EP. 204 — Countering Misinformation about Later Stage Abortions with Asha Dahya

Jameela Intro [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. This week’s episode is so fucking important. Please, please listen to it all the way through. I desperately needed to have this conversation, not just for me, but also publicly with someone who was so well informed on this subject. And we are talking about abortion, but from an angle that rarely gets discussed, right? We all talk about abortion, and those of us who are pro-choice, pro-reproductive rights and and pro-bodily freedom and autonomy. You know, we’ll talk about the basics of the fact that, you know, we have to have agency of our own bodies and that abortion is health care and that our lives are and our safety and our health is a priority. And America has such terrible mortality rates, and people can become pregnant as a result of, trigger warning, I’m sorry, sexual assault, you know, or incest or people are very young or they’re not ready or they’re not economically set up to be able to or maybe they’re not physically able to, you know, or emotionally or mentally able to be ready yet for the, the, the huge responsibility it is to have a child. We talk about all those things, but then suddenly the conversation starts to die down when it gets to the awkward conversation about late term abortions, and I’m talking all the way through to the end of a pregnancy, choosing to end a pregnancy all the way through the nine months. At that point, even the most diehard pro-choice people start to pause. And I was one of those people and and work like the work of my guest this week was part of what illuminated me to understand that the system is so fucked that advocating for abortion all the way through is very important. And I, you know, I challenged the subject in the podcast because we need to have this difficult conversation and it is jarring and it is uncomfortable, and it does make people uncomfortable, not everyone. Some of you are so progressive that you will have already been on board with this, but some of you might not have really thought about this, or when you’ve had the uncomfortable feeling you might have shied away from it. This conversation is for you if you, like me, had some pauses or some reservations or some questions. It’s okay. I’m embarrassed about all this. Like I get embarrassed about things that I know I should know that I don’t know, but that is always immediately replaced with a feeling of thank God I know now, and let’s just keep promoting the fact that it’s okay to learn, it’s okay to grow, and just vital that we do. This is a very, very, very, very, very important year politically. Every year seems to be incredibly important and increasingly important politically, and and my guest this week explains that and breaks that down in a way that is very difficult to argue with as to why we should be very politically active now, almost now more than ever. Her name is Asha Dahya. She’s a producer, she’s a writer, a TedX speaker, an amazing storyteller, and she’s lived in so many different countries all over the world. She’s very culturally experienced, and, you know, she’s had her own journey from being a anti-choice, you know, very, very religious person who was very openly that way, whose gone through her own kind of journey and transformation to the other side, to now making a documentary that discusses the realities of what happens if we remove late term abortion from being legal via a documentary called Someone You Know. That documentary comes out March 3rd. It is so good. It is so important. You should watch it. You should send it to other people, you know, who feel a bit squirmish around the idea of a late term abortion. These are conversations that we haven’t had, that we desperately need to have and that we don’t have very often because they’re so fucking uncomfortable, but they need to stop being uncomfortable because people’s lives are at risk. People’s lives have already ended in the last few months because of this, and so let’s come together. Let’s have the difficult conversation. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you watch her documentary, Someone You Know. I hope you follow her work, and I hope you find a way to peacefully engage in politics, even though it just feels like we are stuck in the hell zone of the lesser of multiple evils. I’m with you. I’m incredibly vulnerable in this episode, and I adore you for being the kind of audience that I could even make this kind of podcast episode about. Let me know what you think. Please feel free to engage and and tell me your thoughts, and I love you lots. This is the excellent and important Asha Dahya.

Jameela [00:04:28] Asha Dahya, hello and welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Asha [00:04:40] Hello, Jameela. I am better now that I’m here with you and just really thankful to be chatting with you today.

Jameela [00:04:46] I think your work is really fascinating, and I found it personally very illuminating. You know, I work a lot within the world of reproductive rights, and the fight for having access to abortion, but there were certain things that I hadn’t considered even with all of my work that I’ve been doing for over ten years, that I learned from in your work. And I think your your film, Someone You Know, is a really important and vital piece of, of information to be put out there that is delivered in a very empathetic and and human way, so thank you for your work. And thank you for being here today and for this general fight that you are on. I know it’s not easy, and I’m sure you got a lot of shit for it, but, you’re very appreciated.

Asha [00:05:33] Thank you.

Jameela [00:05:33] Can we just jump in because this is such an important subject? Can you explain what Someone You Know is?

Asha [00:05:39] Yeah. Someone You Know is a short documentary, and it profiles three women sharing their experiences navigating numerous barriers in a hostile landscape to get a later abortion. Spoiler alert the hostile landscape is the United States of America, and it really kind of explores the complexity of these later abortion decisions, who these people are in the aim to generate more empathy, specifically in, among pro-choice audiences. That is my audience. And so that pro-choice people like you and I can speak more boldly, push back on misinformation, of which there is a lot, and hopefully bring more people to the idea that we need to champion access to abortion in all stages of pregnancy, not just what makes us feel personally comfortable.

Jameela [00:06:29] And so how late are you talking?

Asha [00:06:31] All through the entire pregnancy. And I know that sounds very radical and maybe even off putting to some, but once you see these stories and hear these stories, I’m sure many people are familiar by now with Kate Cox in Texas who recently had to petition the Texas Supreme Court, like beg their permission to have an abortion later in her pregnancy due to a fetal anomaly. They ended up saying no. And so she had the means to travel out of state to get care, but there are so many things that could happen at any point in pregnancy. That’s what any time based restrictions can increase harm, increase stigma. And it just, it can increase maternal mortality. In the worst cases, it can, you know, people can die. And there have been people dying from this, so yeah, all through all through pregnancy.

Jameela [00:07:24] We we do need to get into it because I do know that, like a lot of people, even people like myself, have felt like, okay, that maybe we could find a cutoff point. And I’m not saying that’s now how I feel. I don’t feel that way anymore, partially because of your work, but there was a part of me that, you know, I had a very early abortion. I felt like that was just like, it was just a cluster of cells at that point. I’m sure that some people would like to refer to that as a human being. That’s really up to you. But, you know, it was just it was so small, what was removed for me that they had to make me wait to make sure that they could actually see it to remove it to make sure it was gone during the abortion. So it didn’t make me feel any kind of a way. I guess in my head I always kind of drew the line at if a baby could survive in an incubator outside of a woman’s body then that probably means it’s too late for an abortion because at that point, that’s a little person who could survive. And that’s just me being just totally honest with you about how I’ve

Asha [00:08:18] Yeah.

Jameela [00:08:18] Always felt, and I think there are a lot of people who feel that way where they’re like, “Of course we should not remove all access to abortion, but there has to be some sort of limit,” because it is incredibly jarring, the idea of removing like a nine month, you know, nine months into pregnancy, removing like a fully formed little human and aborting it. That feels insane to consider for a lot of people. And I myself have struggled with that as much as I am pro-abortion access. And so can we just get into the weeds of why it is important to push back against that very normal unease? And have you ever struggled with it?

Asha [00:08:58] Absolutely. I actually am a former anti-choice conservative Christian, so I’ve really been going on a journey to become more progressive, understanding this issue. I’ve got two kids myself, and so going through that pregnancy journey also opened my eyes every minute of every day of every week of your pregnancy, a million things have to go right for the pregnancy to be successful. And the minute one thing goes wrong, all of a sudden, now you’re in a position to make a very difficult decision in a wanted pregnancy or unwanted pregnancy. But I think to answer your question, it goes back to the idea of what a later abortion is and who gets them and why. You know, I think there’s this culture of we need people to justify their reasons to us so we be, we feel comfortable voting a certain way. But once we kind of shift our thinking a little bit and understand the reasons why people get it, and the fact that it is such a small percentage from, once you go past the first trimester with every week of pregnancy, the numbers decrease exponentially. And it also goes to show that the majority of people would much rather have an abortion very early in pregnancy, like you talked about, so that they can get on with their lives. Once you go later into pregnancy, we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars potentially traveling out of state. There are not many providers that provide in the third trimester. And then in the third trimester, you’re talking like really serious medical complications where death could be the eventual outcome, and that has been the outcome.

Jameela [00:10:43] Of not, of not having the abortion in a late term death is the outcome? What do you mean death is the outcome of not being able to have that late term abortion?

Asha [00:10:50] So when you’re that late into pregnancy, it is because of a fetal anomaly and time is of the essence, essence, sorry. And so once you’ve put time based restrictions on an abortion, you’re increasing someone’s chances of that fetal anomaly to turn into sepsis and to harm the pregnant person and then potentially have her uterus removed.

Jameela [00:11:12] We’ve seen people die from this in the last few years.

Asha [00:11:15] Yes, there was a very famous case in Texas. Her name was Jennifer Alvarez Estrada Glick. She had medical complications, and not one doctor that she saw ever suggested terminating the pregnancy. She did not have regular access to healthcare. She was in a low wage job. She couldn’t afford to take time off, and eventually she died. And the medical experts who examined all her files and her case said that this was a preventable death. If someone had suggested to her, “Rhese complications are so severe at this point, to save your life, we need to do a termination.” And no one offered that to her. And she was young. It’s just so heartbreaking to see these stories, and they’re only going to increase the more we see restrictions now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

Jameela [00:12:16] I wanted to ask you about other countries, right, because I think places like Europe have, I think 12 weeks or 16 weeks as their kind of ban. What’s happening there? As in, do they have exceptions for later pregnancies in Europe? I feel like Europe tend to do things better than America in most areas. Sorry, America, no shade, but you’re a mess.

Asha [00:12:36] Sorry, but it’s the truth.

Jameela [00:12:38] Yeah. So how does it work over there? Because I don’t know, I remember knowing that I had like a time limit on how long I had to be able to get the abortion. I remember that when I was in England. I think it was maybe 12 weeks. And so that’s why I was really rushing, and, and I’ve, I’ve never actually looked into what happens beyond that 12 to 16 weeks because I’ve, I’ve not heard an uproar around, you know, women dying or, you know, going to jail etc. Do you know what it is in Europe?

Asha [00:13:05] Yeah, a little bit, so every country has their own restrictions. Germany, I believe, is 12 weeks. And as progressive as Germany is, they can be very restrictive after their cut off point where doctors can be, can lose their license. They can go to jail, and women can be criminalized as well. France is 14 weeks I believe. Poland right now is extremely restrictive.

Jameela [00:13:28] Yeah, there’s a heartbeat bill.

Asha [00:13:29] Yeah, it’s very, very terrifying to see what they’re doing, but now that they have a new prime minister, a new leader, I forget what the, every European country has a different name of their leader, Prime minister, president, that this could potentially change. And it’s exciting to see what may happen in Poland. In the UK, as you mentioned, although they’re not technically part of Europe anymore, they have abortion allowed, but there are restrictions. You have to go see two doctors. You have to take it under the supervision of a doctor. Beyond that, you know, the 1967 Abortion Act, beyond those parameters, you could face up to life in prison in the UK. And there have been women over the past few years who have been criminalized and gone through that process because the Victorian era law, the Offenses Against the Person Act, still exists. And so this is another really important point. Once you start putting restrictions, time based restrictions on abortion, beyond that, assume it is criminalization, potential jail, you know, the worst possible outcome. In countries that have decriminalized abortion, you see better health outcomes. You see more access to healthcare, and just a shift in thinking that this should not be, a health care procedure should not be criminalized. We want to offer support and resources and give people the dignity to make these decisions in a timely manner. Without putting those restrictions on them.

Jameela [00:14:58] 100%. And so part of what I think you argue for, you know, in your work and in the film is the fact that it’s all very well to say, you know, “I don’t think an abortion should happen after 16, you know, weeks unless there is some sort of an emergency.” But that is a very difficult gray area to legislate, so therefore it is much simpler to be able to, it’s legally much, much faster to deliberate on because also then the deliberation sometimes can take so long that the mother could die or experience huge health implications while the court is deciding case by case, is this worth it? Is that worth it?

Asha [00:15:35] Yeah.

Jameela [00:15:35] So therefore, removing the restrictions altogether means that we don’t cost someone those significant hours or days in which they could get sepsis, which is blood poisoning, if something goes wrong with an abortion.

Asha [00:15:47] Yeah.

Jameela [00:15:47] Because I know in the UK, I mean the UK is is I was just looking at it just now, it seems to be a little bit unclear. It says up to 23 weeks and six days, which is in line with the Abortion Act in 1967. But at some point they say that kind of 12 weeks is traditional, but then after that point certain criteria, specific criteria has to be met for you to be able to do it afterwards. How fucking vague that is.

Asha [00:16:10] It’s intentionally vague.

Jameela [00:16:10] And there’s no information about exactly what that criteria is than you’re allowed it up to six months, so therein lies the complication. And I think people just really don’t realize how how like how rare it would be for someone to be like, “Yeah, I’ve like changed my mind,” because I think that’s what it’s portrayed as, right? It’s portrayed as like selfish millennial or Gen Z entitled women who could totally, easily have that baby who are stupid and selfish and they just don’t want to do it anymore. They’ve changed their mind.

Asha [00:16:43] They’ve changed their mind. Yeah, that is a misconception.

Jameela [00:16:44] Because because before 12 weeks, before 12 weeks or 14 weeks, you can understand that like maybe someone didn’t know and now they found out and they don’t want it. But at a certain point of pregnancy, unless you have specific health conditions, it’s normally quite obvious that something’s going on inside of your body. And so then it feels like more of a kind of, “Nah, I don’t want this anymore.” And by the way, there are plenty of people who say, “Yeah, that’s still your fucking right.” It is still your right, even if you don’t want it to say at any point, “No, I don’t want my organs to be used for another human being without my consent.” But I do think a lot of people find that emotionally like a hard pill to swallow. And so most of the time, almost all of the time, it is just because of an emergency because at that point you’ve gone through so much and you run the risk of being

Asha [00:17:29] You’ve bought the crub. You’ve picked a name.

Jameela [00:17:31] Yeah, yeah, and you’ve like, you’ve become bonded. You know, a lot of the time, you know, unless you have, I guess, like a type of natal depression to this, this, you know, being that’s growing inside of your body. Very few people are going to be like, “No, I just don’t want it anymore actually, I was gonna, but now, like, I’ve changed my mind. I want to get this job.” That’s how it’s portrayed, and it couldn’t be further from the reality. So can you take us through some like one of the stories, for example, in your film that you feel like best makes this case?

Asha [00:18:02] Yeah. So the three stories, they’ve all got a little bit of a different reason why. And just before I go into one of the stories, I think it’s helpful to note that the three main reasons that people get later abortions. The first one is they find out information later that they could not have known earlier, so that’s obviously the medical complications. You don’t do the anatomy scan until 20 weeks in pregnancy. That’s halfway through your pregnancy very late into the second trimester. The second is that it is due to a later discovery of pregnancy. Majority of people who, especially have a wanted pregnancy, will find out about between 5 and 8 weeks. The first scan that an OBGYN will do is at eight weeks. That is the first time they can actually, you know, detect that you are pregnant, so they discover later pregnancy because they’re young, they have chronic pain, they don’t have a lot of experience with prior pregnancy. They’re on birth control. So those later discoveries can happen late into the first trimester. And the third increasing reason why people are getting later abortions is because they pushed later into abortions due to the anti-abortion barriers that we see in a number of states or in any country really, where there is a barrier to access. So one of the women in my film, her name was Mindy Swank, is Mindy Swank. She’s still alive, thankfully, but it was touch and go for her. She’s based in the Midwest. She, it was her second pregnancy. She found out in the second trimester that her fetus was incompatible with life. And she just thought, and she also came from a very, quote unquote, pro-life religious background. And so she was under the impression, “Oh, okay, there’s something wrong with my pregnancy. Well, if they’re suggesting termination, just go down to the clinic and, you know, get it taken care of and I can go on with other pregnancies.” She ended up seeing ten different doctors. She was caught up in the Catholic hospital system who do not provide a number of reproductive services, including abortion, birth control.

Jameela [00:20:10] Yeah, we’re going to get into that. We’re going to get into that afterwards.

Asha [00:20:13] Yeah. And so because of these delays, because of these barriers, because of her constantly having to go see different doctors, every week was passing. And by week 27 she started miscarrying, and her water broke. So she goes to the doctor and says, “Alright, this is it. Can you help me now? I’m clearly bleeding.” And the doctor said, “We can see you’re bleeding, but you’re not bleeding enough.” So they sent her home. She continues to bleed. She’s collecting the blood on pads. She goes back to the hospital the next week, and she dumped the bloody pads on the desk and said, “Is this enough blood for you?” And they legitimately weighed all her pads against an empty pad weight to make sure that she was bleeding enough for them to provide a termination. But at that point it was too late. She ended up going into labor. She gave birth to a fetus, and just a trigger warning here, you know, this can be very triggering for people who have gone through pregnancy loss, so I just want to put that out there. But she ended up giving birth to her fetus. It was, it only lived for three hours and 18 minutes, and during that whole time it was struggling to breathe. She was traumatized because of the whole process. And because of that, she ended up joining an ACLU lawsuit against the Catholic hospital system. But her, I guess her thesis statement was it never had to be this way. If I had gotten the termination early, I wouldn’t have gone through this trauma, so that’s one of the stories in the film.

Jameela [00:21:53] And people just don’t consider this. They just don’t consider it. And I

Asha [00:21:57] No.

Jameela [00:21:57] I really want people to understand the, how deeply embedded Catholicism is in specifically this area of the medical system.

Asha [00:22:08] Yes.

Jameela [00:22:08] Can you explain to me what a CPC center is?

Asha [00:22:11] So a CPC stands for Crisis Pregnancy Center, and they are usually a religious founded clinic. They’re usually very well funded by anti-choice, anti-abortion conservative organizations. And they’re very tricky because they set up right next to a real abortion clinic. And by the way, they outnumber real abortion clinics by, I believe it is 10 to 1 at this, at this stage across America. And they deliberately use misinformation and misleading tactics like they’ll say to patients that come in, “Oh, you know, abortion gives you breast cancer.” They’ll tell them they’re further along than they actually are. Oh, sorry early along than they actually are. So they say, “You’ve got plenty of time to make a decision. You’re only eight weeks,” when they could be 16 weeks. So they’re very, very obstructive in that sense. And most of the time they do not have a doctor on staff. They’ll offer a free ultrasound, but beyond that, they’ll make people watch videos about abortion and they just want to deter, their whole shtick is to deter people from getting abortions. And so it’s really awful.

Jameela [00:23:21] And I’ve had a friend who’s accidentally been to one of these places thinking she was going to get proper care and then realized they were just sort of giant statues of Jesus all over the place, and she could no longer judge whether or not they were telling the truth, that her fetus was healthy. And that was terrifying. It was challenged, legally challenged for these centers to be allowed to continue to purport misinformation like like wild misinformation and straight up lies. Can you explain what happened when it was challenged? Who challenged them and what the outcome was?

Asha [00:23:55] Yeah, so this was a Supreme Court case in 2018 out of California, the state. And the case was brought forward by Xavier Becerra, who was the attorney general at the time. They basically said, if you are a CPC or an anti-abortion clinic, not a medically licensed clinic, you have to put out some information, whether it’s a sign on the door or a pamphlet.

Jameela [00:24:23] A disclaimer.

Asha [00:24:24] Yeah. Sort of a disclaimer saying, “We are not a medical clinic, but if you are seeking an abortion or a termination, you need to go elsewhere. Here are the services you can access.” Well, the CPCs did not like that. They said you are compelling us to certain types of speech. This is against our right to free speech. And they won because of the makeup of the Supreme Court, so now CPCs essentially have license to mislead patients, potentially give them the wrong information and just tell them horrible things like, “If you have an abortion, it’s going to ruin your body. You’re not going to be able to have children again,” all these things that are not true or “Abortion is very unsafe,” which is also not true. So it was a pivotal Supreme Court for sure.

Jameela [00:25:10] Something wild that I learned from your work is that as of 2020, there were nearly 3000 crisis pregnancy centers in the United States, compared to barely over 800 abortion clinics, so this is a business. There’s a lot of money to be made from this. This is a really coordinated effort. How ready they were for Roe v Wade to be overturned.

Asha [00:25:34] Oh yeah.

Jameela [00:25:34] It’s terrifying and has really been staggering. And then to think of all these young people in need going to these places because they can’t find any other kind of care or they don’t have health care or they have any money, or they’re a teenager who can’t turn to their parents and tell their parents why they need to use their health care. This is the only place they have to go where their lives are potentially being endangered in the name of, quote unquote, saving a life.

Asha [00:26:00] Yeah, it it’s really awful the way that medical misinformation, especially I think this is a really important one to mention, that a lot of the narrative around abortion, not just on the anti-choice side, but even among some progressive peoples, a lot of Democratic ladies, they’re adopting the anti-abortion words and terms, so that just becomes cultural vernacular, and we don’t know how to push back on that. And so the anti-choice side have or they’ve been playing the long game for decades. When you mention Roe v. Wade, they’ve been chipping away at Roe v. Wade for many years through Supreme Court cases, through state restrictions, through their narratives and, you know, Senate testimonies where they’re allowed to just cite non-medical studies that have no basis in medical reality. And so that is the culture that they’ve been winning for a long time, but I think that is changing now. Ironically, since Roe v. Wade was overturned, we’re seeing a lot of gains for the pro-choice side, and that’s really exciting to see, and I want people to know more about that and how now is the time to push back and and talk more about this and be more bold with our narrative, with the facts. And we have all the evidence to show that it is a necessary procedure, and it is health care.

Jameela [00:27:29] It is health care. So can you tell us how we can help and why this year is so unbelievably important to be politically engaged? Because it’s a fucking testing time to be politically engaged because we have so much hideous shit happening on both sides, and it is it is pushing people to feel disengaged. And, you know, there are some people who are saying because of, you know, what’s happening in the Middle East that we need to even if we have to have, you know, Trump as a leader that’ll teach future Democrats that we draw the line at what is happening in the Middle East like that, that is not acceptable to us. And we will not vote for someone just because the other opponent is even worse. That we we are putting our foot down and people are really willing to take that risk, but I think their also not considering and I understand, I totally understand where everyone’s coming on everything. I can totally, I can totally feel the rage, but I also then feel extremely scared for what happens if we don’t salvage the last shred of opportunity to secure health care abortion rights for people here. So it’s just all these things. It’s just it’s like the trolley problem, you know, it’s

Asha [00:28:42] It’s a lot.

Jameela [00:28:42] It’s a real fucking hellscape to try and navigate. And I don’t know what the answer is, but I would like for you to explain what’s up for, you know, what’s at stake this year.

Asha [00:28:55] It feels so redundant and almost annoying to say this is a pivotal election year. Everyone pay attention.

Jameela [00:29:01] I know.

Asha [00:29:02] Because I feel like I tapped out in 2016, like that was my activism. I did the marches. Do I have to do this again? I think there are a lot of people, rightly so, overwhelmed, like you said, myself included. I don’t engage with it as much on social media because it’s too much. But I will say that this year is pivotal because there are two Supreme Court cases that are going to determine the outcome of access to one of the pills involved in a medication abortion, so the abortion pill, most people know it by. So those two cases are pivotal.

Jameela [00:29:37] Can you tell us about both cases?

Asha [00:29:39] Yeah, the first case and they haven’t been heard yet, so there’s a lot of details that are going to come out.

Jameela [00:29:45] Okay.

Asha [00:29:45] Because the FDA allows, in 2000 they allowed the abortion pill to be sold by pharmacists, to be dispensed by doctors. There is a challenge to that, and they’re trying to say, the anti-choice side, they’re trying to say that the abortion pill is harmful. Here are all these studies. And by the way, the case the judge that decided on that case out of Texas, he cited a non-medical study which has since been retracted. And so this is the danger of promoting promoting medical misinformation makes its way into legislation, into Supreme Court cases where judges who have a certain skew will use it as evidence to potentially take away access to the most common form of abortion, which is the abortion pill. So that is on the line. The second is access to emergency care, and we’re talking the medical exceptions. And this is a case out of Idaho because they’re trying to argue, “Well, we shouldn’t have to provide emergency abortion care even if it is a fetal anomaly, even if the pregnant person’s life is on the line, we don’t want to do that.” And so the fact that the current Supreme Court is even willing to take that is a big freaking deal. And those arguments are going to be heard in April, as soon as April, so that’ll be very interesting, but I’m very nervous about that. Where I am then excited, there are said to be a dozen states that are going to vote on state Abortion ballot measures. And this is where we’re seeing the biggest wins for abortion rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned. So since 2022, seven states have had abortion ballot measures. And every single time, even in states like Kansas and Ohio, the pro-choice side has won overwhelmingly protecting abortion rights.

Jameela [00:31:47] And what does it mean when they’ve won? So what have they won when they’ve, when they’ve won?

Jameela [00:31:52] Yeah. So some states are trying to enshrine abortion rights into their constitution. Others are trying to ban abortion restrictions saying they’re harmful in every single case. The winning side has been on the side of abortion access and abortion rights, essential reproductive and maternal health care. And that’s a really important thing to take note of, because we’re going to see Florida vote on this in November, potentially Missouri and a, you know, a dozen states. And so when over Roe v Wade was overturned, a lot of the abortion anti-abortion folks were like, let it go back to the states. States rights. This is the way it should be. Okay. Let us vote and watch what’s happening. They don’t like that. So now they’re trying to. And this brings us back to the presidential question. If Donald Trump becomes he will become the nominee, the Republican nominee, if he becomes president. The anti-choice organizations, the big ones around the country, national right to life, Americans United for life. They already have a plan in place of how Donald Trump, as the president, can push for federal abortion restrictions without Congress, without getting buy in from the judicial system or any other sort of state level. Like he can override certain things as an executive action. So that’s something to also take note of because they’re trying to push a federal abortion ban. Oh fun stuff. You know.

Jameela [00:33:39] I think he is going to be the next president of the United States in the way that things are currently going. And so I think it’s vital that you are saying what you are saying, because I don’t think people really think it’s possible. But if we disengage, those who actively want him in power are going to. Turn up, and they’re going to vote, and then they will outnumber us because we just didn’t show up. There’s enough of us who believe in this, you know, who can vote to overturn this and make sure that Trump doesn’t win. But some of us. Us are threatening to check out all together for, you know, many understandable reasons. But that is the reality for this country and for. People who get pregnant all over this. You know, in all of these states. And it’s just so sobering and it’s just so horrific to be cornered like this. As someone who’s political, who as someone who’s politically active, and to feel like you’re choosing some lives over other lives and it’s just deeply painful. And I don’t really have any words of consolation for anyone other than I feel you. Yeah. And I can’t believe that this is where we’re at. Yeah. God, it’s just all so dark. But the reason why I wanted to have you on and the reason why this chat is so important is because when young people, when people are, you know, engaging in this conversation, I notice them be like, yeah, abortion rights, abortion rights, abortion access. Yes. It’s like abortion is healthcare. And and it is it is a part of our necessity for our survival. But then they stop when someone goes at any, you know, at any point in the pregnancy. Yeah. That’s where a lot of people who are pro-abortion suddenly pause. Yeah. Because it feels somehow indulgent. It feels evil, right. You know, and I think that’s partially down to when I, when I, you know, is investigating what it is in our society that thinks that anyone would flippantly or casually engage in a frivolous late term abortion. It’s because we have such a deep mistrust of women that kind of goes all the way back to the Bible. Yeah. You know, this idea that women aren’t good or women aren’t smart or women aren’t conscious or thinking, you know, this is a tale as old as time, that women aren’t to be trusted to make the right decision for ourselves or for our own bodies. There’s no trust in women.

Jameela [00:36:14] Yeah, we are considered an unreliable narrators in our own lives and in our own stories. Yeah, the gender stereotypes are rife in this conversation. You’re right.

Jameela [00:36:24] We’re not. We’re not even believed about our own pain. Yes. No, we’re not. We’re not believed about things like endometriosis. People go years, you know, have their lives rest because people don’t believe it. When you say, I’m having pain during sex or I’m bleeding more than I should be, or something’s wrong with my period. Like we just fundamentally do not respect or believe women. And I’m aware that other people you know, from different genders can get, pregnant, of course. But this is this is an attack on women, right? This was set up as a as a general attack specifically to control and punish women for having sex.

Jameela [00:37:01] Yeah, essentially.

Jameela [00:37:02] And a way of taking away their agency, you know, because they’ve developed agency and being able to have the sex that they wish to have, but now they’ve been punished for that by having their agency removed of what the consequences of that sex are, even if the cause of that pregnancy is rape or incest. It just it just feels like such a deep hatred that’s being positioned as love. But what I was trying to say is that I think some people pause at the point where it’s like, yeah, we’re fighting for abortion rights all the way up to the end of the pregnancy. That’s where people stop and pause, and that’s where they disengage and that’s where they pull back. And then I suddenly like, oh God, I don’t know if I could vote for the law. That’s too far for me. And what your work is doing is explaining what you’re voting for when you vote for that.

Jameela [00:37:46] Yeah, I, I love what you just spoke about. You know, this culture of mistrust and denial of predominantly women’s bodily autonomy and the idea of a woman enjoying pleasure just for the sake of pleasure is so taboo and so awful to some people that they have to legislate it like it’s so ridiculous. I’ve had so many conversations with very well-meaning, pro-choice people who will say things like, oh, of course I’m pro-choice. Oh, but not in the seventh or eighth month. And I used to say those things. I used to be a former anti-choice, conservative Christian. I identify with the label pro-life until I actually started reading abortion stories, watching documentaries, following journalist who are doing these, you know, really amazing studies and reports on the need for abortion access. And so what I’m trying to do with my film is just to show people there’s no political narrative in this film. It is just animation. And these women telling their stories, telling the truth of what happens when you want to get a literal abortion. They use their real faces, they use their real names. And I was reading the other day that there’s this neuroscience study that says art and creativity can really bring a lot of collective healing and restoration to us as a society. And so I’m trying to channel that through my film. Like, how can someone, you know, be a source of empathy, be a source of education? Wherever possible? And just to show people that we can’t use these clickbait slogans and these throwaway statements like, oh, those callous women, those stupid sluts, you know? These are things that people say, yeah, you know, but when you look at the majority of people who get abortions, 60% are mothers. They’re not young people. They’re not this caricature sized idea of this evil, evil woman out there that’s just waiting until the seventh month because she changed your mind.

Jameela [00:39:56] I also wonder sometimes if the reason they’re trying to make abortion so difficult to get hold of is because in their twisted minds, they think that, you know, women are using it as a form of birth control. Another trick is the most insane thing I’ve ever.

Jameela [00:40:11] Oh, I’m going to forego cheaper birth control and just spend hundreds. Potentially cheaper.

Jameela [00:40:16] Much easier. Oh my God, I know, I know. And risk, you know, like I take those all the risks and go through all of the hassle and like the time you have to wait in which you become more and more and more pregnant. Yeah. It’s such a ridiculous fallacy that that exists, I think, because of this fear that like, well, if women have access to this, you know, type of quote unquote birth control, then they’ll have even more sex. So this is the only way we have to curb all the sex. These heathen whores are having you.

Jameela [00:40:43] No control.

Jameela [00:40:45] No control. That’s saying it’s just control, control, control. It’s like if we make if we keep making it easier for women to have sex with no quote unquote consequences, then they’ll be off control. It really just it’s hard to not believe that that is part of the motivation. I know that there are people who are anti-choice, who genuinely are coming at this from a place of not just wanting to demonize and control people. I know that they genuinely are, you know, it’s very easy to advocate for the unborn, you know, because all of that activism normally goes away once. That’s a person who likes living on the street or in poverty, right? I do believe that they are they are sentimentally triggered and that they’re not all evil people who hate women. Right. A lot of these people are women or are mothers who genuinely feel very sentimental about this. I think it’s so important to not cast all of them, as, you know, with a kind of, you know, and demonize all of them as exactly the same. They are a diaspora of people. But I think it’s just important to recognize that those people don’t have the facts, they simply don’t have the experience. And it’s almost impossible to imagine it. If they did have the experience, that they would still feel that way. And so that’s why documentaries like this are so important. Because if you won’t. But if you, by God, by the grace of God, don’t end up in that situation, at least you can see what that looks like. And then make a decision and ask yourself, what would you do in that person’s shoes? Because the system is not set up to help you. These people think that, well, common sense would prevail. Obviously, if I was in danger, they would come through for me. A lot of women who were anti-choice have realized the hard way that actually, no common sense does not prevail because we have a patriarchal medical system that does not believe and does not serve women. We have the highest fucking mortality rates. I think some in the developed in the developed world. Yeah. And so it’s really important. And you really open my eyes and, and you have removed that little part of me that paused. And I’m embarrassed that I even was a part of me. The pause. But it was just from a lack of. Cynicism. I believed that that we lived in a world where if a woman’s in danger, then of course, we make the exception. But I have now seen, over time and again, partially through your work, that that’s just not the case, that they will just leave these women to die. Even with ectopic pregnancies, it’s just insane. And so I humbly, you know, I humbly apologize to the universe. My own ignorance is here. But if I, with all of my work, can be in that situation, there might be others too. And so, yeah, we’re all in this together. We are all learning at the same time. I’m sure many other people are more advanced than me. But I’m figuring it out. And I’m so glad to have this conversation with you. And I’m so glad for your work. And is there anything else you want people to know before you leave us?

Jameela [00:43:28] Yeah, I think storytelling, when we see these stories of real people, it’s such a beautiful and powerful way to connect with an issue or an aspect of an issue that we didn’t know about before, because we’re not listening to a political speech, we’re not looking at data. We’re looking at someone who could be us, could be you or I. You know, we see this mirror of of.

Jameela [00:43:48] Someone we.

Jameela [00:43:49] Love and lived experience. Yeah. And I know you mentioned you were embarrassed, but I want to tell people there is no shame in going on a journey. I went on a journey myself, and it takes time for people to learn about these things. This is a big issue and people should have the room to learn and to grow. I love that you always talk about being a feminist in progress. We’re all in progress, so I’m all in favor of growth, and I hope that my film can aid in that growth in some small way as a tool for conversation, leaving you with something to think about, even if it’s one tiny thought that just stays in your head and makes you want to look up an article or a research paper or something, I just hope that it can be a point of conversation and connection with people in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Jameela [00:44:37] It’s also a great resource so that you don’t have to have the argument with the people that you know, or the people that you love who disagree on this issue. You can just send it to them and then ask them what they think. And I this podcast is supposed to be that for anyone who’s like, I’ve got, I don’t want to have the difficult conversation about pronouns or about sexuality, or about sexual assault or all these different things. So you can send this episode to someone that you know so that if you can’t be bothered or don’t want to have the traumatic conversation, this film and this episode, but especially I would say this film, is that for people, it’s a resource not only for us to learn, but for us to help educate other people in time to try and save these elections. Yeah. So you’re a legend. Thanks for coming. Thank you. And and may we all engage now?

Jameela [00:45:25] Now is the time.

Jameela [00:45:26] Yesterday? Yeah. It’s already too late. Lots of love. Yeah. No thoughts of love.

Jameela [00:45:32] Thank you so much to Mila, I appreciate it.

Jameela [00:45:39] Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. Iowa with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmy Gregory, and Amelia Shapiro. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at IWA, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording, sharing what you weigh at Iowa Podcast at gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Speaker 3 [00:46:13] I’ll weigh myself in stories and they say fate. I’m a storyteller, a traditional storyteller from the Appalachian region originally, and the way I learn to tell stories traditionally is a little bit different in the way that I tell them now. Now I’m like, okay, my role as storyteller has changed. It’s not just about the audience. It’s also about trying to figure out through my limbic system, cause the folks who taught me how to tell stories, I didn’t know much about how the brain is set up and cognition, and how they just knew a good yarn when they heard one, you know? But now that I know that the sublimation process, if I tell a story, is not just me telling the story every time I open my mouth, telling that story is also telling me. If you take my meaning, I mean, we are woke in libraries, and I’m curious when I meet somebody, what’s on the shelf? What’s on the shelf in your life framed, you know, is it shelf after shelf of the same story over and over again, dressed with a different cover is a different encyclopedia. Entries are facts and figures or notes or campaign slogans, or have you lived so I can talk to somebody for better, or to figure out what they got on their library shelf to see if our libraries are compatible or not. You know, Cozadd take the time to demand my own story.