Full Interview: One Year After Dobbs, GOP Bans Have Largely Failed, Support for Abortion on the Rise

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman hundreds of abortion rights supporters rallied in Washington D.C over the weekend to Mark the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's overturning of abortion rights uh uh this is one of the protesters Nadine Saylor the protest came as anti-choice activists also rallied in D.C this is Republican Presidential hopeful former vice president Mike Pence speaking

to a gathering of conservatives who were talking about the decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade as a historic Victory he said but he said it didn't go far enough and called for a nationwide 15-week ban on abortion because of your work and because of your prayers the Supreme Court of the United States sent Roe versus Wade to the ash heap of History

where it belongs and gave America A New Beginning for life we're joined Now by Amy Littlefield abortion access correspondent for the nation she was in D.C this weekend at both the protests and has a peace and the special issue of the nation called the body politics her piece the message they've received as you don't deserve to be cared for life on the abortion Borderland Amy welcome

back to democracy Now lay out what happened this weekend and then talk in a larger way about what's happening around abortion in this country at a point where abortion is being banned in so many states and yet the support for abortion is skyrocketing thanks so much Amy it's great to be back with you I started out my weekend on Friday at the national right to life

convention a gathering of the nation's oldest anti-abortion organization and you might expect that a year after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade the anti-abortion movement would be celebrating right but that's not the case and that's because anti-abortion leaders are coming to terms with two realities that are very unfortunate to them and the first is that abortion bans that they have dreamed of instituting for decades

that are now in place in 13 states mostly concentrated in the South are not working the way that they hope they would and they're also deeply unpopular and so we've seen six ballot initiatives in the year after Dobbs one pivotal Wisconsin state supreme court race we've seen you know the Red Wave expected in the midterms that never was all because of the outrage over the Dobbs

decision vision and then we've seen the latest numbers coming out from the society for Family Planning that show in the nine months after the Dobbs decision the number of abortions dropped by 25 000. now that's the abortions that are being recorded that is a catastrophically high number because every person denied an abortion that they want is a human rights tragedy but for abortion rights opponents who

have dreamed of instituting these bands for a generation that is way lower than the number they expected they were hoping it would be in the hundreds of thousands and so they've realized that their Bans are not working that as the headline we testify and I need an a put out a a fake newspaper over the weekend to Mark the Dobbs anniversary in the headline said we

are still having abortions all across the country and that is true so abortions because of the robust Grassroots infrastructure and and clinicians who are going to heroic lengths to get people access to the care they need abortions are still happening in every state in the country tree every day and people familiar with the informal pill circulation networks have told me that there is more than enough

medication abortion coming into the country and being circulated through these Mutual Aid networks to compensate for those 25 000 abortions that were not recorded in the nine months after Dobbs so what we're going to see I think in the coming months Amy from the anti-abortion movement are efforts to contend with the fact that the public doesn't like their bands and with the fact that the bands

are not actually working and so what I saw the national right to life convention is leaders like James Bop who in addition to you know being long-time general counsel of national right to life is also the architect of citizens united um telling State Affiliates that they need to Institute much broader more sweeping enforcement mechanisms like using Rico laws that were used to take down the mob

using anti-trafficking laws to make it harder to travel out of state and to sweeten the deal for State lawmakers sugarcoat those enforcement restrictions by using rape and incest exceptions as if that you know that's going to be the red herring that we see to try to get much more extreme enforcement Visions to try to make these bands that aren't working work better and then number two

we're going to see this PR campaign abortion bins are no longer to be called bands because the anti-abortion movement has realized that the word ban makes their policies less popular even though that's precisely what these measures are so we're going to see them being called protections or limits we're not going to see crisis pregnancy centers as much anymore because there's now a lot of robust information

about how deceptive these anti-abortion centers are on the internet and so they're rebranding them as Pregnancy Resource Centers instead so there's a marketing campaign going on here to try to make their abortion bans more popular at a time when a vast majority of Americans disagree with the overturning of Roe v Wade and also to Institute much more sweeping enforcement mechanisms now that's from the wing of

the movement yeah go ahead no go ahead Amy keep going so the next day Saturday I I went to Washington DC and that you know it's important to State the national right to life convention seems to be the wing of the movement that cares about public opinion right they care about the fact that that they've you know kind of subverted democracy um by instituting these unpopular

bans and they're trying to figure out some workarounds there in Washington DC I saw I went to a rally hosted by students for life that was a rally where Mike Pence spoke they invited all of the leading GOP candidates or all the GOP candidates and and uh Pence was the one who accepted the invitation um he's vying to be the candidate of the movement they were

rolling out I will say a much more overt plan it's not a more extreme plan because of course the end goal of the anti-abortion movement across the board is protections for the embryos starting at the moment of fertilization uh AKA a ban okay let's call it what it is they are calling for using the 14th Amendment to apply due process and equal protection to the embryo

from the moment of fertilization and fact Lila Rose of the anti-abortion group live action said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that she believes that this protection is already in place that laws in States like New York that protect access to abortion are in violation of the 14th Amendment so what we're seeing here is an attempt to wrap their heads around the fact that they're

not going to be able to pass new restrictions on abortion in this moment when abortion rights are are historically popular and so what they're trying to do is use existing laws that are on the books and get courts or perhaps the next Republican president to buy into this idea that the 14th amendment protects embryos from the moment of fertilization now the impact of that of course

would be kind of unfathomable let me ask you about a piece in the intercept that has the headline um the FBI is hunting a new domestic Terror threat abortion rights activists can you explain what's going on at the national level I mean clearly President Biden vice president Harris out on the first anniversary of the overturning of Roe supporting abortion rights what's going on here right so

I mean there's a federal law called the face act that was put into um effect in the 1990s because anti-abortion militants were barricading abortion clinics um chaining themselves to cars using militant non-violent Civil Disobedience tactics to shut abortion access down it's been very sparsely enforced against anti-abortion groups over the years and what we're seeing now is that that law is actually being used to Target groups

like Jane's Revenge that are doing things like spray painting crisis pregnancy centers um so you know the intercept has done some great reporting on the consequences of I think the bid Administration feeling pressured to go after abortion rights groups and certainly there is a sense from the anti-abortion movement that they are under attack that you know they're getting threats that that groups like Jane's Revenge are

our targeting crisis pregnancy centers and our um you know that there's a a sort of more militant and then also in less militant ways that that the public is showing their opposition to these policies but you know I want to emphasize here I think this is part of a concerted effort by the anti-abortion movement to frame their opposition to frame abortion rights supporters as extreme rather

than being in the majority um and and you know I think the real extremism that was on display was at this you know students for Life rally in Washington DC where for example there was a man standing at the back of the rally holding a huge billboard side sign that said you can't end abortion if women can still get away with murder now this is related

to anything abortion abolition movement to to a group that's gaining Power by saying you need to criminalize women and put them in jail for abortions this is The Fringe now but we've seen over time that in the anti-abortion movement The Fringe has become the center so I would keep an eye on these growing efforts to to punish people who have abortions and who self-manage their abortion

we continue with part two of our conversation with Amy Littlefield abortion access correspondent at the nation in an upcoming special issue of the nation called the body politics Amy has an article headlined the message they've received is that you don't deserve to be cared for life on the abortion Borderland one of the people that Amy Littlefield profiles in the nation is a reverend Erica Ferguson an

Interfaith Minister for over 20 years describing what motivated her to begin the Tubman travel project on the night when one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the nation Texas Senate Bill 8 which banned abortion after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect on September 1st 2021. at midnight when sb8 went into effect one young girl I was doing a lot of work with to make

the decision about whether she was going to carry the pregnancy or end it sent me a text and I I still have it it was exactly at midnight and she said how am I going to get out of this state I can't even figure out how to get a bus across town and it was in that moment I said don't worry I will help you I

wasn't quite sure how I was going to do that but I knew that I would and the rest as they like to say is history or her story that's a clip of Erica Ferguson shared with us by Amy Littlefield who profiled Reverend Ferguson and others in her new piece for the nation Amy thanks for staying with us to do part two of this conversation which is

what's happening in the country right now explain after your trip to New Mexico what exactly Reverend Ferguson is doing thank you Amy for giving me this opportunity to talk about this remarkable woman Reverend Erica Ferguson so the the heroism and The Bravery of what she's doing is remarkable um she is traveling with so every every week one day a week she goes to a North Texas

airport she meets a group of strangers and she greets those strangers who need abortions these are Texans who need abortions who she's about to fly with out of state women she's never met before she greets them by telling them her story she's had two abortions herself one when she was 14 and either when she was 18 and she told me that the warmth and compassion she

received from the people who cared for her during that experience at the clinic are what animate her decision to help these Texas Travelers she has called this project the Texas the the Tubman travel project because she sees a parallel between people leaving states where abortion is banned to go to states where it's legal and and the journeys taken by enslaved people who try traveled from from

states where slavery was in place to states where you know they could have freedom she is a black woman she understands that the risk of criminalization is present not just in this aspect of her life but of course all around and she's consciously taking the risk that is involved in traveling with these women openly from a state that is at the epicenter of efforts to criminalize

and punish anyone who helps somebody to get an abortion and so she travels with these women on the journey she told me you know she's a minister but she says she doesn't talk about God to these women the way that her Ministry shows up is that she tells them you are going to be safe and you are going to be cared for and then she flies

with them to New Mexico they go to a clinic there they then recover at what's this this headquarters of a non-profit called the New Mexico religious Coalition for Reproductive choice that I visited it felt like a post-abortion field Hospital on this new abortion Borderland New Mexico of course right next to Texas a state where abortion remains legal volunteers have written notes to The Travelers telling them

that they support their decision that they're sorry they had to make such a journey there are healing justice practitioners there doulas who talk with women who give them massages there's tea there's cookies baked by volunteers and then they get on the airplane to fly home and they've had to leave their families and their lives behind you know to travel out of state for this journey and

it's when they're getting ready to leave the state that Reverend Erica Ferguson tells them this is where I'm going to say goodbye to you and that's when The Travelers understand the risk that she's taking she says if you see me get arrested at the airport if you see anything happen to me when we touch down back in Texas I want you to keep walking like you've

never met me before you've done what you're here to do and I'm gonna say goodbye to you now and that is when The Travelers begin to understand the risk that this remarkable woman has taken in traveling with him out of state um because the the three anti-abortion laws that exist in Texas really should not be interpreted to apply to abortions that happen outside the state according

to a Texas judge's ruling there but that doesn't mean anti-abortion strategists won't use creative mechanisms to try to go after anyone who helps someone get an abortion and we've seen that happen before in Texas including recently with a case earlier this year where Jonathan Mitchell the Texas anti-abortion strategist filed a lawsuit accusing three women who helped a friend self-manage her abortion of murder under the state's

wrongful death statute that woman's ex-husband is suing these three friends for over a million dollars each so these are the kinds of strategies that we're seeing these are the kind of risks that Reverend Erica Ferguson and people like her all across the country are taking in order to hold up this Grassroots network of abortion access in the in the post jobs era Amy you talk about

Jonathan Mitchell give us a full profile of who he is and what his strategy is so Jonathan Mitchell was the Texas solicitor general so he actually defended the anti-abortion Omnibus law hb2 in Texas before the notoriously conservative Circuit Court of Appeals this was a law that ended up shutting down half of the abortion clinics in Texas before it was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court back

when it still had a pro-choice majority um Jonathan Mitchell then went on to start in private practice and he is the architect of Texas Senate Bill 8 which is the Bounty Hunter law the six-week abortion ban that's enforced by private citizens he worked with a Grassroots activist named Markley Dixon and together they came up with these city ordinances that would ban abortion within cities in Texas

and be enforced by private citizens and they pioneered this private enforcement mechanism in small towns and and some cities across Texas um and um where sort of no one was watching in the beginning and then when they saw that it could work it was wrapped into Texas Senate Bill 8 and of course that went into effect and allowed Texas to ban abortion at six weeks while

Roe v Wade was still the law of the land now Jonathan Mitchell is really sort of at the Forefront of testing out different legal strategies I think the next really crucial anti-abortion Frontier that he's very much at the Forefront of is involving the 1873 Comstock act and Amy we've talked about that on the program before this is the law named for anti-vice Crusader Anthony Comstock that

once bail banned the mailing of abortion devices drugs and paraphernalia anti-abortion activists are trying to bring it back into Force because again they recognize they're not going to be able to pass any new laws in this current political environment where most people are against them and so they're going to rely on this law from the 19th century and try to convince courts that it should still

be able to be enforced so can you talk about over this last year give us an overall picture of abortion access in the United States it may be that people don't realize how difficult it is to get abortion right now and yet part one of our conversation Amy you were talking about how the anti-choice movement is concerned that actually they're failing even as they gain in

bans across the country right I mean there is this dizzying contradiction that is at the heart of a question of abortion access in the United States today it depends entirely on where you live right in States like New York abortion has never been more protected I mean New York has just passed this Shield law that will allow doctors like Dr Linda Prine to ship abortion medication

to provide telemedicine appointments and then mail abortion medication to states where abortion is banned and she has openly said I'm going to do that and I'm going to avoid going to Texas after I start doing that right she's going to stay in New York because she feels like she's protected as long as she stays there and that's going to have a remarkable impact if that effort

is able to scale up in getting access to people in these states where abortion is banned but then you have to look at the map Amy and you have to look at the South and you have to look at the fact that of the 13 states that currently have bans in effect against abortion 10 of them are all in a row across the South getting with

Texas and moving East and so you know and then we have more States coming you know that have bans um and and various forms of restrictions as well so so if you live in the south if you live in a state like Mississippi and Alabama you know not only is abortion you have to look you know a couple States deep in any direction to think about

what your options might be um or you could go to plan cpils.org and find out about ways that you can get access to abortion medication through informal networks um and when these you know networks like the one that that Dr Linda Prine is launching you know are able to get off the ground I think we'll see that landscape shifting as well um so abortion access is

always dependent on geography and that is even truer today than it was before Dobbs and what exactly this means especially for the black and brown Community around the country right right I mean right and huge cavity out there right it depends on geography and it also depends on on the wealth you have access to and the the resources you have access to to travel so there

are an Untold number of people who are too poor too young for whom traveling is just not even an option you know I talked to one counselor in Texas who um the moment the Dobson was overturned she had to break the news to a teenager sitting in front of her who had gone through the whole process was about to have her abortion and the dogs decision

came down and the teenager was like oh I guess I'll just stay pregnant because for so many people the number of steps involved in traveling out of state or figuring out you know how to get access in to an informal Network to get abortion access it feels so unfathomable that it's not it's it's like a done deal um right in that moment and so um we

have to remember that states um across the South that are forcing people to carry pregnancies against their will are also states where life can be harder already for black people for women of color for Trans people you know these are the same states that are passing you know a record number of anti-trans measures um these are States where people might be struggling already to raise the

families that they already have right and um and that have sparser Protections in place for people who are trying to raise their families in safe communities and so that's why I think it's a really important sign Amy that reproductive Justice is finally taking its place at the center of the abortion rights movement you know I heard a lot of messages at the abortion rights rally that

I attended hosted by the women's March in DC on Saturday about how black women do not lead single issue lives you know I I talked to a woman named Cassandra who had gotten out of the train at Union Station she and her husband were just there to tour DC they're from Georgia and she saw the rally happen and grabbed a sign and was like nodding along

like yes black women don't lead single issue lives that was the message that spoke to her I think that's increasingly the message that's at the center of this movement and needs to be frankly because that intersectionality that understanding that abortion is connected to immigration is connected to you know economic Atomic resources that are not available in this country to a whole host of different concerns that

affect people's lives I think we're going to see more holistic messaging from the abortion rights movement and that's a very positive sign and as we move into the 2024 elections across this country can you talk about the effect you think this has these polls that have recently been done that shows a skyrocketing in support for abortion across the political Spectrum I mean you were in Kansas

when that vote took place talk about what are the signals to the anti-abortion movement that while they are winning now they could be largely losing I mean I think we're going to see a huge number and we already are seeing efforts to get abortion on the ballot in many states in the coming months and year um Ohio very importantly is facing a deadline to gather signatures

on the petition to get the question of abortion access on the ballot I know a lot of the organizers with groups like urge for example are in Ohio you know they spent their weekend of the Dobbs anniversary in Ohio Gathering those signatures because I think the Forefront of the abortion rights movement right now that work is really concentrated in the states and in in trying to

build local power and so you know States from Ohio to Florida and Beyond are are working on these ballot initiatives to try to protect abortion access in their state of course there's a huge backlash to that right so Ohio the way that Republicans in Ohio are trying to Scuttle this is by making it harder to pass a ballot initiative like the one that Ohioans are who

support reproductive Freedom are trying to pass and so we're going to see this anti-democratic backlash and this deeper understanding of the fact that abortion rights and democracy and voting rights are integrally connected and I think we're finally starting to see Democrats catch on to the fact that abortion is a winning issue you know those of us who cover this issue have been saying that for a

really long time finally Democrats are realizing that that's true so it'll be interesting to see what they do besides running on the message of abortion you know how how they deliver on on those promises I think where we really are seeing that in a historic way is in the states so the National Institute for Reproductive Health released new data showing that more than 200 million dollars

has been allocated by States and municipalities to support access to reproductive health care including abortion and that's quadruple the amount that happened in the in the three years before Dobbs in just one year after the Dobbs decision so there's been a lot of really remarkable historic efforts at the state and local level and a lot of organizing taking place and I think we're seeing leadership from

from state level politicians and activists to make a board abortion more accessible I mean the huge and crucial caveat there is that that doesn't touch you know people in states where abortion um and areas where abortion is heavily restricted although we have seen some of these you know positive signs in in States like Texas and in in states where abortion is heavily restricted so um it's

a patchwork and um I think we're seeing more comprehensive messaging from the abortion right side that's very encouraging but we're also seeing more extreme messaging from the anti-abortion side so we need to remain Vigilant of that as well Amy Littlefield abortion access correspondent at the nation in an upcoming special issue of the nation called the body politics she has an article headline the message they've received

is that you don't deserve to be cared for life on the abortion Borderland we'll link to that at democracynow.org to see part one of our discussion go to democracynow.org I'm Amy Goodman thanks so much for joining us