In This Episode
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TRANSCRIPT
Jessica Valenti: They are really very proactively trying to shift that overton window and get people used to the idea that it is okay to punish abortion patients. If they can’t do it with life in prison or the death penalty right away, they’ll try to figure out another way to do it. No, they are they are moving to the next step. [music break]
Jane Coaston: I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that’s wondering how Vice President JD Vance really felt when his boss declared him the official scapegoat of the Iran War.
[clip of unnamed news journalist] President Trump said yesterday that he was going to blame you if the talks with Iran go sideways. Are you worried that he’s going to make you the fall guy?
[clip of Vice President J.D. Vance] Uh, no, not at all. I mean, I think the president was joking.
Jane Coaston: Oh, honey, maybe ask former Vice President Mike Pence about what a hilarious guy President Donald Trump really is. On today’s show, we talk to Jessica Valenti about the next front in the abortion fight and the scary state-level anti-abortion legislation you may not have heard about. Before we get into all that, here’s what we’re following today, Thursday, June 18th.
[clip of Vice President J.D. Vance] So I guess I would say to anybody, any of the critics, is number one, have a little bit of faith in the President of the United States. The idea that he is going to strike a deal that’s been bad for the American people, it’s preposterous.
Jane Coaston: Preposterous. Vice President J.D. Vance has the unfortunate task of spinning the new U.S. Iran Memorandum of Understanding, or, if you will, Surrenderandum of Understanding. And spoiler alert, it’s not going over well. That’s because this agreement foresees, effectively, pumping Iran full of money by unfreezing hundreds of billions of dollars held in foreign banks and letting Iran sell oil right away. It does not include a long-term resolution to the Iranian nuclear standoff, at least not on paper. So we went from, we’re going to destroy your civilization, to, eh, do whatever. After days of will he, won’t he, the president went ahead and signed the MOU during a visit to the French Palace of Versailles. That makes this the second most important document signed there, after the treaty that famously ended World War I and paved the way for World War II. Trump’s memo of Versailles stops fighting for 60 days, so Vance has plenty of time to scramble for a much better final deal. And for Vance’s sake, that new deal better be a big improvement, because even Republicans think what Trump just signed is bullshit. Fox News host Trey Gowdy said yesterday he thought he was being spoofed after reading the MOU because of how it benefits Iran.
[clip of Fox News Host Trey Gowdy] They’re better off than they were before the hostilities began. And that should not be the consequence of war.
Jane Coaston: Another Fox News host, Mark Levin, tweeted today, quote, “the insanity of those defending parts of the MOU or major matters left out of this MOU is truly stunning.” But it’s not just loudmouth Fox News personalities slamming Trump’s deal. In a tweet yesterday, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy called it the, quote, “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” And in an interview with The Hill, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz suggested Trump might be getting some, quote, “Very poor advice on this deal.” Trump fired back today against, quote, “fools who think he hasn’t been tough enough on Iran,” calling them, quote, “either jealous, bad people, or stupid.” As someone who opposed this war and dislikes this administration, I’ll say I’m having a great time. It’s rare that I get to say this, but the Supreme Court today made a ruling that was both correct and hilarious. In a unanimous decision, the court found that the prosecution of a Texas man for owning a gun while also being a marijuana user was not consistent with the Second Amendment. In Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, he wrote that the prosecution only made sense if you believe that using or possessing marijuana, a drug millions of Americans use and is legal to some degree in 40 states, gave the government the right to take away someone’s Second Amendment rights. I highly recommend reading the full opinion. Because Gorsuch included roughly four pages on the drinking habits of the Founding Fathers. His point, despite the fact that Thomas Jefferson drank four glasses of wine a night, no one at the time would have attempted to restrict his right to bear arms. And so it goes, according to the Supreme Court, with a 10-gram gummy. And speaking of green, Washington, D.C. is dealing with another kind. Despite official claims to the contrary, the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool remains emerald colored and filled with algae. Yes, Trump promised to drain the swamp. Instead, he put one in the reflecting pool. Earlier this morning, the Department of the Interior tweeted they had solved this problem with, and I am not making this up, quote, “advanced nanobubbler technology.” Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. But, DC correspondent Matt Berg went to look and–
[clip of Matt Berg] It’s still green, guys.
Jane Coaston: There you have it, our man in DC on the scene. And that’s the news. Let’s talk about abortion. The 2022 Dobb’s decision that reversed Roe versus Wade promised to return the issue of abortion back to the states. But for anti-abortion activists, state-level bans haven’t been good enough. And more and more states have introduced legislation that would make getting an abortion a punishable crime. In Tennessee, a state with a total abortion ban. Republican legislators tried to push through a bill that would have treated abortion like homicide, making abortion patients eligible for the death penalty under Tennessee law. And in North Carolina, a state where abortion is still legal, Republican legislators recently proposed a bill that goes even further. It’s clear that anti-abortion activists want to see women who get abortions imprisoned, or worse. And with the number of people who have gotten abortions only increasing over the last year. That’s a lot of punishment they want to mete out. Jessica Valenti writes a sub stack, Abortion Every Day. She has been tracking abortion rights for more than a decade. We talked about why the anti-abortion movement has gotten more extreme and what we can do about it. Jessica, welcome back to What a Day.
Jessica Valenti: Thanks for having me.
Jane Coaston: So, North Carolina has been considering a bill that would let voters amend the state constitution to say that life starts at the moment of conception. And it would equate abortion with murder. There are a lot of layers to how bad this bill is. Can you give us a quick explainer?
Jessica Valenti: Sure. Yeah. There’s there’s a lot going on there. Um it as you said, it would classify abortion as murder in the criminal code, not just for abortion providers, but for abortion patients, uh in every state that has an abortion ban, they generally prohibit the prosecution of abortion patients, this would allow the prosecution of abortion patients, um the way that they define abortion and life would make it questionable on birth control. And whether certain forms of birth control like IUDs and the morning after pill would be considered abortions and therefore punishable with life in prison. And then there’s a really, interesting is not the right word, um but a really troubling section that allows um for the use of deadly force in defense of a fetus embryo fertilized egg, meaning you could kill an abortion provider. Um. And that would be legally justified and the language, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the language is so broad that you could also make the argument that killing someone who is driving a person to an abortion clinic, who is lending them money um is being done in defense of a fetus. And so it’s it’s pretty much about as extreme as as you can get, but I would just say, unfortunately, we’re seeing a real rise in bills like this, right? Like they’re no longer anomalies.
Jane Coaston: Right, yeah. I think I’ve seen bills like this in Tennessee and in Louisiana. What what other states have tried to pass legislation that would make an abortion the equivalent of committing murder?
Jessica Valenti: I mean, pretty much every anti-abortion state has has seen a bill like this. I think at last count, it was over a dozen. They’re called equal protection bills because the idea is that fetuses, embryos, fertilized eggs deserve the same level of um protection in the state constitution um as a as a human being. And they’re being pushed by this really radical group, this sect of the anti-abortion movement called abortion abolitionists, which is just problematic for all sorts of reasons, um but they are gaining power, like culturally, politically, they have a really unfortunately good political ground game. They have candidates who are running for office. They have folks who have been elected to office. And so this is, again, it’s not an unusual bit of legislation anymore. We’re seeing it every legislative session. And every legislative session, these bills are getting more co-sponsors.
Jane Coaston: We’ll get back to my conversation with Jessica Valenti in a moment with more troubling ideas that unfortunately we still have to talk about. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
Jane Coaston: Let’s get back to my conversation with Jessica Valenti. Now realistically, this North Carolina bill will not pass.
Jessica Valenti: Yes.
Jane Coaston: I think it’s interesting because you keep having these moments, again, interesting, not in a good way. You keep having these–
Jessica Valenti: Yeah.
Jane Coaston: –moments where this bill is suggested and then the legislators clearly get yelled at just enough that they’re like, oh, well, maybe it’s not such a good idea. Um. I think my favorite example of this was a Tennessee legislator who put this forward. His argument was, well, we don’t execute that many women anyway. So it’s not really that big a concern.
Jessica Valenti: Yeah. [laughing]
When Tenn– you know that bill was put forward in Tennessee.
Jessica Valenti: Yeah.
Jane Coaston: But in a moment in which there are more than a dozen states with total bans, this tells me that the state of the anti-abortion movement is more extreme than ever. You know, we heard for 50 years or so, oh, just send it back to the states and let states make a decision. And then, the Supreme Court did that. And it wasn’t good enough for them.
Jessica Valenti: Yeah, no, they are they are moving to the next step. This is something that I’ve predicted it’s something other feminists and abortion rights advocates have warned about that they are really very proactively trying to shift that overton window and get people used to the idea that it is okay to punish abortion patients. If they can’t do it with life in prison or the death penalty right away, they’ll try to figure out another way to do it. There was a bill in South Carolina, I believe, that would punish abortion patients. Their um their compromise was to move it from life in prison and execution to a couple of years in prison, like two years in prison. And for the first time, a major national anti-abortion group, Students for Life, endorsed that legislation. Right, so we are really seeing like the so called mainstream anti-abortion movement get on board. I reported, I think it was a week or two ago, the Texas Republican Party um explicitly publicly praised and posted about on their social media accounts, abolish abortion Texas, an abolitionist group. They have abolitionist language in the Republican Party platform. And so this is happening, even if these bills don’t get passed um right now, they are certainly making moves towards that eventual end. And I think that we’re moving a lot quicker than some people probably realize.
Jane Coaston: Something that I noted in coverage, local coverage from Tennessee and from North Carolina is that the people who are advocating for these types of legislation are generally men. And the people you see online who are screaming at the women who kind of lead the anti-abortion movement, the mainstream, it’s mostly men saying, we need to punish these women. They are committing murder. You punish murderers by putting them to death. And when anti-abortion activists who are women push back, there’s basically this kind of like, this weird, you’re not going far enough, you’re just you know a simple, stupid woman, you don’t understand what we need to be doing. Is that something you’re seeing as well? I mean, obviously I think misogyny is the underpinning of so much of the anti-abortion movement itself, but there’s also a misogyony within the anti-abortion movement towards people fighting abortion.
Jessica Valenti: Absolutely. Your read on it is 100% correct. Um. These guys are misogynist, ultra right-wing Christian nationalists, right? Like they have a very specific idea about what women’s place is. These are the same guys who don’t want women to vote. Um. They are certainly not interested in listening to a female leader of an anti-abortion group. I have heard stories from women who tried to join the the abolitionist movement. Um. Just to be sort of mistreated and shunned, like they don’t think women are people and so it’s not hard to imagine that they’re not incredibly interested in working with women, having conversations, having political conversations with women. Um. They think that we should be home having babies.
Jane Coaston: You’ve written that the abortion rights movement spends a lot of time responding to emergencies, kind of being like, oh, this is happening right now, we gotta fight it. But it doesn’t plan ahead in the way that anti-abortion activists do. So if the anti-abortion movement is moving towards abolition, where does the abortion-rights movement need to go?
Jessica Valenti: Part of the problem is that for way too long, you know, the mainstream abortion rights movement, mainstream democratic legislators, they don’t take these kinds of things seriously. They think that these are outliers, they think that these are extremists, like nothing is ever going to happen with this. We need to start taking them really seriously. And as you said, really looking ahead 10, 20, 30 years and and doing political work that is thinking decades ahead. I think part of that is really holding Republicans to account proactively and putting them on the record. You know, like pass a bill that says we will introduce a bill in your state, in the federal government that says, we are never going to punish abortion patients. Surely we can all agree on that. Democrats did something similar with um codifying the right to contraception, right? They knew it was going to pass, but they got Republicans on the record saying that they don’t want to codify the right to contraception. And I think the more that we can be talking about this and holding their feet to the fire, the better. And again, taking it seriously, um I understand. I think that there’s always a fear of you don’t want to scare people, right? Especially when there’s so much confusion um and misinformation going around about abortion and what’s legal and what not. You never want to send the impression that um you know a bill is somehow a lie. Like there’s a lot of confusion there for people in these [?] where they think if you make a video about one of these bills, they think, oh my God, can I go get an abortion or am I going to be you know put um to to death by the government? So it’s incredibly important that we’re taking that into account. But this is an emergency, right? Like this is happening now and this is happening very quickly. They are electing these guys to office and the sooner that we can like really get on board and make this a central piece of the movement, the better.
Jane Coaston: Jessica, as always, thank you so much for joining me.
Jessica Valenti: Thank you for having me.
Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Jessica Valenti, founder of Abortion Every Day. We’ll link to her sub stack in the show notes.
[AD BREAK]
Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, congratulate former President Barack Obama, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how the Barack Obama Presidential Center, which features a library, park, museum, basketball court, and gardens officially opened today, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/ subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and in a related note, CNN found today that Obama is the most popular living president, and his popularity with independent voters is nearly twice as high as that of his successors. I miss him. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Fohr, Erica Morrison, and Adriene Hill. Our team includes Hayley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]
