The Religious Right's War on Abortion

Eve Ettinger and Kieryn Darkwater comes on to discuss the (short) history of the evangelical fight against abortion access and birth control.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome. We welcome to it could happen here a podcast
here it happens. Uh, yeah, that that that happens. Yeah,
I'm I'm Christopher Long. I'm doing my best Robin impersonation
because Robert has abandoned us for another interview. We yeah,

(00:27):
we were. We are here to talk today about the
fact that it did, in fact happen here, by which
I mean, the Supreme Court has essentially, by fiat overturned
drove Way and allowed Texas as a just draconian, weird
snitch paying, indescribably illegal anti abortion law to go into effect.
And you know, a lot of people I think are
shocked by this, and I think we're all sort of horrified.

(00:50):
But for those of us who grew up in sort
of right wing, magelical Christian communities, and watch how they
organized and watch how I'm mobilized, it's not really a surprise. No,
I'm so bored with everybody's surprise. Please stop. I've been
saying this for so long, so long, so just like
just like standing in the street screaming from the rooftops.

(01:13):
Just please, yeah, y'all listen now. It's like like when
there's like a list of like the set schedule for
a show and then you're surprised that it actually had
that they do all those songs. Yes, it's like it's
like the writing has been on the wall and the
and the floor and the paper and the years, forty

(01:38):
fucking years, like there should be there, like there should
be outrage, but there should be no shock. Yes. Correct,
Garrison's also here. Hi Garrison, Hello, this is that could
happen here. We're talking about Texas is Um abortion ruling
and well, and then in the Supreme Court's ruling on Garrison,
Christopher already said that they're here. And then who who

(02:01):
are our other two people today? I'm Karen Darkwater. I'm
the co host of the Kitchen Table Cult podcast and
also a Democratic Assembly District delegate for California, and I
have feelings. And I'm Eve Attinger, the other co host

(02:21):
of Kitchen Table Cult podcast and angry writer. Mostly I
think all of us on this podcast could be qualified
as angry writers professionally angry online. I just realized we
should probably say that Karen and I grew up Quiverful,
which is you know, relevant to this subject. Yeah, we

(02:45):
should go into because I think all all four of us,
UM have grown up in some degree of of the
of the more extreme Christian factory. And yeah, you two
specifically have some what why why don't you explain to
the listeners kind of what your background is like. I
don't know, like the text version of it, because we
have other other things to talk about as well. Okay. UM.

(03:09):
I was raised as part of the Sovereign Grace Ministries
cult and was homeschool K through twelve and UM the
oldest of nine kids. My family were hardcore, quarter full
courtship people. UM. And then I left and got married
and then got divorced and got out and it exploded

(03:32):
my whole family and now they're all out too nice.
Very similar to Eve, with the exception of UM. My
parents did not go to Sam and Grace. They did
their own thing, and we're their own cult and church
hopped around a lot. Um. I'm the oldest eight ish

(03:53):
my parents had. My mom had ten full term pregnancies,
but two of them were still born, so I'm the
oldest of technically ten, but in reality eight. UM also
homeschooled K through twelve, grew up being told that I
was supposed to be, you know, a housewife and have
lots of babies, ran away in my eighteenth birthday, got married,

(04:15):
was married for seven years and a surprisingly healthy ish marriage. Um,
got divorced, started HRT, wound up in California, have been
working through all of that ship for the last like
twelve years at this point. And we grew up together
sort of. We know each other from high school. We've

(04:35):
been you know, conspiring to take over the world since
we were like fifteen. Yeah. Yeah, we've been friends since
we were like fifteen and did a lot of writing
in the day, and we still do. Like everything that
we're doing now is still stuff we did in high school.
It's like everything and nothing has changed. Like we're still writing,
we're still doing podcasts. It's just, uh, we've we've switched. Uh.

(04:59):
We were doing pod us when Audacity was in beta,
Like it was hard. Yeah, I guess I'm in the
slightly weird position of being in a group of people
where I had probably like I had not even probably
I had the least funked up right wing Christian childhood.
But yeah, I still grew up in a I guess

(05:22):
more mainline like a town that was sort of dominated
by a sort of more mainline Evangelical University. It's as
hard to say, go back to the beginning on this
because you can pick like seven millions of roments. But
I think since since we're sort of focusing on abortion, um,
I want to start by asking about the story of

(05:45):
sort of how the Evangelical started caring about abortion, because
that's that's a relatively recent thing, especially compared to sort
of Catholicism, and so yeah, I guess how how how
did that start? And how you know what what sort
relationship between that and and the birth of the modern
religious right. Well, have you heard of Philish? Lastly? Philish? Laughly?

(06:10):
So much? Um? Gross, Okay, I'm not enough rage just
more than Enoe. I was trying to think of like
an appropriate like horror sound effect to go right after
her name. Yeah, we can. We can get Daniel to
add a horror Daniel add the worst possible sound effect

(06:34):
you can think of for after you says do you
know philis shop Philip shoply if it will not be enough,
but we have to try. Yeah, it will not, It
will not be dark enough. But just no, I'm just
sitting here being like, there's so much information. If I

(06:54):
just start is going to be a waterfall and like
somebody's going to have to jump in and be like
stop talking. Yeah, okay. So back in the sixties and
the book Jesus and John Wayne by Christ and Dum
gets into this a lot um, the church was having

(07:14):
kind of like a crisis of self in a lot
of ways. Um, this is the height of the free
love movement, and the Vietnam War is going very badly
and uh, you know, the church is losing youth to
cynicism and drugs and sex and like. So there's this

(07:36):
this whole like contingent of like OCEHP we have to
like get the political and religious stuff back on track
according to our belief system um, and birth control and
abortion we're not really part of the picture um for

(07:56):
that that strategy until like the eighties, and it was
kind of this whole like thing that was a manufactured crisis, um,
but it was it was the thing that they could
get voters of both Catholic and evangelical backgrounds to coalesce around.

(08:17):
And they stumbled into this because fucking phillashial athlete was
um really good at direct mail organizing. She was able
to get mailing lists and get like housewives with free
time to get on the phone and call elected officials

(08:40):
and just kind of show up storm Barton, storm Capital
Steps and like talk to officials and get you know
this like overwhelming appearance of like your constituency is for
this thing um, which is a really common thing that
you see in the religious rights still to Yeah, mailing

(09:02):
lists have such a has such an interesting background and
right wing organizing, but that would be like physical mailing
lists back in the day. Lots of the big names
in in like the growing fire right to that, and
even today you can even look at like stuff for
January six with like Trump's email list follows the same
follows the same strategy, and like the left ing the
Democrats never do this. Ship well, okay, actually there's there's

(09:24):
one instance. So there was someone who was involved with
shlafley Is organizing and the mailing list stuff who was
who flipped and was participating in Act Up New York
organizing and taught them how to use mailing lists. So
sure Sarah Schulman's book about Active New York gets into this,
and it's really interesting to see, like, but I think
that's the only instance I can think of that like

(09:45):
the left picked up on that, but shlaughly started it,
focused on the family, picked it up, everybody ran with it,
and it is the default method now for organizing a
block voter base. Yea. And one of the things that
she was doing, so she was against the r A
and that was like her thing was the r A

(10:06):
is going to actually limit women's rights. And it was
kind of about, like, you have certain protections as a
housewife because you're entitled to like this level of support
and all of this stuff, and like you don't want
to be drafted. And so that was kind of how
she was framing that conversation. And she framed in one
of her Equal Forum newsletters the conversation about abortion as

(10:30):
being tied up in that, and that got people's attention.
And she was a Catholic, and the Catholics are have
consistently been against abortion, and the Evangelicals up until that
point were not, and they really just wanted to separate
themselves from the Catholics on this issue. And they called
it therapeutic abortion. So if it's like rape, incest, or

(10:51):
like dangering the life of the mother, they assumed that
those were reasonable reasons to do that, and they, you know,
we're worried about overpopulation, and so they were talking about
birth control is a good thing, and and the Catholics
were against all of it. And so Shafley was able
to mobilize this Catholic and Evangelical female voter base. Um,

(11:17):
white ladies, primarily white women. Um, white women are always
the problem. Um too move the the attention and the
conversation in this particular direction. And once they killed the
e r A, the rest of the evangelical political leadership

(11:40):
on the right, we're like, okay, this is like we're
crossing the ecumenical aisle. We should pay attention to this. Um.
So I mean, I've got um this this book in
front of me, here, all my sources here. So this
is The Evangelicals by Francis Fitzgerald, and it's kind of

(12:02):
the definitive history of the Evangelicals in America, and it's
fucking great. Um. One of the things that she traces
is this whole conversation. And there's this line in here
where it's like the Southern Baptist Convention affirmed a like
neutral stance on abortion, like against abortions on demand and

(12:24):
like you know, doing it thoughtlessly, but like they were
neutral on the concept overall until sucking yep, as they're
like group doctrinal policy. And that's around when like the
moral majority started becoming a thing, and also when people

(12:47):
were starting to freak out about like they're not being
a majority of white people. And at some point the
the rhetoric turned from well, I mean, it's always been
like about the babies, but at some point it got
translated into we have to literally outbreed the left, which

(13:08):
is what I grew up in. Yeah, so we grew
up in UM under the influence of Mary Pride's The
Way Home and The Long like All the Way Home Heard,
two books that she wrote about kind of that kicked
off the quiverable movement. UM. But let me go back.
I want to I want to go through this timeline

(13:29):
that I pulled pulled together yesterday. So the Moral majority
was started by way Rich in nineteen seventy The Southern
Baptist Convention started their pro abortion or neutral toward abortion
policy in in nineteen seventy two was when Schlafley started
opposing the e R A. N. Seventy three is rov Wade.

(13:50):
Nineteen seventy four is when Schlafley's newsletter goes out arguing
that the ear A is gonna make abortion you know
on the and um Billy Graham is still pro abortion,
and then Carter loses in yeah, and that's when the

(14:13):
whole thing flips once Reagan wins. That is that is
such an interesting timeline of events and basically basically it
went perfect for them, except except for like Roevie Wave
was a little bit of like a hiccup, but like
they really were successful in organizing in a way that's
almost kind of unparalleled in the ramp up to Reagan

(14:35):
getting an office, right, and then Mary Pride was in
the late eighties, and like it was so she like
founded the coverful movement of the like, actually, women, you
are being um contrary to your own satisfaction for yourself
if you are staying at work and not having babies,

(14:56):
and you will be like fulfilled if you go home
and keep house and had babies. And birth control is
against God's will and is like thwarding your like self
fulfillment and your best purpose. So like that's the book
that kicked my parents down the quiver full road. Yeah.
I think one of the interesting things here is and

(15:18):
you see this like in Italy too, although it's a
less right ring form with with the Christian Democrats. But
it's like this is like the the focus on, like
the sort of Christian focus on on rolling back feminism
and then bringing women into their movements is something that's
very very important to not just anti abortion stuff, but
to this sort of the broader rollback of of the

(15:40):
left over the whole course in the twenty century. And
you see this in you know, in the way that's
sort of you know, what what what what the left
is doing at this time, Like they have the feminist movement,
but the feminist movement in a lot of ways is
detached from sort of the workers movements, and this becomes
like the way you roll back the worker's movement is
the workers movements ignoring women, and so you know, the
right targets them and wins and and I think also
you know, and this this is also you know, we

(16:02):
talked about this sort of with Reagan's alliance with the evangelicals. Weird,
but it's somewhat tenuous, but you know that this is
you know, in in in a lot of ways, this
stuff like these people that this is more matority, like
this is this is how neoliberalism happens, and I think
like in in a lot like this, this is sort

(16:23):
of like I guess like you could have it like
the sort of you know, it's it's one of the
sort of electoral shock troop things that that happens to
start pushing this stuff. Well, it's such a class and
race based thing. And this is why that, like the
pushing back against feminism stuff started being so popular among
this particular group. I think is you had this idea
of like, oh, ship, this means that if our husbands

(16:45):
leave us or we leave them, we have to support
ourselves because we might might not be able to give
like stay at home wife levels of alimony anymore because
we won't have the legal protections under the e r
A if it passes, so like, uh, that means we'd
have to work. And that's not what white ladies do.

(17:05):
You know. It's just kind of like this like white
lady fragility thing. You know, it goes all the way
back through everything. Yeah, it becomes just like it becomes
this hammer that you can beat like everyone else with
like whatever sort of like and I think this is
why there's so much shock about Texas right now is
because It's like, um, the only women who are going

(17:30):
to be like actually introduced to new dangers right now
or the uterus having people introduced to new dangers under
this abortion ban under this new policy is white ladies.
Everybody else has been vulnerable in this way already, and

(17:50):
so the shock and surprise is like, Yeah, being a
white woman does not necessarily protect you from the patriarchy. Yeah,
especially if you're not rich, Like if you have money
to fleet the state of Texas, you're fine, but otherwise,
like you're just sucked. Racial solidarity screws you over once again.

(18:16):
M hmm. Everything comes back to racism, honestly. Yeah, Like
I think everything with this coalition is it like a
lot of the original basis of this and you can
talk about was more than I camp, but was about
like the original thing they were trying to do was
stopping desegregation from happening and maintaining desegregation, you know, And

(18:37):
this this feeds into sort of private school stuff. Yeah,
even take it Away movement started. I'm like, so have
you heard about Jones University? Sound effect for that one too?
We could we could talk. I'm planning and writing a
Bastards about Bob Jones University coming up here soon to degregate. Yeah. Yeah,

(19:00):
uh that only and like it was like like ninet
nine they allowed interracial dating, I think, Yeah, but they
were I think it was like yes, but also only
if your parents agree. Yeah, we still require parental consent.
All of all of my English was by Bob Jones
University Press. We ran into that a lot too. Yeah,

(19:24):
And the fun thing about the English is that you're
not actually learning English. You're learning like propaganda through the
veil of English. So like you learn about like climate
change denialism through your English program. Just just it's one
of the most most fun things. Yeah, is the way
that they structure their education. And like oddly to like
I'm not sure this is similar to I don't know

(19:45):
how your personal opinions on abortion evolved throughout your process
of de radicalization. Yeah, but like like like for me,
like for some reason, that was one of the last
things to change, Like I I got on, like that
was one of the last things to actually get like
kicked off of of my brain. Like I like I

(20:05):
changed on like a whole bunch of other views around
around like queerness and stuff, like way before I switched
around abortion, it was one of the things that like
they really like, like I think that's their propaganda, and
it really was able to like sink sink its claws
into my brain. Well, it's like it's like the Q
and On stuff and all of the like mythology around

(20:27):
sex trafficking that we have right now is like it's
all about save the babies. And then that's like engender
such a lack of critical thinking because your emotional engagement
locks immediately and they can convince you of anything and
most of it's not true. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah,
I think it really is similar to a lot of mean,

(20:48):
all the qun stuff we're cut and stuff you know
that that was popped that was getting very big last year.
It's really just a continuation of this same thing. It's
just with it's just for the new mask on um.
A lot of this kind of stuff play is on
the same interest that is put into focused by the
same bad actors. Yeah, Like, it's honestly not surprising to
me that so many evangelical Christians and just like generally

(21:13):
right wing people fell for Q and On because it
already confirms all of their priors, Like they're already believing
most of this stuff and it's just like, oh, sure,
I can make that leap of logic, and like for us,
we're like there was, you know, a whole gymnastics of
course you had to go through, but they were already
already there. Okay, I want to jump in here and

(21:34):
tie up some some threads between these conversations, because one
of the things that these these conspiracy theories and the
like anti abortion stuff having common is anti Semitism and UM.
And so the mythology of the Q and on, like
celebrities using babies blood for skincare kind of thing goes

(21:56):
back to the Middle Ages to blood libel, which is
an anti Semitic um mythology that was used to excuse
like murdering lots of Jews um. And the similarly, the
whole conversation around abortion, the using stuff from the Old
Testament to proof text your evangelical belief in like like

(22:22):
the you know, life starts from conception kind of thing
um goes against Jewish tradition and Jewish understanding of these texts,
Like the Jewish tradition is life starts at the first breath,
so like if the baby is viable on its own
and able to come out and like then it breathes,

(22:43):
then it's a life, then it's a person. That's when
the spirit enters the body. As far as I'm my
understanding goes, and so the like evangelicals again using biblical
literalism and proof texting and trying to you know, shape
the Bible into a uh texts that they can reinforce

(23:05):
all of their prior beliefs around, rather than reading it
as literature with a historical context and like like collective
understanding by another group of people, like it's just one
of those another one of those examples, and so this
is built into it is this like yeah, well the

(23:25):
Bible says this that they It's like no, actually, like
that's not how the rest of the world has interpreted
these same texts. This plays into so many other things

(23:46):
that the right is currently grasping on. Like we we
could usually talk about the intersection and not not even
not even this intersection, but the direct continuation of anti
abortion stuff into anti vaxx stuff, Like all of these
things are the exact same thread. They all come from
the exact same place, and it's propagated by the same people. Um,

(24:07):
Like all of these things like once you start to
look into this, you're like, oh, no, it's all the
same thing. It's always wrapped up in this same spiral. Yeah,
I mean the m and it goes into using essential
oils for like healing and like not trusting doctors and

(24:28):
like there's good reasons to mistress the medical institution and
like big pharma. Not for these reasons though, I'm sorry,
like Glonial Silver maybe not, Like we couldn't if we
went to the doctor as a kid, like if our
parents were got to the doctor, that was that was
like a breach of faith. Um, you know, yeah, my

(24:53):
mom's a nurse, so like we actually had like skipped
a lot of this stuff. But Karen has stories. Yeah,
my parents they got involved in this cult called Cleansing
Stream and that was where they were introduced to demonic
possession and also faith healing, and they left the cult
because they believed the demonic possession levels of that group

(25:14):
was ridiculous and it was, but they didn't leave behind
the faith healing, so did not Like I literally didn't
see a doctor from the time I was like maybe
five until I was eighteen, and I went to the
doctor and I was like, I know, I had my

(25:35):
tetanus before it was ten and everything else nothing happened,
So please catch me up, because I didn't see anyone.
I had literally like infections that could have been treated
with antibiotics and cleared up in like a week that
lasted for like two years because my parents were that
adamant about the doctors being evil. And the reason was

(25:58):
because in the concordance, if you look up the word
uh for like medicine, it's parmachea and farmachea translates into witchcraft.
And so my parents were like, well, obviously that means
medicine is witchcraft, and witchcraft is of the devil, So

(26:20):
therefore all doctors in all medicine is bad. Excuse me?
Did they still take communion because that's also witchcraft? That's
that's right. But it was okay because it was Jesus
blood and body and not totally this like expired thing
of grape juice that has been sitting around in the
church closet for like who knows how long, for like
at least twelve years. At least it's aged grape juice.

(26:44):
I blank communion on all my witchcraft practicings. Now it's
got a lot of weird projection stuff with it where
it's like like blood libel. It's like, okay, so you
are from a religion the basic practice of which is
thinking something you think is blood, and so we are
now going to accuse everyone else of doing the thing

(27:04):
that we do as a religious tendant. But you know
the stuff doesn't that narcissist thing of accusing everybody else
of doing what you actually do? Yeah? Yeah, And I think,
you know, I think there's kind of a at least
this is something that I've read into, is that like,
you know, it doesn't do that much good to point
out that there's beliefs or inc consistent like something it
doesn't matter, which it doesn't matter. Okay, so you'll know G. K. Chesterton, right, Yes, Okay,

(27:32):
So G. K. Chesterton was a British Englican pundit um
had like you know, wrote a bunch of you know,
cute little cozy mysteries, but also was a Catholic theologian.
And in his book Orthodoxy he has this concept which
is like outdated like ablest terms, but I'm going to

(27:53):
run with it because it's a really good analogy. Um.
He calls it the Madman's box, and he's like the
ad Man is the most sane of all creatures because
anything that does not work in his reality, he removes
it does not exist. So everything within his universe, if
you accept the terms of his universe, is true. And

(28:15):
I think about this all the time when you think
about fundamentalists and the stuff we grew up with is
but like, if it is going to threaten your core
logic system, remove it. It does not exist because it's
a you can, you can, and the like his whole
thing was like, actually, like the universe is huge, and

(28:36):
like we can't control it, and like we have to
get okay with that knowing things, which I love because
that's true. And the people we grew up with just
can't do that because they believe that like God is noble,
the universe is noble. And also, um, we're right about everything.
You can't. You can't rip someone out of an alternate reality.
It's not it's that's not how that works. You have

(28:56):
to you have to slowly coax them up with breadcrumbs
and even and that can take that can take years
or decades. Like you can't. There's there's never gonna be
a switch. Okay, So let's talk about our own shifts
like when did you when did you start believing that
abortion was cool? Like everybody here and what changed well

(29:18):
around when I was like fifteen or sixteen, Um, I
was in the years prior to that, I was learning
my own like queerness, which was kind of pulling me
out of some of like the harder beliefs that I
was into. It's like a it's like a preteen um. So,
like queerness was like the first step. But abortion was

(29:39):
like the last thing to crack because you're so ingrained
in this thing, like no, like you have to like
i'm i'm I'm against killing people, and if babies are people,
they have to be against killing babies, you know, no
matter what kind of age they are. That gets so ingrained. Um.
What what got me out was learning like more about
um philosophy of like bodily autonomy. Um. So that that's
the kind of thing that was like the last thing

(30:00):
to crack. It's like learning about the importance of autonomy
and how that extends to pregnant people. Um. And so
that was the but it was, yeah, it was it
was like it was the last thing from like my
right wing like from like my far right wing upbringing
to get expelled, like it. It stuck around for a
ridiculously long time. Like I already considered myself kind of

(30:22):
like a social democrat, but I was still but still
was like yeah, but I think abortion should be avoided
at all costs. It was, it was, it stuck around
for such a long time. Yeah. That that was just
like for me too, And it was interesting. So like
my my like immediate family was like my parents were
like pretty liberal, but like everyone else around me was
like like extreme, like you know, it's far evangelical people

(30:46):
and like that. That sort of like the the well,
the pro life people have a point, we shouldn't kill babies.
If if you have to do abortion, it should be
like extremely rare, and like we should try to stop
it like that. Like that was what was one of
the sort of full things that I picked up, even
though like you know, like the anti abortion protests will
show up my school and I'd be like ha ha,
they're doing creation, but like you know that that like

(31:08):
that that the sort of like oh, well you don't
you don't want to kill babies, right? Like that that
took like even when I was like sort of going
further left in high school like that took really until
almost like college before I was like, wait, this is
ridiculous and sort of started picking up. Yeah. Again, it
was partially the bottle autonomy, and then partly it was
about learning the actual history of of what this stuff

(31:33):
is about and like coming like understanding the fact that
like it's not actually about none of the people talking
about this like actually genuine they care about the lives
of babies, like it's it's not about that, and like
abortion isn't soundmentally about that, and you know, and and
you know it's in some ways, like you know, then
this is a lot of people sort of will do
this thing where they like they like yell at the

(31:54):
at the Amagel closers like you don't care about babies,
like you'll shot them off the war or you're like
you let them like starve. It's like no, they don't care,
like it's it's not about that, it's just about sort
of yeah, and I think, you know, and I think
and I think like even a lot of people sort
of still get this, like don't understand that very well,
even even like the liberals on the left that like

(32:16):
they don't care, like it's it's it's it's just about
power and not anything else, and that you shouldn't like
take their argument seriously. Yeah. Yeah, So for for me
it was it was twofold. When you talk about like
the emotional thing that pulls you out of out of
like a illogical belief. It was one, I got additional

(32:37):
data about how birth control works. And two I had
a friend who had an ectopic pregnancy who was a
Catholic hospital and almost died because they wouldn't help her
out in time because even though it was very early
and it was not viable, the Catholic hospital would not
wait until like required her to wait until she was

(33:00):
at death store to intervene to save for a wife,
thank God. So that was the that was the emotional
thing that like kicked that down the road. The other
was just learning about like how conception works and then
the math of it and like so like seven out
of ten fertilized eggs will not implant in the uteran

(33:22):
wall and gets left off, like you can have a
whole lot more conceptions than you have pregnancies and you
will never know and that is perfectly normal and um
and just understanding that like taking birth control actually reduces
the risk of that taking oral ramonal birth control means

(33:45):
that you have like far less chance of having a
lost conception. That way, I was like, oh wait, so
if they were actually pro life, they would be making
everybody go on birth control because if they actually believe
to that it started at conception. Oh fuck. And and
of course like later on and this is maybe a

(34:08):
little t m I, but like, um, I had a
super early miscarriage last year, and just like thinking through
like how comfortable I was with all of my my
logic and decisions and where I'd come from and where
it was in believing these things. Like I was like, yeah,
twelve weeks, like I barely knew I was pregnant, and

(34:29):
like most people don't and I don't. This is not
a big deal. Yeah for me, it was like it
was it was a mix um of like one when
my when I was seventeen and my mom had her
last pregnancy, that's when I knew I never wanted kids

(34:51):
ever did not. I was googling how to sterilize, Like
what what can I do? I kept Okay, but you
have to tell you have to like give give a
little more deep one. Yeah yeah, okay, So uh, every
time that my mom got pregnant, my life would end,
and I, as a child, was the person who was
solely responsible for running the house. So I had to

(35:16):
feed my siblings, educate my siblings, bathe my siblings, make
sure they didn't die being children, like, do all of
the inside girl chores, um, and take care of my mom,
who like half the time had untreated preclampsia and like
could not move and was like a planet and it

(35:40):
would just happen. I like literally like there. I remember
having thoughts of like, she's a fixed object in the
entire household, is orbiting, orbiting exactly, That's exactly what it
felt like. Yeah, I was like, everybody's gonna assume you
mean size. That is not what you mean. I mean gravity. Yeah,
Like that's definitely isn't isn't uncommon for anyone in the

(36:02):
quiver fool type community at all. Yeah, it's it's pretty
par for the course. Like that's that's what the job
of the eldest daughter is. At least that's what my
parents blewd, which is why they did it every single time,
every like eighteen months for a decade straight. And I
got burnt the funk out because it started when I
was eight and ended when I ran away. Um, and

(36:25):
my mom was still pregnant when I ran away, and
I was just like, I can't like stop being a
person every like year for nine months straight, like my
I was responsible for my education as well, so like
my tank. And then when I was fifteen, they were like,
you know everything you need to do to be a
successful wife and mother. You don't need to learn math

(36:45):
or science or any of that ship um and so yeah,
so when I was exactly and they were like and
now like after I was fifteen, like when I turned sixteen,
they were like, well, now you're basically an adult and
you can like court and get married. So that tried
to happen, and they really just wanted me to like

(37:06):
go live their fantasy of becoming a wife and mother,
and it was a dream I never shared. One last
mouth to feed, one less mouth to feed, although I
don't think they thought it completely through because then they
lost like the one person who knew how to keep
the house functioning, um, which is their fault. Uh. But yeah,

(37:28):
so with the last one, nutshell, I was courting my
mom got the positive pregnancy tests, they were like, well,
like this wasn't the answer they gave me. They were like,
we have theological problems with your partners, uh family, and
that's why I were breaking you up. But really it
was because my mom was pregnant and they needed me

(37:48):
to run the house again. And so I saw that
coming because I had, after a decade, become aware of
when my mom was pregnant before she was and I
was like, hmmm, this feels like pregnancy, um and yeah.
I looked up like what it took to become sterilized,
and I found Scarlett teen and I read about birth control,

(38:09):
and I read about how it works, and I realized
that I had been lied to. It doesn't abort babies.
It like, like you said, even it's it's honestly better
because then you're not like accidentally aborting by having your period,
just a whole fucking thing. Um and yeah. And I

(38:30):
was like, Okay, I don't want this for myself, and
I became aware that like that was a choice that
I had, And so the first thing I did when
I saw a doctor was asked for birth control. And
it was through like having my own agency and realizing
that me not wanting to have children didn't make me

(38:50):
a bad person. And didn't make me a bad spouse,
and that it was like my choice made me have
a lot more compassion for other people. And then one
of my friends had an abortion and I was like,
and it was really good idea, and I was like
I was there for them, and I was like, yeah,
like you're not ready to have a kid, that's valid

(39:15):
and you should do the thing. Because at that point
I had been like, you know, after raising my siblings,
like I understood how much it is to be a
parent and I knew that, like, if I wanted to
be a parent, I knew the responsibility that would be
and I knew I didn't want that responsibility and I

(39:35):
wasn't ready for that responsibility and who my friend wasn't.
So it was kind of through being burnt out by
raising children and then reading that like everything I've been
talking about birth control was bullshit, that I became okay
with it. But that was also like it wasn't it

(39:55):
was one of the first things to happen, but it
happened slowly, like I I became approach choice gradually over time,
instead of it just being like one kind of revelation,
it was like, oh, this is okay for me, But
am I sure? Is it? Is? It in in a
lot of like internal fighting. And I think all of
this can be really hard to understand if you did
not grow up inside because like if you grew up

(40:17):
in like like a liberal like democratic area and you
didn't go to church, all this probably sounds very whacky.
You're like, well, why didn't you just like why couldn't
you just not do that? Right? It's like it makes
very very hard, it's very hard to really grasp you.
We didn't like grub this because like even for me,
like I already was like by by the time I
was like fourteen and fifteen, I was like yeah, like
like birth controls fine, like contraptions like contraceptive should be

(40:40):
free for people, like all these other like things. But
it's still like but we still we still shouldn't actually
do abortions, like we can, we can do all these
other things to limit abortions, so you can you can
get you can get like super far into that way
because like you get ingrained with this, like like even
even like saying like no abortions in the case of
incestor rape because as the because the phrase that was

(41:02):
repeated and to me as a kid. It's like, why
would you punish the child for the for the for
the sins of the father. Like that is so like
all of these things get ingrained in use so much
you can you can like wrap, you can like change
all of these strings in your brain to try to
have it make sense. Still you can be like, no,
I still want all these other things free, I want

(41:24):
all these other preventive measures, but still that this this
last part, actually doing an abortion, is still something that
shouldn't happen for for these moral reasons. You know. I
think it's one of the reasons that this like decision
process or like process of like dismantling that whole thought
for us. One of the things that sped it up
was the fact that we got married so young, and

(41:46):
so it became like critically relevant, this is not theoretical
question anymore. This was a like we're burnt the funk out,
and like we do not want to get stuck in
the same path that our mothers were in. What the
fun do we do? I had in laws and my
excommunicated parents who wanted grandchildren, and I was like I

(42:07):
told people, like, give me ten years because I'm tired.
And then I had a his style. No, Yeah, I mean,
I'm sure it's not a coincidence that the time that
I've really started to like understand the more science aspects
of it and understand the party autonomy aspects was also
around the time I was starting to have sex with
you with with people like that. You know, I'm sure

(42:30):
that that that is not a coincidence either. It's like
it's a combination of learning about these things and personal
experience and like the urgency of it got so intensified
for me when I realized, like my ex husband was
abusive to our cat, which was a kitten, and I
was just like, oh God, this is not going to
bode well for kids. And we were in the process
of like splitting up, and he listened to a Mother's

(42:51):
Day sermon at church and was like very inspired by
it and was like, actually, maybe we could make things
work if you were a mom. I think I could
love you if you or a mom. And I kind
of looked at him and I was like, what the
fuck did you just really fucking say that? And he
was like, where do you have to be like that?
I was like, oh no, we're done, Oh no, we
are done. Just like just having to have those conversations

(43:14):
brings the issue to the foreground so fucking quickly, like
you really suddenly realize it is actually life or death
for you. Yeah. And I think the last thing that
we could maybe touch on is the whole bounty hunter
aspect plays into a lot of this as well, of

(43:34):
like raising like holy warriors to track down these people
who are doing the ungodly acts. Like this is kind
of like a wet and dream for a lot of
young males who grew up in this thought process. Um
and watching this start to take shape in Texas is
like I think is very much kind of a should

(43:55):
be used as a warning of things to come. Do
you think they're going to do spin off of Fireproof
inspired by this events? Absolutely? Yeah, you know, like I
like really like I'm I'm sure they will be like
churches making their own web series that are like you know,
like a little like YouTube videos of people tracking down
like abortion doctors, Like this is going to happen, like absolutely,

(44:18):
Like this is this is like stuff like this has
been fantasized about for a long time. Well I'm thinking
about like there's this alright, I'm liking on the name

(44:38):
of it, But this movement in Florida in Operation Rescue. No, No,
I'm thinking, no, that that's the whole other thing. I'm
thinking about the church group that C. J. Mhaney learned
accountability practices from UM. But basically there was this like
whole theological movement at in the as like a subset
of the Jesus movement that was like encouraging everybody to

(45:00):
basically be like syn cops to each other because it
was like for your own spiritual purification, and like everybody
was ratting out everybody to the pastor, and the pastor
would be like, we have concerns about this pattern, simple
pattern in your life, and you need to think about
your sin of pride because you are questioning me, you know,
stuff like that UM, And it got replicated in sovereign

(45:20):
Grace ministries and kind of spread a lot of places
out from there. Yeah. So, and like the courtship world
and the purity culture world, like you know, you'd have
like if you violated modesty codes, writing each other out
was like rewarded. If you were like kissing your boyfriend
and not telling your parents, you would get read it
out and that would be rewarded. So like all of

(45:41):
these things like this is just like we're just involving
the police now to get money for it. We're now
just making it into an act. Yeah, we're now we're
now just turning up the actual consequences of this leading
to like violence and acted by the state, which is
kind of the wet dream of a lot of these
of a lot of these groups, is that being able

(46:03):
to like, you know, tie this type of evangelical Christianity
to this state. This is kind of their end that,
I mean, that was that was the end goal of
Focus on the Family. That was an end goal of
a lot of these groups is to start you know,
this is just the whole Christian dominionist thing is getting
these types of things enforced by the state instead of
having to be enforced by like the church community. And yeah,

(46:29):
I mean, I guess the one thing I do want
to mention is that there's a a great TikTok video
that came out a few days ago about the the
the reporting website where you can whistle blow abortion people.
There's this this video this person made about and they
got a script for iPhones. They can flood you. You

(46:50):
can flood the tip line with fake with fake information. Um,
So that is great. You should you could vice as
an article about it. You can just look up TikTok
abortion was the blower, you can you can get all
the info on that. Can. I just add a whole
big footnote to this entire conversation, and that is that
this just like keep this in mind as you were

(47:10):
thinking about this question and this issue. This is the
preview for how trans writes were going to be handled,
because bodily autonomy for abortion and remmal birth control is
the same situation as bodily autonomy to create your gender

(47:30):
through hormonal injections or whatever. Like, same story going to
end here. No, their their goals to have this whole
whistle blower bounty hunter thing be extended to anyone performing um,
anyone performing any type of reproductive character they're doing now,
but also any type of gender affirming treatment UM reporting

(47:51):
actual like trans youth like oh like like you see
this happening in in the in the church all the time.
It's like, you know, someone getting reported for having you know,
not not performing there they're prescribed gender correctly. This gets
talked about all the time, and this is gonna be
the next step for them, um that you know, the
abortion thing is gonna is gonna spread to other states, absolutely,

(48:14):
But the next thing they're gonna go for after his
trans rights, um, and go after this type thing. And
then they're gonna go after after like like um, gay
things in general. Um, And like this it doesn't stop here,
Like you're not safe just because you are not Yeah,
just because you weren't born with uterus doesn't mean you're
not safe from this. Like it's gonna this is gonna

(48:35):
extend out to many other facets. Yeah, and I think
you know, and and the real danger here, and I
think this is one of the things we need to
talk about is that like the left, particularly democratic parties
organizing this has been terrible. This does not exist, yeah, yeah,

(48:56):
you know for their party, like this is like abortion
is just a fundraising thing, like they don't care that,
don't dre' do noathing and you know, and then the
broader left is being just absolutely blown out of the
water by by the way, like by the organizations happened here,
and like even even in terms of like you know,
I mean just yeah, I definitely want everyone else here
to talk more about this because I have less way
less knowledge about this, Like you know, like these guys

(49:17):
did like terrorism like they were. They've they've murdered people,
they bombed clinics like they like that. They did the
whole range of sort of like every everything from sort
electoralism to like what they're sort of twisted version of
profigative politics where you know, you you create your own
sort of like right wing like Evnel the households right.
They're like a mote of the news side. They did
everything they did. Electoralism they did, yeah, um like they

(49:40):
they did, the demonstrations they did, they know, they killed
people like they did everything. It worked, and we have
not been doing this and this is that's a big
part of why this is happening now. So I wrote
about this for Rewired News and I guess it should
be coming out to usday. But um yeah, it's basically
like the last left, as soon as they achieve a

(50:01):
small victory stops organizing, and the right is always thinking
if further ahead, and they are they already have the
infrastructure for that, like grassroots act like activate the network
to get them to call the offices. I'm like, be like,
don't vote on that bill or vote this way on
that bill, and we really just don't have that infrastructure

(50:24):
in place. We've done it for one off situations, but
we don't have it as a habitual, regular, regular, daily practice,
and we are not training our teams to be involved
in that like they are. UM, and that there's just
so much I could say about this. Yeah, I mean
I can. I can kind of speak to this as
someone who like is kind of up close in the

(50:47):
California Democratic Party, at least as up close as you
can be without being friends with the fucking chair. UM.
I am still livid because what I learned they're being
elected is that there is no organizing structure at all.

(51:07):
Like I went to California campus Camp in twenty nineteen.
And if you're in California and you go to a
community college and you haven't grown up being an organizer,
I definitely recommended, Yeah, if you didn't do Teampact, go
to campus camp. But I was there, and they're talking
about how Paul Wellstone was this leftist organizer in like

(51:34):
I don't know, the eighties, um, and how he invented
this radical way of organizing. It's literally grassroots organizing. It's
literally what I've been doing since I was a child.
And they're like, oh, this is this cool new thing
that we're trying to do. This is really effectively he
had no ship. That's how the Republicans win everything. We
don't have that. There is no organization in the Democratic

(51:58):
Party that is ongoing round advocating for the issues we
say we value. There is no connection between the State
Democratic Party and the Democratic National Convention or like the
National Democratic Party. The d n C literally only exists
for the Convention to do the fucking platform and there

(52:19):
was nothing else. There's no except for in queer circles
organizing gets this, gets this right, but as soon as
you get to like middle class white democratic moderate organizing,
it doesn't exist. You know, I am, I'm literally only
talking about the Democratic Party itself, like Camocratic Democratic Party,

(52:42):
the institution. Queer organizers have been doing this, like a
lot of grassroots leftist organizations have been doing this, labor organized,
labor organizers like there are so many organizations in Oakland
alone that do this very well, like the Anti Police
Terror Project. They're fucking badass. They get ship done. Um.
But the Democratic Party itself as an institution does not

(53:07):
have this, does not support this actively like sidelines. The
organizers like there is a whole progressive wing of the
Democratic Party that has recently gotten elected, and we are
sidelined and not allowed to do ship because there is
just like we get blocked at every time. I think.
I think, I think part of the problem is because

(53:28):
of the rights connection to apocalyptic um predictions via the equstianity.
Like the right has the right and even like the
conservative establishment, they have a goal in mind, like they
have an end goal of how they want to see
the world. The Democrats don't have that. Even large swass

(53:50):
of the left don't have that. We can just we
just want the role to be kind of a little
bit better slowly. The right has an actual view like
they they have like an end point, which is why
they always have the next thing planned that They're never
satisfied with any of their victories. They're always onto the
next thing because they have a set goal that they
want to see the world become. So you're saying the

(54:11):
Democratic Party needs to get in they retreat and do
a vision board. That's not what I'm saying. Honestly, it
will help, I think, you know what. I think The
other sort of fundamental side, fundamental dynamic of this is
that the Republican Party is a real political party, right like,
it has, it has a base, it has, it has
the thing they're trying to do, and like you know,

(54:32):
it has it has a set of goals that that
is trying to enact. The Democratic Party is not is
not a political party. The Democratic Party is basically a
giant engine for absorbed. So you know, the right is
powered by a combination of an enormous amount of money
by the sort of capitalist backers, and you get all
this AstroTurf stuff from the Cokes and from the sort
of the Boultons and their their networks, and then you

(54:54):
know that they have they have a sort of right
wing social movement base, which is a lot of the
evangelical stuff, and you know, and that that that's what
drives the party, right like, that's that's that's that's that's
like the party is there to enact, you know, the
different facts of different visions that parties there to their visions. Right,
the Democratic Party is there too, the party like there's

(55:15):
you have the equivalence of the sort of left wing
social movements, and the Democratic Party is there to destroy them.
Like their their whole goal is to make sure that
none of these movements ever actually like come anywhere close
to taking power, and so you know, and and this
this creates is symmetry. But we're seeing this on abortion
right where you know, you have you have the Publican Party,
which is you know, fanatically dedicated to to to this

(55:38):
issue to winning here, and you have the Democratic Party
who's like there their their their job is to turn
like people people's concern over abortion into inaction and fundraising.
And then that fundraising doesn't go doesn't fundraison, doesn't go
to you know, keeping abortion legal, Like the fundraising goes
to just getting getting getting getting the keep keeping Democratic

(56:00):
Party people in power, keeping their consultants paid, and keeping
their sort of like you know, keeping keeping their sort
of keeping Yeah, it's keeping their corporate their corporate backers happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's exactly what it is. It just it exists to
fondres for elections for people with the D beside their name,
who don't challenge things, you don't actually want to get

(56:24):
ship done, and to just like like as soon as
they get power, they sit back and are like oh cool,
we want and and then they're like we're we're fine,
now we don't have to do anything like they don't
exist to enact their platform. The most that we can
do as delegates is like pass resolutions and amend the platform,

(56:46):
so we can, like pass the resolution that says, let's
not take any fossil fuel money. This actually happened. We
passed the resolution said let's not take any fossil fuel money.
The Democratic Party chairs still accept fossil fuel money. Brought
it up at the e Or convention, like literally last weekend.
It was shot down and said it was out of order,
despite the fact that we were just trying to enforce
our own rules that we put upon ourselves. And the

(57:09):
Democratic Party is accountable to no one, no one but itself,
And so the people who are inside the Democratic Party
of problems with the Democratic Party can ask questions and
we get zero response. Like all I know is that
we give money to strategists who no one will tell
me who they are, no one knows who they are,
and just fundraise into this big pot for democratic elections

(57:32):
for the people who the chair and his friends like.
And the entire by laws of the Democratic Party are
written to give like and outrageous amount of power to
the people who are already elected, like Nancy Pelosi has
like thirty plus votes in the Democratic Party. I have one,

(58:00):
I wrote I I will send you the link to
the power breakdown that I wrote about this because I
was so mad about it during the convention. But like
it really, the Democratic Party is not going to save us.
It's not going to save anyone. What we need to
do is be building dual power structures like the Black
Panthers did. But that is a lot of fucking work
and we don't have the funding for it. Yeah, we

(58:20):
we have. We have to wrap this up sooner than later.
But like and I try to end these episodes with
some type of like if not, if not, like a
call to action, but like something to help figure out
what the heck to do in the future, Like something
that we can think about in a new way or
try to try to try to ponder or achieve. And

(58:42):
this this is tough because it's hard. It's well, like,
how like wrapping up all of these types of things around,
like abortion and the rise of the end of of
the of the religious right, what can regular people do?
There are groups doing this work already. Do not try
to reinvent the We all get involved with your local
mutual a groups get involved with your local abortion funds,

(59:04):
get involved with your local organizing groups. They exist, they're
doing the work. Figure out what is going on where
you live and look at it on a local level
and get involved and show up to meetings, figure out
who's running for city council, figuring out where the budget
is going like, ask questions, attend the meetings, pay attention,

(59:24):
like show up to public hearings and hold their feet
to the fire. Do the local work and the rest
will follow. It is surprisingly easy to take over local politics,
like literally, all you have to do is show up.
It's it's it's simple. You get coffee with your city counselor.
That's what their job is is to meet with you.

(59:45):
So do you have yours? You are their boss, and
you can even do that with your state representative, your
state senator. They are there to talk to you and
if you have a feeling about a thing, email them,
call them, be like hey, I want get coffee like that.
Some students in college don't use office hours like they should,

(01:00:05):
and so they fail the course. This is us. We
have these elected officials and we are at their boss.
We need to show up to office hours and ask
them questions. Like, that's what that's what the right is doing.
That's why they're so successful. We need to be organizing
our own, our own calling about things. If people want
to hear more about your, your guys's work and all

(01:00:28):
of these really fun topics, where can where can they
find you? Online? They can they can find our podcast,
Kitchen Table Cult at Kitchen Table cult dot com. We're
on Twitter at Kitchen Cult Pod. My handle is blue
pup Boy but with an eye instead of a Y
at the end. And I'm eve Ettinger on Twitter and

(01:00:51):
I'm verified Verified, I'm real good job and the only one.
Yeah yeah, yeah, and we're we're working in a couple
of big projects. Um, stay tuned, funds down ahead. Thank
thank you so much for coming on to talk about
the religious right, abortion and all these kind of interconnected issues,

(01:01:13):
because they really are interconnected. Um, and yeah, we need
to We can definitely learn how to organize a whole
lot better and learn learn from how the right has
been so successful in a lot of ways. Um. Yeah, anyway,
uh for more, it could happen here. You can follow
us um on Twitter and Instagram, it happened here pod

(01:01:33):
and cool Zone Media can follow me on Twitter at
Hungry bow Tie and uh, Chris, I know you. You
you have a Twitter. Yeah, I'm I'm in h R
three on Twitter or the ice on speed Destroyed guy.
Yeah yeah, cool Zone also as a Twitter that's at
cool Zone Media and great, see you see everyone again. Well,

(01:01:53):
we'll talk more about these issues in the next in
the next few days and weeks. That's all for today. Goodbye.
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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(01:02:14):
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
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