It's Unacceptable That States are Using a Pandemic to Attack Abortion

In case you haven’t heard, states around the U.S. are taking advantage of the global pandemic in an effort to ban and severely limit access to abortion care. Governors and lawmakers in these states argue that abortion is a “non-essential” health service, and that hospital and clinic resources that are used to perform both procedural and medication abortion should be redirected toward COVID-19 relief. Jessica Mason Pieklo and Imani Gandy with Rewire.News and the Boom! Lawyered podcast helps us break down this bogus argument. 

States like Texas, Alabama, and Ohio have issued executive orders that are generally curtailing medical services amidst the country’s response to coronavirus, and these orders impact abortion care. This is done for the sake of conserving medical equipment (like ventilators and personal protective equipment), yet abortion procedures do not require these resources. These new restrictions are also interacting with pre-existing restrictions and putting people in danger by requiring them to visit abortion clinics more than once, travel outside of their home and out-of-state, and interfering with time constraints that patients are already operating under. Ultimately, this bad faith argument is creating a secondary public health crisis during an existing public health crisis. 

Many courts around the country have ruled that states cannot ban medication abortion nor impose an abortion ban if it pushes a patient past the gestational point for receiving an abortion. The longer abortion care is pushed back, the more difficult it is to receive. While abortion is safer than most medical procedures, performing abortions later in pregnancy is more intensive and increases risk. As abortion access is litigated in courts across the U.S., patients are unsure as to whether it is still possible to receive one.  

 Due to the uncertainty of the future of abortion rights and suspension of care during COVID19, the U.S. may see long-term attacks on the right to abortion care.

Links from this episode

Boom! Lawyered Podcast
We’ll Hear Arguments Podcast
Rewire.News
Rewire.News on Twitter
Imani Gandy on Twitter
Jessica Mason Pieklo on 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: I hope you all are doing well. Welcome to to RePROs Fight Back from my closet. So I'm still at home, clearly as we all should be. Everyone who is able to, I am recording from home in my closet. So you know like maybe a month ago there were these… this picture going around of Ira Glass recording his podcasts in his closet and he's like in a full suit and looking very dapper, recording his episode. I'm just like that basically except I am wearing fleece lined yoga pants and a flannel, so you know, basically exactly the same thing. Also, I have cats, so I think I mentioned this last time and we got very lucky that they decided to behave themselves while I was recording. We'll see if we get lucky two weeks in a row. They often like to sit and talk to me so we shall see what happens. But just, you know, bear in mind we have to deal with that. They have really been enjoying having me home 24/7 at their beck and call and they've also really, really been enjoying doing Zoom calls. So everybody, on my work meetings that have been Zoom meetings, both of my cats have made at least an appearance in every call I have been on, but Luna has really tried to get as much facetime on Zoom as humanly possible and she will just sit there and stare at me or stare at the camera for like most of a call. So that's been fun. Everybody's getting to deal with Luna and it's just, you know, you can only do so much. Yeah, you can push her away once or twice, but she's going to keep coming back. She also really enjoys laying on my notebooks while I'm taking notes on those calls. So that's also really fun. So it's been an adventure inworking from home. I've also been really enjoying watching the Bon Appetit test kitchen videos. They're like my happy place and it can just like sit and watch them for a really long time. It's been fun, but that also makes me think of, I did start my sourdough and it was a success. I didn't make the bride yet. I did the starter from scratch and it's alive and healthy and right now it's in my refrigerator. I will make sourdough bread soon. I just am waiting for a couple of things to come. One of those being more flour-- don't quite have enough flour, or at least the kinds I need to make the sourdough bread. So, I'm waiting on that and then I will have fresh sourdough and I'm so excited. Let's see, what else have I been doing? Oh, I found that Amazon prime has Unsolved Mysteries on it and y'all, I remember back in the day watching Unsolved Mysteries and my college roommate back when we were in the dorms, it came on in reruns at like, I don't know, 11 o'clock at night. So, it would be like one of those things we would like turn it on right before we went into bed and would watch Unsolved Mysteries. So I am feeling very nostalgic and thinking of my old roommate Hoda and watching Unsolved Mysteries right now and watching it and all of its fabulous eighties glory, it's making me very happy. Well, let's see, what else have I been doing? Oh, I have been taking advantage of-- so my best friend lives in Colorado right now and so we try and talk like once a month, you know, we’re busy, she travels a lot, I travel, so we don't always get the chance to talk and definitely not see each other as much as we used to. But we have definitely been taking advantage of being stuck at home and working from home to have a set weekly FaceTime chat and it has been so nice to just take a break in the middle of the day and sit and catch up and hear about what the other one is doing and just get some extra face time with somebody who is easy. Right? Like, I don't have to, we're just easy to talk to each other. It's really nice. And that has made, uh, being quarantined much easier. So I think that's kind of everything that's been going on around here. I'm still reading a lot. Please feel free to send any recommendations, movie or TV or books and I will take advantage. And with that we will turn to this week's episode, which I'm really excited about.

Jennie: There has been so much happening around abortion access during the pandemic, a lot of states are taking advantage of the pandemic to shut down access to abortion care. And so I could not think of two better people to talk to then the two amazing hosts of Boom! Lawyered and writers for Rewire.News. Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo to talk to us about what is going on, what is happening in the states and what is happening in the courts with all of these abortion bans. So with that, I will turn to my interview with Jess and Imani.

Jennie: Okay. So a quick note before we get to the interview, one of the pleasures of recording from home instead of the studio is having to deal with my cats now. Maybe having to listen to them. But another one is my condo building is installing solar panels on our roof, which no big deal, right? Except I live on the top floor. So they are currently in the process of installing handles directly over my unit right now. So there may be a little bit of background noise. I moved into the quietest place I could find, which unfortunately is not my closet. So, the sound may not be as good as it would normally be, but I'm sorry, bear with me. We're doing what we can to make this work and we'll try and edit out as much in post as we can, but you may just have to deal with a little bit of installation noise from my solar panels. With that now we will actually turn to the interview with Jess and Imani.

Jennie: Hi Jess and Imani. Thank you so much for being here.

Imani: Thanks for having us.

Jess: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Jennie: So when I did my intro, I talked about how people should know you from one your amazing writing Rewire.News, but also your amazing podcast Boom! Lawyered. But I forgot to mention your brand new podcast We'll Hear Arguments, which I loved. Do you want to take a second and talk about that?

Imani: Jess. After you. Jess: Sure. Yeah. Thank you. Um, uh, We'll Hear Arguments always a new series that Rewire.News and Imani and I and our producer have put out and it is Mystery Science Theater 3000 meets abortion law, oral arguments. And so we take a deep dive into the oral arguments of Roe vs. Wade in season one and give it the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. Uh, we go through the audio archives and we pull apart the arguments and uh, from the state of Texas that Sarah Weddington made to challenge Texas's abortion ban and then bring it into the present-day arguments that we are having now over abortion bans. And so connect those dots. And it's been, it was a ton of fun to do. We're really looking forward to putting together a season two and you can find it where you get all of your podcasts. Imani. Did I miss anything?

Imani: No, I think you nailed it. It's, it seems like we recorded that, that podcast eons ago, like five lifetimes ago.

Jess: Yeah.

Imani: Yeah. I would highly recommend it. We had so much fun doing it and it's so relevant to what's going on right now with the incessant attempts by states to ban abortion even in the face of a pandemic. So yeah, go check it out please.

Jennie: I learned so much listening it and I just, I really enjoyed it. It was wonderful. So thank you all for doing it. Okay.

Jess: Oh, thank you for listening.

Jennie: Okay, so now we have to turn to the cluster fuck of everything that is happening right now.

[Jess and Imani laugh]

Jennie: And because there is so much happening, I think we need to make it clear. We're recording on the Friday before this comes out, which is April 17th at three o'clock. So this is when everything is true as of because it is moving very fast. So, let's start maybe a little bit at the beginning and talk a little bit about what are states doing right now to try in a block abortion access during the pandemic?

Imani: Essentially they're putting forth a bunch of nonsense arguments and exploiting this pandemic in an effort to ban abortion care, claiming that abortion is not an essential service and that they need to delay abortion because of the pandemic in order to free up hospital resources. And there they're saying that they need to ban both procedural abortion and medication abortions, even though medication abortions don't actually use any personal protective equipment, PPE. So it's basically a bunch of completely nonsensical arguments that are very transparent and it's obvious that their ultimate goal is to ban abortion and then likely use whatever regulations they're able to put in place now two carry over when this pandemic it's over. So it's a really cynical and disingenuous toy to create a secondary public health crisis while we're in the middle of an existing public health crisis.

Jennie: Yeah. And you know, I think for us it seems obvious and I outline this on the outline as why this is all trash. So yeah, it seems clear to us that this is trash, but maybe talk about why this is trash.

Jess: Sure. Um, so as Imani mentioned, states has issued these executive orders that are curtailing medical services generally and in that, in those executive orders, some states have specifically said that abortion is one of the medical services to be suspended to the duration. And the justification for doing that is that states are trying to conserve medical resources in a response to Coronavirus outbreaks. And you know, they were trying to conserve resources like ventilators and PPE, personalized protective equipment. And we know that those are bad faith arguments because abortion as a medical procedure does not use up those kinds of resources. Um, and as advocates have challenged those efforts, um, that evidence has come up to the forefront. And so thankfully that's been blocked, but it is, as Imani said, really creating a secondary public health crisis. Here it is taking a bad faith argument and shoe horning it into a way to try and ban abortion, which these states have been looking for ways to do so throughout, I mean I think it's no surprise, for example, that this is happening in places like Texas and Alabama and Ohio where we have seen really aggressive efforts by conservative lawmakers to try and ban abortion under any circumstances. You know, so here's just the latest one.

Jennie: Yeah. And I think, you know, it's really interacting with existing law that they have. So whether that’s a waiting period, so making people go back to a clinic twice to risk exposure more than once, or obviously you can only get an abortion during a specific set of time, especially if those states have, you know, say a 20 week abortion ban, which a lot of these states do. So it's really interfering with time constraints that people are already operating under.

Imani: It really is. And honestly, if they are really that concerned about conserving medical resources, then they would be deregulate abortion, right? They would repeal these ridiculous TRAP laws and these ridiculous bias consent laws that require these multiple trips to clinics and that require yeah, unnecessary force ultrasounds and require, you know, doctors that have admitting privileges-- all of these things combined to create, uh, reproductive healthcare crisis. And so the fact that they're not doing that, that they're actually trying to ban abortion is more indication that this is not about trying to conserve resources in response to COVID but rather to curtail abortion. And that's particularly cynical I think is that they are sort of framing this as abortion providers wanting to retain “special rights.” Right? So all of these different healthcare providers are being asked to sort of sacrifice part of their care or patients are being asked to sacrifice some, some care that they require and the abortion providers are out here trying to continue their billion dollar big abortion business by putting you know, the population at risk by refusing to stop doing abortions, performing abortion, so that these resources can be used elsewhere. And you know, that's just simply more of anti-choicers trying to frame abortion care as something other than healthcare as, as something that is not within the realm of what is accessible as health care. And it's just, it's nonsense. It's ridiculous. And you know, people were always going to try to control their, their own reproductive autonomy. People are going to get abortions, people are going to need abortion and banning it in Texas for example, has meant that people are now traveling out of state. So they're traveling to Colorado for example, 800 miles or more in order to get care. So it's not stopping abortion, it's just sort of pushing it off or passing the abortion buck to another state, which is, it's, it's a very cynical ploy. It's a ploy that makes no sense in terms of what they say they're trying to do. But if you look at it in terms of what they've been trying to as Jess said is ban abortion. And so if you look at it through that lens, it makes sense. But if you look at it through the lens, they're trying to say is the lens they’re looking through which is, you know, saving resources for a COVID response. That's just not, if not what the reality is.

Jennie: Yeah. And if, you know, people are having to travel 800 miles, it's also really impacting who can access abortion. Only people who can afford to travel like that are able to then access the care they need.

Jess: Absolutely. And we're seeing funds do things now that they have not had to or not to the same degree have had to historically. So for example, abortion funds are providing a lot more in terms of practical support for patients right now because in addition to navigating the restrictions that were already in place, now they are coming to places like Colorado. And so in addition to that expense, um, before there were volunteers who would let people stay with them while they were traveling for care. Now because of social distancing requirements, that's not happening. And so abortion patients are finding themselves having to be put up in hotels. So there's a new layer of expense that even our existing systems of support are now having to adjust to. And this is all coming at a time too, when folks are not able to fundraise on their own. Right? So, so you know, I mean I can't tell you the number of dollars in events that go to creating, you know, resources for abortion clinics and providers and patients that because of COVID19 and stay at home orders and social distancing requirements have been canceled. And so the impact of this is one I think that we are going to feel within our community for months and years to come potentially.

Jennie: Okay. So that is what the states are saying. So what are the courts saying about all this?

Imani: Well, I mean that's a good question. I was just try ingto figure out what it is the Fifth Circuit in particular is doing when it comes to Texas’ executive orders. So it's most courts, the majority of course have said that specifically with medication abortion, you can’t ban it. Some courts have said that you can't ban meditation abortions and you can't impose gestational bans if a ban …would push a person past the gestational limit where they can get an abortion in that particular state, so they're trying to carve out exceptions for people in a way to make it seem like, “Oh well we're still allowing people to get care,” but there are people who as you said, it's expensive, they're low income people, so if you're pushing people back from getting an abortion at 9 or 10 weeks or they can get a medication abortion to getting an abortion at 13 or 14 weeks, even if they're not going to butt up against that deadline to where they won't be able to get an abortion at all. You're just pushing people into more and more expensive care and also more dangerous abortion care because as abortion you know, the later you are in a pregnancy more expensive the abortion is and the more risk there is for complications irrespective of the fact that the overall complication rate is really low. You know you have states like Texas saying, well yeah we know that medication abortion may not use PPE, but what if there's a complication and that person has to be admitted to a hospital? They're really pulling from these truly outlier situations to make those outliers situations seem like they are the norm when they're not.

Jess: And also just to tag onto what Imani has said, you know we are, you know, this is in many ways this is a familiar space for abortion rights advocates because we are in a landscape where we are peppered with federal court orders that are either granting abortion access or denying it. And the good news is so far, all of the federal courts that have, with the exception of the Fifth Circuit…all of the federal courts that have looked at state's efforts to try and use COVID19 is pretext to ban abortion has said that it's just that, that it's pretext, and so that includes rulings in Ohio, in Alabama, there's a settlement in place in Iowa. Let's see where else, and we're talking about Texas right now. They are moving fast and furious. Advocates have also filed…in Tennessee and Louisiana. There's a, there's another order blocking attempts in Arkansas. So far there's eight pieces of active litigation going on with potentially a ninth one maybe coming down the pipes in Missouri, or I mean Mississippi, which is all to say that part of this is while the court's response has been good, having so much litigation around this topic right now is creating a lot of uncertainty. So people don't know, for example, if they can still get an abortion in Texas or if they can get an abortion in Alabama. And that alone has a chilling effect on rights and creates confusion around all of it. So even if the courts are doing their job and blocking these bans, which they have been, there is still damage that's done. Not just, you know, to, those who have to travel, but also to folks who simply don't know what their rights are.

Jennie: Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like that's been particularly true in Texas where there was a while where there was a complete ban and so people were having their appointments canceled.

Jess: Yeah, that's very much the case right now. I mean, you know, so it is Friday, it's Friday, right?

Jennie: Yes, it's Friday. My computer says Friday.

Jess: And you know, as of right now, there are some abortions that you can, that people can in theory still assets in Texas. But Texas is as of this conversation right now, making an argument that no, in fact ,it is still going to prohibit most procedures including medication abortion. So this is a live fight. And one that even when the courts are doing their job, the anti-choice lawmakers are, you know, going right back to the drawing board and saying, well, we were thwarted in this effort of let's see if we can take another bite of the apple this way. And so it's going to be a fluid situation for a little while. I think.

Jennie: Yeah, Texas just seems a little wild right now with multiple cases going to the Fifth Circuit.

Imani: Not only is it wild, you know, we just found out today that that Texas is going to be permitting elective surgeries again. But the Governor has said that still doesn't include abortion. So now we're in a situation where just in the last week or two they'd been saying that abortion is not essential and that it's elective. And now they're saying, okay, you can proceed with elective surgeries, but abortion isn't that. So if it's not elective and it's essential, like there's no middle ground. If there's, is it some self-care purgatory where it's both essential and not essential and elective and not elective like Schrodinger's abortion? Like it's very strange. These arguments that they're making. And I'll be interested to see how they defend them in court, but like maybe Jess can talk a little bit about the fact that basically the Fifth Circuit is just directing Texas, directing the attorney general and how Texas should proceed in order to give the Fifth Circuit the opportunity to continue to ban abortion. And that's something I don't think we've seen before.

Jess: No, this is really a, I mean we talk about the federal courts going rogue with a bunch of Trump appointees, but wow, are we really seeing that to be the case in Texas! So without getting into too much of the legal weeds, there's been some really troubling developments from the judges there. So a district judge issued a temporary restraining order on April 14th that said basically, you know, some abortions can continue but Texas can prohibit a few and the Fifth Circuit said, okay, we're going to back off of that of our, of a previous issue or order that we had said that no abortions could, could take place. Well after that was issued … the judge is on the Fifth Circuit, independently sent a letter to the attorneys and said, “Hey, we see something in… this order. We think it might be appealable. What do you think?” Now that is really weird. I have never, it's been a little while since I practiced law, but I had never in my career as an attorney and in the careers of attorneys that I know who still practice law have had an appellate court say, “Hey, you know we see this order, we think you might want to do something about it. “Right? That's not the judge's job. That is engaging in advocacy. So to make you know, to long story short, the Fifth Circuit, you know, said, “Hey, do you think there's an appealable issue here?” Texas said, “you know what? We sure do!” Lo and behold, here we are on Friday now, very likely waiting on a new, a new order from the Fifth Circuit that will once again ban the few abortions that it had said could take place in the state. So it is, you know, if you are looking on the calendar and picking a date, it is an open question whether or not the Fifth Circuit has an order in place banning abortion or not. And as far as Texas is concerned, that is just how fluid the landscape is right now.

Jennie: So do we think this is likely to work its way up to the Supreme Court?

Imani: I mean it already has, you know, advocates for, for providers in Texas filed an emergency motion with the court last weekend. And then the Fifth Circuit basically said just kidding and, and permitted a medication abortion to go forward advocates. Advocates asked the Supreme Court to say, “okay, wait a minute, medication abortion doesn’t use PPE, so can we at least have medication abortion please?” And the Fifth Circuit was way out of what's an outlier with respect to those orders. All of the other, um, appellate courts that have heard this issue has said, yeah, okay, medication abortion can go forward because this is absurd. So the Fifth Circuit blinked. So, which makes it even more confusing that now they’re going back and saying, no, no, no, actually we do want to include medication abortion in the end, the abortions that are banned even though you just said four days prior that they weren't. So as Jess said, it's a live by and it's also confusing fight and, and really grounded in a lot of…kind of civil procedure law that really nobody wants to talk about right now.

Jennie: Which is why I always listened to Boom! Lawyered and read your guys' pieces to figure out what is happening.

Jess: Well thank you for that. Just to tag on to what Imani has said too…you know, and to follow up on the question of if this will go to the Supreme Court, really the nugget of the fight here is if they have the ability to declare a suspension of the right to abortion during the time during a time of national crisis. In other words, is there some sort of national emergency exceptions to Roe vs. Wade because that's what Texas is arguing for, they are saying that they have the power in, in responding to these, you know, this unprecedented circumstance of the Coronavirus pandemic to suspend certain constitutional rights including the right to an abortion. And so this, you know, that is a huge ask, that is a really big carve out to the right to abortion should the Fifth Circuit find one. And so, um, that is an issue that we are really watching and are very concerned about as we're tracking this litigation.

Jennie: Yeah, that seems really terrifying as in like, you know, one, if the Supreme Court did decide that was true, it just seems like such a slippery slope and just like opening this huge door to just banning abortion in general.

Imani: Absolutely. Because if they're allowed to carve out and a national emergency exception or a public health care crisis exception, then the question becomes well what counts as a national emergency? Are they going to now be able to claim that, for example, forcing people to live in a state where abortion is permitted is an infringement on their religious freedom and that's the national emergency. You know, like there's really no limit to what Texas can argue with a national emergency. As long as you have a court, like the Fifth Circuit that's willing to say, yeah, that's a national emergency. So you're right, it is a very, very slippery flow. And, and as Jess said, that's why we're watching this issue very carefully and pulling our hair out.

Jennie: So you know, we've already kinda’ touched on this, but so right now abortion is still legal in all 50 atates and you should probably be able to access it with Texas depending on what is happening at the exact time you're listening to this.

Jess: That's a correct statement.

Jennie: That's terrifying. But…

Imani: It's terrifying that we have to say that almost every week we're discussing, you know, bans and these restrictions wer’e constantly forced to say it's still legal because the way in which they're sort of waiting this more, it's also they're just creating chaos, right? They're creating a situation where people don't know what their rights necessarily are. And so they may not think that they're able to pursue a particular right. Because you know, it's changing. It's in flux so much so yeah, it's a real humdinger.

Jennie: So what does this mean going forward? And I know Jess, you touched on like a really interesting argument on Boom! Lawyered that people should definitely go to listen to that, where you were worried about some of the things that were in the filings. Are there other things that you're seeing that give you concern for down the road?

Jess: Yeah. So, um, the, this question about whether or not states can declare an emergency and use that to suspend abortion rights is, I mean, it makes me so sweaty. What we talked about on [the podcast] is that even in these orders that are blocking state's efforts to use COVID19 to ban abortion, they are inadvertently creating some big carve-outs. And I can explain that. So in Texas for example, when in abortion has been allowed to continue the order in place has said that medication abortion can continue and those abortions that would time out under the state's 20 week ban, but that everything in between there is suspended. And so that is effectively a D&E ban, a ban on later abortion. Now Texas is actively litigating a ban on D&E abortions. It had already tried under a separate piece of legislation to ban this procedure and the lower court said, no, you can't do that and the Fifth Circuit heard arguments on it and it's sitting on a decision until the Supreme Court decides June Medical Services. So the Fifth Circuit right now doesn't even have to decide that issue because you can't get a D&E abortion in Texas and in other states that have similar orders in place. That is something that we are seeing. So I'm concerned that we will see advocates point to those suspensions and say, see, it's not really an undue burden to limit abortion to, you know, only these particular circumstances. Um, so that is something that is concerning. And of course, should the Fifth Circuit take Texas' mandamus request or should they take the appeal up and given ruling that says yes under certain circumstances, states can suspend abortion rights? As Imani said, there doesn't seem to be a limiting principle right now as to what those circumstances would be. And so we would be less, you know, uh, litigating that. And then there's the practical concern. You know, we've got states like Louisiana that, uh, that are trying to, we use COVID19 to ban abortion and they're already in active litigation trying to close clinics. If clinics close, one of the lessons that we have from the earlier fight in Texas is that those clinics may not reopen. It is really hard to get those clinics to reopen. So there could be a long term decimation of abortion access just from the uncertainty and the suspension and the sort of re-animation and the re-suspension of abortion rights.

Jennie: Okay. So that's a lot and there's a lot happening. So what can listeners do? What actions can people take right now to fight back?

Imani: I mean, we're always going to say that you should try to donate to abortion funds, particularly now. I mean, it's so hard for people right now with the unemployment rate and people at home just kind of wondering what to do. But if you have extra a couple extra dollars, it's always a good idea to donate to abortion funds. And it's always a good idea to, I mean to just yell at people, yell at, if you live in Texas, just yell at Greg Abbott, yell at Ken Paxton. Point out how hypocritical it is for them too claim to reopen the state for elective surgery, but to continue to decline, to refuse to permit abortions to carry on. It's absurd. And also, frankly, yell Ken Paxton for thinking he should be able to go to Colorado for his summer home while pregnant people in Texas can't get abortions and Jess can tell you more about that because that's really something that's quite absurd and quite hypocritical.

Jess: Yeah. In the, in the, you know, while all of this is going on here in Colorado, one of our counties had to issue a letter you know, in response to Ken Paxton complaining that he couldn't come to his vacation home because we have stay at home orders in place and he did a whole big to-do about how, you know, unconstitutional and anti-democratic it was to prevent him from, from exercising his constitutional right to travel. The man has no sense of irony. So yeah.

Jennie: Okay. So since everybody is like pretty stressed right now, and this was kind of a heavy episode, maybe we'll do a quick, what is giving you hope or giving you joy right now? It doesn't have to be work related. It can just be fun.

Imani: I have enjoyed sort of reconnecting with friends that I hadn't been connecting with and you know, over the Zoom chats and these hang outs. That just kind of made me wonder why I haven't been doing that all along. Yeah. But on the flip side of that, I'm still an introvert and so I'm finding a lot of my extrovert friends just are like, let's hang out, let's text all the time. And I'm like, I'm still the same person. I don't need to be talking to you that much. So it's sort of a nice balance of life and able to reconnect with. But like in a reasonable like small doses kind of way.

Jennie: Oh my God, I so relate to that.

Jess: And I don't want to like, I don't want to reward resilience as you know, sort of a political strategy but it has really been wonderful to see our community come together again is such an immediate and effective way to support providers and patients while all of this is going on, I mean this is, everything is so bananas and these attacks in particular feel extra bad faith. And it's such a time when everybody's dealing with so much additional stress, right? People maybe have lost their jobs or are furloughed or they have health concerns. All of this is going on. And, and sincerely, the abortion rights community has rallied in new and really inspiring ways and it makes me just really proud to be a part of the community. And so I am drawing and inspiration from that because we're able to do that, come together in, in ways now when we're all physically isolated from one another and when we have the pressure's on our resources and our time that we do right now. Um, that is a good thing.

Jennie: Well ladies, thank you so much for doing this.

Imani: Oh, thank you for having us.

Jess: Yeah. Thank you for having, it's always a pleasure.

Jennie: 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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