Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Hero Origin Stories- Round 5
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, and SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 4, where we talked to a number of amazing heroes in the field of reproductive health, rights, and justice and about how they began working in this space. This time, hear from Rev. Katey Zeh, Executive Director of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Pamela Merritt, Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice.
Guests include:
Rev. Katey Zeh, Executive Director – Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Pamela Merritt, Executive Director – Medical Students for Choice
LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice on Facebook and Twitter
Medical Students for Choice 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.
Read More
Jennie: Welcome to this week's episode of rePROs Fight Back. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So I am recording this on the Monday before Thanksgiving, so I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm really looking forward to mine. I am off starting Wednesday and I've got a whole five interrupted days off and I'm very, very excited. I don't really have much planned, which I'm also very, very excited for. I'm going to a friend’s I think for Thanksgiving, so that is exciting. So it should be a really lowkey holiday. I'm really looking forward to that. Sometimes, you know, traveling home for the holidays is really stressful, especially Thanksgiving. Like it's such a tight turnaround that it just ends up being really exhausting. So I'm excited to not be doing that even as I will absolutely miss being there with my family. Yeah, that's always the hard part. I especially will miss, my mom cooks a pretty mean Thanksgiving dinner. It's one of my favorites. Like she just makes so much good food. The turkey's really good, and the stuffing, and so I really miss out on that. But I usually can con her into making a Thanksgiving feast while I'm home over the Christmas break. So hopefully we can do that again this year cuz I, I do really miss out on not being in Wisconsin to have that. But the other thing I really miss by not being able to go home is as on the Saturday after Thanksgiving-- my mom's side of the family-- I think I've mentioned that I have a very large family on that side, and my aunts and my cousins and now my cousins’ kids, like it's getting very large, get together and we make Christmas cookies. Like a day full of baking and so many hundreds of cookies made and it's so much fun, lots of delightful food and fun company. Lots of laughs and mishaps and it's just a really fun day. I always miss that when I can't go home, but I enjoy the spoils. My mom will usually put together a box for me and ship it out, so maybe she'll do that again this year. I hope so. Yeah, I just, this Thanksgiving I'm just feeling really grateful for wonderful friends and family even if I don't get to see my family this year. Yeah, I'm just, just really thankful for my family and sad I can't see them, but that's okay. I'll be home for a while over the Christmas break, so it'll be nice to see everybody then. And I'm just, I'm really thankful for you all. Like this little podcast is almost five years old and I'm just so grateful for every one of you who have been there from day one or from today.
Jennie: It's just, yeah, it's wonderful to have such a wonderful audience that is invested in these issues and cares about these issues enough to keep coming back and listening to the amazing guests I have on to come and talk about all of the important things in sexual and reproductive health rights and justice. So, and I'm very thankful for my luck in having amazing guests and I'm really thankful for this week's episode. Y'all, this is like my favorite series we do every year, which is why we keep doing it every year. And it is the one where I have amazing people come on to tell their sexual reproductive health rights and justice origin story. This year I had such amazing bounty of stories that we're actually splitting it into two episodes, so there'll be a special bonus episode next week with I think three more stories in it. Today we are going to start with two amazing stories from two amazing advocates. First, we have Reverend Katie Zeh with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and then we have Pamela Merrit with Medical Students for Choice. So I hope you enjoy both of their stories. I had a wonderful time hearing them. Okay, so with that, let's turn to Reverend Katey Zeh.
Rev. Zeh: When I decided to go to seminary the year after graduating from college, I think it was in part to avoid entering the professional sphere. And it was also because I did have a sense deep down that I was called to do something in the world. I just didn't know what that was. I thought maybe I was supposed to be a minister of a church or maybe go on to do doctoral work. I honestly didn't know. But about the last place I ever expected to discover my calling was within the walls of the abortion clinic just down the street from my campus. This is a story that I've told on this podcast before and still it kind of amazes me how all of this came together. When I was a student, I took a couple of classes actually provided by the organization. I now run the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice or RCRC. They [came] to campus and taught how do you walk alongside someone making a decision about a pregnancy and how do you do that with the spiritual support that people often need as they're asking big, big questions? I absolutely loved the training and I wanted to use it and I didn't know how. And so I ended up going on a tour of a local clinic that offered abortion care and on my way there I encountered the protestors for the first time in a very different kind of way in which I was mistaken for an abortion patient. And that impacted me in a lot of ways, not the least of which, pushed me to explore my own internalized abortion stigma. In addition to that though, when I went inside and I got to see for myself the kind of loving and compassionate care provided there by the staff and the doctors and the nurses, I was just so blown away by the amount of love that I saw and I felt compelled to come back as a volunteer. I started first in the recovery room, helping the nurses pass out Saltines and ginger ale, and then one day the staff was down a person and they really needed someone in the procedure room to hold the hands of patients during their procedures. They asked if I would be willing to step in. I was honestly pretty terrified. I had only seen one procedure and I'd gotten a little faint. There's a reason that I didn't go to medical school, but it was just one of those moments when I couldn't let my trepidation stand in the way of providing care to people who needed it and there was nobody else who could. So I agreed and patient after patient would come in and I would stand there and offer them my hand. It felt a little awkward and it also felt extremely sacred to me to be able to hold that presence and just be there with patience during this very vulnerable moment. And the fact that they were letting me in and letting me hold space for them was incredibly sacred to me. And I really felt like that was my, my calling was somehow to find a way to combine the work that I was doing in seminary around theology and ethics and sacred texts and combine that with serving people going through reproductive decisions and who are on reproductive journeys where they might want some spiritual accompaniment.
Rev. Zeh: And I also knew that I had a role to play in answering the kinds of rhetoric that so many people hear from Christians like me who make it part of their lives to regularly stand outside of clinics and offer hate and harassment and violence. I knew that I wanted to do something different from that and that really was the origin of my work. And now as the CEO of RCRC, when there are really tough days, and there have been a lot of those lately, I really do return back to those early days when I was in the clinic and I remember the people I met there, the staff, the doctors, and also the patients and how much love and support they showed me, too. It wasn't just about me offering something, it was also about me learning and receiving so much in that space. It's really an honor to do this work. I definitely don't consider myself a hero, but I definitely consider myself someone who feels very strongly called to do this work in a community of many amazing people who do this work day in and day out. It's my honor to be included in this episode and thank you for the work of rePROs Fight Back.
Jennie: Hi Pamela, thanks for being here.
Pamela: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Jennie: Okay, before we get into your story, do you wanna introduce yourself real quick and include your pronouns?
Pamela: Absolutely. So my name is Pamela Merrit. My pronouns are she and her and y'all. I am a proud Midwesterner and the executive director of Medical Students for Choice.
Jennie: All right. Would you like to tell your story of how you got involved in the repro movement?
Pamela: Sure. You know, it's a long road, but I'll walk y'all through. So I need to honor the fact that I grew up with two very progressive, pro-choice parents and you know, they weren't perfect, but they were very clear on, you know, not just what they valued as far as bodily autonomy, but why. And my first introduction to sex ed was actually through Planned Parenthood coloring books. They're awesome. My mother, for whatever reason, I think it's just 1950s upbringing, but she struggled to talk about reproductive health and way more than she struggled to talk about feminism in general. And so the coloring books were a great way for us to learn medically accurate terms and have a discussion point with her. The one thing when we were talking about contraception was that she was explaining the different methods of preventing pregnancy and I got an insight into her life, which was that, you know, she didn't have me until she was 30, but my brother was born and then 16 months later my sister was born, then 18 months [I was born]. I was not by design, but basically by inadequate healthcare that, you know, my mother went to Catholic hospitals for all of us and ended up being told that she could not use birth that wasn't candidate, they gave her all kinds of misinformation. And when she had my sister, like she was in grad school, she had already had a baby in diapers and now that I'm an adult, like my heart just goes out to her. She then, you know, was told that they would not do a [tubal ligation], it went against, you know, [their religious code], so she, you know, the best time to have that done is when you already in the hospital having given birth. So her doctor told her that she could not get pregnant while breastfeeding and to use the rhythm method. So I, anytime somebody talks about natural pregnancy prevention and the method, I'm like, “oh, I'm really familiar with it” even though I've never used it cause of a baby completely the result of the rhythm method. And somebody trying to use it with two babies, one new baby breastfeeding, all of us, all of us in diapers.
Pamela: I just, I cannot imagine how she did it. But it was a really interesting window into the challenges that people were facing [surrounding pregnancy]. And also just how much influence a doctor had on somebody's life. You know, I was born February 22nd, 1973, so a month after the Roe decision. And in what my mother was told through three pregnancies was directly connected to the way that doctors treated pregnant people and the weight and value that they put on their life considerations because, you know, I'm happy to be here, but it certainly wasn't the best decision for my family. It was an incredible burden and it definitely delayed my mom's ability to complete her degree. And she was very open about that. So growing up I had a very strong understanding of, you know, the fact that, you know, pregnancy wasn't all flowers and, and glorious Disney animals playing. And then the other thing that I grew up with was a very firm understanding that everything doesn't always work out right. And by that, I mean that many of my friends then growing up, and even now when people talk about pregnancy, they think of the best case scenario. And so I grew up the third child who, uh, was born into a family where we knew my older brother, he was the oldest, that something was different about him. And then, you know, because of the time in which he was born in the early seventies, it took a while to get the diagnosis of autism, but throughout my childhood I knew that you can't just plan for the best case scenario, that you have to think, “am I going to be able to support and provide for this child?” And for a lot of people in the seventies, the answer to that question was no. And they put infants into institutions, and I was raised by parents who made us promise when I was like 10 that I would never do that, and that they did not think that that was, you know, an appropriate place for my brother. And that a lot of what we did as a family was to make sure that he wasn't vulnerable to being placed in an institution. And that was a lot of work back in the eighties, late seventies and eighties. And I applaud my parents—it has long since passed, but I do applaud not just what they did, but their transparency and the way they framed it. Not that my brother was a burden, but that the social safety net that should be supporting all people does not support so many people, including people with developmental disabilities. But to talk to your average person on the street, they don't even, don't even consider that. And, and how it affects everything in your life. Not just whether you can get, you know, the right education for this child, but also you know, how much you can work, where you can work, you know, everything. And that's true of children, but particularly true, uh, for parenting a child with a disability in the early eighties. So all of that kind of turned up in my life coupled with growing up in the eighties, which was, its a lot.
Pamela: So I, I'm a pure Gen Xer. I grew up, you know, first hearing about herpes through Saturday Night Live skits, and then, you know, learning about this horrible cancer that was plaguing the gay community that then became, you know, known as AIDS and, and that was the constant companion to my analysis of sex and empowerment. And also, you know, I think being a Black youth at the time, I really felt really horrified at how dismissed people were being. The lack of compassion in the lack of, like, regardless of people's views, what it felt like and looked like to have people in your world who were suffering from AIDS was absolutely brutal in the eighties. And you know, my mom had many friends who didn't make it and was quite about the reality that people were not being prioritized because of who they were, not of what disease they had. So all of that, like the stark reality of that I was brought up in, was a big part of how I approached like myself in the movement when I was in college. I was very committed to racial justice. I, I went to school in Massachusetts and I just left right after high school, but mostly because it's a blur. Like I, by the time, by the time I go to high school, I, my entire life was a plan to get out of Missouri. And you know, I had a really horrible school experience, even though people I meet now who I went to school with did not see that at all. I think I was a good actor, but there was a lot of overt racism, a lot of bullying. It was Ronald Reagan's eighties in a, in a Midwest suburb. So it was very materialistic, very stereotype driven. And you know, just as, as a lot of folks who were Gen X, like we came out this with parents who were trying to process the sixties and we're trying to process the collateral damage of the sixties, which was, you know, the world we lived in. So I fled Missouri just as soon as I could. I actually took early hour credits in high school in summer school so that I could graduate a year early. And I went to this for the first year of college, quirky school called Simon's Rock College. Uh, I think it's called Simon's Rock College of Bard now, but it is in great Barrington, Massachusetts. It's early college for people who want to skip their senior or junior year of high school and just start off with 300 students. Super, super liberal. I think, you know, I was considered conservative on that campus, just kinda hard looking back. And so in 1990 I really made the connection at that school between academic theory, feminism and reproductive rights, and the reality of policy. But in a state where there was a lot of support for reproductive rights. And so even when I transferred after my first year to Brandeis, I was still going to school in an environment where there was entitlement to birth, to abortion, and a reverence for the violence that was perpetrated against abortion providers and clinics. There was a, you know, horrible terrorist incident in Boston, I believe in the eighties. And so there was still this tension about defending clinics and also calling out, you know, what in that city was a very Catholic heavy anti-abortion presence. You know, to the extent that I got active, I think that was the lens that I was looking through that, you know, people who are trying to provide healthcare should not have to be a gauntlet and, you know, have to deal with bomb threats every other day, which was pretty much so the norm through the eighties and into the nineties.
Pamela: And so I’m done with school, I was broke, I dove into paying for food and working in advertising. I moved to Texas and kind of put activism on the back burner. I did, you know, I was the person who would take a sick day off of work to help a friend go get an abortion and support them. But I definitely was not the person who was like, “I'm gonna be a clinic escort.” I just, I don't, I don't think it really hit that I had a personal mission yet. And so this was the first step I took into movement work was actually by getting sick. I got diagnosed with fibroids and endometriosis when I was 27 and I spent one year on horrible hormones and then another year trying to find a gynecologist who would give me options that weren't based on whether I wanted to have kids. So this was in Dallas, Texas. It was a fun exercise that I will share with anybody. Not only could I not get my very good health insurance to cover alternative treatments for fibroids and endometriosis because they felt that they were fertility treatments, but I also could not find a high-risk OB who would take me on and give me the option of hysterectomy or, you know, [other procedures] to remove the fibroids. I wanted to have the full spectrum of options and I didn't want somebody second guessing the fact that I knew I didn't want to have kids. And part of that, probably it was a month, but when you're, when you're having a period for 15 freaking days straight and you're in the doctor’s office, the thing you hear is somebody patting your hand and saying, “oh, you, you’ll change mind.” And just, yeah, I was livid and I stayed mad. Even when we got into something good, like I found a really good treatment plan, I had a really good doctor, I was still off that like on top of the anxiety and the agony of trying to find out what the hell was happening to my body, I was being treated like I was like an emotional wreck who was incapable of making a sound decision or having a position on whether or not I wanted to have kids. I got fired and then I ended up moving back... So I was like, right, I started doing advertising with the regional LGBTQ newspaper. Um, those used to be a thing. They were wonderful and awesome and some of them still exist and the press was in, was everything. And particularly in, in a small town like St. Louis where, you know, there's no protection for people, still no civil protections on the books. So people use the newspaper as a, as a resource to prevent awkward encounters, violent encounters, being denied services. So it was a great way to learn the city and also learn the politics of that policy. And then on top of working for that newspaper, I went and started volunteering through a woman's group at local shelters. And the shelters that they chose just happened to choose shelters for pregnant or recent moms or parents who were homeless. And so, but were on a waiting list for transitional housing. So in St. Louis, Missouri, there are a ton of these shelters because Missouri has a really messed up system where if you are 15 or 16 years old, you are considered incapable of making a decision about whether or not to continue a pregnancy. If you are 16 and have a child, you are considered an adult, a separate family. And so you have government subsidized housing and then back in, so there's like the upset with the idea of the, you know, the nineteens welfare mom, is, you know, to the system. And as result to have, people away from their support system for just stupid reasons and forced to, you know, wait for transitional housing or wait to get approved to go back into their home at a moment when they need their family more than anything.
Pamela: So I was doing, I was supposed to go in and do basic budgeting and I don’t know why they thought I would be the right person to do that if they'd seen my credit, they would not made that decision. But my first day of my first class, I walked in convinced that all of these women were in this situation because of something they had failed to do and that I was going to teach them about basic financial management and fix this. And I am to this day grateful to that first class of 10 women who, one of whom interrupted five minutes into spiel and went off-- like cussed me out. Like I haven't been cussed out since grade school. And it was, and she was right in the fact that I did not know their lives. I did not know anything about the circumstances that they were with. I did not understand, you know, what it was like to have a, a relative use your social security number to set up a gas account because they, they needed heat in the house and then now you can't get an apartment 18 years later. So, you know, I decided to take this note and rather than, you know, get pissy about it, I was like, “you're right, I have a lot to learn.” And so I said, “we're gonna learn together and I'm gonna to learn from you what you're dealing with and why. And I'm gonna to share with you that there's a system of government at the local, state and federal level that is being paid to work on problems like yours and the needs to be forced to do this.” So that was the partnership that we entered into. And I did this work, I volunteered with two shelters for six years and through that process I learned that we are failing pregnant people and particularly failing pregnant teens. That the level of stigma and shame that is tossed at parenting teens is just outrageous. And I've witnessed it with teens and I just want to say that, you know, a lot of the work that needs to happen needs to happen with my generation and, you know, millennials and how we're oriented toward younger folks and what they're faced with and what they're dealing with. So, you know, it was a big education for me. It really was the first time I was deconstructing some of the biases that I grew up with. But I also got see that amazing moment when women, you know, are connected to their political power and they shift from saying, “I could call this person but they're not gonna do anything” to “what's the name of this person? I wanna call them about X.” And I dragged like older people, the mayor, you know, representatives, state senators, you know, people from the attorney general's office. I was like, “you need to come and talk to these folks about the inadequate housing that they're dealing with and all of these other things.”
Pamela: The other thing that I became horrified and then committed to work on was that I was overhearing a conversation at the end of class, four of the students were talking about somebody who had passed away as a result of a pregnancy. And in hearing them talk about it, I was confused cause I'm like, “are you talking about the same person?” And they were like, “No, just my friend so and so passed away and I know my so and so passed away.” And people in that room, 13 of them knew more than one person who had passed away within a year of giving birth. Not the same people at all. And I was, I mean I was physically ill at that and, and immediately doing research because, you know, I had thought that the people I'd had heard of who had had traumatic birth experience were unique. And then I realized, wow, this is, this is way bigger. And of course, you know, when you, when you're working with poor people who are forced to return to work a week after giving birth who you know, aren't given time to pump milk to do basic, you know, recovery from childbirth, it's not 100% shocking. But a huge part of me was horrified that we were in a state, in a city where people are constantly pontificating about supporting a culture of life. And yet Black women and Black people who experience pregnancy are dying at this rate compared to the mainstream population. And nobody wants to even talk about it. Like nobody's even remotely interested in talking about it. And that is sad, you know, for people in political power. That's, that's still the case in, in most of the Midwest, where folks are activists on the issue. But there is not an out and out discussion in society that, that sees those numbers and just shrugs it off. So I was hooked and I had committed myself to being a positive force in lowering maternal mortality rates and by any means necessary, including my current job. Which one of the things that really attracted me to taking the helm at Medical Students for Choice was the ability to infuse into some of the curriculum reform measures that we work on, anti-racism and the reproductive justice framework, so that med students before they go into residency are thinking about how their work and their practice plays a role in either dismantling racial health disparities or contributing to them. So that was one of the things that really appealed to me. So in the middle of all this volunteer work, I was also writing a blog. One of my coworkers who's now like a brother to me, gave me a blog for my birthday because I was a mouthy person and basically said you should totally write a blog. And I started writing it just for my friends and then I kept doing it cause it was a great way for me to vent about the issues that I was uncovering through my volunteer work and you know, political volunteer work. And then ultimately after a year, somebody told me that I should put some sort of tracking on it and I realized other people were reading it. So I did a post about King Kong and all of a sudden, which is I hate that movie, I hate the whole story. I didn't realize people were really, really passionate about King Kong or did not know. And I wrote a post in less than 20 minutes and I didn't even have my own laptop. So I wrote it at work, logged off, back on and I had like two thousand views! So I think that was when I realized other people were reading me and I worked really hard throughout a decade of writing that blog, I can't believe I wrote for that long. But I worked really hard not to think about people reading it, but really just to talk about what I was experiencing and what I was seeing and the hypocrisy of politics in what people say they care about versus what they're willing to work on. So I was doing reproductive justice work through the blog and through my volunteer work, but did not have that framework in, in that term to really describe it.
Pamela: And then when I moved over to work at Planned Parenthood, I was able to connect with activists all over the country. I was at Planned Parenthood in Missouri and realized, “okay, there is a framework for this and there are people who are using intersectionality not just to analyze reproductive oppression but really to tear it down.” And so I was super excited by that and I spent the next five years trying to make change within the system, but also really I'm like, I'm a natural introvert. So I was like studying the system as well to say like, what's working, what's not working? I realized that I was not gonna be able to make substantive change in the system and left to work at a communications hub for two years. It worked on every progressive issue in Missouri. [Inaudible]. I loved it, but I received an email from my friend Erin Matson and she sent me an email asking me the question, “if you have time, I'd love to talk to you about what do you think the reproductive health rights and justice movement is doing right? What do you think they're doing wrong? Are we losing and if we're losing why, what's missing?” And I was so glad I checked that email. And I immediately replied and we got together and after two focus groups and many conversations, we decided to co-found Reproaction, which really was to me a life altering experience. It was such a, a rare happening to be, you know, a Black Midwesterner who's able to co-found a national reproductive justice organization. And I was very aware of the rare opportunity and that it shouldn't be so rare, but that most of, most national organizations are anchored on the coast. The other thing that was super fun is that, you know, we were intentionally to the left of the mainstream. So, you know, calling in the movement was challenging it was also very cathartic. It was, you know, not just for me, but also for the people who volunteered on our direct actions and were like, this is amazing. Like, I love being able to demonstrate that we can do direct action protests in front of crisis pregnancy centers. Co-founding Reproaction was an opportunity for me to, to see like a theory prove true, which is that, you know, direct action was, it has been a component in every single right that I have in gaining it and in holding it and then, you know, defending it. And so for me, you know, I think we forgot the mainstream movement, certainly forgot that and began to rely way too heavily on the courts and on, you know, legislative strategies.
Pamela: But direct action is a wonderful way to educate the masses as well. And what has been lacking and what is still lacking is sadly we're getting a clinic now and exactly why we need bodily autonomy, but was just a deep understanding of why these rights are dear and that they are worthy of, you know, camping out in front of a crisis pregnancy center for three hours that they're worthy of direct action. And you know, it's far easier to defend, uh, a right than to try to get it back after it's gone. And, um, I think we're all experiencing that now. Um, so yeah, when I, when I co-founded Reproaction, it is still like the, one of the, if not the crowning achievement of my professional work. Medical Students for Choice is just a natural, to me a natural pivot that, you know, I saw that Reproaction definitely was able to move on and grow. And, and I think for any founder, co-founder, that's like your ultimate dream. And I'm so proud to still be serving on the advisory council of Repraction, but the opportunity to work on medical education, when I saw way back in 2016, you know, if we don't protect this skillset and this in the pipeline that we are gonna have a heck of a time rebuilding access. And after November of 2016, I knew we would lose Roe in some capacity and I knew that we would be up for the fight of our lives. So I was very much so drawn as a movement person to Medical Students for Choice. But yeah, I think, you know, my journey has been like a lot of people that I kind of fell into it, got off, and gradually at a certain point you're like, “oh God, this is, this should be a full time job so I need to figure out how to get paid.”
Jennie: Yeah, I feel you. I always talk about my journey as like, it's not, it wasn't a path, it was just like a bunch of stepping stones and then all of a sudden like, this is what I'm doing and could not imagine doing any other work.
Pamela: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and I tell people when they're like, “oh, you know, what do you recommend people do to, to get started?” And I'm always saying, you know, you know, attend a clinic escort training. I think those are awesome, but also just go to a lobby day because you don't have to be a 100% in love with the political process. Like, I get it, it's broken in a lot of places, including my home state until you've been to a state legislative legislature and sat down and talked to people about something as basic as the right for trans kids to not be bullied when they go to the bathroom or the right that people should be able to sue their employer for calling them the N-word. Or that people should have the right to make medical decisions about their body that aren't regulated by doctors who won an election in Dunlin County, Missouri. Until you've experienced that, you don't know how people like me are made. Cause that process alone, well I think I don't, I've yet to meet somebody who has walked out of a lobby day and not been like, this is crazy like this, this is wrong. And these people are not listening and they're not operating from a place of science or law or public service. And if that doesn't make an activist out of you, I don't know what will, but it certainly did for me. And if you're lucky enough, actually there's not a single state legislature in the country, none that are functional. So even if you're in Oregon or Hawaii or Massachusetts, you're dealing with people making decisions based on everything but the rights of the individual, in the best interests of individual liberty. You know, and it, it's horrible. And they'll look you right in the face and say it, you know, I remember lobbying on abortion and being in a, in a committee hearing and one of the, like we were asking one of the sponsors of the bill, like, like he was pushing up into beyond viability and we're just like, that doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, “well what's a reason? How do you say that's a reasonable abortion restriction?” And he's like, “well I think you know, that we should be banning abortion up to nine months. Like, period.” Like he basically was joking that, that I don't think we should have it be legal at all. And I'm like, so we're not having a debate about abortion restrictions and we haven't been for quite some time. And now we're on the flip side of it where, you know, folks like me who are struggling a little bit with the fact that our life's work is not where we wanted it to be and where we hoped it to be, but still committed to, you know, making, you know, helping us get into in the right direction and not doing more harm. But for us it's like, okay, now we need to document what we're seeing, and we need to hold people accountable for what's happening because we've moved, we moved away from propaganda and dogma and into reality. The reality is horrific. It is already having devastating consequences on medical education. It will have, as a result, horrific consequences on access to the best OBGYN care in 26 states. Even with some of the wins that we just saw. You cannot, you cannot replace a constitutional right to autonomy on a state-by-state basis. You simply cannot. And I'm optimistic because we don't have any other option but to fix this, I'm hoping that it doesn't take as long as it did in Ireland. But I'm also mindful that we need to document this because losing sight of the facts is a little bit of how we got here. And then also people not having a deep personal understanding of what's at risk and how it's connected to them. And then white suburban voters, women voters being convinced that they can whip out a credit card and circumvent the restrictions, uh, didn't help either. It certainly didn't help in 2016. So I think ultimately we need to figure out, or I will say this, like we don't need to figure out, but I think white women need to start talking to white women and having courageous conversations and uncomfortable Thanksgivings because I clearly am not the right person to have those conversations. But they need to happen .
Jennie: Yes. And I think, uh, I would love to like kind of add on to what you were talking about, like how to get involved. I think another question that I'm sure you get a lot from young people who are just graduating or whatever is like really stressing about like what their next step is and wanting to make sure they make the right choice. And I think part of the reason I do this like, series of origin stories is in response to that question of showing there is no right choice. Your path is your path and you make it. And so don't stress over that as much, but I I'm sure you also have thoughts around that as well.
Pamela: Oh my God, yes. I'm so glad you asked that because you know, what I hope comes in my origin story is that I did not start doing this work in a committed way until I was 30. That life does not start to wind down. Sorry. Like I am, trust me, most people do not know me from my broadcast radio sales days in Dallas like that, that this work defines me. And I say that without regret, proud of it. I hope that when I die, if I have a tombstone that they put “abortion rights activist” on it, that I didn't start doing this until I was 30 and that I took the road less traveled. That I don't think anything that I did along the way was wrong. It's not, it didn't delay anything. Everything happened when it was supposed to happen. And with the exception of I think having a really clear understanding of what leadership feels like, and I don't know how you get that until you're in a leadership position, but just, it's isolating when things are really going bad. It can feel bad. So it's been a long year. But other than that, yeah, you know, I wouldn't change anything and I wouldn't change the leadership. I just think it, it would be interesting if I'd done a little more research. How can you, can you prepare for the future constitutional destruction of your work?
Jennie: Yeah.
Pamela: Yeah. It was hard to get in that head space.
Jennie: No, I'm still working on it.
Pamela: I think now that, now that I have a little time to breathe, it's hitting me and I, and I think for me it's, it's dealing with, I've always been the type of person to look back at a project or a campaign and think about what I could do better. And so for me it's like I look back and I'm like, I could have done that, I could done that. That's not that I think I alone could fix anything, but just you look back and you're just like, oh my God. And then a tremendous sense of guilt, which I know is misplaced, but, and I'm not, oh, it's not Catholic guilt.
Jennie: Oh, that's so close to home.
Pamela: It's, it's huge. Like it's that I, I've not cried about anything as much as I've cried about what we're leaving and what young people are facing and for my friends who have children that what they're going to have to dig out of… I feel tremendous guilt, tremendous guilt. And I think you don't do this work if you don't wanna win. Like if you're not that now, which I think is perfectly normal and have to process like grieving, but if you're not feeling that guilt and weren't probably weren't in it. Cause everybody I know who is all in is like, oh my God, like that's the hardest thing. The hardest part.
Jennie: Yeah. I'm trying to be good about looking back and it's like projects big and small, right? Like and trying to do it in productive ways and not unproductive ways. So like, yeah. I have found, like with the podcast, I cannot go back and re-listen if I can help it because I just hear all the things I feel like I should have said better and that's not helpful. That just gets in my head.
Pamela: Yep. Yep. And I think it's the same thing. It's like, what could I have written differently or what speech could I have done?
Jennie: I could just say the one right thing and everything would be better.
Pamela: Exactly. Exactly. But I think ultimately what it comes down to is that even with the guilt, I don't have regret. Like I, I'm processing guilt because where we are now is hurting people and will hurt people and will hurt the people that I care about the most, the people most impacted by reproductive oppression. But I do not regret this at all. And I think it's a little bit like when people, you know, go for a big goal and if you don't hit it, you don't necessarily regret not hitting it. I don't regret a single second I've spent, I don't regret the holidays that I've missed or, like how many times I was out there in a hundred-degree heat, door-knocking for people or you know, being called genocidal while walking into work several times. I don't regret any of it because it was in the cause in of justice. So it's a privilege and I'm not done.
Jennie: Well that feels like the perfect place to stop. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I really am grateful that you took the time to do it.
Pamela: Yay. I hope it wasn't too rambly and boring.
Jennie: No, it was perfect. Okay everybody, I hope you enjoyed hearing this first part of a two-part sexual reproductive health rights and justice hero origin stories. I had so much fun learning everybody's origins today and I cannot wait for y'all to hear the rest. My origin story will actually be included in the second part. Uh, so many, many of you have already heard mine numerous times, so it's gonna be hidden at the end of the second part. So just FYI.
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.
Follow these organizations on social media and keep up-to-date on their amazing work!
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice on Facebook and Twitter
Medical Students for Choice on Facebook and Twitter