231 The Freedom Show – Life and Liberty of the Constitution

It’s the 4th of July which means it’s my old roomie and pal Mary’s Birthday. Now that’s worth celebrating!!!

Today I teach Con Law 101. Okay, not really, but I wanted to deepen my understanding of the 14th Amendment which I haven’t thought about in detail since law school. While the language, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” seems straight forward to me as it relates to body autonomy, the Supreme Court has battled over the concept of liberty and the right to privacy for decades. I wanted to understand why. I enter the rabbit hole to the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs and end with my unfortunate and cynical conclusion that the court interprets the laws the way it wants to. 

Admittedly, it’s not an easy task wrangling the different thoughts and opinions from over the years, but truthfully I don’t know why we are turning to precedent that existed when women had no official rights under the constitution. That being said, there is plenty of common law to show that abortion was not criminalized prior to the quickening stage, and that often abortion was criminalized to protect the life of the mother because abortion practices were quite dangerous. I also don’t understand why the issue at hand isn’t a women’s right to body autonomy and to make personal and private health decisions. I can only conclude it’s because if that was the “right” that was to be reviewed and balanced against a State’s interest, the Court would be hard pressed to come to the same decision. There was zero consideration, review, analysis or balancing of a woman’s interest in her health as it relates to the often life threatening and nearly always life changing state of being pregnant. We’ve officially returned to the dark ages. 

References:

Cornell Law School Civil Rights

The Dobbs Decision Has Unleashed Legal Chaos for Doctors and Patients article in the New Yorker.

Sirius Gateway Info is -> here.

We listened to these songs throughout the show to give us a chance to digest and be inspired…You can’t hear them here because I don’t have the rights to them, but you can still enjoy them on your own time.

Our show music is from Shana Falana!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

Leave me a voicemail with your thoughts or a few words about who has what you want and why! (845) 481-3429

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230 Joyce Manalo, Chloe Caldwell, Sari Botton, and Aileen Weintraub “Health and Uteruses”

Joyce Manalo, founder of Kala Health and Wellness, is a Certified Health Coach who is an advocate for diabetes and mental health awareness. Formerly a Community Health Worker in Dallas, TX, Joyce has an important perspective on health inequities and with the recent Supreme Court’s decision related to women’s health, some important thoughts on the state of women’s health in Texas. Here’s her YouTube channel!

Bad news! The radio station’s mechanism that records all the content failed halfway through the show and I lost the conversation with Chloe, Sari and Aileen about their uteruses, how they’ve impacted their lives and how the medical establishment has failed them. I wanted to share their backgrounds with you so that you can go out and get their memoirs which go into loads more details from what they shared during our conversation. We talked about how women’s stories, now more than ever, are important to ensuring the truth about and support for women’s bodies is shared with others.

Chloe Caldwell is the author of three books: I’ll Tell You in PersonWomen, and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have been published in The New York TimesBon AppétitThe CutThe StrategistBuzzFeedNYLONVICELongreads, and many anthologies. Her essay “Hungry Ghost” was listed as Notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. She lives in Hudson, New York, and teaches creative writing online at Writing Workshops, LitReactor, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Find out more at http://www.chloesimonne.com. Her latest, The Red Zone is a searching, galvanizing memoir about blood and love: how learning more about her period, PMS, PMDD, and the effects of hormones on moods transformed her relationships—to a new partner, to family, to non-blood kin, and to her own body.

Sari Botton is a Gen-X writer and editor living in Kingston, NY. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the award-winning, bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She teaches creative nonfiction at Wilkes University, Catapult, and Bay Path University. She publishes the newsletters Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in Journalism.

Her new memoir, And You May Find Yourself… is about “finding” yourself later in life—after first getting lost in all the wrong places. As Botton discovers, the wrong places famously include her own self-suppression and misguided efforts to please others (mostly men). In a series of candid, reflective, sometimes humorous essays, Botton describes coming to feminism and self-actualization as an older person, second (and third and fourth) chances—and how maybe it’s never too late to find your way…
assuming you’re lucky enough to live long. Sari was last on the show talking about Oldster Magazine at the end of 2021. In Sari’s memoir she has a chapter, “My Hysterectomy, a Love Story,” which reflects on her journey to conceive and what she learned when she reach the end.

Aileen Weintraub is the author of Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, a laugh-out-loud story about a commitment-phobic Brooklyn girl who, after a whirlwind romance, finds herself living in a rickety farmhouse, pregnant, and faced with five months of doctor-prescribed bed rest because of unusually large fibroids. Publishers Weekly says, “Love, marriage, and a harrowing pregnancy yield a haunting story of survival in this gripping account.” Aileen has written for  the Washington Post, Glamour, Parents, Al Jazeera, Huff Post,NBC, Lit Hub and AARP among others. She is also the author of the middle-grade social justice books, Never Too Young! 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference, which won a Parents Choice Award, and We Got Game! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World, A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year. Aileen was recently chosen as Erma Bombeck’s Humor Writer of the Month for Knocked Down. Find her on Twitter @aileenweintraub or drop her a note at Aileenweintraub.com Aileen was last on the show in February to talk about her book. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision, I am excited to hear her thoughts about the future of women’s health and personal freedom.

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radio Kingston.

We also heard music from Shana Falana!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

Leave me a voicemail with your thoughts or a few words about who has what you want and why! (845) 481-3429

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

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217 Opening Up the Abortion Conversation

Today, I approach the subject of abortion with a (somewhat) open mind. I appreciate the fact that this is a divisive topic, and my hope is to relieve some of the pressure on the subject so that we can address the practical issues that are related to reproductive care. As someone who believes that it should a person’s choice whether or not they have a child, I am committed to taking action to maintain that choice, but I am open to listening to and understanding other’s opinions.

So in my attempt to keep an open mind, I share two TedxTalks by women who are holding space for non-divisive conversations around this subject. Staying true to my own need to keep fighting for the right to choose, I share a Ted Talk that gives hope and suggestions for what to do when Roe is overturned. Finally, I share Ted Talk that has nothing to do with abortion or reproductive rights, but it’s as a reminder that life is complicated, people are complicated and their stories are not single nor straightforward, so let’s keep an open mind as we have these discussions. Plus a little New Moon wisdom…

TedxTalk by Asha Dahya, Journalist and women’s rights activist; founder/editor of GirlTalkHQ.com, presents: “Reframing Reproductive Rights: Going Beyond Pro-Choice vs Pro Life” Asha shares her big idea surrounding what it would it look like if we took the most divisive topic in America and changed the narrative beyond pro-choice and pro-life?

Ted Talk The End of Roe v. Wade by Kathryn Kolbert, Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision protecting people’s right to have an abortion in the United States, will be overturned within a year, says reproductive rights attorney Kathryn Kolbert. In this electrifying call to action, she breaks down the systematic attack against reproductive freedom in the US and envisions what a post-Roe world could look like. “First, we’ve got to build a badass social justice movement,” she says.

And just for reference, TedxTalk by Pro-Life Feminist Deanna Wallace. (not listened to on the show)

TedxTalk about “wholelife” principles, the precursor to “pro-life” and what’s been left out of it today by Khadija Garrison Adams, former missionary, master storyteller and Black breastfeeding champion Khadija Garrison Adams talks about the ways that fear of pregnancy impacts people who aren’t unmarried young adults, unpacks how our understanding of the pro-life movement is based on a faulty version of its history and how it’s origin story is ripe for building a third way in the conversation – a way that could be led by a group ignored by pro-life and pro-choice champions – The Black Church.

TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story by novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Maternal Mortality Stats

Stories for Choice from the TMI Project

And finally, here’s your Moon report.

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda of Radio Kingston.

Our show music is from Shana Falana !!!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcast

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