Nancy and Sarah talk about how abortion got overturned, the modern push to control our biological destinies, and why we refuse to give in to the ideological comfort food of hatred and despair
I adore you two! Something Sarah said really stood out. She’s glad she lives in Texas and is glad she’s around people who don’t think like her. I consider myself on the Left but I listen to smart, conservative podcasts (the dispatch crew, National review, even Ben Shapiro 😱) and what I find with my crowd is a complete ignorance about the “other side’s” arguments. I can’t tell you how many people have been railing against the White Male Patriarchy™️ and what they don’t realize are all the pro-life women who are absolutely earnest in their beliefs. They’re not brainwashed, they’re not propping up White Supremacy, they have very honest feelings about protecting unborn life. And while I don’t want them reversing Roe, I can see their point of view and actually *gasp* appreciate it.
I was reading David French’s latest French Press (honestly, god bless the David French’s of the world) and I was moved (almost) to donate to a pregnancy center (I need to do more research). If abortion is going to be banned or severely restricted in some states why wouldn’t you want places where women can go for support? https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/roe-is-reversed-and-the-right-isnt
I wish we could all have an honest, respectful conversation with each other but it’s not going to happen if all the Left sees are avatars for the WMP™️.
Re: paywall, Sarah’s piece about Depp-Heard is all anybody should need to become a paying member. It’s an honor to invest in this type of journalism.
Anyways, love you guys!!! Thank you as always for the calm analysis.
I totally want to grab a cup of coffee with you, Gabrielle. I agree wholeheartedly about the importance of listening to people with different opinions. I’m a (formerly progressive, now politically homeless) NYer, and was baffled...stunned when Trump was elected. It made no sense and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My friends and the media said it is because this country is filled with hateful racists and misogynists. I LOVE pointing fingers and blaming, it’s one of my favorite hobbies, but I felt the need to hear other points of view rather than just screaming WHITE SUPREMACY! I listened to National Review and Megyn Kelly and I was surprised to learn there were ideas I agreed with and/or perspectives I hadn’t considered. While I may not see eye to eye on everything, I see where people are coming from, and they have valid points. I still consider myself on the Left, even though the goalposts have shifted so much that I would probably be considered to be Archie Bunker reincarnated by those 10-20 years younger than I am. So be it.
I just subscribed to French Press and am looking forward to listening. I’m so glad I don’t have a shopping habit, because at this point all my discretionary income is going towards podcasters that are keeping me sane: Sarah and Nancy, Blocked and Reported, Bridget Phetasy, Meghan Daum, and Fifth Column!
Gabrielle, you have great points about being around those with opposing viewpoints. I think if one can't articulate and reason through what they are saying then you don't really understand them. And I second your opinion on Sarah's Depp-Heard piece.
It’s so bizarre. I find that my lefty friends are almost afraid of alternate political views. I used to listen to Pod Save America but found they were too smug about political opposition. It was obvious they weren’t listening to the arguments and dismissing things they should have taken seriously (lots of DeSantis stuff in that category)
I had so many thoughts about motherhood and the choice not to be a mother during this fascinating discussion. Your mention of RBG being a young mother while she was in law school, and the question of why universities and our culture doesn't embrace that more these days made me think about how different motherhood looks now than it did when, say, RBG or my own mother was young - the pressure on today's mothers to do it all-- all the activities and arts and crafts and driving to sports and all the household management all without letting your kids out of your sight for a single second (because God forbid you're not constantly engaged with them in some edifying way)-- pretty much precludes women with young children from doing much else. Was it different for, say, RBG, who maybe wasn't expected to frost three dozen Minions cupcakes for her kid's class party? What has caused the shift in the expectations on mothers? I think it began in the 80s, somewhere around second-wave feminism's insistence that women can "have it all", and has been exacerbated by social media and hustle culture, but I don't know, exactly. It's an intriguing question to me.
Also, a movie recommendation - The Lost Daughter (on Netflix), directed by Maggie Gyllehnaal and starring Olivia Colman, a thought-provoking (and disturbing) look at the burdens and joys of motherhood.
Yes to all of this. The culture of motherhood changed dramatically. I'm reminded of Jennifer Senior's book "All Joy and No Fun" where she makes the observation that working mothers today spend more time with their kids than stay-at-home mothers did in previous eras. (See: Nancy's conversations about Seventies parenting.) Everything feels so out of balance. I know for me, I refused to be a mother unless I could Do It Right -- which might be foolish perfectionism, but also reflects decades of hearing about how hard and important motherhood was -- and then in the end, I didn't do motherhood at all. So! I was thinking about The Lost Daughter as we had that conversation. I haven't seen the movie, but I've heard lots of friends discuss it. -- SH
Oh, gosh, SH, I so feel the "not gonna do it unless I can do it right" thing. When I was expecting my first, I was, of course, certain that I would be the perfect mother. It turns out that I am a mediocre baker, a terrible arts-and-crafter, a vessel of limited physical energy, and only a "good enough" mother who, of course, loves her kids to pieces (and I am confident that the feeling is mutual).
I remembered after I posted above that Meaghan Daum (to whom you and Nancy led me, and I can't thank you both enough for that) discusses in her book "The Problem With Everything" the link between the rise of women in the workplace in the 80s and the Satanic Panic (along with an uptick in fear of child abduction and poisoned Halloween candy). I think this may be the dawn of the new culture of motherhood, when terrified, guilt-ridden working mothers began to compensate for their absence from the home by taking on, well, everything related to child and home care.
I can't wait to check out Jennifer Senior's book, and Nancy's take on '70s parenting, of course! (One more note: I think, generally speaking, the products of '70s parenting turned out pretty okay).
Yes, yes, so much of this super-mom stuff may have roots in guilt and overcompensation, and amplified by the voices/worries of the internet, which make far-away dangers feel close up. Meghan is such a beautiful writer, thinker, and contributor to the cultural conversation, I'm glad we could introduce you. As an aside, I'm a very crafty person, and feel certain I could have been a kick-ass Pinterest mom, and feel a bit chagrined I never got the chance. Maybe I'll make some crafty gifts for our podcast. My new baby. -- SH
Another great conversation, even more thought-provoking and challenging than most of your episodes. I live in a Republican-leaning rural state. Many of my neighbors are lovely people who I'd never share my political opinions with in a million years. But some of them... well, they suck, frankly. I think back to the guys that came heavily armed to the candlelight vigil for George Floyd that my high school daughter went to, or the people that I walked by every day who did everything short of physically attacking state legislators who had the audacity to vote to receive federal funding for promoting Covid vaccines, or the guy who called a coworker words I won't use here because she told him to wear a mask in our building. I don't want to sound whiny--I'm a straight white male, I haven't had to deal with shit, really. I guess my point is, yes there are plenty of talking heads or activists on the Left that demonize the Right without any understanding of the people they're talking about. But also? Some of that shit is real.
And yet...
Everything you say about needing to know your neighbors, and not demonize people you disagree with is undeniably true. We're not going to get anywhere if we deny the humanity of people whose beliefs seem alien to us. You are right about all of that. I just find it really fucking difficult. But now I feel called out a little, and justifiably, so I need to try and do better on this front.
I swear I don't make a habit of going on discussion boards and dumping all my feelings--not until I started listening to Smoke 'Em, anyway. Wow, you two have REALLY gotten into my head! ( :
You guys are so open-hearted and wonderful. Thanks for this conversation. I'm starting to shed my "pro-life" label for something more descriptive: I think there should be limited limits on abortion, something like a 15 week cutoff* with important exceptions for maternal emergencies and victims of rape and incest. My husband described this plan as "pro-life," but I think Nancy would possibly support something similar with a "pro-choice" label. Perhaps the life/choice verbiage is part of the problem?
*see VEEP episode where Selina Meyer can't "pick a number":
Anyway, I'm printing out a bunch of the articles and finishing the second half of the pod. Love love love this coverage. Y'all are really scratching an itch that the Fifth guys can't. (Not that they're not trying, but their discomfort is palpable).
Y'all are so right about knowing your neighbors! I have lived in a red county outside of Austin for the past 20 years, surrounded by the most lovely Republicans that I never knew could exist before I got here. We don't agree about much politically, but we love each other, we listen to each other, and we help each other out. Some of my favorite nights are in the summer when we all gather to swim in my pool. I wouldn't trade them for anyone.
Thank-you ladies for your prospective. I recently watched a Vice News report and both sides angered me. The reporter and the clinic interview subject kept using the term pregnant person why not just way woman.
The reporter also interviewed a spokesperson from Alliance Defending Freedom, this organization provided legal assistance with Dobbs. If you read the website it all appears very rationale concerning free speech and religious freedom. If you dig a bit they appear to be probably working on over turning gay marriage.
This would be an interesting group to investigate as I believe their tactics are aimed at provoking liberals and unfortunately their tactics will probably work.
Sarah -- off topic, but -- your website is not working. This is the one linked on the Smoke 'Em about page. It goes to a link at aplus.net about "suspended due to incomplete whois verification". I'm pretty sure it was working fine a few weeks ago. Just FYI. (Feel free to delete this comment once you get this fixed; I didn't see any better way to let you know.)
Hey Em - Nancy here. I, interestingly, read your comment just after I had dinner with a friend in from SF. She is apoplectically enraged about the overturning of Roe, beside herself that anyone, other than herself, would exert autonomy over her body. She further has a cousin who is a doctor in a St. Louis family practice clinic that performs abortions. Her cousin said the overturning of Roe is going to result in many more late term abortions, with people afraid and confused as services become harder to access. These are the unintended consequences of overturning the law, ones that I cannot imagine anyone being happy about. (I really am getting to your points!) I countered to my friend, what about the idea of push-push-pushing birth control? She said her cousin's patients in the main are super uneducated, they are not going to take precautions and never will, leaving abortion as the only option for an unintended pregnancy. It would be my hope that this can be changed, to be able to get birth control as easy to buy as a pack of gum.
As for your comments: I agree, and I don't. Most people reading that issue of the magazine are not at that moment experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, but are, if the magazine is properly pegging its readership, interested in knowing how to end a pregnancy, for themselves or a friend or a relative or just to feel in the know and/or apprised of the culture. (My first gig as a journalist was as a nightlife columnist in LA, and I quickly learned, people don't necessarily want to go, they just want to know.) This makes sense; forewarned is forearmed. This is why I think it would have been a smart idea to include something about birth control. If my friend's cousin is right (and, granted, her patients are likely not New York Magazine readers), there are people who need hand-holding; obviously that's so even for blue city chatterati, if NY Mag is publishing an exhaustive list of options and locations. I am of the additional mind that people can be saved hardship and money if they avoid the pregnancy.
Go ahead and dump! Trust me; I know it can be frustrating. Covering antifa and the more radical activists in Portland, with them getting in face and stealing my phone and following me around and putting my picture online, I had to be... patience, grasshopper; don't be one of those people who lose your nut, report calmly. There are definitely problematic people on every one of the googolplex sides of life. And so very many good ones!
I couldn’t bear up under that kind of harassment. You got a steely spine, Nancy. All you journalists that wade into the bullshit to report what’s going deserve manor props.
Just gotta say, a period tracker is a wonderful thing for women with irregular periods. I wish I had had something like it in high school. It also helped a ton with figuring out ovulation - put in a ton of temperature data, and it figures out the day.
Lovely discussion, as always. I wish the sides of the abortion debate weren’t staked by the loudest, least nuanced voices in the room, but i don’t know if there’s any way to change it. Just keep adding nuance and hope people will take note, I suppose.
Yes I second your enthusiasm for period trackers, especially when that sucker isn't, uh, periodical. Every time my doctor asks me the date of my last period, it's like my head spins a pinwheel for ten minutes. I've never felt so on top of things, but as I've proven, I am the more chaotic and less organized of our duo. -- SH
Somehow I knew there would be other fans of David French on this Substack. But he does get criticized by some right wingers for being too civil - wait, isn't that what we need to do to talk to others with whom you might disagree?
This is easily the most reasoned and calming conversation I've heard about the Dobbs decision; I would like there to be many more but as y'all have discussed, many people would much rather be yelling at each other and rallying the troops. So much food for thought in this episode. Some random thoughts --
- I would like to hear more of the history of how abortions were handled through history, as you mentioned near the beginning - this was in Damon Root's piece. This is in line with Sarah's research on "how we got to this point". There is always history and it's often relevant
- I too would like to put a stop to the shaming of various states. States are (mostly) BIG, with lots of folks with lots of views.
- I would like to put in a plug for Twitter, with all its faults; but that's mostly due to how I use it. I treat it as "read-only", or as a lurker, as we used to say. I "heart" the tweets I like or find interesting, but almost never reply. But I gain a lot of information by following people who are interesting or informative, mostly in the fields I want to follow -- programming, astronomy & space, geology, some travel, some culture, and limited politics. (and of course @iowahawkblog for his weekend "Daves Car ID Service", who wouldn't love that!)
- Nancy, you tweeted a pic on the weekend of where you were about to podcast from -- many very interesting photos and stuff in the background! Would love to hear about that, whatever you would care to share!
- Another thought-provoking and satisfying morning walk (4.79 miles again, I guess I have a consistent pace) & conversation; thank you!
If autonomy is our goal for women, then I think it's reasonable to remind ourselves of the things a woman can do for herself regardless of which state laws apply to her. There's going to be a lot of flux in the laws for the foreseeable future. A culture of autonomy and awareness of one's body is never amiss. It's not abortion abolitionism.
FWIW, I prefer the dental hygienist to flossing!!! ;)
I’m a paid subscriber. I like listening; I share a lot of your views.
That said, I grew increasingly irritated while listening to this episode by the assumptions that seem to have tacitly steered many of Nancy’s comments on abortion and how we talk about it.
These assumptions emerged most clearly for me in the context of her critique of a recent article (post repeal) outlining the many ways a woman might terminate her pregnancy. Nancy felt the article should have included information about various forms of birth control as well.
Mmkay. To me, this seems akin to complaining that an article about bariatric surgery and prescription-only weight loss drugs fails to include information about diets for thin people who don’t want to become morbidly obese.
I doubt Nancy would draw that analogy, though, since she probably understands morbid obesity as a state to which very, very few people aspire. Further, she also probably understands that NOBODY considers bariatric surgery an easier option than staying thin.
(I am aware that the analogy isn’t perfect.
I expect it to be especially difficult to square for parents.)
Final thought: I would love to listen to an intelligent discussion of the repeal that does not gesture at this mythical woman who needs assistance and handholding in learning about birth control but finds it easy to locate an abortion provider, to schedule an appointment (or two, depending on the state or the procedure), and to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for it. Odd that these skills would not transfer!
I bet this woman also LOVES dental cleanings because it lets her skip the daily flossing routine...
Hey Em - Nancy here. I, interestingly, read your comment just after I had dinner with a friend in from SF. She is apoplectically enraged about the overturning of Roe, beside herself that anyone, other than herself, would exert autonomy over her body. She further has a cousin who is a doctor in a St. Louis family practice clinic that performs abortions. Her cousin said the overturning of Roe is going to result in many more late term abortions, with people afraid and confused as services become harder to access. These are the unintended consequences of overturning the law, ones that I cannot imagine anyone being happy about. (I really am getting to your points!) I countered to my friend, what about the idea of push-push-pushing birth control? She said her cousin's patients in the main are super uneducated, they are not going to take precautions and never will, leaving abortion as the only option for an unintended pregnancy. It would be my hope that this can be changed, to be able to get birth control as easy to buy as a pack of gum.
As for your comments: I agree, and I don't. Most people reading that issue of the magazine are not at that moment experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, but are, if the magazine is properly pegging its readership, interested in knowing how to end a pregnancy, for themselves or a friend or a relative or just to feel in the know and/or apprised of the culture. (My first gig as a journalist was as a nightlife columnist in LA, and I quickly learned, people don't necessarily want to go, they just want to know.) This makes sense; forewarned is forearmed. This is why I think it would have been a smart idea to include something about birth control. If my friend's cousin is right (and, granted, her patients are likely not New York Magazine readers), there are people who need hand-holding; obviously that's so even for blue city chatterati, if NY Mag is publishing an exhaustive list of options and locations. I am of the additional mind that people can be saved hardship and money if they avoid the pregnancy.
I really want to make a joke about THOTs but I’ll heroically refrain, lol.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I do appreciate it.
Certainly there are populations that need hand-holding, as you put it. But I don’t think they’re as widespread as your comments suggest. They ARE, however, playing a central role in many of the self-consciously “measured” or “reasonable” responses to the repeal. (For another example, see how the pro-choice argument was framed on Bari Weiss’s podcast.)
Such responses center this uneducated group (for whom we need to “demystify birth control and make sure it’s easily available and affordable!”) while tsking at the harms done by that other group of women, the one that supposedly celebrated and “shouted” their abortions, the ones who pushed for abortion rights up to birth, etc.
Neither of these groups is actually very large, I think. Nor is either germane to the main question (should American women have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?). So why do they keep getting centered?
I think it’s probably not coincidental that they make great fodder for a particular strain of condescending paternalism that has absolutely infested liberal discourse since 2016, and which I guess is now going to shape moderates’ takes on Roe.
While fun (in the same way that Twitter brawls are fun), this soft paternalism is politically useless. In its condescending form, it conjures a populace that is uneducated, and therefore in need of expert guidance or protection (eg, vaccine hesitance among marginalized groups); in its contemptuous form, it conjures a population that has been warped by misinformation and needs to be deplatformed (eg, anti-vaxxers who listen to Joe Rogan and retweet conspiracy theories).
In both modes, it frames the speaker as the educated authority. And it alienates pretty much everyone else.
So now I see it shaping reactions to Roe. But it is very difficult for me to take seriously that many readers of New York Magazine might need a lesson in birth control from a reporter. It’s also equally hard for me to believe that your friend’s cousin’s entire patient pool is unwilling to take precautions, ever, because they’re “super uneducated” about it.
I’m not at all surprised that she *thinks* it to be true, though. This is THE new analytic that we on the left have embraced, in order to make sense of those who are different from us: either they are ignorant (and in need of educating), or (in the case of Trump-adjacent lunacies) they are evil and must be silenced.
I just hate seeing shades of this logic creeping into responses to Roe (educate the ignorant to use birth control! silence the “shout-my-abortion” extremists!).
We will NEVER successfully assert women’s right to bodily autonomy that way. Either it’s a choice women should be able to make for their own bodies, or it isn’t.
Anyway, thanks again for engaging. As I said, I dig the podcast and look forward to each new ep.
Okay, a few more thoughts (actually not being clever here! beyond me as first cup of coffee still brewing): I agree with you 100% about the soft paternalism and had I not had dinner with my friend who brought up the clueless-about-birth-control group it would not have occurred to me. I am also 100% in agreement that that slice of the population is small, and, despite my friend's cousin's contention, do not learn. It's really not that hard, especially I imagine after one's had an abortion, to understand how one gets pregnant and, if one finds the abortion not something one wants to repeat, to use birth control in the future.
The people I want to get on the birth control train are those who know all about it but just choose not to, instead using abortion as family planning. You may argue, and you may be right, that this, too, is a very small number. I'm not sure. Ending a pregnancy with Plan C (I am told) now outnumber surgical abortions. I applaud that, while also wondering whether young women are using it AS birth. I am not saying it's not their right to. It is, and I'm glad for the option. Where I suspect we may part ways is the idea that not getting pregnant in the first place, and aborting an unwanted pregnancy, are same/same. They're not. People can argue all day (and I am not saying you are one who would) that abortion doesn't take a psychic/physical toll and even if it did, it's the woman's choice. Second part true, first part, in my opinion, not. Why not avoid it in the first place?
This is what I mean about making birth control as readily available as a pack of gum, hell, make it a pack of gum. Have it in everyone's eyeballs at the bodega or the 7-11, right next to the Tic-Tacs. I'll wager that most people reading this have had unprotected sex when they knew it risked getting pregnant at a time when they did not want to become pregnant; I certainly did. If OTC birth control becomes a thing (inshallah), you'll have companies competing to make birth control better and cheaper. I think it makes sense to think, this brings down the rate of abortion.
Yes, of course women have the right to not take birth control, to have 40 abortions if they want to. Maybe you can convince me: So what if they do? But I do think there's a so what, and what I am going to write is going to be hard to put into words, and maybe nobody but me cares, but here goes: There was about a 5 day period before I knew I was pregnant when something happened. I wanted to get pregnant, but as these things go, I hadn't missed a period yet and wasn't concentrating on whether I was, anyway, I existed during these few days in a sort of outer space I had not heretofore encountered; again, it's kind of hard to put into words. I was 26 and working and just... on some other plane. This was the time, I later learned, when the fertilized egg has yet to implant, it's making its way toward implantation, meaning it, too, is sort of floating in space. I imagine some people don't even register it, but I did, if not, well, see above.
Several years ago the daughter that was the product of this dual astral trip sent me a link to a Radio Lab episode, where they breakdown just what is happening during this very early stage, when the body is at war - literally, these warring factions, the woman's body saying, YOU WILL NOT IMPLANT HERE, the will-be-baby saying, OH YES I WILL. It it no wonder I sensed something going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3CfkTzHcJY
I find all this phenomenal. I am not saying, women who experience an unwanted pregnancy do not have the right to terminate it. I am saying, it strikes me as making a cake, and actually a kind of profound one, and dumping it in the garbage. Why not just not make the cake?
I know I'm a year late to this discussion, but I get incredibly annoyed when people talk about Roe having a shaky legal justification. That's certainly an opinion that law scholars and others can (and do) have, but I hardly see how it ever matters. The Supreme Court has been empowered (through the accidents of history, by the way) to be the sole arbiter of what counts as a shaky or not legal justification. If, say, Roberts and Kavanaugh both thought "Gee, I think Roe was decided on the wrong legal theory, but I think this other one is stronger", they could absolutely have written an opinion saying "We've set aside Roe, but the new controlling legal doctrine will be rooted in this other section of the Constitution." They could absolutely have done that if they chose to, and Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer would have immediately said "OK, we accept this new legal doctrine." There has been no shortage of scholarly articles describing how to root an abortion protection in other parts of the constitution, so they wouldn't have even had to do much work to get there. So the fact that something does or does not have "shaky legal justification" according to law scholars means very, very little. All that matters is how the judges collectively choose to act. In this case, six justices decided they wanted to throw out Roe/Casey. And because they wanted to, that's what they did, and their reasoning matters literally not at all. Had they just thought that abortion was a constitutional right but that it was legally shaky, they could have strengthened the legal reasoning quite easily, but they chose not to do that. They wanted to throw out Roe, and so they did (and indeed, they had been carefully selected because they would do so). Every legal doctrine is only ever as strong or as shaky as the current Supreme Court decides to let be strong or shaky. In practice, precedent matters to Supremes because they (well, most of them) want to be seen as respectable jurists, and so they don't upend precedent constantly or without merit, but there is literally nothing stopping them from making any conceivable choice that they want to. "Shaky" is just not a category that ever matters for why the Supreme Court makes any decision. You can argue the extent to which judges make good judicial decisions and give due deference to existing precedent, but you can't argue that they literally can make any legal decision on any case they want to. That's how the system has been set up. (And that's why the system as it exists now is just truly absurd.)
Or to paraphrase Hamlet: There is no judicial opinion shaky or sound but five justices' thinking makes it so.
I adore you two! Something Sarah said really stood out. She’s glad she lives in Texas and is glad she’s around people who don’t think like her. I consider myself on the Left but I listen to smart, conservative podcasts (the dispatch crew, National review, even Ben Shapiro 😱) and what I find with my crowd is a complete ignorance about the “other side’s” arguments. I can’t tell you how many people have been railing against the White Male Patriarchy™️ and what they don’t realize are all the pro-life women who are absolutely earnest in their beliefs. They’re not brainwashed, they’re not propping up White Supremacy, they have very honest feelings about protecting unborn life. And while I don’t want them reversing Roe, I can see their point of view and actually *gasp* appreciate it.
I was reading David French’s latest French Press (honestly, god bless the David French’s of the world) and I was moved (almost) to donate to a pregnancy center (I need to do more research). If abortion is going to be banned or severely restricted in some states why wouldn’t you want places where women can go for support? https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/roe-is-reversed-and-the-right-isnt
I wish we could all have an honest, respectful conversation with each other but it’s not going to happen if all the Left sees are avatars for the WMP™️.
Re: paywall, Sarah’s piece about Depp-Heard is all anybody should need to become a paying member. It’s an honor to invest in this type of journalism.
Anyways, love you guys!!! Thank you as always for the calm analysis.
I totally want to grab a cup of coffee with you, Gabrielle. I agree wholeheartedly about the importance of listening to people with different opinions. I’m a (formerly progressive, now politically homeless) NYer, and was baffled...stunned when Trump was elected. It made no sense and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My friends and the media said it is because this country is filled with hateful racists and misogynists. I LOVE pointing fingers and blaming, it’s one of my favorite hobbies, but I felt the need to hear other points of view rather than just screaming WHITE SUPREMACY! I listened to National Review and Megyn Kelly and I was surprised to learn there were ideas I agreed with and/or perspectives I hadn’t considered. While I may not see eye to eye on everything, I see where people are coming from, and they have valid points. I still consider myself on the Left, even though the goalposts have shifted so much that I would probably be considered to be Archie Bunker reincarnated by those 10-20 years younger than I am. So be it.
I just subscribed to French Press and am looking forward to listening. I’m so glad I don’t have a shopping habit, because at this point all my discretionary income is going towards podcasters that are keeping me sane: Sarah and Nancy, Blocked and Reported, Bridget Phetasy, Meghan Daum, and Fifth Column!
Well, I do love coffee and pointing fingers!
Gabrielle, you have great points about being around those with opposing viewpoints. I think if one can't articulate and reason through what they are saying then you don't really understand them. And I second your opinion on Sarah's Depp-Heard piece.
Steel-manning is such a wonderful exercise! ❤️ Agree!
It’s so bizarre. I find that my lefty friends are almost afraid of alternate political views. I used to listen to Pod Save America but found they were too smug about political opposition. It was obvious they weren’t listening to the arguments and dismissing things they should have taken seriously (lots of DeSantis stuff in that category)
I had so many thoughts about motherhood and the choice not to be a mother during this fascinating discussion. Your mention of RBG being a young mother while she was in law school, and the question of why universities and our culture doesn't embrace that more these days made me think about how different motherhood looks now than it did when, say, RBG or my own mother was young - the pressure on today's mothers to do it all-- all the activities and arts and crafts and driving to sports and all the household management all without letting your kids out of your sight for a single second (because God forbid you're not constantly engaged with them in some edifying way)-- pretty much precludes women with young children from doing much else. Was it different for, say, RBG, who maybe wasn't expected to frost three dozen Minions cupcakes for her kid's class party? What has caused the shift in the expectations on mothers? I think it began in the 80s, somewhere around second-wave feminism's insistence that women can "have it all", and has been exacerbated by social media and hustle culture, but I don't know, exactly. It's an intriguing question to me.
Also, a movie recommendation - The Lost Daughter (on Netflix), directed by Maggie Gyllehnaal and starring Olivia Colman, a thought-provoking (and disturbing) look at the burdens and joys of motherhood.
Yes to all of this. The culture of motherhood changed dramatically. I'm reminded of Jennifer Senior's book "All Joy and No Fun" where she makes the observation that working mothers today spend more time with their kids than stay-at-home mothers did in previous eras. (See: Nancy's conversations about Seventies parenting.) Everything feels so out of balance. I know for me, I refused to be a mother unless I could Do It Right -- which might be foolish perfectionism, but also reflects decades of hearing about how hard and important motherhood was -- and then in the end, I didn't do motherhood at all. So! I was thinking about The Lost Daughter as we had that conversation. I haven't seen the movie, but I've heard lots of friends discuss it. -- SH
Oh, gosh, SH, I so feel the "not gonna do it unless I can do it right" thing. When I was expecting my first, I was, of course, certain that I would be the perfect mother. It turns out that I am a mediocre baker, a terrible arts-and-crafter, a vessel of limited physical energy, and only a "good enough" mother who, of course, loves her kids to pieces (and I am confident that the feeling is mutual).
I remembered after I posted above that Meaghan Daum (to whom you and Nancy led me, and I can't thank you both enough for that) discusses in her book "The Problem With Everything" the link between the rise of women in the workplace in the 80s and the Satanic Panic (along with an uptick in fear of child abduction and poisoned Halloween candy). I think this may be the dawn of the new culture of motherhood, when terrified, guilt-ridden working mothers began to compensate for their absence from the home by taking on, well, everything related to child and home care.
I can't wait to check out Jennifer Senior's book, and Nancy's take on '70s parenting, of course! (One more note: I think, generally speaking, the products of '70s parenting turned out pretty okay).
Yes, yes, so much of this super-mom stuff may have roots in guilt and overcompensation, and amplified by the voices/worries of the internet, which make far-away dangers feel close up. Meghan is such a beautiful writer, thinker, and contributor to the cultural conversation, I'm glad we could introduce you. As an aside, I'm a very crafty person, and feel certain I could have been a kick-ass Pinterest mom, and feel a bit chagrined I never got the chance. Maybe I'll make some crafty gifts for our podcast. My new baby. -- SH
Crafty handmade Smoke 'Em merch! Do it!!!!!!!
Love that film and book. Cheers!
I'll have to check out the book! Cheers to you, Jessemy!
Another great conversation, even more thought-provoking and challenging than most of your episodes. I live in a Republican-leaning rural state. Many of my neighbors are lovely people who I'd never share my political opinions with in a million years. But some of them... well, they suck, frankly. I think back to the guys that came heavily armed to the candlelight vigil for George Floyd that my high school daughter went to, or the people that I walked by every day who did everything short of physically attacking state legislators who had the audacity to vote to receive federal funding for promoting Covid vaccines, or the guy who called a coworker words I won't use here because she told him to wear a mask in our building. I don't want to sound whiny--I'm a straight white male, I haven't had to deal with shit, really. I guess my point is, yes there are plenty of talking heads or activists on the Left that demonize the Right without any understanding of the people they're talking about. But also? Some of that shit is real.
And yet...
Everything you say about needing to know your neighbors, and not demonize people you disagree with is undeniably true. We're not going to get anywhere if we deny the humanity of people whose beliefs seem alien to us. You are right about all of that. I just find it really fucking difficult. But now I feel called out a little, and justifiably, so I need to try and do better on this front.
I swear I don't make a habit of going on discussion boards and dumping all my feelings--not until I started listening to Smoke 'Em, anyway. Wow, you two have REALLY gotten into my head! ( :
You guys are so open-hearted and wonderful. Thanks for this conversation. I'm starting to shed my "pro-life" label for something more descriptive: I think there should be limited limits on abortion, something like a 15 week cutoff* with important exceptions for maternal emergencies and victims of rape and incest. My husband described this plan as "pro-life," but I think Nancy would possibly support something similar with a "pro-choice" label. Perhaps the life/choice verbiage is part of the problem?
*see VEEP episode where Selina Meyer can't "pick a number":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFJZxirddv4
Anyway, I'm printing out a bunch of the articles and finishing the second half of the pod. Love love love this coverage. Y'all are really scratching an itch that the Fifth guys can't. (Not that they're not trying, but their discomfort is palpable).
Y'all are so right about knowing your neighbors! I have lived in a red county outside of Austin for the past 20 years, surrounded by the most lovely Republicans that I never knew could exist before I got here. We don't agree about much politically, but we love each other, we listen to each other, and we help each other out. Some of my favorite nights are in the summer when we all gather to swim in my pool. I wouldn't trade them for anyone.
Thank-you ladies for your prospective. I recently watched a Vice News report and both sides angered me. The reporter and the clinic interview subject kept using the term pregnant person why not just way woman.
The reporter also interviewed a spokesperson from Alliance Defending Freedom, this organization provided legal assistance with Dobbs. If you read the website it all appears very rationale concerning free speech and religious freedom. If you dig a bit they appear to be probably working on over turning gay marriage.
This would be an interesting group to investigate as I believe their tactics are aimed at provoking liberals and unfortunately their tactics will probably work.
Sarah -- off topic, but -- your website is not working. This is the one linked on the Smoke 'Em about page. It goes to a link at aplus.net about "suspended due to incomplete whois verification". I'm pretty sure it was working fine a few weeks ago. Just FYI. (Feel free to delete this comment once you get this fixed; I didn't see any better way to let you know.)
Ha, yes, it's fixed now! Temporary glitch.
❤️❤️
Hey Em - Nancy here. I, interestingly, read your comment just after I had dinner with a friend in from SF. She is apoplectically enraged about the overturning of Roe, beside herself that anyone, other than herself, would exert autonomy over her body. She further has a cousin who is a doctor in a St. Louis family practice clinic that performs abortions. Her cousin said the overturning of Roe is going to result in many more late term abortions, with people afraid and confused as services become harder to access. These are the unintended consequences of overturning the law, ones that I cannot imagine anyone being happy about. (I really am getting to your points!) I countered to my friend, what about the idea of push-push-pushing birth control? She said her cousin's patients in the main are super uneducated, they are not going to take precautions and never will, leaving abortion as the only option for an unintended pregnancy. It would be my hope that this can be changed, to be able to get birth control as easy to buy as a pack of gum.
As for your comments: I agree, and I don't. Most people reading that issue of the magazine are not at that moment experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, but are, if the magazine is properly pegging its readership, interested in knowing how to end a pregnancy, for themselves or a friend or a relative or just to feel in the know and/or apprised of the culture. (My first gig as a journalist was as a nightlife columnist in LA, and I quickly learned, people don't necessarily want to go, they just want to know.) This makes sense; forewarned is forearmed. This is why I think it would have been a smart idea to include something about birth control. If my friend's cousin is right (and, granted, her patients are likely not New York Magazine readers), there are people who need hand-holding; obviously that's so even for blue city chatterati, if NY Mag is publishing an exhaustive list of options and locations. I am of the additional mind that people can be saved hardship and money if they avoid the pregnancy.
Thots?
Go ahead and dump! Trust me; I know it can be frustrating. Covering antifa and the more radical activists in Portland, with them getting in face and stealing my phone and following me around and putting my picture online, I had to be... patience, grasshopper; don't be one of those people who lose your nut, report calmly. There are definitely problematic people on every one of the googolplex sides of life. And so very many good ones!
I couldn’t bear up under that kind of harassment. You got a steely spine, Nancy. All you journalists that wade into the bullshit to report what’s going deserve manor props.
Just gotta say, a period tracker is a wonderful thing for women with irregular periods. I wish I had had something like it in high school. It also helped a ton with figuring out ovulation - put in a ton of temperature data, and it figures out the day.
Lovely discussion, as always. I wish the sides of the abortion debate weren’t staked by the loudest, least nuanced voices in the room, but i don’t know if there’s any way to change it. Just keep adding nuance and hope people will take note, I suppose.
Yes I second your enthusiasm for period trackers, especially when that sucker isn't, uh, periodical. Every time my doctor asks me the date of my last period, it's like my head spins a pinwheel for ten minutes. I've never felt so on top of things, but as I've proven, I am the more chaotic and less organized of our duo. -- SH
I am so with you on David French. And on Sarah's Depp-Heard story! xx
Only a monster wouldn’t love David French! 🤣
Somehow I knew there would be other fans of David French on this Substack. But he does get criticized by some right wingers for being too civil - wait, isn't that what we need to do to talk to others with whom you might disagree?
This is easily the most reasoned and calming conversation I've heard about the Dobbs decision; I would like there to be many more but as y'all have discussed, many people would much rather be yelling at each other and rallying the troops. So much food for thought in this episode. Some random thoughts --
- I would like to hear more of the history of how abortions were handled through history, as you mentioned near the beginning - this was in Damon Root's piece. This is in line with Sarah's research on "how we got to this point". There is always history and it's often relevant
- I too would like to put a stop to the shaming of various states. States are (mostly) BIG, with lots of folks with lots of views.
- I would like to put in a plug for Twitter, with all its faults; but that's mostly due to how I use it. I treat it as "read-only", or as a lurker, as we used to say. I "heart" the tweets I like or find interesting, but almost never reply. But I gain a lot of information by following people who are interesting or informative, mostly in the fields I want to follow -- programming, astronomy & space, geology, some travel, some culture, and limited politics. (and of course @iowahawkblog for his weekend "Daves Car ID Service", who wouldn't love that!)
- Nancy, you tweeted a pic on the weekend of where you were about to podcast from -- many very interesting photos and stuff in the background! Would love to hear about that, whatever you would care to share!
- Another thought-provoking and satisfying morning walk (4.79 miles again, I guess I have a consistent pace) & conversation; thank you!
My late stepfather David Levine - NY Review of Books caricaturist and painter - studio upstate!
If autonomy is our goal for women, then I think it's reasonable to remind ourselves of the things a woman can do for herself regardless of which state laws apply to her. There's going to be a lot of flux in the laws for the foreseeable future. A culture of autonomy and awareness of one's body is never amiss. It's not abortion abolitionism.
FWIW, I prefer the dental hygienist to flossing!!! ;)
I’m a paid subscriber. I like listening; I share a lot of your views.
That said, I grew increasingly irritated while listening to this episode by the assumptions that seem to have tacitly steered many of Nancy’s comments on abortion and how we talk about it.
These assumptions emerged most clearly for me in the context of her critique of a recent article (post repeal) outlining the many ways a woman might terminate her pregnancy. Nancy felt the article should have included information about various forms of birth control as well.
Mmkay. To me, this seems akin to complaining that an article about bariatric surgery and prescription-only weight loss drugs fails to include information about diets for thin people who don’t want to become morbidly obese.
I doubt Nancy would draw that analogy, though, since she probably understands morbid obesity as a state to which very, very few people aspire. Further, she also probably understands that NOBODY considers bariatric surgery an easier option than staying thin.
(I am aware that the analogy isn’t perfect.
I expect it to be especially difficult to square for parents.)
Final thought: I would love to listen to an intelligent discussion of the repeal that does not gesture at this mythical woman who needs assistance and handholding in learning about birth control but finds it easy to locate an abortion provider, to schedule an appointment (or two, depending on the state or the procedure), and to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for it. Odd that these skills would not transfer!
I bet this woman also LOVES dental cleanings because it lets her skip the daily flossing routine...
Hey Em - Nancy here. I, interestingly, read your comment just after I had dinner with a friend in from SF. She is apoplectically enraged about the overturning of Roe, beside herself that anyone, other than herself, would exert autonomy over her body. She further has a cousin who is a doctor in a St. Louis family practice clinic that performs abortions. Her cousin said the overturning of Roe is going to result in many more late term abortions, with people afraid and confused as services become harder to access. These are the unintended consequences of overturning the law, ones that I cannot imagine anyone being happy about. (I really am getting to your points!) I countered to my friend, what about the idea of push-push-pushing birth control? She said her cousin's patients in the main are super uneducated, they are not going to take precautions and never will, leaving abortion as the only option for an unintended pregnancy. It would be my hope that this can be changed, to be able to get birth control as easy to buy as a pack of gum.
As for your comments: I agree, and I don't. Most people reading that issue of the magazine are not at that moment experiencing an unwanted pregnancy, but are, if the magazine is properly pegging its readership, interested in knowing how to end a pregnancy, for themselves or a friend or a relative or just to feel in the know and/or apprised of the culture. (My first gig as a journalist was as a nightlife columnist in LA, and I quickly learned, people don't necessarily want to go, they just want to know.) This makes sense; forewarned is forearmed. This is why I think it would have been a smart idea to include something about birth control. If my friend's cousin is right (and, granted, her patients are likely not New York Magazine readers), there are people who need hand-holding; obviously that's so even for blue city chatterati, if NY Mag is publishing an exhaustive list of options and locations. I am of the additional mind that people can be saved hardship and money if they avoid the pregnancy.
Thots?
I really want to make a joke about THOTs but I’ll heroically refrain, lol.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I do appreciate it.
Certainly there are populations that need hand-holding, as you put it. But I don’t think they’re as widespread as your comments suggest. They ARE, however, playing a central role in many of the self-consciously “measured” or “reasonable” responses to the repeal. (For another example, see how the pro-choice argument was framed on Bari Weiss’s podcast.)
Such responses center this uneducated group (for whom we need to “demystify birth control and make sure it’s easily available and affordable!”) while tsking at the harms done by that other group of women, the one that supposedly celebrated and “shouted” their abortions, the ones who pushed for abortion rights up to birth, etc.
Neither of these groups is actually very large, I think. Nor is either germane to the main question (should American women have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?). So why do they keep getting centered?
I think it’s probably not coincidental that they make great fodder for a particular strain of condescending paternalism that has absolutely infested liberal discourse since 2016, and which I guess is now going to shape moderates’ takes on Roe.
While fun (in the same way that Twitter brawls are fun), this soft paternalism is politically useless. In its condescending form, it conjures a populace that is uneducated, and therefore in need of expert guidance or protection (eg, vaccine hesitance among marginalized groups); in its contemptuous form, it conjures a population that has been warped by misinformation and needs to be deplatformed (eg, anti-vaxxers who listen to Joe Rogan and retweet conspiracy theories).
In both modes, it frames the speaker as the educated authority. And it alienates pretty much everyone else.
So now I see it shaping reactions to Roe. But it is very difficult for me to take seriously that many readers of New York Magazine might need a lesson in birth control from a reporter. It’s also equally hard for me to believe that your friend’s cousin’s entire patient pool is unwilling to take precautions, ever, because they’re “super uneducated” about it.
I’m not at all surprised that she *thinks* it to be true, though. This is THE new analytic that we on the left have embraced, in order to make sense of those who are different from us: either they are ignorant (and in need of educating), or (in the case of Trump-adjacent lunacies) they are evil and must be silenced.
I just hate seeing shades of this logic creeping into responses to Roe (educate the ignorant to use birth control! silence the “shout-my-abortion” extremists!).
We will NEVER successfully assert women’s right to bodily autonomy that way. Either it’s a choice women should be able to make for their own bodies, or it isn’t.
Anyway, thanks again for engaging. As I said, I dig the podcast and look forward to each new ep.
Okay, a few more thoughts (actually not being clever here! beyond me as first cup of coffee still brewing): I agree with you 100% about the soft paternalism and had I not had dinner with my friend who brought up the clueless-about-birth-control group it would not have occurred to me. I am also 100% in agreement that that slice of the population is small, and, despite my friend's cousin's contention, do not learn. It's really not that hard, especially I imagine after one's had an abortion, to understand how one gets pregnant and, if one finds the abortion not something one wants to repeat, to use birth control in the future.
The people I want to get on the birth control train are those who know all about it but just choose not to, instead using abortion as family planning. You may argue, and you may be right, that this, too, is a very small number. I'm not sure. Ending a pregnancy with Plan C (I am told) now outnumber surgical abortions. I applaud that, while also wondering whether young women are using it AS birth. I am not saying it's not their right to. It is, and I'm glad for the option. Where I suspect we may part ways is the idea that not getting pregnant in the first place, and aborting an unwanted pregnancy, are same/same. They're not. People can argue all day (and I am not saying you are one who would) that abortion doesn't take a psychic/physical toll and even if it did, it's the woman's choice. Second part true, first part, in my opinion, not. Why not avoid it in the first place?
This is what I mean about making birth control as readily available as a pack of gum, hell, make it a pack of gum. Have it in everyone's eyeballs at the bodega or the 7-11, right next to the Tic-Tacs. I'll wager that most people reading this have had unprotected sex when they knew it risked getting pregnant at a time when they did not want to become pregnant; I certainly did. If OTC birth control becomes a thing (inshallah), you'll have companies competing to make birth control better and cheaper. I think it makes sense to think, this brings down the rate of abortion.
Yes, of course women have the right to not take birth control, to have 40 abortions if they want to. Maybe you can convince me: So what if they do? But I do think there's a so what, and what I am going to write is going to be hard to put into words, and maybe nobody but me cares, but here goes: There was about a 5 day period before I knew I was pregnant when something happened. I wanted to get pregnant, but as these things go, I hadn't missed a period yet and wasn't concentrating on whether I was, anyway, I existed during these few days in a sort of outer space I had not heretofore encountered; again, it's kind of hard to put into words. I was 26 and working and just... on some other plane. This was the time, I later learned, when the fertilized egg has yet to implant, it's making its way toward implantation, meaning it, too, is sort of floating in space. I imagine some people don't even register it, but I did, if not, well, see above.
Several years ago the daughter that was the product of this dual astral trip sent me a link to a Radio Lab episode, where they breakdown just what is happening during this very early stage, when the body is at war - literally, these warring factions, the woman's body saying, YOU WILL NOT IMPLANT HERE, the will-be-baby saying, OH YES I WILL. It it no wonder I sensed something going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3CfkTzHcJY
I find all this phenomenal. I am not saying, women who experience an unwanted pregnancy do not have the right to terminate it. I am saying, it strikes me as making a cake, and actually a kind of profound one, and dumping it in the garbage. Why not just not make the cake?
I know I'm a year late to this discussion, but I get incredibly annoyed when people talk about Roe having a shaky legal justification. That's certainly an opinion that law scholars and others can (and do) have, but I hardly see how it ever matters. The Supreme Court has been empowered (through the accidents of history, by the way) to be the sole arbiter of what counts as a shaky or not legal justification. If, say, Roberts and Kavanaugh both thought "Gee, I think Roe was decided on the wrong legal theory, but I think this other one is stronger", they could absolutely have written an opinion saying "We've set aside Roe, but the new controlling legal doctrine will be rooted in this other section of the Constitution." They could absolutely have done that if they chose to, and Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer would have immediately said "OK, we accept this new legal doctrine." There has been no shortage of scholarly articles describing how to root an abortion protection in other parts of the constitution, so they wouldn't have even had to do much work to get there. So the fact that something does or does not have "shaky legal justification" according to law scholars means very, very little. All that matters is how the judges collectively choose to act. In this case, six justices decided they wanted to throw out Roe/Casey. And because they wanted to, that's what they did, and their reasoning matters literally not at all. Had they just thought that abortion was a constitutional right but that it was legally shaky, they could have strengthened the legal reasoning quite easily, but they chose not to do that. They wanted to throw out Roe, and so they did (and indeed, they had been carefully selected because they would do so). Every legal doctrine is only ever as strong or as shaky as the current Supreme Court decides to let be strong or shaky. In practice, precedent matters to Supremes because they (well, most of them) want to be seen as respectable jurists, and so they don't upend precedent constantly or without merit, but there is literally nothing stopping them from making any conceivable choice that they want to. "Shaky" is just not a category that ever matters for why the Supreme Court makes any decision. You can argue the extent to which judges make good judicial decisions and give due deference to existing precedent, but you can't argue that they literally can make any legal decision on any case they want to. That's how the system has been set up. (And that's why the system as it exists now is just truly absurd.)
Or to paraphrase Hamlet: There is no judicial opinion shaky or sound but five justices' thinking makes it so.