dobbs Opinion, the Supreme Court stayed in theory mode. They decided this case based on their conviction, that Roe versus Wade was shoddy legal work. I don't totally disagree with that. And on their conviction that because Americans have different feelings about abortion care, then this should be decided in the states where people are arguably represented more effectively than they are at the federal level certainly by the court. And I think the Supreme Court needs a little bit of a moment of feelings are important but not in charge, because by disrupting the status quo, as the court did, they ensured that in states where voters have not been able to express their opinions on abortion care and haven't needed to in 50 years, suddenly we live in a space where we are in these restrictive settings. I am concerned that we are so deep in our feelings about abortion care that we're going to have to continue to tell really graphic stories about the reality of this on the ground in order to shake us loose from those feelings. And I wish there were a way around that, because we're asking those stories to be told on the canvas of a culture where we won't even talk about perimenopause because we're so uncomfortable, where we fight about whether you can show a tampon in a children's show. We are asking women to say, give us the most intimate, devastating, terrifying thing that has happened to you in graphic detail, so people might believe that you have an ability to exercise some kind of decision making in the course of coping with that. Against this backdrop of a culture that won't even discuss a period candidly. And as a mom of two daughters in that culture, I just don't know what to tell them about the society that they're living in right now. I don't know what to say about the disregard for their experiences that are conveyed in two ways. I can't even discuss a monthly reality for you, but also we're going to need you to pour your soul out if something heinous happens to secure what had been a legal right.
Sarah [00:15:17] When you were talking, I thought, well, there's one small edit there, which I think is voters because a lot of people participating now where voters before. They weren't even registered to vote. There has been a surge of female registration, and I think that's just something we got to talk about. There were just women that thought, this is not relevant to my life, when this is a constant discussion of preventing the loss of this right. And it sounded theoretical until it wasn't. So now it's like, oh, wait, this is relevant. I would argue things outside of abortion are relevant, but this is hyper relevant, no doubt. Because of the graphicness, because of just what you articulated, this is blood and breath. This is it. And it is both encouraging and a little bit infuriating to see that surgeon registration, considering what we've lived through in the United States politics over the last few years. But I just think it is the reality. I think it is the reality that for a lot of different reasons, until something touches a person's life in that very intimate way, it's easy to opt out-- not just easy, but understandable. That's why I'm not too mad about it because I understand that instinct. I understand it's because we don't have a particularly empowering or representative system in a lot of ways. It's easy to look and say, like, "Where do I play a role?" I think that's obvious because of all of the reaction to Kansas that we were, like, what, you mean we can change things? You mean enough people can turn out to vote and change things? And, look, we're going to get that opportunity on many, many, state levels. Now, before we move on to our particular state, Kentucky, I know that there's a debate going on. I don't know if it's with anybody else or if it's just with Lindsey Graham and himself. I think it he might be having this debate with himself about whether this should be left to states, because he is very confusingly presenting federal legislation and saying, oh, this shouldn't be left to states, even though that is the argument of the Supreme Court and the argument of many, many, many factions inside the Republican Party.
Beth [00:17:34] I want to be really clear about what Lindsey Graham has proposed, because what he has said is that he thinks it would be helpful for the Republican Party to define themselves on this issue in the wake of the Dobbs decision. And it has been covered in media as a 15-week ban on abortion. And there has been conversation that sounds like, well, is that a compromise position? Is 15 weeks a compromise position? Because Roe and all of the decisions that came in its wake said there is some right to abortion, but we haven't defined exactly the scope of what that right means. There was a trimester framework, and we've gone back and forth about when is it too late to have an abortion in the United States? State by state, when do we think it's too late? And physicians will tell you that you cannot write a law that captures this issue either because of the millions of ways that human bodies present in their offices. And public polling will tell you that the vast majority of people do not buy that and think there is a point at which it is mostly too late. And so by putting out a 15-week ban, I think Lindsey Graham wants to calm some of the unrest by sounding like this is a compromise position.
Sarah [00:18:58] I think that's generous. I think he's trying to reduce political liability, but I take it
Beth [00:19:03] That's what I mean. Reduce political liability. That's a sharper way of saying exactly what I mean. I think it's important to be clear that what Lindsey Graham is proposing is 15 weeks as a ceiling on when you might cut off the right to an abortion. He is saying that if a state chooses to be more restrictive, if a state chooses to ban all abortion, that's fine. But no state may permit abortion past 15 weeks. And I think that is the reverse of what something like a compromised position in the wake of Dobbs could mean. If the United States Congress were taking up a bill that said throughout the United States, you have a right to abortion care up to 15 weeks everywhere and then if a state chooses to to expand that right it may, if I were in the Senate, I would vote for that. I don't think it's good enough but I would take it, especially after the past month of living in Kentucky and hearing about the situations where people are looking for options and finding none. I would take a 15 week guarantee of access to this health care, but that is not what Senator Graham has proposed. He is saying we will prevent blue states-- just in the parlance that he would use-- from allowing abortion past 15 weeks. And I think that is the opposite of federalism and the opposite of what the Supreme Court says it is going for in the Dobbs opinion itself, and certainly the opposite of what Mitch McConnell likes to say about this issue. He walks around constantly saying we should just leave this up to the states.
Sarah [00:20:45] I also think it doesn't reduce their political liability for what it's worth, which I think is his only goal. And I think this is a sloppy, sloppy, attempt that's not going to get anywhere. There is no way, because of the lived reality of American women, for the Republican Party to claim this as an asset. That's my opinion. I don't think there's any way to right the ship and make it an asset. I just don't think that's available to them, rightfully so. I think they are the dog that's caught the car. That's why they're scrubbing their websites off their radical, radical, anti-abortion stances. I mean, their behavior is proof of how they see this, rightfully so, playing out across America. And the more that women live this experience, and the more women that talk about it and share and the matter they get, the worse it's going to get for them.
Beth [00:21:36] It's a tricky conversation to have because even when you say women, there is an experience of gender in this country that is becoming more and more complex and we're doing a better job recognizing that. So certainly abortion access affects more than just women. Certainly women are not a monolith on the issue of abortion. There are lots of women, even young women, who are out at pro-life rallies who support criminalization of the act of abortion for other women. And so we're not all in one place about this. But I take your point that on the whole you do see a surge in women, and young women in particular, saying you have got to be kidding me. We're taking this giant step back in recognition of me as a person, and in recognition of what my body might present in a physician's office and what options I have access to. That's unacceptable. And I really hope that the midterms are a surprising shock wave of new voters or more engaged voters than we've seen before, to just say we will not accept this.
Sarah [00:22:52] It's like there's this weird attribution error, this weird abortion attribution error. This is what I read in these stories. I think there's a sense of because we have talked about abortion politically purely through the prism of unplanned experiences, because abortion advocates have defined the narrative and defined the story as abortion is used by women who are making lazy, irresponsible decisions and suffering the consequences of that, it's like we've all put that in ourselves. And so we think, well, that's not me, so this won't affect me. This is not what I'm doing. This is not what I'm living in my life. So when they run up against these laws and the laws are like, no, no, the no exception means no exception. I think there's this really sense of like, oh, I didn't think you meant me. From men too to the sense of, like, but that's not what we meant. Oh, it's not? I don't mean to be flip, but that's just my, like, frustration and anger coming through because there were people, there were doctors, there were abortion rights activists saying this is not how this is going to play out. And it's like they were sort of blown off as hyperbolic. And I think there was this sense of, like, well, if you're not using abortion as birth control, that's what really we're talking about. We're talking about people abusing abortion. But that's not what I need. I don't really even need an abortion. I thought Chrissy Teigen's story about like "I described it as a miscarriage, but what I had was an abortion of a child that was not compatible with life or my health, and it didn't even occur to me to describe it like that. But that's what happened." I just think you see that shift of like, I think, can you just do it naturally because that political culture is so strong and unless you have an individual experience or a friend who experiences something that really just breaks it all open? You can't see through it. It's so opaque. You can't see through to the live reality of how that plays out.
Beth [00:24:50] And I take responsibility for that. I fell into a bucket of people, I've said on this podcast abortion is not my work. I've never felt a sense of activism around this issue until the past couple of years watching decision after decision make its way to the Supreme Court, and seeing this erosion of the right taking place and realizing that it wasn't hyperbolic to say there was a threat to any care being accessible. I think I had this sense that Roe was a poorly written opinion from a legal perspective, but that it got the issue about right. And that a lot of what happened after that, there isn't a perfect scenario, but maybe we're getting close to the best that we can do. And then, as I've learned more, I've realized, no, we weren't close to the best that we can do. The best that we can do is pretty hands off and letting medical ethics govern here instead of trying to write a law that takes into account every experience in which people need this type of care. But I absolutely have been dismissive of this issue as a voter for most of my life because I haven't felt any particular threat around it, and I haven't had enough personal experience connected to folks who've received this care. It's only now having friends who've had the kinds of procedures that Chrissy Teigen described, learning from our listeners, learning from our guests, and learning from all of these opinions that I've read, that I see how pervasive this is. I don't know how you get through ages 20 to 50 without this touching you in a pretty direct and personal way.
Sarah [00:26:33] As we all continue to deal with that direct and personal fallout, there is real political organizing happening. We all followed the story in Kansas where the voters beat back a constitutional referendum. That effort was led by Rachel Sweet, who is now here leading the effort in Kentucky around our own referendum in November. And we are so excited to share our conversation with Rachel. We are thrilled to be here today with Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Protect Kentucky Access and former campaign manager for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom. I, as a Kentuckian, were thrilled when I heard you were hired in Kentucky. But before we get to Kentucky, take us back to Kansas. Can you explain the amendment at issue and what you think really landed with voters there in Kansas?
Rachel Sweet [00:27:35] Absolutely. So in August of this year, Kansans voted 59 to 41% to reject an amendment to our state constitution, which would have said there is no right to abortion in the Kansas Constitution. In Kansas we were very fortunate because our state Supreme Court had issued the decision in 2019, making it very clear that the Kansas Constitution guarantees this broad right to personal autonomy. It is in section one of the Bill of Rights, and that includes the right to make decisions about health care. And I think, in the words of the Kansas Supreme Court, decisions about health care, family formation and family life, including the right to have an abortion. So it was this really great decision. And immediately the anti-abortion movement started to mobilize and start laying the groundwork for this constitutional amendment push. And so this all started really in 2019. In Kansas we have only legislatively referred constitutional amendments. So they tried to get it through the legislature in 2020. They couldn't get the votes they needed in 2021. Some of the faces in the legislature changed, so they kind of pushed it through pretty easily. And, yeah, here we are. It's been a bit of an odyssey, I guess, through this sort of multi-year effort in Kansas. I'm happy to talk about sort of what worked with voters and our approach.
Beth [00:29:11] I would love to hear. I mean, that margin was surprising to me and really encouraging. How do you think you got there?
Rachel Sweet [00:29:20] That margin was surprising to us too, let me tell you. We obviously invested pretty heavily in polling and research. And some of that is your standard horse race type polling, like who's up, who's down? That stuff is important. But more important for us was really a deep dive into how do Kansas voters feel about abortion, and what are the values that sort of underlie those opinions so that we could develop the best message for our electorate? And I will say that's a process we're replicating in Kentucky because, as I've told folks across the Commonwealth, we're not here to copy and paste Kansas on to Kentucky. It's its own place that's on electorate. But in Kansas, we really saw that voters were really responsive to this argument about government overreach and government interference into personal, private medical decisions, which I think in a lot of ways is kind of the crux of the pro-choice position, right? Like, who gets to make these decisions? Is it women and their families or is it politicians? And I think Kansas voters really understood that. We also made it really clear that this would ultimately lead to a total ban on abortion with no exceptions. And that is something that people were really concerned about. And in Kansas we had a really well-funded opposition that was running a pretty smart campaign, and we thought it was going to be much closer than it ended up being on August 2nd. We knew we could win. Of course, you never know. And I think there's like some relatively fair distrust of polling. But we expected this to be a two point race, not an 18 point race. So we were also very surprised.
[00:31:10] And I think the reason that I think we won ultimately is because we did create this permission structure for people who have their own complicated feelings about abortion to still vote no on this measure because it was really too extreme and out of step with their own values. I think the reason that we won by 18 points is because this issue mobilized and activated a lot of people who just don't typically vote, and especially those who don't typically vote in primaries. One proof point of that is in Kansas we have closed primaries, so if you're not registered as a Republican or a Democrat, you don't really get to vote in the primary election typically. But in Kansas there were at least 172,000 unaffiliated voters. So voters who aren't Democrats or Republicans that voted on August 2nd and showed up, and the constitutional amendment was the only thing on their ballot. So those are people that showed up just for this. And I bet if you asked voters why did they vote on August 2nd, this was front of mind. So I think what really pushed us over the edge and took us to the the margin that we had was those people who were really concerned about Roe v Wade being overturned, they had been hearing this surround sound about the constitutional amendment for months leading up to the election and they were just really engaged and really concerned. So I think that's really what took us to those heights is those people who showed up because they care about this and it affects their lives.
Sarah [00:32:51] So what is different here and what is the same when you're out there making the case to the citizens of the Commonwealth, like, this is what's on your ballot? I mean, we also are a close primary state, so I think you could see a lot of those same sort of situations play out. What do you think is landing with people on the ground as you're explaining what this referendum actually means and sort of the reasoning behind their vote?
Rachel Sweet [00:33:16] Yeah, that's a great question. I think there are definitely some similarities to Kansas, but it's not exactly the same message. I think there is definitely some anti-politician sentiment in Kentucky. People definitely don't want the government in their health care, in their business, which I respect, and we are definitely going to use that message. But what I think has been really interesting is it seems like we can lean a little bit more into empathy. And so really leading with empathy, I think we're going to be-- for this race in Kentucky-- probably telling more first person abortion stories. We have also seen that a lot of voters are concerned about how far this goes. Does this compromises care for miscarriages, for ectopic pregnancy? And that is something that really concerns people that may personally consider themselves to be pro-life. That doesn't matter if you're pro-life or pro-choice if you're in a situation where a doctor has to ask their lawyers if they can give you treatment for a miscarriage.
Sarah [00:34:25] Several years ago, we had a woman on our podcast talk about a situation where she had a wanted pregnancy where the fetus was not compatible with life but had a heartbeat. And the machinations that she was forced to go through in Ohio and so she testified before the Ohio state legislator. [Inaudible]. And I will never forget as long as I live, which she said, "I felt they were sympathetic to my story, but the sense I got was that I was a sacrifice they were willing to make, that women like me were a sacrifice they were willing to make." And I desperately hope and pray, and we'll do my best to convince the citizens of Kentucky that those women should not be sacrifices that we are willing to make. Whatever your views on abortion.
Rachel Sweet [00:35:09] Wow. That's very powerful. That's true.
Sarah [00:35:12] So what are the most effective strategies? If you are a Kentuckian or you're outside the state of Kentucky and you want to help this effort, what should people do? Where should they go?
Rachel Sweet [00:35:20] The best place to go is to our website, which is Protectkentucky.com. And if you click on our events page, you can see all of the different canvasses and phone banks that we have going on across the Commonwealth. If you're in Kentucky, we would love to have you come knock doors with us, come to our phone bank. But if you're outside of the state, one of the things you can do is participate in a virtual phone bank or come to one of our digital organizing trainings. There are a lot of ways to get involved, even if you're not a Kentuckian, because we know that this is an issue that people really care about. And we want to make it easy for people to get involved no matter where they are and no matter their level of experience. If you've never knocked a door or made a phone call in an election before, we'll teach you how to do it. And it's one of those things that just gets easier the more you do it.
Sarah [00:36:12] Also not for nothing, geographically, so many people live close to Kentucky. We are very centrally located. So even if you don't live in the state itself, you probably live close enough to come help. We're close to like 15 states. Listen, everybody is close to Kentucky.
Beth [00:36:25] And it is a region where access is not available. If you're trying to help someone in the situation and you look around at our neighbors, it is tough geographically. We do have an interest in each other's laws around abortion.
Sarah [00:36:39] Absolutely.
Rachel Sweet [00:36:40] Absolutely.
Beth [00:36:41] Well, Rachel, thank you so much for what you're doing. It cannot be easy. And we are so grateful that you are here in Kentucky leading this campaign, bringing all the lessons from Kansas and also you just your curiosity and expertise. So we're grateful for you and the work that you're doing and that you spent some time to tell us about it.
Sarah [00:37:09] For Outside of Politics, we're into something a little different. We're going to share our conversation with Gabrielle Blair. Now, if you are like me, you have been reading Design Mom for a very long time. She is the founder. She is incredible. She is a mother of six, and an author, and has a new book coming out around her viral thread about responsible ejaculation. And we wanted to share our conversation with Gabrielle here today. In 2018, you wrote a Twitter thread that you were afraid-- I loved it when I read this in the interview. You were afraid that no one would read it. Now, it started, "I'm a mother of six and a mormon. I have a good understanding of arguments surrounding abortion, religious and otherwise. I've been listening to men grandstand about women's reproductive rights, and I'm convinced men actually have zero interest in stopping abortion. Here's why." Now that threat is four years old and your concerns were misplaced because it now has over 36 million impressions and has been shared from users around the world, even translated into Japanese. And you have turned that thread into a book out October 18th entitled Ejaculate Responsibly, in which you make an argument that's, I would say, has been hiding in plain sight that men who are fertile 100% of the time take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.
Gabrielle Blair [00:38:27] Right. So if you look at the birth control industry, which is an $8 billion industry-- that's a massive industry-- 90% of the products purchased for birth control are purchased by women. They're aimed at women, are purchased by women. And even over 30% of condoms are purchased by women. So women are doing all of the work of pregnancy prevention. This like lives on our shoulders. It's always on our shoulders. And we're looking at if our egg comes that month, if it arrives, it's going to be fertile for 12 to 24 hours. That's it. Now, that doesn't mean you only need to avoid sex for 24 hours if you don't want to get pregnant because sperm have a really long fertility window, they can live five day, six days. They're not quite sure. And so that's a sort of separate issue. But I'm just saying, an egg is fertile 12 to 24 hours. And it's really unpredictable even if you have the most consistent cycle. If you're, like, I [Inaudible] every 28 days, this is me. That doesn't mean you ovulate at the same time within that cycle. They've done a lot of research in this. I've included that research in my book. But there's like a10 day variance-- in even people who have a really regular cycle. There's a 10 day variance of where you can ovulate within that. So we're just guessing. We're constantly guessing on whether a woman's fertile or not. It's just a big guess and it's this tiny window. So it seems like, yeah, we could just take care of that, that would be great. But we can't. It's totally unpredictable. We cannot depend on when it's going to be.
[00:40:05] And of course then you contrast that with men who are so reliably fertile. If it's a fertile man, he's fertile from the moment he hit puberty until he dies. Every day, every second he's always fertile. And there are no products that are tracking men's fertility or trying to account for men's fertility at all. We just never even think about it. We're so focused, just laser focused on this 24 hours of women's fertility which is absolutely uncontrollable. Like, the women can't decide when that is. No one can control that. And we absolutely ignore man's fertility which is so reliable and predictable and you can plan for it. And it is just bizarre. And when that kind of clicked for me, I was, like, what are we doing? This is insane. And it just had never occurred to me until I saw some abortion numbers. I don't remember what year it was, but I saw like this is the report for the year and it was higher than I expected. And I talked to women a lot. I know you guys do as well. I talk to women. I get their stories. I receive their stories every day. This is part of my job. I've been doing this since 2006, so I just hear all these stories. And I was so surprised by that number because I knew without a doubt that women are really careful with their bodies. We don't want to go get a pap smear. It's like that's invasive. We're really careful. We don't want extra services. Especially, again, anything kind of invasive with your most sensitive parts, you're like, no, I'm not excited about that.
[00:41:49] And so I was, like,why is this higher than I think when I know women are caring for their bodies? And I knew immediately. I'm like, oh, I know. Because I've done every kind of birth control. Birth control is actually really hard. Like, it seems like it should be easy. We've been doing this for decades and it seems like this should just be easy. You should just be able to go pick up a box of Band-Aids, some ibuprofen and your pill or whatever it is you need. And it seems like it would be that way, and it's just not. We talk about it as if it's that way, like, oh, everyone's on birth control. It's so easy. It's just not. And it's expensive for some people. Not every insurance covers every kind of birth control and not everyone has insurance. And there are people actively trying to make it harder. The Supreme Court in 2020 gave a ruling that companies don't have to cover certain kinds of birth control or offer it for free to their employees. It's just harder than you think it's going to be. And so that clicked for me. I was like, oh, there is someone that just can't use birth control. It's either too hard, too expensive, it's too many side effects, whatever it is. Or there's also the fact of women that have to use this birth control even on days where they're not having sex. So if their partner is out of town, or they're out of town, or whatever, then maybe they're not going to see someone for a month. They're not going to have sex for a month, maybe two months. There's a chance they might have sex in there.
[00:43:25] They still have to take that pill every day. Or if it's a shot, they already have the shot. The shot can release the hormone every day. Whatever it is, they're dealing with it every day. If they have an IUD they're dealing with those side effects. They're dealing with them every day whether they have sex or not. Anyway, so all of this was swirling around my head and then I started contrasting it with, well, what options do men have? And it just was like, oh, condoms are amazing. It was just it's like a light ball, like, why don't we just love and basically worship at the altar of condoms? They're so inexpensive. I mean, you can get them for free. Like, literally every state has a program where you can get free condoms. That's just a fact. So you can get them for free. And if you don't want to like work through the state program, drop by whatever clinics at your local college, I'm sure they've got a bowl of them. It's just they're easy to get. If it's after hours, there are condom vending machines that are commonplace in all sorts of places, public restrooms and places like that. You can store them for years. They're very stable. There's so many types, you can figure out what works for you.
Sarah [00:44:37] The side effects are minimal.
Gabrielle Blair [00:44:39] What side effects? There are no side effects. You wear it for a few minutes doing penetration and that's it. And if you don't have sex that day, you don't wear it. And if you think you'll not have sex that day and you don't, no worries. You don't have to wear it. It's just like the opposite. They're accessible, inexpensive, they're very effective if you know how to use them correctly. That's a big if. We don't teach condom use very well and so they're not as effective as they could be in practice. But when you are using them correctly, they're 98% effective. And the other thing is they have this magical power that no female birth control has. They can prevent STIs. IUDs don't do it. Hormonal birth control doesn't. And so then I was like, well, then why aren't we using a condom every time? Why isn't this just like a no brainer? And then of course, I'm like, oh, well, it's because men don't like condoms. That's why.
Beth [00:45:32] I really love that you're having this book sent to Supreme Court justices because, to me, this thread gets at one of my main frustrations in Supreme Court jurisprudence on abortion. I wish that we could go back in time and have this decided as a matter of equal protection under the law. And I think your thread really points out here how we are unequally treated by pharmaceuticals, by research scientists, by popular culture, and under the law. In every place we are unequally treated. And so I just really love that you're getting this in front of the people who make those types of decisions.
Gabrielle Blair [00:46:08] Well, thank you. I'm really excited about it, too. I'm calling an impact goals and kind of introducing these and we'll be sending them to other politicians as well, not just the judges. I really get frustrated when I hear politicians using abortion as this bludgeon, as this tool. When I am watching their actions going, I don't believe you actually care. You're not out to reduce abortion. You don't actually care about this. This is just this tool in your political tool belt that you know you can say these certain key words and get a vote. And it drives me bananas because, one, it really is a burden on women that I would like to see lifted. But, two, I do care about reducing abortions and for any reason that people typically care about. I'm very pro-choice. I personally would like to see abortion remain legal for anyone who needs it at any time. But pregnancy is so dangerous, so dangerous. Just an inherently dangerous thing. We don't like to talk about it like that. And I get it, no one would have babies if we like really said, "Do you know what's going to happen to your body? Do you get it? Do you really understand this?" And I want to say here, too, even more dangerous for black women. The outcomes for black women right now in maternal health are abysmal. It's just horrible. I mean, it's horrible across the nation and then multiple times worse for black women right now. So it's just this dangerous thing. Again, we don't talk about it like that. We don't approach it like that. I think of an unwanted pregnancy and I'm worried about this woman. I'm worried about this woman who didn't want to experience pregnancy. And even if she's only experiencing it for a short while and she decides to stop her pregnancy, still, I don't want to have to deal with it at all like that. I'm sad about that.
[00:47:54] And I'm also sad because it implied that a man treated her body really casually, treated this just unthinkingly, that he put his sperm in her and it could kill her. Pregnancy could kill her. It will definitely scar her. Like, it's going to leave permanent scarring, it's just going to be a thing. And we don't even think of it as permanent scarring, but there's going to be permanent scarring. There's going to be body changes. This is just a fact. And he did that unthinkingly. I want to say unthinkingly, because I hate to think he's doing it purposely and he did it in order to experience a few minutes of slightly more pleasure. He still would had a great time with a condom on, but he wanted to experience slightly more pleasure. And so he did this thing that risked her life. And or even if it didn't risk her life, like say she had a safe pregnancy, it still risks her well-being, her social status for job, her family relationships. For a few minutes of slightly more pleasure, it's just this equation that's just blows my mind. And and so when I say I want to see abortions go down or unwanted pregnancies go down, it's for those reasons. It means, oh, men are being responsible for their own bodies. They're thinking about their partner and not risking her life. And women aren't having to experience an unwanted pregnancy for even a few weeks, which is great in my book.
Sarah [00:49:22] Well, I just feel like you can see that in the post Dobbs fallout, that there's another this whole huge perspective on abortions that no one was thinking about, too, which is sometimes they're not needed because it was an unwanted pregnancy. Sometimes it was a wanted pregnancy and you're still in danger, and there's still all these consequences. And it's like you can see it kind of cascade across the country the sense of like, oh, I didn't think about that. Oh, no, you didn't think about that? I'm so surprised that you didn't think about that. That you didn't think that maybe, just maybe, women are full human beings capable of contemplating their own actions and the consequences of those actions. And you might disagree with the choices they made, but they are still thoughtful people capable of making their own decisions with their doctors advice and care. And it's like you just can see it. You can just see this sense of like, oh, well, I didn't really think about that. Well, yeah, we can't all contemplate all these scenarios. That's sort of the point. It's like let's just leave it up to the person stuck in that situation instead of expecting all of us to 100% anticipate every situation.
Gabrielle Blair [00:50:36] Right.
Beth [00:50:36] I think that shows why your book is so important, because just the language of responsible ejaculation is brand new and opens up this whole new space. We need words other than wanted and unwanted, right? Because those words are just trying to hold, like, wanted at what point? I very much wanted a baby, but I did not want to throw up at my desk every day for nine months. It messes with us and it makes us feel guilt when our hormones start to fire and tell us that this was the worst decision we've ever made, whatever. Like, it's just too much. And so having some new words I think is so important. And I just love how flexible your thinking became around this to put this together.
Gabrielle Blair [00:51:19] Thank you. One of the things I really love about responses is if I shift the conversation, if we shift the conversation from stopping abortion to preventing pregnancies, it takes so much emotion out of it. We have not mentioned babies in this conversation. We have not tried to determine when life begins. These are philosophical, religious debates. We're not going to ever agree. We're not going to get everybody to agree on them. We don't have to talk about them at all. There is no baby to talk about if you prevented the pregnancy, if you did that basic work. And it just takes so much of the emotion out of it. And it intuitively just makes sense. We all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is that principle.
Beth [00:52:11] Well, thank you so much for the thread and for the book Ejaculate Responsibly. I'm sure you can buy it anywhere you can buy books. And we really appreciate your time.
Sarah [00:52:20] Thank you to Gabrielle for coming on the show and talking to us. And we are going to have another conversation with her about perimenopause we can't wait to share. Before we wrap up, again, we are going to be in Oklahoma City at the Junior League next week, Thursday, September 29th at 6 p.m., tickets are $10. You can go to the link in the show notes if you live in that area and want to come see us live and in person. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.
Beth [00:52:56] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [00:53:01] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [00:53:07] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
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