BONUS. Robin Marty on Preparing for a Post-Roe America
Robin Marty, author of Handbook for a Post-Roe America, on abortion care in the South, why the federal government can’t save abortion access, and what we all need to do to prepare for a future where abortion could be outlawed in some parts of the country.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:02] Intro music
Garnet Henderson [00:00:32] Welcome to Access, a podcast about abortion, I'm your host, Garnet Henderson. Today, I'm excited to be bringing you a bonus conversation with Robin Marty. Robin is a former journalist and the current director of communications at West Alabama Women's Center. She wrote a book called Handbook for a Post-Roe America, which was just reprinted with lots of new information. So we talked about the book, why abortion access isn't as safe as you might think, even with Democrats in charge of our national government and what we all need to do to prepare for a future in which abortion could be outlawed in large regions of the country. If you've been to our website, you've actually seen Robin's photos. She's got a great collection of abortion stock photos that I've used many times, especially for our first episode, which was all about what happens during an abortion. So if you haven't seen those yet, go check them out. And without further ado, here's my conversation with Robin.
Robin Marty [00:01:47] So my name is Robin Marty, I use she/her pronouns and I am formerly from Minnesota, but as of a couple of weeks ago I have moved now to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I spent the last decade as a reproductive rights reporter, primarily reporting on abortion access, clinic access and also people within the pro-life movements. Over the last couple of years, though, my focus has moved primarily towards abortion access and especially abortion access in red and rural states, and where there are very few, if any, clinics and where clinic abortions are really difficult to get in general because of that. I ended up about two years ago, time as meaningless, two years ago, I believe, writing a book called Handbook for a Post-Roe America. And it was specifically written with the idea that at that point, Justice Anthony Kennedy had just retired from the Supreme Court and everybody was convinced that Roe v. Wade was on its deathbed. And by that point, most of the activists had realized that even if Roe v. Wade wasn't overturned, the actual right to an abortion was already so restricted that for many people it was impossible to get in any way, shape or form as it was. So the handbook was a guide for helping people figure out both how to navigate trying to get an abortion legally if they need if they need one, how to navigate getting an abortion outside of the legal system, if that was the route that they needed to take. And then also how to best plug themselves into advocacy in order to try to get abortion access available for everyone again. And that ended up then being republished just this week. The new handbook for a post-racial America is most of the content of the old version, but we've added to do lists at the end of each chapter so that people have concrete actions that they can take and work their way through. To do lists on everything from how to go protest and anti abortion protest, how to prepare yourself if you're going to go do some form of civil disobedience or even how to make a list to have everything all prepared, if you want to do your own abortion at home so that you have all the things that you need for comfort and safety. And then there's a huge section much expanded on how to make sure that you stay safe online, as well as how to make sure that you avoid any sort of surveillance should you decide that you need to get an abortion through a means that's less legal.
Garnet Henderson [00:04:21] And I think that's really important. We did an episode of the podcast on self managed abortion and something I didn't get into very much in that episode. Just because there was so much to cover in that one episode was that issue of digital security, which is huge, especially when we look at the criminalization of people who self manage their abortions and how common that is, despite the fact that it's not expressly illegal in very many states at all. So I would love to hear a little bit more about some of those steps that you highlight that people can take to keep their information safe.
Robin Marty [00:04:58] Most definitely. One of the reasons why this became such a focus in the second go around of the book was because over the last year or two, we've seen both a large explosion of personhood laws that have been introduced, some of them have gone into effect, some of them have not. For instance, in Alabama, which is where I am right now, we've seen how the states has written into the Constitution that a fertilized egg from the point of fertilization has constitutional rights. And we've seen this play out in everything from the so-called meth lab bills that have criminalized people who are giving birth and are discovered to have drugs in their system. So they're being put in jail for that. But also the case last summer of the woman who got into a fight with somebody else when she was pregnant and ended up being shot by the other woman. And she was the one who ended up in jail for murder because she lost the fetus that she was carrying during that altercation. They said that she was the one who put the fetus in danger and so she was the one who should be in trouble, whereas the other woman was acting in self-defense. So a whole expansion of all of these things that we already knew were happening regarding pregnant people being punished for not remaining pregnant or not taking care of a pregnancy. So one of the things that we've been doing is we've also seen this very large surge of people who are going online in order to access help. This is happening for a number of reasons. One is because clinics are closing. The second is because covid has made it very difficult for people to be able to access these clinics in the first place, even if they do have one nearby. They're finding that they can't bring their partners with them for support, they're finding that doctors will set up appointments, but then something will happen to one of the staff, and so the clinics no longer operating for a few weeks. All of these things are making it very difficult in states, especially where we already had two time waiting periods where you had to go into a clinic more than once, a few days apart, those sort of issues. And then, of course, is the very obvious fact that a lot of people are in serious economic issues right now. The pandemic has left many people at home without jobs. Stimulus took forever to get here. There's just a vast number of reasons why it's simply not possible to be able to say, OK, I need an abortion, I have money, I can go and do that. So we're seeing things that are happening online, especially in Reddit and then a vast number of Facebook groups of people who aren't necessarily trying to seek out an abortion outside of a clinic, but who will have questions about what's going on with the clinic, what clinic is safe, and then other questions that will come from there, like not having enough money to be able to do it, not having the a vehicle to be able to go, all of those sort of things. When people are doing this on Facebook, they often don't think to themselves, hey, there are people who are infiltrating these groups who are more than happy to expose me, or there are people who are looking to preach at me. There even might be law enforcement that we just don't know about that are in there. So people come in and a lot of times they will post under their own name with their own with their own profiles. Luckily, there are some groups now that make it so that you can do anonymous posting. So that's a huge change from the point in which the book happened. But one of the things that we were recommending to people was making sure that they lock down their profile before they go into places like this to make sure that they see what the profile looks like from a stranger, which is something that you can do on a Facebook page before you actually enter a group and ask questions. Do burner accounts on Reddit if you can set up something completely new, a new email address, a new user name, use as little specific information as possible. If you live in a small town, don't say I live in a small town. If you live in an area where there aren't going to be a lot of people, you don't want to give a lot of private information that could allow people to figure out who you are. And then there's just really simple things like a lot of people are on Facebook and they are seeking out abortion and maybe have not told their partners or their family. And if you go into their profiles, you can see these are my family members. This is my spouse. So these are all things that people need to look at and make sure is not visible before they start to do any sort of questioning online, whether legal or not. We see people who said somebody contacted my boyfriend that they saw on my Facebook page and said, your girlfriend is thinking about an abortion, you need to stop her. These are the things that happen in social media now that are even outside of, oh, crap, I could get arrested. It's oh, my God. My family now knows about this thing that was supposed to be private. And just for me.
Garnet Henderson [00:10:02] Right. That's a great point, that digital security really isn't just about the risk of criminalization. It's about who you do and don't want to have access to your private information. So, you know, I think that most people are aware right now that we have a Supreme Court that's very hostile to abortion rights. But I also think there's generally a perception that now that Joe Biden is in office, things are going to be at least a little bit better. And I would love to hear what you think about that. I know you don't agree. So tell us about it.
Robin Marty [00:10:37] So I always tell people that when. Yeah, it's great. I'm obviously really happy that Trump is out of office. I'm really happy that there are Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate and the White House. But obviously A. we can't overcome the Supreme Court. And unless we actually expand the court, I don't know how that's going to get fixed. So knowing that we have one arm of the government that is very much out of power in comparison to the other arms and has so much more oversight than anybody else does. So there's only so much that can happen from a federal standpoint as it is. One of the things that I tell people to look at is if they look back to two thousand and nine there, we had President Obama in the White House. We had a majority in the House. We had a for a while veto proof majority in the Senate. And we got what we all recognize now as a really, really watered down version of the health care reform out of it. So the federal government is never going to save us in general. And even if the federal government could save us by doing things like, OK, we've gotten rid of the Hyde Amendment and so now Medicaid can cover all of abortions or we've gotten rid of the protocol that says that you cannot mail medication abortion out to people. So now everybody can have medication, abortion. What people tend to forget is that while these are great federal victories, these are victories that have already been cut off from ever being applied or accessible in red states and especially in the Southeast, because when it comes to states that have not expanded Medicaid of 13 that are left, 11 of them run from Texas over to Florida. So we're not talking about like here are some states that have not done this. We're talking about there is an entire chunk of the country all placed next to each other that does not have the same access to health care that the rest of the country has when it comes to medication abortion, being able to be done via Telemed. There are, I believe, 16 states that have actual telemed abortion bans and most of them are in the southeast again. So we are not going to be able to benefit from any of these new things that could get changed federally, and unfortunately, what we see tend to happen over and over again is that when people say, hey, federal laws are happening, everything's going to be OK, they move on to a different topic. So then we lose the urgency, we lose the support. We definitely lose the organizing money and those sort of resources because people want to move on to climate change or immigration. And these are all really worthy things, don't get me wrong. But the South gets left behind every single time.
Garnet Henderson [00:13:28] Right. And I also think it's worth noting that we haven't really seen a lot of action on abortion from the Biden administration anyway. Essentially, he's kind of just restored the status quo from before Donald Trump became president. But we haven't seen a move from the president to, for example, get rid of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions, although there is a law that's been reintroduced in the House that that would do that.
Robin Marty [00:13:58] One of the things that's really frustrating to me is that people look at this changeover as something that can be like it's not even about the status quo. When Obama was in office and the House and the Senate belong to Democrats, there was like a year in which that was a victory. And then the Tea Party started and everything focused and switched completely on the right to state state based laws. I mean, Obama in a lot of ways, and that total Democratic victory was what led to the now five hundred plus abortion restrictions that started in 2011 through model legislation that was fed out to all of the states. It's like for some reason, progressives cannot work on two levels at once. We can either work on the federal or we can try to regain things in the states, but we don't seem to know how to do both of them. And so now that we're working on a federal level, again, I am terrified that all the work in the states is just going to get kicked to the side, just like it was in 2009.
Garnet Henderson [00:15:03] Right. Because there are a few states that have started to take proactive steps to protect abortion access. Virginia in particular, I would say, is the state who's kind of done the most reversal of abortion laws.
Robin Marty [00:15:16] I'm really, quite frankly, extremely proud of New Mexico right now because New Mexico has been working for so many years to try to get its old Roe-ban pre-Roe ban on abortion off of the books. And it has failed every single year until this year. And this year they managed to hold the entire coalition together, whereas last year they lost because of pro-life Democrats. So the fact that New Mexico is now able to actually turn some of this around New Mexico is such a really important spot because it is a place where it's a I don't want to say access oasis, but that's really the only language I can use right now because everything around it is going to be so bad if Roe is overturned.
Garnet Henderson [00:16:01] Right. I mean, we heard from somebody in a previous episode of the show who when clinics were shut in Texas because of covid this time last year, one of the options she was considering, which fortunately she didn't have to, but she was considering driving to New Mexico to get an abortion as the closest place that she could have gone.
Robin Marty [00:16:19] Well, and that's going to become even so much worse once you look at if abortion is actually allowed to be illegal state by state. There is an entire section, again, that will not have legal abortion based on previous laws and what has been happening in their state legislatures. So New Mexico is literally going to be the state in the South because all the way across there would be everybody has so far said that they will ban abortion outright, except for Florida and Florida, still iffy because now Florida has a new Supreme Court that might take out the constitutional right to an abortion from the state constitution. If that happens, then we are looking at literally no abortion from New Mexico, like New Mexico would be the only place and then all the way across nothing. Right.
Garnet Henderson [00:17:08] And people who live in the South and in the Midwest already have to travel so far to get to the clinics that are left in their states. And now we're looking at people having to make multiday trips or having to fly somewhere in order to get an abortion potentially.
Robin Marty [00:17:28] Yeah, we did, We did a poll together for just to give Alabama media a background as to we do this is the beginning of a year to make them understand, like what is the state of access in Alabama? What is the state of access in the surrounding area? And we figured out that based on what is already set up, Florida will be the only place that people basically from Texas over can go to. But if Florida does flip, then the closest abortion clinic, if everything ends up going the way that we suspect would be in in Illinois. Yeah, it's not pretty.
Garnet Henderson [00:18:08] Right. Yeah. And so we know that a lot of states have what are often called trigger bans on the books that would immediately ban abortion if Roe v. Wade were overturned. So that's a lot of what you're talking about there.
Robin Marty [00:18:20] Either on those that have said because they have trigger laws or the other part of it is just any state that has introduced a heartbeat ban and had it passed and signed, because I mean, we have to prepare for a possibility that the Supreme Court is not going to overturn Roe. They can say instead something like, well, states should have more leniency to be able to make whatever sort of laws that they want. And that's why the heartbeat bans the ones that ban abortion basically at six weeks from your last menstrual period. That's one of the things that we've really been trying to hit, is that we're talking about four weeks from from from conception. So when it's six weeks, there's two weeks that are still before you even would have the sex to get pregnant. So this is just a matter of two or three weeks in which a person would need to be able to try to get into a clinic and get an abortion. It's not going to happen. It's going to be basically impossible. And there's a very strong possibility that the Supreme Court will say it's not an abortion ban. So Roe is technically upheld. Every state has legal abortion.
Garnet Henderson [00:19:28] Right. And we've heard from so many people on this show who did not discover that they were pregnant until after in some cases long after six weeks. It's really a lot more common than people realize. Six weeks is about the point where someone would start to suspect that maybe they're pregnant usually.
Robin Marty [00:19:47] One of the things that I, so there's a lot of different types of activism in the book and especially the new book. And one of the things that I sadly have to recommend to people is that one of the best things that you can do and invest in that is Supercheap is the idea of going into Amazon or someplace online and ordering both pregnancy tests. There are these tiny little strips called one fros, and they are they are basically the pregnancy test without the actual plastic on it. And you can get like 50 of them for eight dollars. And it's awful, but they're really good. If you are ever going to be in a state where you would need to know immediately if you got pregnant, that's one way to do it really cheaply. And also, I recommend them to people who are managing their own care because a lot of times they don't want to go into a doctor afterward because they're worried about some sort of some sort of follow up being a thing that would either make their doctor not give them the same kind of care or could turn them into the state or whatever. I recommend them for people to use every couple of days after they've had their own self managed care so that they can check and make sure that the pregnancy hormones leaving their bodies.
Garnet Henderson [00:21:03] Right and, you know, I think something you see a lot on Twitter especially is people talking about stocking up on emergency contraception or even trying to get abortion pills and stock up on those. And so I'd love to hear what you would say about that.
Robin Marty [00:21:21] So I would say a couple of different things. One is that emergency contraception is something that everybody should have one pack, maybe two packs on hand for. But obviously the idea of stocking up is how you end up taking it away and emptying the shelves for people who would actually need it. So I say to people, unless you have an actual network that you work with where you are getting emergency contraception out to people, nobody is just going to walk up to a stranger on the street and say, hey, do you have any EC? So you have one for yourself. You have one, maybe for if somebody that, you know, has an emergency and you know, they can't get to a store, but you never need more than two on hand. There are a lot of groups now that are doing really great work on emergency contraception, dispensal. I'm working with Yellow Hammer Fund, which actually has a free emergency contraception by mail for any person who has a zip code in Mississippi, Alabama or the Florida Panhandle. And I'm also talking to a number of groups that are trying to expand their own. And so there are going to be a lot of places where people can get free emergency contraception, and that's really important. And as that network grows, it's something that we need to make sure more people find out about, especially in covid times and especially in rural areas where a lot of times people just won't even put it on the shelves at all. So that's already a problem. And then I'm going to say something that's kind of interesting. So I really, honestly believe that, and I'm not sure how it would work, but I believe that any person who is capable of becoming pregnant and is worried about it should find a way to order one one abortion kit themselves. It's a thing that I believe that everybody should do because I know a lot of people are purchasing them through aid access, and that is a system that is the most affordable for most of them. But also it is a system that is so unbelievably slow. And I have huge concerns about whether people are going to get their medication in time. That's one of the things that I see the most on in different groups online is people asking: "so I use data access. I'm waiting for my pills. How long is this going to take?" And I believe it's getting better now that now that we no longer have Trump kind of stalling things at Customs, but it's still a long time and it's like any other clinic, it's it gets backed up. So there should be a way that people can have it ahead of time. I know that it can't be done through access because you need to give an ultrasound and other things. But we look at all of these countries that are now doing a complete no touch abortion pill distribution, and there's no reason why it can't be something that a person has in their medicine cabinets. So I do have lists of places where people can go to try and find medication abortion pills that are not through clinics. A clinic is never going to give you pills, of course, if you don't actually have a pregnancy that they can see and confirm. So it's never going to be able to happen through that system. But I do believe that when you look at places like Plan C that have the listings of places where you can get medication, if it's a pharmacy, then you shouldn't need any sort of verification. In which case I recommend that if a person has the means, they should do that. One of the biggest issues that I'm having right now, and this goes back to our whole talk about federal versus state and what happens when people stop paying attention to abortion access still being a problem, is that we're seeing all of these new telemed programs and they're great like I'm very happy that the gynnuity is offering care that Planned Parenthood can offer care in some places that we see, hey, Jane, come in and start offering care. But it's places like, hey, Jane, that actually kind of worry me, not because of their ability to provide, but because when you have a place that can give more, more affordable pills, but they can only do it in certain states, that's where we're really going to see this huge divide between northern states, southern states or coastal states, Midwestern states. And so we're going to have these states like New York and California, which they can already use Medicaid to pay for their abortions, but also now they can get these much cheaper, like I believe they're two hundred or three hundred dollar medication abortions as opposed to in clinic abortions, especially down here in the south. A medication abortion is going to be at least six hundred dollars. So we are setting up a system that is so tiered now. And it's it's very frustrating to me to see that access is going to get better and cheaper and so much easier in states where people already have pretty good access. And obviously, I want everyone to have access to an abortion as easily, cheaply, quickly as they possibly can get it, it's just I wish that it wasn't always going to be in the same places because people in the South deserve abortions cheaply, safely and quickly too, and. I'm starting to wonder how that's ever going to happen.
Garnet Henderson [00:27:03] Right, and another issue there, too, is that not everybody wants to have a medication abortion. Not everybody can have a medication abortion safely. There are a lot of people who may end up choosing that option just because it is easier or more affordable when that's not actually what they want.
Robin Marty [00:27:24] That is such a real thing and it's such a real thing that is honestly kind of disturbing and coercive in a lot of ways because there are so many cases of people like me being going to clinics and having clinics kind of talk them into medication abortion simply because it's easier for clinics as well. There's always going to be the need for an abortion clinic and there's always going to be a need for people to a be able to do procedural abortions and also to be able to have procedural abortions, whether it's because of trauma in the past, because of longer gestational periods, whether somebody just needs a follow up because their medication, abortion failed. But there is always going to be all this need for abortion clinics. And that's another side effect of the abundance of medication abortion is that there's like what if we end up in a place where there's one abortion clinic that actually does procedural abortions in every state and everything else is just medication that's going to be just as bad as where we're at with things now.
Garnet Henderson [00:28:34] Right. And there already are a number of clinics. I think this is one of those things that a lot of people just don't realize. There already are a lot of clinics that only or or doctors in private practice that only offer medication abortion.
Robin Marty [00:28:48] There are a number of clinics that only do medication abortion. Another thing that's really disturbing that I don't think people have a visual grasp on is how few clinics there are that do second trimester abortions. In a lot of places. It's because there are laws that have been set up that make it so that you cannot like the Dakotas, you cannot have a second trimester abortion unless it's done in a medical center. So abortion clinics do not count. Those sort of laws have passed. And then obviously there are clinics that just find when you get into second trimester, it's opens you up to a lot more risks. Which clinics are becoming more and more risk averse and rightfully so because of the way that they're being being castigated by legislatures and stupid lawsuits and Operation Rescue and all that fun stuff. There are not that many second trimester and especially not third trimester care, but second trimester care in independent clinics. And that's another thing is that they're primarily independent clinics that are doing second trimester care at this point, too. And they don't have the same sort of system for being able to keep themselves afloat that Planned Parenthood's do.
Garnet Henderson [00:30:01] Right, yeah, and second trimester care is also a lot more expensive for both the both the clinic to provide and the patient to pay for.
Robin Marty [00:30:10] And that's a really alarming thing, because one of the things that we're seeing is in the south, our clinics are backing up again. I work for West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa. And we had we spent the last six months operating maybe once a week, sometimes less, because we had a problem with licensing with one of our doctors. All it takes is one clinic in the South to not be able to operate. And then suddenly there's this cascade effect that goes all throughout. And when that happens, because we see so many people who are, don't have money and who need assistance from abortion funds, then abortion funds start to get even hit even harder. And that when they have later appointments, then they need to start providing more money. So it's not just the patient or the clinic that's doing this whole chasing the fee thing that we talk about. But it's the funds trying to keep up, too. And we're seeing so many requests for solidarity funding, which means that it takes multiple funds for a person to get financed in order to be able to get a second trimester abortion now and be able to get to a clinic that provides it.
Garnet Henderson [00:31:20] Right, and another thing I always try and emphasize for people is that when you have somebody who's waiting for care like that, just because a clinic is backed up or they can't afford it, that's somebody who doesn't want to be pregnant, who has to remain pregnant until they can get to that appointment and know that they can pay for it, for starters.
Robin Marty [00:31:41] So for I mean, I've been I've been pregnant four times and I've given birth three times. Pregnancy when you don't want to be is miserable. It's the pregnancy is not easy by any means ever. But pregnancy, when you don't want to be pregnant is, ughh, it so awful. Like I don't understand how that's not seen as some sort of torture to people.
Garnet Henderson [00:32:04] Yeah, and then it's this is another thing I was thinking about when we were talking about six week bans as well. I mean, none of those are have been enacted right now. But we are certainly looking at a future where those types of laws could start going into effect. And even if somebody were to discover that they were pregnant right before six weeks, you know, five weeks or whatever, you would need a clinic to be able to get you an appointment immediately. So that's another reason why it's an effective ban.
Robin Marty [00:32:38] And these are a lot of times in the same states that are hostile and are passing six week bans are also the same states where doctors don't want to live there. And so doctors often fly in in order to do procedures. So they'll only come in once or twice a week, that sort of thing. So it's really a rough thing. But another thing that I want to just make really clear about these so-called heartbeat bans is that we call them six week bans is shorthand and we really shouldn't because most of them are written to state the point in which some sort of heart tone can be detected. That's not six weeks. So and this is another thing that I had to do for the book, because I realized that there are so many people who don't truly there's so much minutia as to what is gestational age, what is last menstrual period like all of this timing. And it when we're talking about days, it really matters. And so what happens is in a lot of cases, heart, heart tones cam be detected by an ultrasound vaginally within like I believe it's twenty one to twenty eight days after implantation. So we're talking three weeks maybe so you can technically see in some cases what they would consider a heartbeat at a week, a week after a late period, but also a lot of times there are a lot of abortion clinics won't do abortions that early.
Garnet Henderson [00:34:09] I know, yeah.
Robin Marty [00:34:10] OK. We don't want to do an abortion until we can definitely see a heartbeat. But then also a heartbeat is the point in which we can't do an abortion. So it's very deliberate the way that this has been set up to make it so that people can't and can't get care. And one of the reasons why clinics often wait until after a heartbeat can be detected is that they are also aware of whether there might be an ectopic pregnancy. If there were somebody who were to come in and say, OK, I am, I just missed my period. I'm three days past past my period. Please give me medication or please give me a basically like a menstrual extraction so that I don't have to worry about this. Then that person could still have an ectopic pregnancy and not know that because they went in so early that they weren't able to see. And I want to be really clear now that I just brought up the ectopic pregnancy thing, because this is one of the things that anti's use all the time to explain why you shouldn't be able to have medication abortion. So using an ectopic pregnancies as a reason to ban anything is a ridiculous thing simply because if you have a medication abortion and you are pregnant with a regular non tubal pregnancy, that will take care of the pregnancy. If you have a medication abortion and you have an ectopic, then yes, you could end up with a ruptured ectopic that way. But the thing is, any person who is pregnant runs the exact same risk because almost nobody, especially with the way our medical system is set up now, is able to get in and have a pregnancy confirmed. And usually there are no ultrasounds within the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy. Like a lot of times doctors will say, OK, come back to me when your first trimester is over, after you pee in a cup and then give you some prenatal vitamins because they're like, we're not going to do the medical expense that's going to be involved in this until we know for sure that you're not going to miscarry because so many people miscarry in the first trimester. The one thing the doctors always tell you, they don't give you an ultrasound when you first come in, they just say, OK, yeah, your pee says you're pregnant, by the way, watch out for if you get pain in your shoulder or pain in your side, because that could be an ectopic. So every pregnant person is at risk for an ectopic. It does not matter whether you have an abortion or whether you don't have an abortion. It's all the same risk. So if you just tell a person, OK, you think you're pregnant, here's the medication. By the way, after that's done, if you feel any of these signs that could be an ectopic pregnancy, go into the E.R. that does the exact same thing and alleviates the risk just as much as any other way. Yeah.
Garnet Henderson [00:36:59] And I wonder if you could say a little bit about West Alabama Women's Center just because one thing that we've touched on a little bit in the show is that one of the problems with abortion access, too, is that there are a lot of doctors who've been doing this for a long time and they need to retire and there's no one to replace them. And I think that was the case with West Alabama Women's Center. And I know that yellow hammer saved up to buy that clinic. So I'd love it if you could tell us a little bit about that.
Robin Marty [00:37:28] Sure. So what happened is that West Alabama Women's Center basically is responsible for most years, about half of the abortions in the state of Alabama. And it had been run for decades by a woman named Gloria Grey. And also the doctor that she had in was named Dr. Payne. Dr. Payne wanted to retire. Gloria wanted to retire, both of them. Well, Gloria was very concerned about the idea that if she sold the clinic, that it would get closed or even worse, become a CPC. It's right next door to the CPC. So it was it was a reasonable concern.
Garnet Henderson [00:38:06] And that has happened too.
Robin Marty [00:38:08] All the time. Yeah. So when after Yellow Hammer Fund raised a lot of money because of the total ban on abortion in Alabama in May of 2019, Gloria approached Yellow Hammer Fund and said, I would like to sell the clinic, Would you be interested in purchasing it? And obviously that was not necessarily part of the Yellow Hammer funds big overall vision. But we recognized that it was a chance to not just purchase an abortion clinic to keep abortion accessible. But if we could find the right doctor, it meant that we could actually expand services to be able to do more. Birth control, more sexual health care, trans health care, STI testing, all of these other things that we always wanted to be able to bring in because Alabama is so devoid of especially respectful sexual health care, but just any sort of preventative health care at all. Like I said, this is one of the places where Medicaid hasn't even been expanded yet. So we ended up contacting Dr. Lea Atorás, who agreed that she would be willing to move to the state in order to be a full time doctor and medical director at the clinic. And then this is where things get complicated and why it's so difficult to keep clinics open. Alabama has certain rules that are set up for if an abortion clinic changes ownership as to how it would have to then be re-licensed. And as anybody who has ever worked in a hostile red state has dealt with, medical boards will know that that's a very daunting process and one that often the boards are politicized. So it can be very difficult because of the way that the sale was arranged. That was not something that we needed to do. However, we ended up running into a huge issue when it came to getting Lea licensed in the state of Alabama. And that was a process that was extremely long and extremely drawn out and finally Lea came and began working In August, Lea had her license suspended for this process near the end of August, and Lea's license was reinstated last week. So as you can see, there is a medical process and it gets worked through and it's very politicized and can often be very hostile, especially to abortion providers, and it was something that we knew we would have to face going in. We didn't know it would be quite this long. But as of this week, Lea is licensed again and we are able to start looking at expanding all the telemed care and other care that we were hoping to do. But this is why it is so difficult to find a provider that is willing to live in the same community as where an actual abortion clinic is. It's a lot of the clinics are places where you have to have a provider come in because they don't want to live in the area. It's not because they don't like the state, it's because they feel threatened or they know that their livelihood, when Lea's license was taken away, there was a question about whether that would affect all of her other licenses in other states. Like that's a really scary thing to know that you could move to a community and lose your entire ability to practice medicine altogether because there's a politicized board that's after you.
Garnet Henderson [00:41:38] Absolutely. Well, is there anything we haven't talked about yet that you want to add anything? I didn't ask you that I should have.
Robin Marty [00:41:47] I do want to say that there is a perception of the South and especially of the South when it comes to organizing against reproductive rights being taken away, all of these other things. There's this idea that that it's too far gone to be able to do anything to help, like a lot of times we see people, people got really excited about Georgia because they were like, hey, there can be a change made in Georgia. And obviously we saw with the last Senate race that things could be changed. We've seen all this work that has gone into voting rights, all this work that has gone into racial justice. And it's amazing. But it was work that has been happening forever and it was work that came out of a network in a coalition that was built up in Georgia and was built up in Georgia, to be frank, because people wanted to have federal political power, like if Georgia did not have a chance for people to be able to flip Senate seats, we would not have seen nearly as much attention, money, resources going into it. So it's really difficult to be in states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, where people don't think that it's worth investing in it because there isn't going to be a election that can be won. Maybe someday there could be. But because of that, we have to build our infrastructures all ourselves. And people don't understand that in Alabama, we have a really strong, growing progressive infrastructure. We have policy people, we have ACLU, we have Tko, which is a it's a the knights and orchids society, which is black trans youth organizing, urge. We have all of these groups, but nobody is supporting us here because we have to do it ourselves. And so I know that when it comes to trying to make progressive change, that eventually people are going to realize that Alabama and Mississippi are states that can be invested in. I hope that they realize it before it gets too late, because even just the tiniest bit of money of attention of any sort of activism for us can make such a huge change simply because we are such a low resource state that having that power would really change everything.
Garnet Henderson [00:44:03] Absolutely. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Robin Marty [00:44:07] Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful.
Garnet Henderson [00:44:25] Access is produced by me, Garnet Henderson, our logo is by Kate Ryan and our theme music is by Lily Sloan. This show is a completely independent production. There's no big media company giving us money. If you want to help us grow, the best thing you can do is share the show directly with a friend. You can also donate by visiting glow.fm/apodcastaboutabortion that's in the show notes, too. Don't forget to subscribe to access wherever you get your podcasts. You can also help people find us by leaving a rating or review wherever you listen, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @accesspod. A reminder that I'm always interested in hearing from you. If you want to share a story on the show, you can reach me at accesspodcast@protonmail.com, and that's in the show notes as well. A full transcript of this episode is available on our website, apodcastaboutabortion.com.
