S2E11: Beyond Abortion: The Need for Reproductive Justice — with Kimberly Mutcherson

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[00:00:07] One of the reasons why I think it's so important to talk about abortion in the context of reproductive

[00:00:14] justice is that we have to recognize that pregnancy is a moment in time, right?

[00:00:20] And that, you know, you could have a having me. So before we dive into like the meat of this conversation, I do want to start off with some real casual stuff. What are some of your favorite like activities, books, movies, TV shows, all that fun stuff? Well, one of my favorite activities now is playing the piano, which I did for years and years and

[00:01:44] years when I was much younger. And then as a chance to check out the TV series? So I started watching the first season and I probably watched two or three episodes. Okay. And I liked it. But not enough to stay with it.

[00:03:01] Oh, okay.

[00:03:02] So I will not read the books because I'm enjoying the TV show.

[00:03:05] Yeah, usually.

[00:03:06] I mean, I think they did it well.

[00:03:07] Okay. of my education around that. So went to college, immediately went to law school after college, and I went to law school to be a public interest lawyer. That was my plan, best laid plans of mice and men and all that. And so I graduated and I had a public interest fellowship. I started doing work at a place in Manhattan called the HIV Law Project, which I loved

[00:04:22] and got to do amazing work there.

[00:04:26] And then about two of civil rights, issues of women's rights, social justice, racial justice. I feel like I came out of the womb thinking about those things, but it's been a part of my life really from the beginning. And then through law schools when I really started to focus in on women's

[00:05:41] rights issues and then eventually on reproductive justice issues.

[00:06:44] so obviously political, right? Nothing had changed except for the people who sat on the court. And literally just a couple years before they had an abortion case where they reaffirmed

[00:06:50] Roe. So it was really, it was a, it was such a bold move to just say, we've got the end, this is

[00:06:58] essentially what happened, right? We've got the votes. I think we'll, let's hit rewind on the story and then we'll come back to like the present day and the future a little bit. But let's go back to the 70s. And we have the landmark decision, Roe versus Wade,

[00:08:23] essentially protecting a woman's right to an abortion

[00:08:26] in danger.

[00:09:41] And you basically had to go in front of a panel of doctors

[00:09:44] and convince them that you should be able

[00:09:46] to have an abortion, but the state also has an interest in potential life and and their goal was to sort of balance those interests.

[00:12:04] And so they said, we're going to throw out this whole trimester thing, and we're just going to focus on the line of viability.

[00:12:07] And that's going to be the dividing line between when you can ban abortion

[00:12:11] and when you can just regulate abortion.

[00:12:14] And so still said you have to have an exception for the life or health of

[00:12:18] the pregnant person.

[00:12:20] But then in Casey, they said that because the state has an interest in

[00:12:23] fetal life from the moment that a. Yeah, I had no idea so much details of that court case that are just not in public sort of conversations. Yeah, yeah. So talking like, I guess on the ground, during the years that any of the sort of bias-informed consent requirements, you didn't have the waiting period requirements, you know, it was just a, it was a, it was a set of circumstances where if you were pregnant and you didn't want to stay pregnant, there were lots of ways for you to terminate that pregnancy and lots of places where you could

[00:15:00] terminate that pregnancy.

[00:15:02] And you weren't going to, the lawicine to have medication abortions early in pregnancy. So there were all these sorts of ways where states, what they really're a poor woman and Medicaid is how you get your insurance that Medicaid is not going to pay for you to terminate a pregnancy and so you know accessing drug treatment, right? That you're able to do that and not tell your parents because that's an important thing and we want you to have access to that or getting treatment for you know sexually transmitted infections. We don't want you to be scared to talk to your parents and so we're going to give you a carve out so that so you can do that and you don't have to go to court to ask a judge if

[00:19:03] you can get treatment for a sexually with abortion. And maybe even just to paint an even bigger picture of that, like the US versus even other

[00:20:21] places.

[00:20:22] I know as a Canadian when, you know, the US. And for me, that's- It's extraordinary. You notice it when you're from a country that that's not the case, and then you come into a country where that is controlling the landscape of how things are done.

[00:21:41] So I just want to back it up even past the US because I think Americans might even take

[00:21:45] for granted how different the US functions maybe than other places because of that in complicated than the religious right would have everyone believe. In fact, their original unifying ideology was racial segregation in schools and universities. The following information is drawn heavily from a May 2022 article in Politico by Randall Ballmer, the John Phillips Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College and author of Bad Faith,

[00:23:01] Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.

[00:23:03] We'll link to the full. Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful, we are not agreed. But about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances, we are in accord,

[00:24:25] read the statement. 1968 to 1970, issued this statement, I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person. And it has always therefore seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed. Even one of abortion's greatest enemies, James Dobson,

[00:25:42] stated in 1973, the same year that Roe v. Wade was decided,

[00:25:46] that the Bible was silent discussing the topic of abortion. First, that anti-abortion positions didn't become the de facto evangelical stance until nearly eight years after Roe v. Wade was decided. And second, that the birth of their political movement was based on defending racial segregation

[00:27:00] in schools, not on fighting for the lives of fetuses, or as they would put it, unborn

[00:27:05] babies. deconstructing and decolonizing the oppressive traditions they came from, please feel free to hop onto the server. If you don't know what Discord is, it's a place where communities can gather online for chatting on a wide variety of topics. In our Discord server, we have channels devoted to general deconstruction conversations, some meme sharing, therapeutic venting about whatever religious bullsh** you're currently dealing

[00:28:23] with, and even a channel specifically devoted to vote on. And one of the things that's been really powerful, there's been some really interesting political science research, and part of what it has shown is that people who are

[00:29:43] deeply religious, evangelical, Catholic, and some of these other faiths,

[00:29:44] that they will vote on abortion.

[00:29:47] Like that is the issue. of it is stealing, right? Stealing the label of pro-life, right? If you're pro-life, then what are the rest of us, right? So it's been really, really powerful how folks on the right and folks in evangelical communities have really rallied around abortion as a way to consolidate political power.

[00:31:02] Yeah.

[00:31:02] I think the left should have called it,

[00:31:04] instead of pro-choice, pro-freedom.

[00:31:06] Then they would have really, I do find it all interesting too because even even in the the both the Catholic and evangelical Bible the the idea of Life starting at conception that it's not in there Nowhere in in any of those texts can that can that concept even be close to found that maybe they might say

[00:32:22] You know you you knit me in my mother's womb before I was even born you knew you know That's where our Bible comes out of, is the Jewish Hebrew Bible, it's birthed out of that. So it's interesting to see the evolution of beliefs around when life begins and how evangelicals have sort of turned that into something else out for political gain. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then you also have to sort of think about how not only how people can harness religion,

[00:33:44] but also how they harness medicine and science, right? I promise you that is not a six feet, every really looks like. Because people are ignorant of many different things, they are visualizing something that's just not true. Particularly with most 90 plus percent of abortions in this country happen in the first

[00:35:04] trimester. And now they're in this incredibly unenviable position of I have to terminate this pregnancy. Like when you've gotten to that point in a pregnancy, you want that child. Like that's somebody who wants the child. That is not somebody who's just trying to use this as birth control or is debating whether or not they want to become a parent. No, this is somebody who's ready

[00:36:21] and is waiting for this child to be born.

[00:36:23] So.

[00:36:24] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:36:25] And the other thing that case and then how that all led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and even some of the political backgrounds and what was going on, the leaks and everything, if you wanna talk a little bit about that.

[00:37:40] Yeah, sure.

[00:37:41] So Dobbs was a challenge to a 15 week abortion ban

[00:38:48] the court to do. So again, last abortion clinic in Mississippi Jackson Women's Health, they were the plaintiffs there. And you know, we had this, I mean, everything about this case

[00:38:55] was just bonkers, right? So one, you have the court allowing Mississippi to change what

[00:39:00] it was asking for. Two, you had a leak of different levels so you know essentially what the majority of the court said was that you know Roe was wrongly decided that the court never should have decided Roe in the way that it that it did you know that all of these states from you know

[00:40:22] time immemorial had made abortion giving us a right to access contraception. Those cases are wrong and, you know, these cases- What did Loving versus Virginia and interracial marriages be under that as well? Oh, but that wasn't wrong. That wasn't wrong. And, oh, for him. Definitely not. Yeah, that was perfect.

[00:41:42] It was such an obvious choice not to include that

[00:41:47] in this list of cases, right? So you have to be really careful about thinking, oh, well, this case is about this issue. And so therefore, that's the only thing we have to worry about. Because anything that sort of sets up that kind of huge precedent, which

[00:43:00] is what the court did here, allows them to then,

[00:43:04] going forward, say, well, this is what we did in Dobbs,

[00:43:06] so we're going to do it again here.

[00:43:07] And this is what we did in Dobbs, and so we're Amy Coney Barrett were in disagreement with the men, basically. That's exactly right. Surprise. Surprise, surprise. Yeah, which is basically how all these cases are coming up now, right? They've got their six person majority and they're going to do as much as they can with those numbers. Yeah. So the future is, I mean, so just to throw out another wrinkle into this, right?

[00:44:23] So we've got the Mifepristone case now, right? You know, like, if I have to make a healthcare decision or if I have to decide what vacation I want, I really would prefer that the FDA is working that out rather than like Justice Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett, right? I mean, that just makes no sense whatsoever. So, you know, you can imagine what that looks like

[00:45:40] if the court says we don't have to defer

[00:45:42] the expertise of federal agencies anymore, right?

[00:45:45] So think about, yough, it's infuriating.

[00:47:02] It is.

[00:47:04] So now-

[00:47:05] Can we go back to Texas for a moment?

[00:47:07] Yeah, let's keep that to yourself. Deeply, deeply problematic. And we don't know when these actually apply, right? Because it's not like doctors were sitting down and saying, okay, let's craft these exceptions in a way that makes sense to us as physicians, right? It's a bunch of like bozos from the state legislature. And so Texas has this exception and there is this, you know, lovely woman, Kate Cox, who's married and who has a couple of kids at home already.

[00:49:42] And she became pregnant and, you know,

[00:49:45] 20 or so weeks into her pregnancy finds out clear this is an abortion that should happen because in Texas if you perform an abortion and you're not within the exception, you lose your medical license, potentially you can get life in prison. There are reasons that people wouldn't want to risk that. So they go to court and they sue and they say, we want an order that allows Kate Cox to have this abortion

[00:51:04] because it is a necessary abortion for her. sends a letter to other hospitals in Texas saying, anybody who performs this abortion, stay there for more than a couple of days. I mean, it's just

[00:53:40] incredible. And part of what was so profoundly disturbing when you have to labor to produce a dead baby or you have to have a C-section to give birth to a dead baby and just completely ignoring the physical and mental anguish that is involved in asking someone to do that.

[00:55:01] And there are certainly women who make that choice, right, who find out this is not a

[00:55:05] viable pregnancy, I'm deserve to be able to make tough choices for themselves and not have those choices made for them, that everybody Meanwhile, they come up with all of these bullshit arguments for why they can impose their systems onto us. I think the part that gets to me and that I find hard, hardest to swallow is the role that men are playing in trying to legislate women's bodies.

[00:57:40] I think whenever I see... I mean, it's one thing listening to women debate these topics

[00:57:44] and discuss them. really problematic is this is this way of sort of saying, you know, women were made for a purpose. And your purpose is to have babies. And if you die having a baby, well, that's just you know, you're a martyr. Right.

[00:59:00] And that is, you know, that's the greatest sacrifice that a woman could make to die,

[00:59:05] you know, while trying to not to have and maybe can have, but what about women who want to and can't? What kind of pressure are you putting on them in their own value? And, ah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So icky. Yeah. Ah, because those inevitably in those circumstances, women are there thinking,

[01:00:20] well, I can't live up to my purpose.

[01:00:24] And so what do I exist for?

[01:00:27] How shitty is that?

[01:00:28] Get out of those churches, please, ladies. which tells my story of teaching English at an evangelical school and realizing I didn't believe in God or the Bible anymore. I created Chapel Probation as a compliment to my book, but justice is a movement that was started by a group of black women in the mid 90s. And these were women who, they were activists. They were doing amazing things in their communities

[01:03:00] across a whole host of issues,

[01:03:01] including reproductive rights related issues.

[01:03:04] And they were really frustrated

[01:03:05] with mainstream reproductive rights organizations, and it goes back to something we were talking about before, that you have the right to raise your children in safe and healthy environments, right? And so there are these like sort of three pieces to it. And one of the reasons why I think it's so important to talk about abortion in the context of reproductive justice is that we have to recognize

[01:04:21] that pregnancy is a moment in time, right?

[01:04:25] And that, you know, born and exist in the world, we should still feel a sense of obligation to them and to their families

[01:05:40] and to their parents is part of what reproductive justice gives

[01:05:46] us. will suffer. You know life is really complicated and complex and so many of the discussions that we have really try to sort of flatten that out, right? And you just can't do that particularly in this context and it's really really frustrating to see people sort of you know draw this kind of you know

[01:07:01] either you're gonna have the baby or it involves the other siblings, it involves the entire family, the community surrounding you. The community, exactly. All of it, all of it. And I haven't even, I mean, we've had this whole conversation, I haven't even talked

[01:08:21] about the fact that, you know, this country has the highest maternal mortality rate of

[01:08:26] any development, right?

[01:08:27] Yeah. makes to the overall picture as well. Absolutely. Yeah, it's really, you know, it's the, you know, it's the hypocrisy that gets me, right? So it's like a state like, you know, you know, like, like Texas saying, okay, we don't want you to have an abortion, but we also don't want to provide Medicaid for more than a couple

[01:09:44] of months at postpartum, right? patriarchy. Unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare. Unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike. They allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships. And when they are born, you can forget about them because they cease to be the unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth,

[01:11:00] power, or privilege without reimagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations

[01:11:05] to anyone. They are in short the perfect people to love. If really what you mean is someone who can't debate anything with you at the same time. So it's very convenient too. Yes. Yeah. So any thoughts on what the future holds for women and others who can become pregnant in the US?

[01:12:20] Do you, are you hopeful in any way?

[01:12:24] Do you think all of this is a lost cause

[01:12:26] somewhere in between?

[01:12:28] What are your thoughts? coming out of states where you would not have expected it. That's interesting. Yeah, right? I mean, I would not have put my money on that, right? Nope. So that I so horrifying from an, as an outsider to this system to imagine countries exist where this is normal and, and a country like the US that's assumes to be so, you know, compared to other places, whatever they imagine. We're the best. We're number one.

[01:15:00] It is.

[01:15:01] It like has just, yeah, I think there's things I've taken for granted as a Canadian when I, now pressure on these folks who like to talk this big game to actually put some money where their mouths are. We'll see if that plays itself out. But there is an opportunity for that to happen. And then the third thing that is exciting for me is it's really a moment

[01:16:20] where people are paying a lot more attention to what terms of elections, you know, if you're, again, I'm right across from Pennsylvania where they elect judges, by the way, as bonkers, whatever, then you need to be at every election where judges are being put on the bench that those things matter. So again, right, this is a moment where people

[01:17:41] hopefully are having their eyes opened

[01:17:43] and are feeling sort of galvanized.

[01:17:45] And also, frankly, recognizing that, never been about protecting all of us. It's been a very narrow band of people who wrote the Constitution. I mean the thing that I always say is we have such a commitment to this document that was written by people who thought it was okay to own other human beings. Right?

[01:19:00] Yeah.

[01:19:01] I mean, what?

[01:19:02] Yeah.

[01:19:03] Right? Please don't talk to me about how important at Rutgers Law. So, and the question is, how does this identity inform your work? And I feel like you have already started to talk about that. Do you have any anything else to add on to

[01:20:22] that?

[01:20:23] Yeah, I mean, I mean, the first thing that away, right? So, you know, the Supreme Court's decision and students for fair admissions, you know, that's going to have a real impact on who gets access to higher education, and if you can't get access to higher education, then how do you

[01:21:42] become the Dean of a law school, right?

[01:21:44] Right. students. It was a huge part of how I thought about hiring people, who was going to be in a law school, and what kind of opportunities were we going to give to people who wouldn't necessarily always get opportunities. And that's a really great position to be in. I mean, there were, I could write number of students of color who I have taught over the years who say, so many of our students have records are first gen, first gen law school, first gen college, and students of color who will say to me, I never met a lawyer who was a person of color until I came to law school.

[01:24:21] And so every time I go and talk to those third graders,

[01:24:24] I think all of them will be able to say, power and then when they asked me to, I had such a reaction against it because it was like, but you guys don't do this. Are you sure? And I had so much questions. And then the pushback that I received from so many people in my community because it was a patriarchal church was immense and intense. And that was just on one level. That was just being a woman in a male-led environment.

[01:25:40] But then to think, add on another layer for instance, to recognize, oh, we're treating this white male faculty member really differently than

[01:27:01] we typically have treated faculty members of color or female faculty members and saying for like, you know, 15, 16 years. And the first time that I did it, somebody raises her hand in the meeting and says, you know, I'm really getting uncomfortable with the way that we do this. You know, I really think that the faculty needs to have more input in how we're putting

[01:28:21] together these committees and blah, and yeah. It's been a hard earned sabbatical

[01:29:40] and excited for you going forward.

[01:29:42] Thank you.

[01:29:43] Did you have any questions, Nate,

[01:29:45] to go that you wanted to?

[01:29:46] Yeah, so just a couple wrap up type questions. right and really pulling it all together. So I think that's a really great resource. If you're someone who is interested in what is happening in terms of abortion in this country, one place that's a really great place to get data is from the Guttmacher Institute. They're really sort of the biggest

[01:31:02] abortion researcher,

[01:31:04] research organization in this country and they are very reliable.

[01:32:04] Dorothy is like, everybody reads Dorothy, right? Like Dorothy is just the queen of it all.

[01:32:07] And she wrote this book called Killing the Black Body

[01:32:09] many, many years ago.

[01:32:11] And it's this really great collection

[01:32:15] that helps people understand the many ways in which black women

[01:32:20] in particular in this country have really

[01:32:23] been abused and denigrated, but LinkedIn is not particularly interesting.

[01:33:41] But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things

[01:33:44] on Blue Sky.

[01:33:45] So that's the place to find me.

[01:33:47] I know you said that was your final question, One, two, three. Taylor, am. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And here's why. You see you. Stop it. Stop it. Do you see do you see the zip code on this shirt? North Jersey or South Jersey here. So that's why you have the difference. Here's my here's my diplomatic take on it. All right. So it's it's you've heard you've heard me.

[01:35:01] Yeah, it you've never heard me put it as a diplomatic take. But so

[01:35:06] it's like, you know, the Taylor ham They will passionately defend their meat was showing me a video on this yesterday and I was like So passionate about this all the time, it's such I'm gonna have to get used to this in New Jersey

[01:36:21] You know what? There's there's so many

[01:37:23] current host, Joanna Bond, and executive producer, Shanita Carter, on winning the Silver Anthem Award

[01:37:26] in the category of diversity, equity, and inclusion

[01:37:29] in audio podcasts and the category of media awareness.

[01:37:32] Great job, folks.

[01:37:36] Thanks for listening to another episode of the Full Mutuality Podcast.

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