Bonus Pod: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Hero Origin Stories- Round 5, Part 2

Longtime supporters of rePROs Fight Back know what time of year it is… tune in for a reprisal of our most popular series, SRHR Hero Origin Stories! If you haven’t already, check out our previous episodes, SRHR Hero Origin Stories, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 2, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 3, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 4, and SRHR Hero Origin Stories Round 5 (Part 1) where we talked to a number of amazing heroes in the field of reproductive health, rights, and justice about how they began working in this space. This time, hear from Tarah Demant at Amnesty International USA, Gayatri Patel at the Women’s Refugee Commission, and Jennie Wetter, host of rePROs Fight Back.

Guests include:

Tarah Demant at Amnesty International USA

Gayatri Patel at the Women’s Refugee Commission

Jennie Wetter at rePROs Fight Back

Links from this episode

Amnesty International USA on Facebook and Twitter
Women’s Refugee Commission on Facebook and Twitter

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast where we explore all things reproductive health, rights and justice. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and I'll be helping you stay informed around issues like birth control, abortion, sex education and LGBTQ issues and much, much more-- giving you the tools you need to take action and fight back. Okay, let's dive in.

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Jennie: Welcome to this week's episode of rePROs Fight Back. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So first, sorry for maybe some less than ideal audio for the intro. Don't worry. The rest of the episode should be good. I, I just had to run home to Wisconsin for a family emergency and so I'm actually recording in my childhood bedroom right now. But that means I didn't have like my microphone or all of my usual recording equipment with me. So we're getting maybe a little less than ideal audio for the intro, but the rest of the episode should be wonderful and I'm so excited for this bonus episode. It really is one of my favorite things we do because it is just so fun to hear people's stories and hear why they got into this field or how they got into this field. I feel like every year, even though I know a lot of these people pretty well, like I feel like there's always at least one person's story who tells me something that I didn't know before. I'm always surprised by somebody. And that's a lot of fun. And then the other thing to me that is really important about this series is I feel like I get asked a lot, how do I end up doing what I do or get this job whenever we have interns, like I feel like they're always really worried about making the perfect next step. And I remember that, right? Like I gotta do just the right thing to get where I want be. And I think these stories are a great illustration of we all came at this in many different ways and everybody's paths were different. And that there is no one way to get to work in this field. There's just the way you came to this field. And I think these stories do a really great job of illustrating that. So again, I just love this SRHR hero origin story series. It's one of my favorites and that's why we keep doing it. So I hope you'll all enjoy a special bonus episode of it today. I, I do tell my story but I stuck it at the end since y'all have heard me talk about my past several times, so I figured I would stick that at the end. So if you didn't want to listen to it, you didn't have to. Sorry y'all, if you can hear that, my parent’s cat is running all over the place. So today we have Gayatri Patel with the Women's Refugee Commission is going to tell her story first. And then I have Tarah Demant with Amnesty International is going to tell her story and then that leads into where we talk about the how we have similar stories in some places. And yeah, I hope you enjoy this episode. Like I said, I had a great time talking to both Gayatri and Tara, and I hope you enjoy our conversations.

Jennie: Gayatri, thank you for being here today.

Gayatri: Hey Jennie, it's great to be back and good to see you.

Jennie: Always wonderful to see you. Before we get into your story, do maybe wanna introduce yourself and include your pronouns?

Gayatri: Sure. My name is Gayatri Patel. I am the Vice President of Advocacy and External Relations at the Women's Refugee Commission. And I go by the pronouns she/her.

Jennie: So I love this series cause one, everybody's stories are like totally different and it's always so fun to hear how people came to this work. Do you wanna tell us your story?

Gayatri: Yeah, and I gotta say I really love it too. There's, there's so many different ways that people have engaged with SRHR issues or gotten motivated or, or you know, what drives them. So it's been really interesting to hear what has brought people to this work for me. I think a lot of it really kind of started off with my, my background and my deep, deep personal interest in gender-based violence issues. And I've been working on, on those issues for quite a while in a number of different ways. Like I was a rape crisis counselor for a while. I was a prosecutor for domestic violence issues for a while. I've worked on gender-based violence in domestic settings and in humanitarian settings. I've, I've gotten kind the global aspect of it and it's really just, it's hit home for me the importance of bodily autonomy and just having control over your own body. And the reason I'm saying this is cause it, I've had clients or interacted with people whose, their choice to be able to leave an abusive relationship was stifled because they had children with their abusive partner and they didn't feel like they were able to leave. Or, you know, some, some of them didn't even have control over using protection, using condoms, taking birth control pills, et cetera, in that abusive relationship or as a result of, of rape or sexual assault. And so it, it just, it just really hit home to me through all of those experiences that, you know, this fundamental question of like, if a woman can be raped or you know, if they can hit us or if they can tell us to even like, prevent a pregnancy or prevent a an STI, do we even own our own bodies? And I guess that fundamental question has really kind of driven me in, in our advocacy or my advocacy around sexual and reproductive health and rights because it, it's just so fundamentally important to recognize that we, we do own our bodies, we own that.

Jennie: Well, again, the learning things you didn't know in this episode, this is the, my favorite part is learning parts of my friend's pasts. I didn't know, I didn't know you were a prosecutor.

Gayatri: Yeah, for a really, I mean it was a, it was a brief moment in time, but it was so enlightening cause I was working on domestic violence in like a city and some of the cases we would get were just horrifying. There were people who came in who had been beaten by the same person for years, but literally refused to even file a complaint against them because they, they had children with that person or they were economically dependent on them. And so as a prosecutor, I was like, “okay, but we have resources. We can help you, we can, we can get you hooked up with a, a social service counselor to be able to get you financial assistance or help with getting custody of your children.” But it, it was so internalized for a lot of them that they couldn't leave their abuser. And when it came down to just not even having, not even being able to, to demand that their abuser use a condom or, you know, that they have any say over their own birth control choices. It was so… looking for the right word… I, I felt that they were so trapped in so many ways and that is such a disempowering feeling. I felt that before. So I, I felt for them how trapped they must be feeling to feel like they have to stay in that kinda relationship.

Jennie: Yeah. This is one of those issues that hits very close to home. I talked about it on the podcast being a victim of intimate partner violence. But I, and I think one of the things that really, like from my experience and like thinking through all of this is the lack of broader community understanding of like what is in that whole bubble. And like people only have like this really narrow view of like what domestic violence or intimate partner violence is. And so, and it's not through any fault of any person’s, right? Like it's just broader education in the community. And so it's hard to find help early cuz you might not know all of those early signs because they're not talked about as much. I just, thinking through like that whole big thing of all of the things that are captured when you're thinking about intimate partner violence before you get to the place where you're so trapped, it's impossible to make decisions. I don't know, it's just one of those things I think about.

Gayatri: Well, I mean I also think about that. I think you're totally right and I think about that in the context of the work that I do now. So like I said earlier, I, I work for the Women's Refugee Commission and we work in humanitarian contexts where we know that services and options for women and girls are limited. There's a disproportionate impact of a humanitarian crisis on women and girls, particularly for adolescent girls for instance, who, who kind of get ignored when it comes to services for women and services for younger children. And so, and they, they deal with things like child marriage or human trafficking, female genital mutilation. Like all of all of these issues impact them specifically. And when we're talking about these issues, it's, it's a matter of, it really hits home that SRHR in emergencies is not just a, nice to have, it's actually lifesaving in so many ways. And when you're looking at girls who are too young to, their bodies are too young to birth children, yet they're forced to birth children or you know, some of them don't even know what their periods are yet, they're forced to marry. It's, it just really makes clear how important comprehensive SRHR services are, comprehensive sexuality education. I mean that, that's one thing that, that is part of this whole concept of sexual and reproductive health and rights, yet it's something that we’re purposely keeping it from girls who need it the most and it's killing them. It's really killing them. And, and so, you know, when I'm advocating on these issues, I really try to, to make those terms and, and the impact of it clear that when we're not investing in adolescent girls, when we're not investing in sexual and reproductive healthcare, when we're quibbling about, you know, legislative language that will impact the lives of millions of women and girls in humanitarian context, we really have to just humanize that and, and say this is, this is killing people to keep them from that access. I'm sorry, I'm getting on my soapbox right now.

Jennie: No, and I was actually thinking like part of the things you were talking about was like kind of connecting those multiple points of like comprehensive sexuality education is like, can play such an important role because it can do that healthy relationship education that can teach you about like what abuse looks like from beginning to end. It can make sure you're aware of birth control and abortion and making sure you have that awareness so you can have that control over your body.

Gayatri: Exactly. And I, I mean I think that's the point, right? Like so much of the patriarchy feeds itself because we keep information from people and information is power. So if we keep comprehensive sexuality education away from them, if we keep, you know, access to birth control or abortion or post-abortion care, any of that from people, you are disempowering them and you're keeping that status quo of women and girls will stay in their place. They'll be, you know, wives, child bearers, et cetera, rather than living their dreams. And so it really just limits their options and really almost negates the fact that they have a human right to this, to, to sexual and reproductive healthcare. So it, it's something that's really critically important to me and, and as a person, but also as an advocate and as, as a person who works for the Women's Refugee Commission. It is very important to, to keep raising in the context of humanitarian settings.

Jennie: Do you have anything you wanna add or…?

Gayatri: Yeah, I mean, I, I mean I think I've, we've touched on it, but to me, when we're talking about SRHR, we're talking about the full range. We're not just talking about abortion, we're not just talking about birth control or family planning. We're talking about everything from the information you get to the agency that you get from having that information and being able to use it all the way to the, the methods to the access to the quality, to the life-saving nature of it, to prioritizing it, to proactively making sure that it's available to, to people and that people have, have a choice in using it for them, personal choice in using it. That to me is what we should be talking about, that full range and not just the availability of it, but the actual ability to get it in your hands. And so I think that's the only thing I would add is personally really important to me and kinda what, what drives me.

Jennie: Yeah, I think that gets lost in like access, right? Cause we talk about access, but there's like multiple levels of like access to like being able to go to the store and get it to like knowing it's available to having the ability to choose to use it. Like all of that gets kind of hidden in like the easy way we talk about it when we talk about the importance of access.

Gayatri: Yeah. And just kinda the environment in which we lived where, you know, in some places taking birth control is stigmatizing, particularly for adolescent girls. So they don't do it. And the whole host of, of problems with, you know, early pregnancy, early childbirth, et cetera. And so looking at how we change the mindset and, and norms around SRHR.

Jennie: Well Gayatri, thank you for sharing your story as always. It's a joy to talk to you.

Gayatri: It's so great to talk to you and I'm looking forward to hearing this, but I'm also looking forward to you continuing to do this podcast. It's so fantastic and kudos to you for just making it so accessible and so easy to engage.

Jennie: Oh, thanks Gayatri.

Tarah: So my name is Tarah Demant, my pronouns are she/her/hers. I am the Interim National Director of Programs, Advocacy, and Government Relations and Advocacy at Amnesty International USA. Although those, those titles sort of change with some rapidity… most importantly, I lead our work on women's rights, sexual and reproductive rights and Indigenous people's rights. And you know, the question of like, where that work started, particularly my, my interest and commitment in sexual reproductive health and rights and my really specifically commitment to abortion access… I've been thinking about this a lot cause I don't really have a particularly interesting story or like really, you know, compelling or narrative-driven story when I, I grew up in a really small town. We talked about this before and of course Jennie, you know this, but like I grew up at a really small town in in rural California that was like…

Jennie: Ooh, California.

Tarah: And I'm like, I’m from the, not the part of California you're not thinking, right? Which is the farm country. And it was a town of like a thousand people and my parents were the only Democrats in town. I mean, I secretly think there's another family, but they would never be out about it. Like, like this is the type like just a really, really conservative town and everything in the, the town rotated around the church. And it was either like, “so my dad is the retired Lutheran minister or the Presbyterian church or the Lutheran church or the Catholic church” or whatever, right? So like just a very religious space and like very little separation of church and state, like at the school level. And so even though my parents were really liberal comparatively, like my town and my friends and the, the surroundings were really conservative and, and this is the eighties and like the culture wars were hot and I mean there was no internet so that was great. But you know, there was still a lot of like top radio and television sort of really building that, which now feels very common narrative of like, abortion is murder and, and abortion's a sin and abortion is wrong. And you know, when I was in high school, I was really active in like loads of things and loads of clubs and whatever else, but including in like our church youth group. And like in my church it didn't come up, it wasn't really talked about in that way. But like I knew everyone around me didn't support abortion. Like I knew like my, my mom was pro-choice, but like the whole world was not, right? And I remember even as a kid or as a high schooler, which is, you know, still a kid, but being with friends and, and like someone who's giving out those little feet pins, they're like this little gold pin that has two like little tiny feet.

Jennie: Yep, yep.

Tarah: It's like the size of a dime, right? I remember putting it on and being like, well yeah, like, you know, you shouldn't murder a baby, right? Like this, this feels right. And, and it's just like this very unthoughtful way of thinking. At the same time, my high school had one of the highest pregnancy per capitas in all of California because like we had no sex ed and because there were no resources cause there's no birth control… this kinda stuff. And like, but it was not a particularly thoughtful journey to being like someone who was wearing this like little pro-life pin and then being like, wait, wait! Shout out to Michael Dukakis, which many of your listeners may never have heard of Michael Dukakis, who ran against, he was a Democratic nominee against George Bush. We went to a rally at the train station in Fresno, which is the nearest city to where my town is. And there were these people that held up these signs that they were the ones with like the weird, dismembered fetus signs where you're like, “yeah, weird. How are you getting these things? Like what is this?” But I remember my mom, I was maybe like 10… but I was, was young, but I remember my mom like losing her shit. My mom's a really petite person. Like she's like 5” on a good day. And like, she like, I mean she was, she just lost her mind. And, and I remember thinking, “oh, like these people are not right. Like these people are wrong.” But like then in high school sort of thinking like, “oh I dunno, abortion doesn't seem right.”

Tarah: Right? But the more and more like I actually thought about the issue of abortion, I think also when I considered myself a reproductive age person and became sexually active that I thought, which was after high school, right? So I wasn't really thinking about this as a real issue. It was more like a theoretical issue. Theoretically, abortion seemed wrong, right? And then when I was sexually active and when all the people I knew were sexually active and like talking about it, it was like, “oh, like I should be able to control my own body in my own life.” And it, it wasn't like this sort of vast realization that like abortion is or is not wrong, but that like I should be able to control my own body in my own life. And that like, and that for, for people who can have, who can get pregnant, and looking around me in my college, and again, this is now in the early nineties and, and looking at all the, the cis women I was friends with at the time and thinking we, we should have the power over our own bodies and like stripping people of power to access abortion or abortion rates is fundamentally like tethering us to like a birthing path and, and really like thinking about the way that like, it very quickly moves from like, abortion is wrong to like a dystopia in which we are people who can give birth are forced to give birth. And so I think like when it became personal is probably maybe when I actually was much more thoughtful about it. I remember my mom sort of being like, “don't wear this [pin]” cause I wasn't really thinking much about it, but when it like became obvious what it would mean, even though in high school all these people around me were having children, whether or not they would have chosen to do that, you know, is sort of beside the point because they didn't have the choice. And, and so that, like my origin story is not that interesting in the sense that like, it just occurred to me one day like this is real. This is super, super wrong. To deny people the right to make the choice for themselves. And then like very, very quickly also it was like very easy to reconcile with my own morality and with my religion. And I think that there are folks who maybe come from much conservative religious backgrounds… I think that's something that we do very well in the movement is to think about if you do have folks who come from a specific religious background that's very conservative on this issue, it's, it can be much, it's a much harder bar to pass. Um, and my it wasn't particularly virulent about it, it wasn't particularly conservative about it, I wasn't like amazing about it. But, you know, and that's come a long way the church. But yeah, so, so that was, and then in college it just became so obvious. It was like once I thought about it, I was like, this is so obvious to me. This is so, so obvious. And also like, I just don't understand how everyone doesn't think this is this obvious and how everyone doesn't make this their life work, right? In some way or another. Whether or not you're, you're doing it full time for pay, whether or not you're dedicated to it as a voter, whether or not you're there to support friends that need abortion care, whether or not you're there to have hard conversations with your auntie who thinks abortion is murder and no one should have to be able to, you know, access it, whatever. And I think that like then that that it very just quickly was like from 0 to 60 for me, where it was just like, oh, this is just obvious and now like everybody needs to be talking about this and thinking about this.

Tarah: I think for me too, that this was, you know, I really, again, my mom was really active in her own way in the women's liberation movement and was very liberal in a very conservative space. And I mean like, you know, liberal for being in a comforter space. And like for me, abortion very clearly was the central tenant. Like as I began to think about this, like abortion is the central tenant of women's liberation and it's for anybody who can get pregnant. And that includes like trans men and you know, non-binary folks. But it's someone who at the time particularly was very focused in the question of women's equity inequality. Like there is no version of gender equality without abortion. And that became sort of very central to me very quickly where if you are dedicated to women's right in any way, you have to be doing the work on abortion access because there is no equality when the state controls your body, then that's true of a lot of issues and across sex and gender. But like for me thinking as a, as a cis woman thinking about women's rights in that way, particularly in the nineties, it was a wild time in the nineties. Like there's just no way to, to separate those two things out. And so, so that's the sort of like slow and fast evolution of how I got into this work. And then I went to graduate school and I was a professor in gender and an English and not in advocacy, you know, directly. And I, it was the aughts and, and there was the dynasty of Bushes unfortunately that that had just been, um, elected is a strong word. Obviously, Bush was not elected the first time but was appointed president and there was a really devastating blow. I was an activist in college and it was the very end of that time of working in terms of trying to, like, it just seemed to me so obvious that America would reject this choice. And then of course then he was appointed president.

Jennie: Yeah, I remember that.

Tarah: Yeah. And then he was elected a second time and I was, that was like gutting for me. I thought, I just thought this is a different place and of course like we know, know it's not a different place. We know in fact it's a much worse place. And that particularly like the ability to believe that is like, you know, doused in white privilege. And for me at the time, it was a real wake up call about what our country is and always has been and like what it can very quickly become in terms of like more and more like stripping of rights and access and those types of things. And so if, I dunno if anything like radicalized me, it might have been the first, uh, the appointment of President Bush and, and just sort of seeing the way that how quickly these institutions I had just sort of assumed were in place could really fall apart really quickly. And like things I didn't believe in that no one should have to do, including the, to be forced to give birth or, of course like torture, all the things that came outta that presidency like that, that fell apart. And that to me, I think was a time where I was like, oh, I need to do this full time. Like this is something I really wanna be spending my time on. And so then slowly I figured out how to transition out of an academic career. But that had a major gender component but felt still very detached from the things I really wanted to be making impact on. So, so that's my, that's my origin story, my hero and or villain story depending on how things go any given day. Um, and I think… Like as someone who's never needed an abortion, like I, I don't have that, but I have always known that if I needed an abortion I could and would get one. And like that's something that not everyone gets to say because of the luck of their position in this country or this world. And like having that knowledge has been like at the center of me being able to make choices about my life and my destiny is that I can always choose whether or not to have a child to give birth. And that like, I can't imagine making choices about your life or going anywhere, whether it's in advocacy or, you know, getting to DC or California or wherever it's you wanna be without being able to make that decision. So yeah, so then, then it was the sort of slow and fast move into advocacy that brought me here. And I'd been a volunteer, you know, I'd been working in advocacy campaigns and those types of things, but professionally, made that switch. And then I just, it's just very hard to imagine not doing it at this point. And it can be a drag. I mean, you know, this like, it's really exhausting and, and sometimes you think like, I don't know, do the folks in the environmental movement have it easier or probably not right? But like you start to like imagine that another cause might be.

Jennie: Yeah, I'm gonna open that bakery and bookstore and just…

Tarah: But then what I'd just be like, oh, I really need to be doing this other work. So that's how it sort of, you know, started the gears going. But like I'm continually challenged in such incredible ways by, by the youth, interns, like outside of, I’m very middle age at this point, but also like the folks who are doing such radical reproductive justice work are continually like the people that I look to and are like, yes guy, you are the north star and can I ever inch myself closer? Can I ever hope to be doing the type of work that you're doing and pushing it forward in the way that you're doing? So, so that's the continuation. I think that's the, that's the future tense, right? Like I don't know that there's a, a world in which I'm not policy and advocacy nerd. Like it's pretty good with my skill set and I really enjoy it. But, but like the folks who are doing like the really transformative reproductive justice work, which obviously includes abortion, but it's not exclusive to abortion, who are making the explicit ties with racial justice and decolonization. Like those are the people now that I think, oh, now you're my continued origin story, right? Like you are continuing to move me to like be drawn to do this work, to see the transformative power of it and to see it how necessary it is across every spectrum of rights and, and questions. So yeah. TBD in five years, what that, you know, what that looks like. My origin story's gonna be like, actually it's just this, these folks have been doing the work so well and for so long. So yeah.

Jennie: I have to say there’s a lot of parallels. So like I grew up small town Wisconsin, I mean my address was Beloit, which was a bigger town. I think it was like 35 or 40,000 when I grew up. But…

Tarah: Oh yeah, my address was Fresno.

Jennie: But I did not live there, right? I, I went to a very small high school, but I went to Catholic school through K-8 and went to Catholic church. But similar to you, the one I went to wasn't like, wasn't super active around abortion. Like it, it wasn't something I remember hearing talked about like from the pulpit or anything like that. I mean maybe it happened, I don't remember it, it did not have an impact on me if it did. So yeah, I had “sex ed” and yes, that is very heavily air quoted because seriously that was not at all what it was. It was from a nun.

Tarah: I’m sure that was extremely comprehensive.

Jennie: Yeah, no, so comprehensive. Very, I always refer to it as the Mean Girls sex ed, right? The like you're gonna have sex, you're gonna get this horrible disease and you're gonna die.

Tarah: Oh yeah, that public school super helpful in life. Yeah.

Jennie: Yeah. And then similar to you, like I young, I had somebody I went to school with when I was in, I don't know, I wanna say like fifth or sixth grade, invited me to go to Madison to like, “let's go save babies. My family and I are going to Madison to this clinic and we're gonna go save babies you should come with.” And being like, yeah, no, like I mean [saving babies is good, right?] Like if only we were, you know, not as evil, but just as good at messaging cuz saving babies is really hard to argue against.

Tarah: Right, exactly.

Jennie: So then I like go home and I'm like, “mom, can I go with so and so to go to Madison and save babies?” And it was very much the like, “okay, let's sit down.” And like, I remember like sitting in our sunroom at like the breakfast counter and like having this conversation with her and her not telling me like, “this is what you should think or any of those things,” but very much just like, “okay, but have you thought about someone who's in this situation” or, or “what about this?” Or “what about that?” Or, or whatever. And, and then at the end just being like, “okay, well if you still wanna go you can go.” And like obviously by that point she had clearly made her case of like, oh no, this is terrible. Like no, you should obviously be able to make these choices based on your situation and whatever. Obviously it wasn't like the full view I have now, right? But it was like, okay, like baby steps, right? And then I went to the small, very rural high school where I don't remember issues like being talked about a ton, but it was much more conservative. But I just remember not being like an open welcome place for people to be their authentic selves. And that had a huge impact on me. I don't know that I just wasn't exposed to a broad range of ideas right? Like in many way shapes and forms. Right? Like it's a very small rural high school. So like there weren't a lot of like class options of like…

Tarah: It wasn't the only thing you weren't learning, right?

Jennie: Oh God, yeah. No, I went to college and had no idea how to study cause I had never had to do it before.

Tarah: It's, I'm like the ways that, especially like the parallels with our moms…Cause to me I think the necessity of us talking out loud about abortion and you know, I think, I really admire and I think that's so impactful when people share their abortion stories. It's always like someone shouldn't have to share a healthcare story to like make people care. But like that, you know, the question of like shouting your abortion is partly because it humanizes this issue. And I think whether or not someone has had an abortion, like we all need to be talking about this like the normal issue it is. And not, you know, because like, you know, our moms are like, wait, what? Because like we'd never had a conversation about abortion.

Jennie: Oh yeah. I remember like it's in high school the like whisper like, “oh, so and so she…”

Tarah: Yeah.

Jennie: Like, but they're true or not. They're not, I don't even know that those were true. Right. But like…Yeah. In like rural areas…

Tarah: I remember a girl that got pregnant in my high school and like didn't know and didn't wanna have a baby and like literally had no idea what to do. And like those are the cases where in those stories, and I think we all know some version of the story or the whispers around high schools particularly, or maybe even colleges but like, or college age or high school age folks. But like the, just that like this has to be a kitchen table conversation. Whether or not, you know someone who needs an abortion, who's needed an abortion, but of course like you do, right? Because like the odds are, unless you know no one, like, you know and love people who have had abortions. And I think about this, I think about this with my grandmother too on my, on my mom's side who grew up again in California but extremely rural, extremely rural northern California, like mountain pass kind folks and like no electricity until the seventies, no outdoor plumbing, like that kinda thing. And like they grew up during the depression and, and after and like my grandma is really, really liberal on these issues and a lot of issues and it like, because fundamentally like she knew people and like no one talked about it and all those sort of classic stories right? But still no one talked about it. And I think about even if like this assumption that it sounds like both our mothers had that, like doy, like you would support, you would support basic human rights. It didn't even occur to me to talk about this. I think one of the things as a movement is like we have gotta talk about this. Like I've gotta be talking about this with my brother and his kids and I've gotta be talking about this at the kitchen table. Like we, we as Demants talk about a lot of things with the kitchen table. And so, but like at the kitchen table’s a friendship and whatever else, like normalizing talking about abortion, it, you know, has gotta be part of that call. Cause otherwise someone's, you know, someone's hero story is gonna be a villain story, where it's like, “I didn't think about it and then I was really compelled by this messaging or my religion told me this was bad. And I'm compelled by that.” as opposed to like having the conversations with folks that are, are asking us to be more thoughtful, asking us to think about like what it really means to make that choice for someone else. Make that decision for someone else and basically like force someone to give birth. Right? Yeah. I know we've talked about before how our stories are sort upbringings are fairly similar.

Jennie: Yeah.

Tarah: And now it just seems so obvious but I think like I feel like it could have gotten a lot of ways for me, right? It could totally different way and like that's just sad for me more than the movement, right? That's like, that's a really place to be on the wrong side of justice and like forcing people to carry pregnancy. Like I just imagine being that person and think I'm really glad that that's not where I am. I do wonder sometimes where like, you know, in 20 years' like, “oh my God, I can't believe I thought X, Y, Z” because we're continually growing and thinking as activists.

Jennie: It's funny cause I think back to that conversation with my mom for a number of reasons and it came back up in college when I met some friends who were like, lived in my hall and we ended up becoming roommates later and they were like a really conservative religion and like, I had not appreciated the tenants that that conversation brought up of like, learn more about question things. Figure out your own thoughts. Don't just take what I'm saying but like, figure out your views on this until I met some people who very much were not raised that way. where it was like, “no, this is what it is. Full stop. Like being gay is bad and abortion is murder” and like hard line. And I'm like, “wait, what are you talking about” like, yeah. Have you not thought about this? And so like even beyond the abortion part of that conversation, like having the ability to make my own choices was like really great. The other funny part of my story is that that inciting incident, that person came up again later. She connected with me on Facebook. Like early days when I got on and I had just started working at the Population Institute and we were like just developing our page and I was trying to grow it and I knew I had people that I went to Catholic school with. So like I didn't go like the abortion angle or I didn't even talk about family planning. But I, I was talking about maternal health and like the importance, this is when like a woman was dying every minute. Which again, shows how far we've come. Cause it's not that bad-- it's still bad-- it's not that bad anymore. And she responded about like, “well a woman's greatest pleasure should be to die bringing life into the world.”

Tarah: Whoa. Shit!

Jennie: And I was just like WOAH! What? How did this happen?

Tarah: And being like, who is radicalizing these people? Yeah. I mean that, that's a really weird, to me, really bizarre. Boy that's a cult. You know, I don't even know what to do with that except for like… wow.

Jennie: I was like I can’t respond to that.

Tarah: And then to be forcing that on someone else, right? Like that's, but I do think we're at cross purposes on a lot of those conversations with, and it's not a conversation. Cause like if someone is, you know, someone to say is like, “well it's not a personal thing because we, we make morality our laws all the time. Like you can't murder” for example, which is morality, right? Like murder is bad, therefore no one should murder, and like, so if someone like just believes that like… literally your destiny, your greatest martyrdom is to like die giving birth, then we got nowhere to go with that person right now. I dunno that, I don't wanna say never, but like that's not a conversation to like, that's not a place I think is worth our time right now. Or if someone else has the answer I'd really interested. But I think right now, like look, abortion is possible, abortion polls, abortion votes, like abortion's a gerrymandering issue in the United States. It doesn't mean that there aren't people who like in their heart of hearts believe that abortion's wrong. Clearly we know these people, everyone knows these people. But it means that like more people believe that everybody should be able to decide for themselves what is right for them. And like more and more people believe that like abortion is not murder and that actually it's healthcare and, and so like those are the conversations I think we need to build on it and grow. But yeah. Cause I don't know how you even start like, I dunno how you have a conversation.

Jennie: Yeah. I didn't respond to that. That I had some friends who did and they did it in a gentle way of… “in a lot of places. Like people that don't have this choice” and like, I was obviously rapidly unfriended.

Tarah: Yeah. Crazy. I am not super active on social, but RIP Twitter and, but like I'm on Facebook and partly like, cause I actually don't, like, I stay in touch with the people I wanna stay in touch with and I don't, but I dunno that that helps, right? Because like then conservative people I went to school with never see another opinion.

Jennie: No. Right. Yeah. It, it was one of those things of like my path wasn't straight was, went kind of all over the place and mine actually came through environment. Like that's where I connected in college and then it became environment and development. and then looking for a job after grad school and didn't find what I thought I was looking for and stumbled to where I’m at and found like, oh wait, this, this is where my passion is because of all of the things that had happened in my history. Right? Like not having good sex education and the implications of what it meant later in life and being a survivor of intimate partner violence and like all of the threads came together in this one place and like now I couldn't imagine working in another field.

Tarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, totally. And I think if anything, I'm glad to have a boring story just cause other, like I think sometimes there's this like premium put on like needing to be the perfect activist and the perfect advocate and like, I don't actually, it doesn't matter how you got here, right? Like come do the work, be a part of it and be a part of it where you are. And I think that's also something I need to work on personally is like…

Jennie: Keep learning, keep learning.

Tarah: Keep learning together. No, I'm always, I'm really, I'm excited to hear mostly the other folks on the, I'm really excited to hear how other people get into this work. I've and I've, and also like what this work means, right? Cause we're really, we're really privileged to be able to get paid to do what we really believe in. And that is privileged. I mean it's still capitalism. I wanna be really clear that, a job is a job and it sucks a lot, but also like it's privileged to get paid to do work you really care about. And I'm really interested to the folks, I just don't have the drive that folks, the folks who do a full-time job or, you know, for pay and then their second shift basically is doing this work. And those are folks that I find myself really inspired by because I'm like, I can't imagine doing other things. And so this is a very good fit for me at the end, the day I'm exhausted and I go home and I, you know, garden and whatever. But I read a lot of books and, and try and do other things I care about. But like for folks who show up after having done something else that they need to do to survive in this capitalistic world, like those are the stories I wanna hear. Like what motivates those folks? Cause that's, I sometimes need that too. Cause I've gotta pull in my own second, second shift and, and sometimes I'm like, ugh, how, how can I make this work? And I need that motivation. So yeah, really excited. Always a pleasure to talk with you on the podcast.

Jennie: Thank you for sharing your story!

Tarah: Thanks for putting all our stories together, right. These, the, that bind us and keep us going when the times get hard and they're, so we'll keep going together.

Jennie: Okay y'all, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I, like I said, the origin story ones are just among my absolute favorites. So I hope you all enjoyed that and I will see you all next week with our regularly scheduled episode.

Jennie: Thanks for listening everyone. And we'll see you on our next episode of RePROS Fight Back. For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website at reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at RePROS Fight Back, or on Instagram at reprosfb. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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