Session1

The transcription discusses the history and current issues surrounding the Roe vs. Wade case and the controversy of abortion. It mentions the landmark decisions of Griswold v. Connecticut and Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. It highlights the restrictions and bans on abortion in various states, including Tennessee and Mississippi. The case of a 13-year-old girl in Mississippi who was forced to have a child after being raped is shared as an example of the traumatic consequences of restrictive abortion laws. The discussion also touches on the hypocrisy of being pro-life but not supporting resources for children once they are born. The transcription emphasizes the importance of respecting personal choices and privacy in matters of abortion. Good morning, good afternoon, or good night, we will be talking about Roe vs. Wade in the history and the history. Can you fill me up? So exploring the current issues on how the Roe vs. Wade. Yeah, it's hard. I'm trying to think of like how we started and then it's like after that Should we pause it? No, because we can just edit it out. The controversy of Roe vs. Wade has transcended into our day-to-day. I'm Matty B. reporting from I-5 News. Oh, that does sound good. Fuck you. Okay. Oh, is that recording? Yeah. Okay, so, do you want to start over? Take two. Yeah, let's cut. Is this a resource video? Nah, we can edit that out. Roe vs. Wade recap. Jackson. That happened after Roe vs. Wade, so. Oh well, Connecticut. So, Connecticut, Roe vs. Wade, Dobbs vs. Madison. Connecticut? Wait, can the camera see me? No, yeah. Connecticut. I don't know your law. Birth control, my bad, my bad, my bad. The one about, yeah, the partners. Okay, so. And then Arizona. Ready? Take two. You want to bring us in, Matty? I mean, it's just a podcast, so I don't. Yeah, so today we'll be talking about the whole concept of abortion and how it's transcended today after Roe vs. Wade. Certain states in terms of legalization, where you're allowed to do things where you can't, and just an overall background history of what happened. So, Enrique has a little recap of what happened in Connecticut. Oh, yeah, okay. So, in 1965, there was this case by Griswold and Connecticut where it was a criminal conviction against an executive director for Planned Parenthood who was providing contraceptives to married couples, which was ground-breaking at the time, crazy. And then the Supreme Court found that the state statute making it a crime to use birth control violated married couples' rights to privacy, and seven years later, the justices found that this right also applied to single people. And together, these cases set the stage for Roe vs. Wade and the upcoming current days now. Yeah, so with the overall court ruling in Roe vs. Wade, the person did have the opportunity to choose to have an abortion until the fetus is viable. And for any of those people that don't know, viability is like referring to the ability to live outside the womb. So, if it's a kid and they're between like the weeks of 24 and 28 after conception, then that is illegal. But before that, they have the opportunity to do that. So, in June of 24, 2022, Adopts vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization was a landmark decision that addressed whether the Constitution protected the right to an abortion. So, obviously, before, you know, we had Roe vs. Wade, but in Mississippi, there was a law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with the exceptions for most abortions. There was a law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with the exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal abnormalities. But, of course, in June 24, 2022, that was overturned, which also led to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Also, after Roe vs. Wade, more than a dozen states have banned abortions. It also brings me to how it's banned in Tennessee, which is one of the cases that I looked, which is Monica Kelly. She was trying to have her second kid when she found out that I'd had some fetus diagnosis. It was just a bad diagnosis, and she just couldn't have it anymore. The doctor told her that it was just for the best if she had an abortion, which she couldn't have in Tennessee because it's banned. She had to go all the way to Florida to go have an abortion, which was already hard enough for her because she has to go out of her way to have it when she doesn't even want to have it. It's not like she just decided she didn't want the kid anymore. She had to have an abortion. She had to go all the way to Florida and have an abortion. She talks about how hard it was for her to look further into abortions that she wanted to in the first place because it wasn't an accident. It wasn't anything that wasn't planned. It was a planned baby. It was her second kid. She lost her first kid, so I think that was really hard for her, too. Imagine maybe that was her first one and how that affected her, too. That's kind of insane, though. What's crazy about it is it's not just Tennessee. It's other states like Texas, Indiana, Utah, Arizona. The main protected states right now would be Rhode Island, Maine, Colorado, North Carolina, and, of course, ours truly, California. The biggest thing that I found was a case out in Mississippi about a 13-year-old girl. Same scenario where she had to fly out of state, but she didn't even know she could do that, which is even worse. It was a 13-year-old girl named Ashley. She became pregnant because she was raped by a stranger at the time. That guy ended up going to jail, and he's still in there. He's going to stay there. Sadly, 11 weeks after the rape incident, Ashley discovered that she was pregnant. They weren't even going to the doctors for checking to see if she was pregnant. She was going there because she was nauseated. It transcended from being sick like that all the way to you're pregnant as a 13-year-old girl, which is unbelievable. Was she forced to have it? Yeah, she was forced to have it. That's what's crazy about Mississippi is there are high restrictions out there. With that, abortion is completely banned with very limited exceptions. If somebody did want to have an abortion, you're going to have to do it out of the state. If you try to do it in the state, it would have to be some doctor that's willing to go behind the scenes. Which is just not safe at all. You don't have to do that. This is your kid. This is a little girl. She doesn't even know that. It's like what she's going through. It's a combination of issues. As a teenager, she's just barely a teenager. Yeah, she's a girl herself. What's crazy about Mississippi, the whole legislation is they're forced to make two trips before anything even happens. One is an in-person counseling where they're trying to figure out if this person is mentally insane or not, not given the fact that they're a victim. Yeah, they're a victim themselves. Another visit is 24 hours later, and that's the abortion if they think it's okay. But before that, you're just analyzing the person to see if they're stable or not. That's a traumatic event. Imagine being a child that just got molested, raped, and now you're getting tested just to see if you're okay. For the wrong incident. The overall conclusion of this is Ashley had to have a kid. A 13-year-old kid had to have another kid. Out of rape, too. Yes, this girl has to go to school, do her homework, and then when she comes home, she takes care of this kid. It's insane. How are you even capable of doing that? Also, the fact that maybe it reminds her of her aggressor, too. How traumatic is it that now you have a kid that maybe has the face of your aggressor, and they force you to have them? Same qualities, same mentality. Same DNA, too. Because that's how they found out it was him. They went inside the baby and figured out it was his DNA. Which is just traumatic for her, too. It's kind of interesting to me, I think, that you say that because she was raped, that she wanted to have this abortion. Even if you aren't raped, even if it's not this traumatic instance that was led to a pregnancy, at the end of the day, if you are not ready to have a child, you're simply not ready. It's crazy how people want to defend abortion, and people want to defend pro-life. They want to be pro-life, but yet when it comes to actually taking care of the child when it's born, they don't want to do that. Who's going to do that? She's coming from experience, ladies and gentlemen. Let me just be clear on that. That's one of the things, where everyone is pro-life, pro-life, until it comes to actually taking care of that child. Yeah, they're not going to be the ones. There's no resources, none of that. It's kind of sad that we have to highlight these stories of rape and sexual assault and all this, in order to justify why a woman should choose to not have that child. Why somebody should choose to have an abortion. It's pretty sad that we have to use these extremities to do so. All that it really came down to is that Ashley just wasn't financially stable enough to go out of the state to get that abortion. How many people do you think really do? She's 13 years old. It's only possible for the rich. It's only going to be a certain percentage. Have you guys also heard about their states where not only are you not allowed to get an abortion in their state, but now they actually want to go as far as if you travel outside of your state, they want you to get in trouble for that too. That's insane. It's not enough that in your own state you're banning it, so people have to seek it elsewhere, but now you're making it difficult and you're trying to impose these criminal... Onto their private lives. We went back to how it started. It was like the government shouldn't be invading into your private life. What are you doing if it's not affecting anyone negatively? If they're going somewhere else, why is that an issue? Why does it matter? Everyone's getting paid in your state. It's not your jurisdiction. It's not your business. That's why they're traveling. We're so preoccupied with people's personal lives and experiences. Why do people flee countries? Why do people come here? Also, I think we forget that an abortion is not an easy procedure. It's not like you just want to have it for fun because you're bored or something. It has its risk and it has a lot of things that you need to look into before you do it. It's not just, I want to go do it today because I've decided to right now. It's not like in a spur of the moment kind of thing. It's something that you need to plan. Like she said, it's not only for a victim. Maybe you don't want to have kids. It's not even that you're not ready right now. It's maybe you just don't want to ever, which also brings me to how some doctors choose to not tie tubes for women because they're like, maybe you're too young right now. You should wait a couple of years. Maybe talk to your partner about it. Maybe stuff like that. That's not their place to say. That's really not. I'm not as educated. Are you all talking about like fallopian tubes? Yeah, so when you don't want to have children as a woman, you get your tubes tied. And some doctors actually want, like they ask you like, oh, are you sure? They want you to be past a certain age. Or if you've had children, they're like, well, are you sure you don't want more? And then if you have a husband or a partner, they're like, well, you know, they want to speak to your partner to make sure that your partner is okay with it. And it's like, why should my partner, if I don't want to have children anymore? That's your choice. That's the end of it. That's my choice. Like a vasectomy. Yeah, like a guy, we would just be able to go. There would not be an issue for like, oh, ask your wife or ask another person, right? Is your wife okay with it? For them, it's like, no, there's a multitude of trials to go through. Because she's the one that bears the child. That's not us. Exactly. Yeah. So my ex, he was going to go through the procedure of getting a vasectomy. And like to women, they tell you, you know, are you sure your partner doesn't blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. But the only thing that the doctor told him was, well, you know, what if you meet someone else? Oh, okay. That's it. You know, just completely disregarding me as a person. Like, what if you meet someone else and she wants to have children or whatever? Like, it's insane. Yeah, it's insane how like, even then you're completely disregarded. And it's just. Bias. Very much. But also, if you gave a straight answer to that and they're still like giving you walls to go through, like more questions to follow it. Like, why are you doing that? Like, why are you trying to stop me from doing something I would like, right? Like, we're past a certain age to where your frontal lobe is grown. You're thinking like straightforward and. Decision making. Like your prefrontal cortex. Yeah. Like fully developed by some age. 25. 25. 25. I'm 25. But even if it wasn't, it's still your choice. You don't have to be 25 to have an abortion. Maybe you're like the case he mentioned. It's what, 13 year old girl having a kid. You know how insane that is? We shouldn't even be talking about age. Exactly. It's not an age thing. It's not. It's just the opportunity to have it. It is. And that's the whole big deal y'all behind like the southern states is because like our history behind this issue. Like for me, I grew up in Louisiana until I was about eight. Like. The whole concept of abortion was like. Almost connected like it was Satanism. Okay. You don't hear about it. Your mom's ever talked about in school. And if you ever heard about it, that person is an outcast. They're not regarded into our society. Like you don't look at that girl. You don't talk to her. You know she's trouble. And it's like how do you know her first name? Exactly. You don't know that person. You don't know her history. You don't know what she's been through. And it's messed up because like as we grow up as children like that, it's like that's the mindset that we have. Because like for me, like coming out to study in California, get this education. Like you're going to have different views. Everybody's going to have different views. But the fact that I grew up with these people trying to like burden people that are in those scenarios. They get hurt or if they have a kid and it's just like in the scenario they can't have a kid. Like you're just going to tell them no? Yeah. Because you don't want it. Like obviously you don't want it. Right. But like are you going to take care of it if they give it up for adoption? Yeah. Like are you going to adopt the kid? You know how the adoption cycle is. There are many kids left on the street because they're put through the system. And constantly no one is taking kids. Right. Especially as you get older, no one is going to take an older child. A teenager maybe have issues because there are four. You're not rich if you're through the system. Right. So like then you just keep putting them through the streets. And people aren't thinking about that. They're not just thinking about them for personal values. I'm like oh I don't think it's okay. Yeah. It's so easy to say you can have the kid and just give it up for adoption or something. Exactly. Even then it's not that easy. It is. It's not. Giving up a child, even if whatever the circumstances were to give up that child, it's extremely traumatic and it has a psychological effect on you. So it's not just oh just have it and why should you have to put yourself through that. I was going to say your body goes through a lot. You could die. Exactly. Why would you have to? Knowing that you can't have the kid and then on top of that it's like giving your DNA, your offspring, your child to people you don't even know. And knowing that you can't take care of them. You don't have the financial support. But you still have to have them. And maybe one day you can have them again. But you don't. It's horrible. I think there's also this misconception when it comes to abortion. I don't know if you remember this, but the first time that I met everybody, we were talking about I wanted to know where everybody was at when it comes to abortion. And I was like where are you guys at? And then you were like I'm pro-abortion. And I was like yeah, pro-choice. And you were like yeah, that's pro-abortion, right? And I was like yeah, it's pro-choice. And I made sure to say that I think because I know that for some people just because you are pro-choice it means that you're pro-abortion. Yeah, of course. It's like putting, oh, so instead of being like no, I'm for people making that decision, people automatically take it as like you're for killing babies. You know what I mean? And I think people have that misconception that when you are pro-choice and you want people to make these choices for themselves. You automatically want them to have an abortion. And it's like no, I simply want everybody to have that right. And if you do not believe in getting abortions and you don't want to, that's perfectly fine. If it's against your beliefs, if it is just something that you do not want to do, there's nothing wrong with that. However, people that need it, people that want it, let them have access to it because if not, they're going to find access to it whether it's safe or it's not safe. Yeah, better to be in a safe way than having to go to like... As you say that, we're talking about unsafe abortions. And I can bring you guys up a stat to where it was saying that half of the world, right, even though this is, we're talking about the U.S. here, but just put it into a broad spectrum. They said annually 68,000 women die from unsafe abortions, right? That's almost like 13% mortality rate. But you do it in a safe space, the states that allow it. It's I think .03, .3, let me just make sure with that. But that's a significant difference. I think I saw it said that the last time they were recording deaths per year was in 2021 and six women died, right, compared to the amount of deaths during labor. I think it was, I said 38.9 per 100,000 women. And that's still a significant number. There's millions of women, but like six deaths for the whole entire year for the hundreds of thousands of abortions that happened that year. You're not putting women at risk that don't want to be put at risk, right? More people die giving birth than they do having an abortion. That's the thing, y'all. With Ashley's scenario where she grew up in Alabama, if she didn't have a mother watching over her, I guarantee you she probably would have been in some backstreet alley trying to get an abortion in the worst way possible. And that's the purpose of her case is to get this legalization for better enablement for these kids to have support groups and programs they can go to where they don't have to even consider the fact of flying to another state. To be safe. So that kind of brings me on to the case that I found, which is the Swarovski versus state of Texas. It's basically five Texas women that were denied abortion care. And because they were denied that abortion care, they ended up facing risks to their health and their fertility. And Amanda Swarovski, she's from Austin, she was basically denied an abortion after experiencing a pre-term, pre-labor rupture of membranes at 18 weeks of pregnancy. But because they could still detect the fetal heartbeat and everything, they decided no. You might have had something ruptured, but we can still hear a heartbeat, so you can't have an abortion. So three days after that, she actually started showing signs of infections and she was diagnosed with sepsis, which is a life-threatening condition. And they ended up having to perform that emergency induction abortion, but she still ended up spending like three days in the ICU fighting for her life because they simply waited. And they chose not to give her an abortion because they could still feel the heartbeat, even though at that point it was a danger to her life. Now they're putting her life at risk. Now they're putting her life at risk because of their own whatever it was that was going on through their minds to decide, like, no, you do not need to have an abortion. Just put her through all that. And now, yeah, so like, and because of that, by the way, so because of that, they denied her from having an abortion. She ended up going through that infection and then her fallopian tubes had to be tied. They're permanently closed. They had to be permanently closed, so now she can't have children. Maybe if she wanted more, you know. Yes, and she did. So now she's doing IVF, which is like in vitro fertilization, to try to have that family. So on top of them, you know, not taking her life seriously and putting her own life at risk, they actually ended up messing up her chance of having children in the future. Where's the consent from the doctor? Where's the consent? They just went with the process and completely ignored? We can hear her heartbeat, so there's, you know, it's more important. You know, no, you can't have an abortion because it's Texas. And there's a heartbeat. Yeah. So it's a lie. That's so insane. And like when it was legalized before Rover 2.8 got put down, we were having like less abortions than 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Like 30 years ago, it was 1.4. Right now, it was at 600,000. So it's like insane. We've got a few more minutes, so we can wrap it up. Does anybody have any like specific cases they want to record? I just wanted to ask you guys, like how do you think this is going to look in the future? Like do you think there are going to be more laws like against it or more pro-choice? Y'all, I think it depends on our political leader. I'm sorry. Because man, when Trump was in office, Planned Parenthood was going to disappear. And the thing is, like I've taken my ex-girlfriend to Planned Parenthood to get them that treatment. I'm like if he's in office, it's probably not going to be there where it is in San Diego. Like that's the hard truth. It has to do with the religion. It has to do with the political leaders and the region you're from. I think also once the fact that we were even able to get to Roe versus Wade and we were protecting abortion rights, and then all of a sudden one day we decided not to, that to me doesn't speak like things are going to get better. I think it seems like things are going to try to get more restricted because of people's own ideologies or politicians' ideologies. So I personally can't see anything positive coming out of this. I think we've seen also a lot of growth. Like he said, there are less abortions now than before. So maybe that can be a sign for any politician in power to just let abortion be a safe thing to do without it being just completely against it. So I'm hoping that we get more open-minded, and I think we will. I think we have evolved. We are more open-minded than we were before, so I'm hoping that's going to continue and it's going to keep evolving and it's going to hopefully open more Planned Parenthoods, open more places where women can get the help that they need or if they want it. And it's an if choice. If you want it, no one's forcing you to go to Planned Parenthood. No one's making you do anything. It's just the fact that you get to choose, and that's also really important. Like you said, we've been improving over even the last 60 years for women's rights. This is a very large step backwards. Now you're giving it to state to state. So hopefully, I feel like as a community, as a population in the U.S., I feel like we're having more open-minded individuals. You've even seen Matt. He said he grew up in it. He came here with certain views or pushed onto him by his community, and he's seen change. He sees what is right. Even the small change from Louisiana to California. The community, right? Especially like your case where you brought it up where that girl had no help. Were you going to say something, Matt? Especially with the conversations I've had with my dad, which it surprised me so much in this past year. When we were talking, he grew up in Texas. He grew up in Coons, Texas, where high white supremacy, get out of our neighborhood type of energy. He's lived here for a long time, at least a decade. We were talking about it a week ago. He was just like, we need abortions. My parents are devout Christians. They worship on Sunday. They live by those morals, and they believe in children being alive. But at the same time, with those cases with the kids, there has to be some morale. Like I said, there's growth. Even people from different perspectives, they grew up different. They even change their minds. That's why I'm a little hopeful for the future. I think there is a chance that it might happen. I just wanted to finish this up with some resources that I found for people that may have had an abortion or want to have an abortion. Just some resources because I know it's not an easy thing to go through. If you have, just how to deal with it, how to cope with it. There's some resources at the end. Thank you.