287. Alabama IVF Ruling: How to Stop the Attacks on Infertility Treatments & Reproductive Health with Jessica Yellin

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Before we get started today

on our episode in which we talk about the state of the world, I wanted to check in with you about

how we are all dealing with the state of the world.

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Thank you.

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

We will be doing hard, important things today.

Today, we are so lucky to have Jessica Yellen here.

I know for me and a lot of people, we have been so

correctly focused on what's going on in Gaza that

some of us may have lost track of what's going on here.

And

we have some really important things that we need to pay attention to that are happening politically and legally in our country.

And today, Jessica Yellen, who always helps us stay clear.

and grounded and explains things so beautifully is here to help us wade through that and tell us exactly what we need to know on reproductive justice and many other things in this country.

So let's jump in.

Jessica Yellen is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand.

Over 1 million subscribers and followers across Instagram and other digital media rely on Jessica and News Not Noise to understand what matters, which experts to trust, and to manage their information overload.

She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy and Gracie award-winning political correspondent for ABC, MSNBC, and CNN.

Please follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Jessica Yellen.

You can also find the invaluable news, not noise newsletter on Substack.

Yay!

Hi.

It's so good to see your face.

How is everyone?

I haven't seen you all for so long.

Jessica, so someone on my team was trying to make sure they got your name pronounced right.

And I told them that before we were friends, which we're friends now, the way I remembered your name was that I used to always say, it's Jessica, the only one who's not yelling.

Yelling?

That's funny.

Thank you.

So here she is, Jessica, not yelling.

I know.

I tried to figure out a way to like play up yelling, but it's literally the inverse of what I do.

My whole brand is not noise.

So how is my last name noisy?

I don't know.

Isn't that funny?

It's so funny.

Okay, get started.

I know, sister, you're ready to pounce in here.

What we're talking about is the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision, which Jessica is going to walk us through, that effectively, if not directly, stopped IVF in vitro fertilization in Alabama and all of the implications of the snowball that will bring to us.

So, thank you, Jessica, because we reached out to you a few days ago and you just were so willing to jump on with all of your research and analysis.

And it's so helpful because this is overwhelming.

It's such a deeply, deeply personal thing and also such a patently political public thing that we just need to understand what it is.

So, could you walk us through, first of all, just what the Alabama ruling was?

Yes.

Okay.

I want to say one thing before we start, which is a lot of times when freedoms have been rolled back recently, I will hear from audience members shocked and horrified that this has happened and saying they had no idea this was even possible.

And why has no one stepped in to stop this?

And so before we get into this conversation, I think it's kind of helpful to say to everyone listening, this is your alert, your warning, you're being made aware now that these rights are on the line.

And if you care, this is the time to learn and get engaged.

So

what happened is the Alabama Supreme Court heard a case that related to a situation in an IVF clinic where a patient walked into where the frozen embryos were.

And it was vandalism, basically, picked up some frozen embryo tubes or whatever and dropped it on the floor.

And those frozen embryos were destroyed.

The patients whose embryos were destroyed sued, claiming this was wrongful death of embryos.

And the state Supreme Court agreed and in the decision held that frozen embryos unimplanted have the same rights as living children under state law.

So the people who drop the embryos can be found guilty of wrongful death.

Now, he also said in the ruling, I'm going to quote, all human beings bear the image of God and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.

Oh my God.

And he called

the embryos extrauterine children.

So this, now I want to say one thing before we go into a whole conversation we can have about other implications and fetal personhood, this movement.

The ruling is a little bit vague.

Like it doesn't actually say that this isn't a criminal case.

It doesn't firmly assert that unborn children can't be destroyed, but it creates a lot of chaos, confusion, and is a first step to asserting fetal personhood.

Yes.

And this was based on, and this harkens back to Comstock, which I'm sure we're talking about, but like 100-year-old law that basically said that parents, if their kids were hurt or killed by others, they had the ability to sue those people.

So they're saying embryos count as people.

Parents can count these as people under that law.

For civil damages.

In other words, the parents can sue them for money, but the state won't sue the person who dropped the embryos for murder.

Yet.

You know, won't charge them with murder.

Yet.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

There's obviously so many implications of this that are a week, a month, a year, five years down the road.

But the immediate impact as of that week and the next week on people who were desperately trying to conceive.

What was the immediate impact in Alabama on those clinics?

So three fertility clinics in Alabama announced that they are halting all IVF services.

So if you're in the middle of doing your shots or you have your frozen embryo and it's ready to be implanted, total pause, shut down.

And for people who are in the middle of this, they're getting injections, there's all sorts of problems.

I happened to interview, it's in my most recent newsletter, a woman, Elizabeth Goldman, who moved to Alabama to have a uterine transplant and conceive in her uterine transplant via IVF.

So she was born without a uterus and they gave her one.

She's in the middle of this, and it's now on pause for her, too.

That's both a health concern because she's on immunosuppressant drugs to make sure that she doesn't reject that uterus, can't do that indefinitely.

And she's also like upended her whole life for this and desperate to have a child this way, another child, and doesn't know what the future holds.

Jessica, why does this ruling

saying they can sue stop IVF for everyone else?

So, good question.

Okay, so here's what I'm going to first read you what the University of Alabama at Birmingham, that's where this woman's IVF was frozen.

They said, we have to evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages.

Because the court already said that you can be sued for punitive damages, and we don't know how much, like destroying a life could be millions.

And then maybe some enterprising prosecutor will try to sue criminally because there's a whole movement trying to advance this stuff.

It just pushes us into this realm of the total unknown where really anybody can experiment here and the medical system is frozen in fear.

Because you can't run a business, you can't run a medical facility if you face unlimited perpetual liability.

Are you going to sign up to work at that facility when you know if there's some kind of accident or if the power goes out and the embryos are unfrozen, that you will be sued.

You can't get insurance for that.

So it's not saying IVF clinics have to close, but it is de facto saying they do because there's no way to continue in that limitless liability place.

Well, here's one of the many bizarre and ridiculous things, which is after this happened, all the very conservative lawmakers who were cheering this, started hearing that this is going to pause IVF.

And they're like, oh, wait, no.

Like, we want more kids.

Like even Senator Tuberville was like, this is a great ruling and more children.

And the reporter's like, no, it means less children for IVF patients.

He's like, oh.

So now they're trying to introduce a bill that will protect IVF, but allow for fetal personhood, which like makes no sense.

Now everybody's tied in knots.

It's just a situation of total uncertainty, right?

Anti-abortion rights people don't even know what to do next on this.

yes that's such a good point because 78 of pro-life people

people who are i am pro-life 78 of them support ivf i mean they are really running up against that and i love senator tuberville's quote which was like

when he said oh no more people more kids we want more kids so i'm glad that this ruling came down and then they were like what about the fact that this will mean less kids and he said no no no no that's a separate question this is about abortion i think doesn't understand that.

So that is, but I think he does understand.

He knows that the personhood movement is all about abortion and has nothing to do with IVF.

And IVF is just an unfortunate casualty in the personhood movement, which is intent on taking away

any right to abortion.

Yeah.

And it has so many other implications.

You know, if they decide that this is a life, the fetal personhood movement can go in a lot more directions.

I interviewed Mary Ziegler.

She's an amazing legal historian and she writes about fetal personhood.

She's like, they could criminalize ill-advised but not illegal behavior like drinking while pregnant if you have a miscarriage.

This could also lead to limits on, you know, banning IUDs, birth control, the morning after pill.

Taking it further, you could even criminalize the birth control pill because if denying implantation is murder, then taking the pill is murder in that conception.

And one could, in theory, be prosecuted for the pill.

The list goes on, we could get into it.

But it's very hard to defend all that and then say, but on the other hand, IVF is protected, which is what a lot of Republican lawmakers are trying to do now, because politically, so many people are upset about the threat to IVF.

I mean, it's created a political box for the far right.

Yes, it sure has, because they're saying

women who do not want to be pregnant have to be pregnant.

And women who want to be pregnant have to not be pregnant.

You have a way of saying things.

Yes.

Correct.

It's ridiculous.

Yeah.

It's we love life so much that we are going to prevent it from occurring.

We want to protect it so bad that we'll make sure it doesn't happen, is what they're doing with the IVF thing.

Okay, can you explain personhood as a movement?

Because I think we've been talking about it a bunch, but like,

explain why anti-choice

activists have focused so much on this way of thinking, this legal structure to establish personhood as early as possible.

And this is as early as I've ever heard about.

Yeah.

So the concept of legal personhood is that a fetus has the same rights and protections as a person.

This could criminalize miscarriage.

It could criminalize anything that even prevents implantation.

So some go as far as saying a fertilized egg has rights and that blocking implantation itself is criminal, which is why some in the movement oppose IUDs and other forms of birth control, the morning after pill.

On the restrictive end, as I said, it could end access to IUDs, birth control, morning after.

More restrictive would prosecute people for those things.

And then the most restrictive version has some advocating prosecuting someone for possible murder if they miscarry, even requiring investigations of miscarriages.

So that's sort of the practical implications.

You asked what this comes from.

And there's this larger movement, a Christian conservative movement that believes that the Bible should inform how policy is made in the country.

They say, here's some of the language.

We need to address major policy concerns from a biblical worldview.

You've heard about the Federalist Society, which is a more intellectual, not religiously extreme in this way.

This is a much more religious version of that.

And both the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has ties to this movement and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Of course, she does.

Who in her,

it's eerie going back to her confirmation hearings where they asked specifically about IVF and she refused to answer that question.

I mean, that's

something crazy and rational

never come to that.

And of course it did.

And this is not even theoretical.

In Alabama in 2013, the Supreme Court said that pregnant people could be prosecuted for child abuse if things happen during their pregnancy.

Yep.

Alabama is the state that more than any other state prosecutes pregnant people for drug use.

So they're already, I don't want to say leading on this, but that is correct.

And if you're a person who's like, well, they're doing drugs, it'll be extend past that.

It'll be like you were riding a bike and you were pregnant and you shouldn't have been riding a bike it could go a lot further than just drugging out dancing i mean think of just anything they could investigate anyone who miscarries right yeah it's really important to take it all the way down to like follow the rationale so follow us no one is pregnant but there is human life in their conception right in their conception no one is pregnant human life which means a frozen embryo is a person

that

has rights that need to be protected.

What a lot of people's bodies do, including mine, on a monthly basis, which is if there is a fertilized egg that is not implanted because my body does that as a natural course of things and sheds its lining,

then how is it true that it is a life outside of my body, but not a life inside my body?

And if you take that to the next extreme, it's if I am a person who is desperate to have a child, but i've had many miscarriages and i decide to keep trying

keep trying to conceive and i keep failing to deliver a baby

how is that any different than dropping a petri dish you have because of your actions destroyed all of this human life because you knowingly went in knowing the high risk to all of those lives

inside of you

That's not a stretch.

And in the case of IVF, it's a very real problem right now, because for folks who aren't familiar, when one does IVF, you might get six embryos and you only implant one or two.

And then let's say you implant two, but one's not quite right.

They do what is it called selective reduction, which is abortion.

And then you have these other four sitting out there.

And you have to make a decision.

Do you pour those down the drain?

And then is that murder?

So, i mean the complexity of what they're opening up here is it's just hard to imagine a future where all of this is criminalized but the threat is there

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So the reason why there's no science, so they use God language, right?

Yeah.

Talk to us a little bit, Jessica, about

the make-believe separation of church and state in our country.

We call that the establishment clause.

It used to be a thing.

What happened?

Why don't we even pretend anymore?

It's very strange.

In Alabama, there seems to be a pattern of like thinking that all applies to other states, but not to us.

Okay.

And so this movement we talked about a little bit, Christian conservative policymaking, is arguing that that sort of whole notion of the establishment of clause of separation needs to be ignored.

I want to read to you some of what they basically say, which is that they are dedicated to the belief that America would be better off.

if more Christians would run for elective office at all levels because they believe that God has to be part of the decision-making process, and we have to deliberate based on clear biblical principles.

I'll add that Speaker Johnson of the House, who's now Speaker of the House, had spoke at a recent convention of one of these groups, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers.

And he said, what we're engaged in right now is a battle between world views.

It's a great struggle for the future of the republic.

So to be plain about it, this group of activists believes that that whole piece, church and state, was flawed and needs to be gotten rid of, basically.

Okay.

So let me guess none of these Christian biblical values are going to be based in ending poverty or war or feeding hungry people, right?

Let me just take a wild guess.

It's definitely not in their list of stated priorities.

Okay, so it's just on the current platform.

It's just the abortion part and the controlling women, neither of which were ever mentioned.

So it's just, it's the label they're putting on their controlling women.

As my sister said recently, is this all just an attempt to reclaim any sort of relevancy?

Are men just afraid that they're becoming irrelevant?

Like, are the men having a hard time?

Are the men okay?

This is what we need to ask.

It's certain men.

I will add that part of their platform is recriminalizing gay marriage and, in particular, gay sex acts.

They're also very anti-trans and anti-lgbtq generally also anti-trans transaction stunned i am is anyone gonna tell them

that

frozen embryos are literally non-binary

explain why because they haven't yet gone through the process they haven't had a gender reveal party exactly

but this is

of course it's a logical thing.

This is why they were like, sorry, IVF has to take the fall.

It's very easy to take the leap between

you can only

have

a

sperm and an egg come together and make life and that is life, then to extend and say, a sperm may not go anywhere other than for the purpose of making life.

Like when you make it all about that, of course gay sex is the next thing because that's a perversion of the intention of making life.

Like it's, it's all connected.

That's what they're going for.

I just keep thinking of Elle Woods saying so then under that circumstance, could every ejaculation that is not intended for conception be considered reckless abandonment?

Go, L.

That's the case.

I mean, they're talking about child abuse.

Yeah.

So what's going to happen, Jessica, and how do we stop it?

Well, okay, so the positive version is this is an argument against complacency, right?

So if you care about this stuff, got to decide is this a priority issue for you and what other issues are you willing to put in the back burner in order to make sure that this doesn't happen.

The next election could decide whether or not.

this becomes widespread practice in the U.S.

So the presidential level election, and we can talk about what Trump is proposing.

Let me bookmark that and remind me to get back to it because I want to be sure to say it's also the case that this decision is being made at the state level by a state Supreme Court, and the U.S.

Supreme Court can't even weigh in on it because a state Supreme Court has the final word on state law.

So, this is a settled matter in Alabama now until the legislature introduces something else.

There are elections, those are elected positions, and there are state Supreme Court elections across the country this year.

And if this is an issue you care about, it's important to find out if there's an election in your state and who to vote for.

Those people have enormous power and voters in many places do have a say.

So that's something you can do right now.

And the local level is really an effective place to act.

So that's one.

And it isn't just Alabama, right?

Oh, no.

There's at least like, I think more than a dozen places where the state Supreme Court is up for election this year.

And what I was told is

we could see similar actions in states wherever you have a very conservative state Supreme Court and some kind of thing in your constitution that has language that could allow someone to interpret into it fetal personhood.

Doesn't have to be explicit, just has to be something about valuing life.

And Florida is a state that has both those things, where we could see some movement into fetal personhood in the near future, because their state Supreme Court, Chief Justice, has hinted at it a bit.

And in your newsletter, didn't you say there were 14 states that had either pending or already existing personhood language?

Yes.

That could be, so this isn't, if you're like sitting there being like, Alabama, it's 14.

different states have that that could be acted upon in the same manner if they they decided to.

There's the state supreme courts who are powerful and one can vote on those to look at.

There's what you just brought up, which is 14 states are now considering bills to introduce fetal personhood language that would allow for criminalizing all the things we just talked about.

There are also another dozen or so states that are looking at the opposite.

protections for reproductive access, right?

So the other version.

And then 19 states have laws or language in their constitution that could be interpreted to suggest fetal personhood already

so plus 14 that's you know half the nation more

can you talk to us a little bit about what the trump proposals are from the other side because every time something horrific happens we're all like how could this happen how could this have happened but we're telling you what it's gonna happen right like it's gonna happen they're not hiding the ball.

No one's hiding the ball.

We cannot act surprised.

So tell us what they're saying they're going to do.

Okay.

So moment of Zen, deep inhale first.

That's my new pause on the news.

I've learned that sometimes one just needs to pause on the news and recent.

That's good.

Okay.

The New York Times has reported that they're not saying publicly this stuff.

It's all reporting through his allies and what they're saying privately.

So Trump has said privately he supports a federal ban on abortion at 16 weeks.

But beyond that, there are a number of people around Trump who have been leaders in the fetal personhood movement, have helped define some of the law and some of the novel court cases that we're talking about.

And what they have said they want to do is use an old set of laws that are collectively known as the Comstock Act

to bar the use of shipping of mifiprestone, which is the abortion pill, and possibly, and this is very out there, but possibly even through unilateral action without taking it to Congress or the courts, bar abortion based on this Comstock Act.

Now, the Comstock Act is a very old set of laws that were around pornography.

They banned the sending of obscene, indecent, or lewd materials in the mail.

It was just back in the days when we tried to legislate morality and limit use of pornographic material.

It has been used in the past back in the day to prosecute people who sent birth control or even pamphlets about birth control.

Flashback to Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger.

They founded what became Planned Parenthood.

So this still exists.

And

novel conservative legal minds are thinking that what they they could do is use this to argue that it's illegal to mail birth control.

I should also add sex toys or porn.

And on its most extreme end, you can argue that any implement one would use to conduct an abortion, to do a DNC, the medical devices are shipped, are mailed, right?

And so in theory, one could use this act to stop.

that as well, and then effectively bar abortion unilaterally by executive order.

Before everybody gets very panicked, I've talked to one of the most serious constitutional lawyers in the country, and he said he doesn't think that would stand up to scrutiny, barring abortion based on this.

But as we've just said at the beginning of this conversation, merely having one decision throws the entire thing into chaos.

Yes.

And then imagine how long it will take for this to work its way out in courts, et cetera.

In the meantime, doctors just stop acting because they don't want to be sued for millions of dollars.

They don't want to be sued for murder.

Yeah.

You don't have to ban IVF to ban IVF.

No.

You don't have to ban abortion to ban abortion.

No, there you go.

All you have to do is make it impossible to safely do the procedures to have it effectively banned.

Yeah.

To know that it's confidently legal and you won't be sued for it.

Right.

Can I just ask you a layman's question?

Please.

Why are they doing this?

Like, what is the truthiest truth as to what is this all for?

Why are these Christian conservative folks

choosing to go after this or gay rights or whatever?

Like, what is their agenda, their overall plan?

I mean, there's two answers to that.

One is for the people who are true believers,

I think there is a mission to return, not even return, to create that this nation was meant to be a Christian nation formed based on these traditional values they imagine of heterosexual couples living a certain way.

And they want to create that sort of

hyper-heterosexual, traditional utopia in their version and their conception.

I think Lena would probably have better language for how to describe that, but that's, it's some idealized thing that they have in their minds.

Yeah.

And I would say like the heterosexuality isn't even the important part of that.

The important part of that is what they're calling traditional is the man at the top.

Yeah.

Patriarchy.

That is what we're talking about.

The traditional heterosexual marriage, and what

this version of Christianity is insisting upon is that the man is the head of the house.

The man is the head of the government.

The man is the head of the woman's body.

The man is in charge.

That is what this is about.

It's about male power.

And Jesus is just a sticker they're putting onto it.

And by the way, not everybody who

buys that is a bad person.

Like this is the problem.

It's that

the people at the top sell this idea to everybody else.

I've been in those pews.

I've been there.

They teach that this is what God wants.

And so there are a lot of true believers who believe that what these men in the pulpits are telling them is what God wants.

The men in the pulpits, the politicians who are in bed with these men in the pulpits, they are not true believers.

They don't believe the shit they're selling.

They know it's all to gain power.

But there are masses of people who are sitting in those pews who are their soldiers who go out into the world to support these laws, and they do think they're doing God's work.

You know, that brought to mind something, which is one of the legal leaders in this movement pushed forward this case in Texas where a husband sued his wife for aborting the fetus and under a wrongful death claim, which is fundamentally, and as we said throughout this conversation, like in some cases, you're allowed to have kids, right?

But in other cases, they don't want to have kids.

And what's the through line is that the dude decides.

Yes.

Right.

So there you go.

As you're saying.

Right.

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Justice Ginsburg, when she

was the founder of the Women's Rights Project, so fucking brilliant and never not the incredible strategist.

She didn't want Roe to be be the case that decided abortion rights.

The case that she wanted to be the one that went to the Supreme Court was a one in which a woman, she was a captain in the Air Force.

She was in the military.

And at that time, you had, if you became pregnant in the military, you had to get an abortion or you would be discharged.

And she took that case and that was the case that she was bringing up to the Supreme Court.

Roe got there first because her case became moot, but she wanted to bring that case to say, this is about

government staying out of it.

It's just as much about you, government saying you have to have an abortion as it is you cannot have an abortion.

It's about stay the fuck out.

It's equal protection of the law.

You don't treat men in what is a

short-term disability.

They don't have to be discharged.

Yeah.

But this one, you make them discharge.

I think about that so much.

If that had been the case before the Supreme Court, where we would be now would be so different.

And do you know anything about

what this is going to mean soon for?

I mean, my heart, I just, I'm thinking about all of these people

in the midst of their IVF journeys right now.

And many of them are queer couples, right?

Of course.

Many of them aren't, but many of them are.

Do you have ideas about what's going to happen with same-sex marriage?

Oh, I'll say first on the people who are in this, a lot of people say they'll move states to be able to do IVF.

Usually, if you're doing an IVF, you have some privilege.

It's an expensive procedure.

And so they are, many people are privileged enough to be able to move states, not everyone.

And so That's one thing.

In terms of the implications for same-sex marriage, I mean, thinking that the language used in Dobbs in particular opened the door to overturning Obergefell and making same-sex marriage no longer legal.

The court has indicated and publicly suggested in decisions that they've allowed enough ambiguity to try to say that's not on their agenda, but should Trump be reelected.

I think, you know, a challenge to Obergefell and same-sex marriage is quite feasible, maybe even likely.

I mean, there are all sorts of of freedoms and protections that exist now that could be under threat with this court and these decisions going forward.

So, Jessica, I've been in many living rooms with you.

Hot squad, what you need to know about Jessica is like,

poor Jessica, okay?

She's the friend.

No, really, poor Jessica.

She's the friend who, when she shows up, everybody's like, okay, just tell us everything.

Like, she's explaining.

She doesn't ever

have like 20 notes on a running list

till I saw you.

She doesn't get to relax ever so

you are always

very calm even in those conversations even with our friends when we're peppering you with questions when we're freaking the fuck out you are very

i don't know you're just calm measured measured measured careful about

what are you feeling and thinking about the possibilities for our country if trump were to get elected again

i don't know what the future holds

What we know now

will likely not be our same reality then.

I can't imagine how quickly things change.

He says that he's prepared to be a dictator on day one.

His list of policy actions he wants to undertake depart from what we've typically considered democratic.

You know, sometimes we're surprised.

So who knows?

But I also think it's important to take him at his word because in the past, he's implemented the things that he promised and that everybody said he won't do, he did try to do.

And in a second term, he's going to have much more knowledge about how government works and how to pull the levers of government to get his things done.

A lot of the stuff he tried first term was in that category of what I described, but he didn't know how to do it.

That'll be different.

He knows how to push out people who are not, you know, sort of loyal to his vision.

And so I think we should expect him to pursue his extremist agenda in a more effective way than he was able to in his first term.

Yeah.

If this country elects him, we will get what we deserve.

There is no

hiding the ball.

I mean, he

committed treason and tried not to leave the office.

If he gets elected, he is never leaving that office.

And so there are no checks and balances ever again because he's not going to leave.

In what world does, I mean, am I wrong about that?

He said, I'm going to be a dictator on day one.

I don't know how much more clear anyone can be.

Yeah.

The one thing I'll say when people ask me this is what I predict is something unpredictable will happen.

Like,

we don't know.

Our world is so bizarre right now.

I just think some black swan event is going to happen between now and the election, that something none of us could have imagined has never happened before that'll sort of scramble the discussion because that seems to be our trend.

And right now, everybody's exhausted and in a little bit of trauma fatigue and a little bit numb.

And whenever I post on politics and the campaign, I get a lot of, oh, I don't want to hear it.

I know.

People aren't ready.

I think it's.

We're coming to the point where we should all open our aperture a little bit more to take in more of this stuff.

I still say don't go wall to wall, not time to be wall to wall on TV because it's a marathon, not a sprint.

But we need to be paying attention because it's important that whoever is engaged can educate their friends and social circles around the stakes and what we're facing.

It's like we have to get fortified.

This is the time for human beings that live in this country that will be voting in November.

It's time to like get rid of all the bullshit in your life, go for that walk every day, to give yourself the hour, whatever you need to do to get prepared, because I do think it's going to be a pretty wild ride.

And so many of us want to just not

even

get into it.

So many of us are not only just fatigued, but like.

I feel scared about putting my foot inside of that world

because it feels so gross.

And we all still have to just go for it.

We all still have to be a part of it and do our civic duty and learn as much as we can.

But I understand.

I think about November and I get a pit in my stomach because I don't know if I'm going to be strong enough to maintain and to show up and to fight for what I believe in because the way that they've made it all feel over the last, I don't know.

even the last 12 months is like, I don't have a fucking say in this shit anyway.

Why am I going to like hurt my own spiritual self to participate in this crazy world that they're just, they're like

trying to control?

I don't know.

It's frustrating.

Can you speak to the fact that all this shit is happening under a Democratic president?

A lot of people bring this up.

Just what is your response to how all this goes down?

So this happened.

at the state level by a state supreme court around state laws.

The federal government and who's the president has zero input in that.

So, about

14 years ago, there was an effort by some in the Republican Party to raise a lot of money and focus on winning state legislative races and flipping state houses to become Republican-run.

And Mitch McConnell, who announced that he's going to be stepping down from leadership soon.

To be clear, he stepped down from leadership a long time ago.

He's just going to be an official now.

Go ahead.

There's that.

So he made his sort of legacy and his life's mission was to bring conservatives onto the courts across the country in big numbers.

To make the Supreme Court conservative was the end goal.

But along the way, he helped usher into these state court at lower levels conservative judges as well.

So that's the federal judiciary, and then there's the state judiciary, and then there's state legislatures.

All those people are the ones really driving this train right now.

And it only gets up to the federal level when you reach the Supreme Court or you go to Congress, and that doesn't happen that often.

So the White House has very little say in all this under either party.

It's really what's going on in your local elections.

And that's why it is so important to vote in your local elections.

for local offices, state offices, and those Supreme Court offices in your state.

Can I say one more thing, which is we've painted this very stark picture, and I just am compelled to always show the nuance.

And this vision of the fetal personhood movement we've talked about is the most extreme edge of the conservative movement right now.

The majority of Republicans are not there.

And I know many Republicans who are not supportive of reproductive rights, but believe that where we are now is where it should stand, right?

Like it's up to each state what their laws are.

And many believe that that's where it should end.

And that what we're describing is also an affront to them.

So this isn't extreme.

It's just that these extremists are being very effective and they have an ally in Donald Trump.

How do the extremists maintain so much control?

Because when you're saying that, that sounds exactly like what we learn about gun control, that actually most of gun owners support common sense gun reform.

And yet, that doesn't matter.

That doesn't seem to matter.

It doesn't seem to matter how many Republicans support gun control.

We still can't have it.

So like, it doesn't matter how many Republicans feel great about IVF.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like the extremists still seem to be able to legislate.

So why does that matter?

Well, so it matters because I think there are a lot of It's not, I think, I see the numbers.

There are a lot of Nikki Haley voters, for example, who say they won't vote for Trump because of this issue in part, because of reproductive rights and women's rights.

And for Donald Trump to win, if you look at the math, he needs every Republican who voted last time, and he needs to suppress the Democratic vote even more, like substantially.

So it's a lower turnout than last time.

So the math for him is hard.

He needs those Nikki Haley people.

If they're not voting for him because of this, that's a meaningful consequence in politics.

You asked how they're so influential.

You know, when the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe, everybody was having a lot of conversations about how this was a 50-year project finally realized.

Anti-abortion activists have been focused, determined, and patient and consistent for 50 years.

And so they are now finally having some success with their agenda, but they were not successful for years.

And that led to a lot of complacency on the other side.

And all the while, you know, McConnell was putting conservative justices in, these movements were building power and they they were building legal doctrines and precedents to use and push forward.

And, you know, finally it all is coming together.

Yeah.

Everything you've just said, Jessica, with everything that Abby said, which is about how

from the first days of the Trump administration, it has been grueling and chaotic to our nervous systems and deeply unsettling.

And we conjured up the fight within us us to get through those times to speak out

and

at great cost to ourselves.

I mean, when you're looking and you're seeing assaults on your rights at every turn, it's very costly emotionally,

physiologically, everything.

And so I feel like a lot of people have

started to protect themselves.

from all of this, have really started to be like, I, for my mental health, I can't look at that.

And I get that so much, but it's also like when we

are saving ourselves individually, we are fucking ourselves collectively.

That's good.

Our self-protection will not protect us.

That's good.

Yes, it's right.

It's right.

It's like, I get the instinct.

I get that.

It sucks.

But also,

either way, it's going to suck.

It's going to suck to look at it.

And it's really going to suck to look at it when it's too late.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

My approach to this is I don't think everybody needs to pay attention to all this all the time, right?

Sort of manage your intake and maybe even pick your issues.

Like maybe this is the issue you care about and this is what you monitor for the next few months.

And then you can get more engaged as the conventions happen, right?

We're not even in the general election yet.

Whatever it is that works for you, because there is this balance between you do need to stay grounded and centered and calm so that you can engage effectively.

And that's different for each of us.

What I think is unhealthy is either extreme, like constant nonstop barrage of the traumatic information or like earmuffs not listening to any of it.

And I feel like it's a Abby hinted at this, but it's sort of Abby, like training for some big event that you know is out there.

I imagine you're not at your Olympic peak performance a year out.

That's good.

Right.

That's good.

I can understand that.

That makes sense.

Well, and that's why a plug for what you do is so good.

I mean, you really do just present the most important things.

You don't have an agenda of getting people super fired up in either direction, which is, I feel like, what our nervous systems are prepared for: is like, oh, God, here it comes.

And you're so good at that.

I have a last question about

this whole personhood and individual rights of embryos.

Are there any cases coming, or at what point are we going to have an analysis of

where the rights of

the quote-unquote embryo person

meet the rights of the person who is carrying it?

Because when I look at it, it seems to me that it's already been decided

that the rights of the embryo supersede the rights of the person carrying it because that person has to go to court and file a court case and say in cases like Texas, where who was the one who had to go to court and say, this pregnancy is threatening my life?

Kate Cox.

Yeah.

Yes, Kate Cox.

threatening my life.

And so I need to have an abortion.

And they said no.

They care about protecting the personhood of the embryo, but not the personhood of the adult woman.

This is what I'm saying.

If a person

has rights to life.

Okay, let's all just agree for purposes of the argument.

People have rights to life.

But then you've got Katie Cox going into court and saying,

hi, it's me.

I'm a person.

Therefore, I have

the right to my life, which is threatened by this pregnancy.

And they're like, oh, not right now.

So I honestly don't understand.

Like intellectually, I'm trying to understand.

So there is a case before the Supreme Court right now that doesn't go directly to the fetal aspect, but it does touch on when does the pregnant person's life becomes paramount, right?

And it's called EMTLA.

I'm not going to say right, EMTLA, which is this case that is about this emergency medical care.

For if a pregnant person presents in the emergency room having some like a rupture or some medical crisis, the federal government gives Medicare dollars to these hospitals and says under Medicare law, participating hospitals have to give emergency treatment to anyone who needs it if they can't pay in a medical emergency, including pregnant people.

And Idaho has a restrictive abortion ban that only allows abortion to save the life of the mother.

And so what's happened is you'll see that doctors will say, we have to wait for this presenting patient to get to a much worse place where her life is literally at risk now.

So let's watch her bleed.

More bleeding, more bleeding, more bleeding.

Okay, okay, now she might die.

So we're going to now intervene.

And the federal government has said, no, you have to intervene for stabilizing treatment as well.

And that is what the court is hearing.

They're going to hear it, I think like in April.

They'll decide it this term.

That's one case that'll sort of start to shape the outlines of this.

A lot of those other cases are going to be on the state level.

And while we're talking about the Supreme Court, I'll mention, remember, they're also hearing Mifiprestone this term, which is the abortion pill and how that can be used.

So we'll know more, and both those decisions will come down before November, before the election.

So we're going to know this year.

And I just saw on the news that CBS and Walgreens are actually now shipping the abortion pill.

which is, I think, a big important thing for people to know.

To states where it's legal.

Got it.

So it's not everywhere.

It's in some states, but that is a big change.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, Jessica, everyone's going to follow you.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

And then as we get closer, we're going to be training.

Yeah.

We're going to be training and getting our rest.

And then

you're going to come back,

right?

And help us stay focused, know what what we need to know, and stay organized and stay awake as we approach the worst time of the year.

Oh, you can sing.

Yeah, I know.

I'm really good.

Wow.

I guess it's not surprising your daughter can sing.

Yeah, she can.

So I just want the pod squad to know that while this is alarming and horrific and all the things, We are going to walk through it together.

We are not going to go to sleep.

We are not going to sleep.

We are not.

It's the right kind of heart.

We're going to keep showing up.

So

thank you, Jessica, for the work.

I seriously don't know what we would do without you.

You're so sweet.

Thank you.

I do, I cover the news every day on Instagram and in my newsletter.

I try to keep it calm and I'm going to focus a lot on these issues, but I'm also going to do what we talked about, which is sort of pick a basket of topics to.

keep everyone informed on and not cover everything all the time because it can get overwhelming.

That's smart.

Wonderful.

We appreciate you very much we can only hold so many buckets jessica right you give me so many buckets give me four buckets girl i know

the thing is news that doesn't suck i'm adding in news that doesn't suck like positive news news of like breakthroughs progress i sort of need that for my soul i think it helps all of us news that doesn't suck right it exists can you make that one of my four buckets then you could do like a sandwich where you're like a couple things of news that doesn't suck a few things that does suck and then a few more things that don't suck Correct.

A positive sandwich.

All right, pod squad.

We can do hard things.

We're going to do this one.

We love you.

Bye.

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