Unbearable: The War on Women
If you or someone you know needs extra support to survive Trump’s economic warfare on the American people, to find help near you, enter your zip code in findhelp.org.
For decades, Christian nationalists have insisted that controlling women’s bodies is a moral crusade. What Irin Carmon shows in her blistering new book, Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America, is that this crusade doesn’t just target abortion, it poisons every aspect of pregnancy care in America and forces authoritarianism into our homes and doctor visits. Whether you want to be pregnant or don’t, the system is designed to remind you who’s in charge: not you.
Carmon, an award-winning journalist and coauthor of Notorious RBG, was eight months pregnant when the Supreme Court, stacked with MAGA Mullahs handpicked by a Christian nationalist movement, tossed aside Roe v. Wade. The ruling didn’t just ban abortion in swaths of the country; it unleashed slavery-era lawfare, rampant state censorship, and cruelty even for people desperate to carry pregnancies safely.
Through the harrowing stories of five women across America, Carmon exposes a healthcare system warped by Christian nationalism. In Alabama, women risk their lives because doctors fear prosecution. In supposedly progressive New York, indifference and red tape mean patients still face shocking neglect. It turns out the war on women is not confined to “red states,” it’s everywhere, and it threatens our very democracy.
What keeps Unbearable from sinking into despair are the moments of solidarity: the defiant doctors, advocates, and ordinary people resisting the grip of religious extremism. This is not just a book about pregnancy. It’s a warning: America has allowed Christian nationalism to turn women’s bodies into a battlefield. And until we call it what it is–a war on women–nothing will change.
Want to hear Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
Download Transcript
Show Notes:
Unbearable Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America By Irin Carmon https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Unbearable/Irin-Carmon/9781668032602
Opening clip: “AOC: There was a day before his presidency, and there will be a day after — and it belongs to us.” https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3m45o2k6uf22o
Lawmakers float a nationwide basic income experiment that would cover the cost of a 2-bedroom apartment https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-monthly-basic-income-program-bill-2025-10
“Democratic socialist candidates are looking to gain ground in various city governments this fall, including Cleveland and Detroit, as well as New York City.” https://bsky.app/profile/boltsmag.org/post/3m44llxm3vu2x
Western intelligence agencies eye neo-fascist fight clubs: ‘an international white supremacist movement’: Security services are monitoring ‘active clubs’ as they move across borders to spread their extremist ideology https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/19/neo-fascist-fight-active-clubs-white-supremacy?CMP=share_btn_url
Studies indicate that addressing financial insecurity through an Universal Basic Income (UBI) could effectively curb crime rates, potentially reducing costs associated with incarceration and law enforcement https://research.binghamton.edu/ResearchDaysPosters/uploads/5831_Wang_Susanna.pdf
“Lightfoot’s recently announced guaranteed basic income program will provide monthly $500 cash transfers to 5,000 of Chicago’s most in-need households in a city in which 34 percent of Black residents live below the federal poverty line. Although this is, for now, only a small-scale pilot project, policies like Chicago’s have the potential to substantially reduce violent crime.” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/how-cash-transfer-programs-prevent-violent-crime.html
Everywhere basic income has been tried, in one map: Which countries have experimented with basic income — and what were the results? https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map
EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:
November 3rd 4pm ET – Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky + Total Resistance by H. Von Dach – Poetry and guerrilla strategy: tools for survival and defiance.
Minnesota Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other: join here.
Vermont Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other: join here.
Arizona-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to connect, available here.
Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available here.
Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available here.
Have you taken Gaslit Nation’s HyperNormalization Survey Yet?
Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and the first ~40 minutes are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit for our community
Advertisement (00:00):
At Value City Furniture, we're kicking off Black Friday early with up to 30% off, and that includes Doorbusters. It's the perfect time to save on every room in your home. Want even more? Get no interest financing for up to 40 months for the best early Black Friday ever. See if you pre-qualify without touching your credit score. Now, hurry in. Get more at Value City Furniture while paying less value. City Furniture, more of what you value.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (00:31):
That we, our city, have chosen to adorn ourselves with the nation's greatest monument to freedom the Statue of Liberty. And she reminds us every day that the central commitment of America is an unconditional freedom, precisely of the kind that cannot be bought, that is available to the huddled masses yearning to be free. This is America, New York City. Don't let them tell you any different. Don't let them tell you that we are the exception. We are the rule. We are the standard. Wea re the acceptance, and we set the bar for America. I'm talking to you, Donald Trump. There has been a day before his presidency and there will be a day after -- and it belongs to us.
Andrea Chalupa (01:51):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, the film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see. So be sure to watch it. And this is Gaslit Nation, a show about corruption and rising autocracy worldwide. The opening clip you heard was AOC at a packed rally for New York mayoral candidate and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in Queens where my dad grew up. Go Mets!
(02:26):
All across the country. Democratic socialist candidates are surging. I'll link to some reporting on that. And a basic income pilot testing out, giving money to people to survive just giving them money, no strings attached. Why? Because studies have shown it works. It works. It pulls people out of extreme poverty, out of housing insecurity. It is extremely good for the societal health of all of us in strengthening a social safety net, reducing crime, investing in the minds of the next generation.
(03:07):
Basic income programs work, and one is being launched by democratic lawmakers in New Jersey. And this is just the beginning. A better world is possible. It's up to us to fight like hell and build it, turn their fear, their hate into soil for the beautiful world we're going to create together. A big shout out to Chicago. You are fabulous. You have Greg Bovino trying to be a fabulous Nazi, a Gucci man, Gucci SS man proudly Nazi cosplaying looking like such a peacock out there, strutting his stuff in his black leather or whatever. I mean, it's clown show galore. And the people of Chicago are responding by blowing their whistles right into Bovino's black, pleather soul. Thank you so much, Chicago. You are extraordinary. And thank you to everyone who joined yet another lively, inspiring and informative Gaslit Nation salon. Thanks to you, the listeners, I learned so much from you.
(04:17):
As always, if you missed our Monday salon, you can join the conversation and shape the show next Monday. We're there 4:00 PM Eastern. Look for the Zoom link to our salons every Monday. If you want to join the conversation, shape the show, come to a salon, sign up at patreon.com/gaslit. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Discounted annual memberships are available and you can give the gift of membership. Thank you to everyone who supports our independent journalism. We could not make Gaslit Nation without you. And in the meantime, you can join our friends at Sister District to make some phone calls in the final stretch of the big races in Virginia and New Jersey. Yes, we still have a democracy. No, Donald Trump can't steal it. Yes, we'll build a true democracy and a livable safe future for all. I know you're reading the same headlines I am reading that he is trying to stay in there for a very illegal third term.
(05:18):
He's trying to pull a Putin and Medvedev. He doesn't want to switch places with the VP. That's what Putin did. But he's working on 2028. I know they just had one of their MAGA cultist by Dominion voting machine. I see it. I read everything you're reading. Everything that's keeping you up at night is keeping me up at night. I see it, but we're not going to let it happen. Donald Trump is just the latest chapter in America's long dark history of white supremacy terrorism. This is just another dark chapter. We'll get through it again. It's not going to be easy. And obviously here at Gaslit Nation, we try desperately to prevent this. We launched the show to try to prevent this crisis. We launched countless phone banks because it works. We don't just do that for fun because there are other ways to have fun.
(06:15):
Okay, that's not my first choice. I don't say I need to go on vacation. Where's the nearest phone bank? We did that because it works. We screamed at Merrick Garland and everybody enabling him and his online bot farms enabling him. We tried so hard to stop this, but here we are and we're going to get through this and we're going to be a resilience community for each other and helping build the real grassroots power, the engine that is the nightmare of dictators throughout history. We stand on their shoulders of giants. We have so much, so much power, so much strength still left. There are people carrying in the dark of Russia that would love to have the democratic luxuries that we still have left here in America. So no, all hope is not lost. So blow your whistle loud and proud and stop those silly little iceman from playing Robocop and living out some dumb mouth breather fantasy.
(07:17):
We're going to put an end to all that and we're going to make them pay and we're going to get our own version here of Nuremberg Trials. That is all going down and I'm so honored and excited to be a part of all this with you. Alright, on this show this week, we have a heroine of reproductive justice, Irin Carmon, the author of the new book, Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America. Our conversation ultimately looks at Christian Nationalism's long game to turn America into the Handmaid's Tale. But first, we're celebrating Ivanka Trump-Kushner's birthday this Thursday, October 30th by running Gaslit Nation's Trump and Epstein super special. Our team has been working hard on it for weeks. It's Gaslit Nation's way of saying Ivanka Trump, you and the rest of MAGA helped bring a convicted felon, alleged pedophile to power. And for that, you need to be held accountable and know you'll never be president.
(08:20):
The people will never forget what you've done. To our Gaslit Nation listeners, be sure to look out for our Trump-Epstein super special this Thursday because guess what? The algorithm will bury it. That's what they've been doing to us. Every time we have our Epstein coverage go out, we get punished for daring to talk about Trump and his 15 year long friendship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. We'll not be silenced, but you may need to look out for that. So check back on Thursday to hear this. Thursday, October 30th. Happy birthday, Ivanka. That's how you celebrate listening to Gas Nation's Trump and Epstein. Super special. That is this Thursday, the long awaited Gaslit Nation Trump and Epstein super special is out this Thursday. Enjoy Ivanka.
(09:14):
And now here's Irin Carmon. She's an award-winning journalist, a senior correspondent at New York Magazine and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Notorious RBG. Now she's back with Unbearable, a searing and deeply reported exploration of what has gone wrong with pregnancy in America, drawing from history, politics, and the lived experiences of five women. Carmon reveals a system that is not only broken, but often cruel, and she does so with empathy, clarity, and urgency. Welcome to Gaslit Nation.
Irin Carmon (09:53):
Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here.
Andrea Chalupa (09:54):
So you've spent over a decade reporting on reproductive rights, but what was it in your own pregnancy eight months along when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that pushed you to write Unbearable?
Irin Carmon (10:07):
It was a surreal moment, the exact moment. I'm sure everybody who cares about this stuff remembers where they were when Alito's opinion leaked because it was a total shock. It was happening usually with the Supreme Court handing down opinions. We're sitting there refreshing SCOTUS blog or racing to the court if we're reporters. But I was actually scheduled to already be on Chris Hayes's show to talk about the Republicans introducing a national abortion ban in the Senate. And three seconds before I was going to go live, I got a text saying, turn your phone back on. I happened to look and I already had it on 'do not disturb.' Turn your phone back on. I need you to read something. I texted you something and it was the Booker and I had about three seconds to skim the opinion before we went live. Me and Chris, just as it was breaking and kind of process that something that we had anticipated, people who were paying attention anticipated it happening was happening.
(11:06):
But we did not know the scope. We did not know the reasoning, and we did not know the sheer disregard for people who can get pregnant. And for me at the time I was six months pregnant, I was eight months pregnant when the opinion formally came down. It's all in weeks, so it's a little imprecise. But there was something so literally visceral that I could feel in my bones. Although I had chosen to be pregnant, I was happy to be pregnant. I didn't have a very difficult pregnancy by pregnancy standards, which means I only had all of my internal organs and my bones rearranged and smushed in my life transformed forever, suggest that. But it arose in me a feeling of deep solidarity, anger, fury, and sadness all at once. And so on the one hand I was dispassionately analyzing the opinion as somebody who has covered the Supreme Court for a very long time and who has basically my entire career had been leading up to understanding how we'd gotten to this point and how it was going to affect people all over the country almost instantly.
(12:06):
And on the other hand, as a person, a human being who was gestating a fetus at that moment, I was looking at the opinion and not seeing anything that recognized the burden, the humanity and the sacrifice of people who get pregnant. Instead, there was this language borrowed from the Mississippi statute that said, at this number of weeks you get fingernails at this number of weeks. One of the lines was by all intents and purposes takes on the human form the fetus at this point. And I had this thought, I too have taken on the human form and I too and everybody else who can become pregnant is completely erased from this reasoning, from this value system. And to me personally, it wasn't because I didn't place value on the fetus that is now my daughter, but that was my personal value system life and decision.
(13:06):
And I wanted to figure out how to take that feeling that I had in that moment, even as an extremely privileged person who had every benefit in my pregnancy to think about acting in solidarity with all the different experiences of pregnancy and actually understanding how, although there's an intrinsic biological fact of pregnancy, which is that it can go wrong, it can be complicated, it can do all these things to your body. It involves so many emotions and rites of passage and how you see the world regardless of the course of your pregnancy or the circumstances. It's so personal. But there's so many ways in which this country has made decisions to make the experiences of pregnant people more difficult, more cruel, more dehumanizing. And I wanted to figure out how to tell a story that wasn't, I was explaining where I came from on it, but that went all over the country. In the end it was focused on Alabama and New York City as two different kinds of polls of American experience to say what are the ways in which the state and the medical system have inflicted harm on individuals who are people too and who deserve dignity and respect before, during and after they're pregnant.
Andrea Chalupa (14:24):
Yeah, I remember in the rise of Trump, people trying to convince themselves that there's no way Trump was going to ban abortion because he himself needed abortions for all the women he was cheating on his wives with. And Republicans needed that too. So they're not going to do it. There's no way they're going to do it. And then when he was packing the court with those three justices who all went under oath to Congress and talked both sides of their mouths when it came to overturning Roe v. Wade, could you talk about that moment in American history where people largely were in denial? Many people, obviously you knew what was coming because you're covering this issue for years, but there was also this cognitive dissonance and the Republicans were weaponizing gaslighting to try to convince you we're not really going to do it. So vote for us.
Irin Carmon (15:19):
As I was preparing for our conversation, I thought that out of all of the conversations that I'm going to have, the framing of your podcast is the most apropos because I mean it's Gaslight Nation in the Trump era, and then I try to tell some of the history of obstetrics and gynecology in this country. It's also gaslighting about this country's history and the foundation for the kind of harm that we are seeing today. But the most obvious form of gaslighting that took place was certainly legal bros and politics bros telling many of us who were reporting on this and who were listening to what they were actually saying and doing, they were telling us that this will never happen. I remember actually doing a podcast and not to call out Ken White, he seems like a nice person,
Andrea Chalupa (16:05):
Do it. This is the place to do it.
Irin Carmon (16:06):
I was on left, right and center and he was the co-host. I think he was the center I know, or maybe he was the guest. We were both guests. And he said within the last five years, Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. Planned Parenthood vs Casey will never be overturned for all these reasons. And also the status quo was working. People are able to get abortions. And I just went off. I just could not believe it because first of all, by that point, the chipping away of access and rights, if you were paying attention, you could see that Roe was already being treated like dead letter. But the extent to which the Supreme Court first by sneaking through the Texas law in 2021 under cover of night in the shadow docket, like letting deadlines expire, barely explaining the reasoning. They showed us who they are, they showed us that they're not even going to go through the regular processes and they're showing it every day.
(17:07):
I just wrote a column about the Supreme Court bending the knee to Trump using these shadow dockets where people are asleep or half of these things are happening and not even fully substantiating their reasoning to give Trump exactly what he wants. And in a way, I think the abortion and reproductive rights sphere is kind of like it was the original fake news before this term got co-opted. It was the actual way in which the state was giving people misinformation at the behest of right wing activists and medical doctors were being conscripted in giving people false information. And so I think if you already knew that fundamental science was going to be distorted with help from the state and you already knew how dead serious they were about that and you listened to what they said, it would've been clear that this was going to happen and that John Roberts, by the way, he would've done it in two steps, but the so-called institutionalist, he did not dissent in this case.
(18:07):
He just wanted to take more time to do it. So in a way, Alito et al did us a favor by making it so absolutely clear what was happening. Then the other ways in which I think that there have been the years since Dobbs and some of this I do explore in the characters in my book in Unbearable, is that we were gaslit about how many people would be harmed and how we were told by defenders of the anti-abortion laws that were allowed to go into effect by the Supreme Court's actions that it would not harm any woman's health, that emergency abortions would be accessible and that only abortion would be affected. We all know that that is not true. All you have to do is read a story from almost every day. You could find a story of somebody being denied life-saving treatment purely because they are pregnant.
(19:01):
In my book, Unbearable, I also tell the story of a civil rights lawyer in Alabama who is desperate to be pregnant, who is going through fertility treatments and who has recurrent miscarriage and cannot get miscarriage care. Even a lawyer at the ACLU who has every ability to work the system ends up driving for hours to the close down abortion clinic, Robin Marty's clinic in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, trying to get access to healthcare that we were all told would not be affected. But because of the chilling effect and because of the hostility to exceptions, because they believe that people will take advantage of them to have abortions for funsies, they have set up a system that is doing, we now know exactly what everybody warned would happen. Miscarriage would be affected, infertility treatment would be affected, people who wanted to be pregnant would be affected.
(19:58):
It's bad enough that people who need abortions are not getting them. But the same feeling of solidarity and anger that I felt in that moment that I learned that it would really happen. I think I'm hoping that the reading unbearable and seeing how intertwined these stories are with policy of different experiences of pregnancy all being affected by this, that we will also see how deeply linked their side is that they are actually trying to harm any number of pregnant people who, whether they want an abortion or not, they all are being brought under this very cruel regime of control.
Andrea Chalupa (20:35):
Exactly. Control of women, and I know it's an abstraction to some people when they hear abortion is healthcare. And just to illustrate what that means, before Roe v Wade was banned, so back in the fall of 2021, in my first trimester pregnancy with my second child, I was told very matter of factly by my doctor that I had a high risk pregnancy. I could not get on a flight. I had to be careful. I might need bed rest. And if it came down to an emergency situation, if I was bleeding uncontrollably that they would abort the baby to save my life. All very matter of fact. And my husband, I conveyed this to my husband, he is like, yeah, of course, that's absolutely fine. There's no question about it. This is what we mean when we say abortion as healthcare. You have women who are bleeding out in parking lots and getting infected and dying because they don't have access to abortion healthcare. It is just so anti-science and so driven by misogynistic control and superstition. Could you talk about the psychology of the dark psychology, triage, whatever, the dark triage of personality traits that in your reporting you've seen driving their anti healthcare, anti-women movement?
Irin Carmon (21:53):
Well, one of the most instructive documents that I examined for Unbearable was the directives from APPLOG, which is the anti-abortion, or I guess it's the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Now, it's not a coincidence that you're hearing those stories about women bleeding out in parking lots and they also have heard what your doctor has told 'em. It's not that they don't know that somebody could need a life saving abortion. It's more that they think that only they should decide if it came to you versus your future child who makes that decision. Is that a decision where you and your family say it's most important to save my life, or does the state impose on you that you are a vessel for the outside chance that the fetus could survive? And we're talking, I mean I have sat down with some of these anti-abortion doctors and background briefings.
(22:52):
They're aware that sometimes people go into labor. They have premature ruptured membranes at a time in which there could never be a live birth, like 17 weeks, 16 weeks. A full-term pregnancy is typically 40 weeks. We're talking about 22, 23, 24 under the best circumstances gestational age, a baby could survive if born at that age. So we're talking weeks before it's ever even possible, and they still want to inflict for a baby to be born and to live. They still want to inflict this suffering and harm. And so if you read the directives, the practice directives and recommendations from epilogue, which has been very influential in drafting many laws and in bringing cases before the Supreme Court, they're part of the coalition along with the Christian Dentist Association that was seeking to ban the abortion pill has brought those cases. They often write amicus briefs. They get cited by anti-abortion judges.
(23:49):
They very explicitly say that it is okay to not only harm but to harm the future fertility of somebody who is pregnant even if there is no ability for there to be a live birth from that procedure. And this is their interpretation of Catholic doctrine. They even say that it is better to perform a C-section in the case of a very early premature rupture of membranes again, in which there is no chance of a baby surviving this procedure. But we know that the evidence-based indication for a C-section is when it is an emergency that is required for, or let's say underlying medical indication, but that in an ideal world, a C-section would not be your first choice because it carries more risk, especially to the pregnant individual, right? So if it's not like let's say we needed to save the baby's life, how are you going to save the baby's life if it is well before fetal viability?
(24:58):
Instead, what you are doing is, and the kind of incision that is necessary that early in pregnancy, what you're doing is you are seriously harming the health and future fertility of somebody without their informed consent or perhaps their consent at all depending on what the law indicates because you think that it is more important to have this abstract, not even realizable ability for a baby to be born even when it can't happen. And so that tells you that there is no even short of death, there is no amount of suffering that they think is too much, even when a potential future baby cannot be saved. And it was just sort of chilling to me to say the risk of hemorrhage is higher, the risk of overall complications, placenta previa, complications from the placenta are much more likely to happen from surgery. So you need a good reason to perform a surgery on somebody who otherwise doesn't want it or doesn't need it.
(26:00):
And the good reason, I guess, is that women are vessels and the doctors will, and the doctor's value system triumphs over that of the pregnant person. And when I mentioned the history, I think there are many incredible medical providers, including OBGYNs. I have interviewed many of them. I feature one of the characters in my book, Dr. Yashika Robinson is somebody who has been a heroic abortion provider in Alabama and is now fighting for her patients to have safe births. But the history of obstetrics and gynecology in this country is one of patriarchal forcing out of traditionally female knowledge and the experimentation and subjugation upon enslaved black women. And without acknowledging that history, we are destined to repeat it and to sort of experiment on an even wider frame, a wider array of women because we value their potential future offspring more than we value their humanity.
Andrea Chalupa (27:02):
So I'm going to get weird for a second and listening to you talk, I was thinking about the long, long, long ancient history of civilization sprouting from agricultural communities and the early goddess worship because the supernatural ability of birth obviously echoed the land giving birth and the goddess earth goddess and so on, and all the fascinating goddesses that used to rule these early civilizations like anana, ISIS and so on. And then they gave rise to the Greek and then Roman goddesses and then temples of Athena were getting replaced by temples to marry an extremely simple woman. And all we know about her is that she gave birth and was such a pure, perfect, totally non-complicated mother that she was a virgin in fact, and didn't even go through all the painful, messy neediness and complications of a pregnancy. And it's just the way the Catholic church, the patriarchy popes would go on to then declare war on Mary Magdalene and make her out to be whore and so on and so on. It goes. And just this horrible intrusion into our lives, into our cultures of this really dark Christian nationalism that has been with us for centuries and is now present here. What are your thoughts on that?
Irin Carmon (28:31):
I don't think that's weird at all. I think it's of a piece. I would like to say, I think modern medicine has brought us many, many important and significant things. And you mentioned being based on the science. I think all of those things are important. But I also think something I really try to bring forward in the book is that pregnancy is not just a mechanical process. It is also something if you carry a term, you give birth that can fundamentally transform you. And in my experience, birth was fundamentally transformative and I was lucky enough to experience twice that wild. I don't know. To me it doesn't really speak to me the goddess thing, but I did feel this sort of primal, animalistic connection with another dimension in a way that nothing else in my life has equaled. And I feel really privileged that I got to experience that.
(29:17):
I think that the power over who lives and who does not live is deeply terrifying, especially to people who don't want women to make those decisions. They want to be able to control them. I am not an expert in Christian theology beyond things that I've reported on, but I will say that in the Jewish tradition, although it can be very patriarchal, there is an overriding ethos that the pregnant woman's health is the most important matter and that abortion is permissible. If it is deemed to be in the best interest of the woman, she can choose it. So I feel glad that I grew up with that tradition. I think it's also, I will also say that kind of back of the envelope, that little sketch of history that you gave, I would give another one too. I mentioned the history of obstetrics and experimentation on enslaved women.
(30:16):
I write about Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy, three enslaved women who were held basically by J Marion Sims, who was later heralded as the father of obstetrics and gynecology. And I visit this incredible memorial to the three of them. I'm hoping to do an event for the book there in Montgomery, Alabama. It's created by an incredible artist and activist, Michelle Browder, who's informed by the reproductive justice tradition of black women. So both of those histories, the history of subjugation and patriarchy, and also the history of resistance, connection, connection with history, connection with other people, other women who are giving birth, those coexist in our history. And there's another really important way in which our contemporary age is echoing the past, and that is that modern obstetrics and abortion bans and the forcing out of midwives is deeply, deeply linked to sentiment and misogyny. And so when doctors decide in the 19th century that they want to become a respectable field with their own central credentialing authority, they decide that the way they're going to do that is through obstetrics.
(31:30):
They're going to offer women that they have a safer way to give birth and they're going to impose it on them by law, by saying that only doctors can have safe births. And that midwives who have almost exclusively done all births are dirty, ignorant that infant mortality is their fault. Now, the majority of midwives at a certain point during this campaign are immigrants from Eastern Europe and Latin America. They are the descendants of enslaved people, especially in the south. And so it becomes deeply linked with, well, white women cannot be delivered by these ignorant midwives. They need the authority of a white man in a white coat. The other way in which they managed to kind of complete their takeover, their colonization of obstetrics and gynecology in the 19th century, and it's all right there in black and white in the historical record, is by pointing out that white women were choosing to have fewer children.
(32:27):
And so white women were through family planning and access to contraception and through access to abortion, which happened through midwives. Midwives had very basic ways of advising women about how to end a pregnancy. The white birth rate dropped dramatically by the end of the 19th century, by the middle and the late 19th century. And so doctors began publicly campaigning to say that they needed to control reproduction and birth. They needed to rest it away from the ignorant women who were immigrants in the cities and rural black women, especially in the south, because these women were telling white women how to end their pregnancies and how to have fewer children. And that soon the newcomers who were still arriving at that point on the shores of the United States would drown out the white race. And so it is very much xenophobia, racism, anti-immigrant panic that it is driving the bans on abortion that are passed in the 19th century and the increasing crackdown on midwifery such that by the middle of the 20th century, the ideal notion of birth becomes going to a hospital where previously only very low income people gave birth in hospitals before the advent of antibiotics and handwashing, they were really dangerous places where you would pick up an infection.
(33:53):
It became very difficult to practice as a midwife. And your root to your sexual and reproductive health had to go through the discretion of a white man, whether he was willing to give you a therapeutic abortion, the typical experience of birth involved being strapped down and giving twilight sleep. And so when the feminist movement was fighting the paternalism of healthcare for women, there was these different kinds of reproduction, these different experiences, whether that's preventing a pregnancy, ending a pregnancy, or carrying a pregnancy to term. Historically, all of these had been very linked. They weren't siloed off, but they were very linked in an attempt to have white men control the reproduction first of white women to try to get them to have more children and to not be competitions in the workforce. And it also functioned as a lever of control first on people who were devalued by white supremacy, by Christian nationalism, and by colonialism.
Andrea Chalupa (34:58):
Wow. Okay. So we are now experiencing here in America the anti-immigration terrorism and the anti-abortion terrorism. And they go hand in hand to basically end what the far right, what the Christian nationalists see as unquote white genocide. The great replacement theory, as we saw in Charlottesville when they had those khakis Trump hats and tiki torches, they were chanting that you will not replace us. So that's what the abortion and immigration bans are about, and I never considered that link before. That is absolutely fascinating and horrifying.
Irin Carmon (35:40):
It is crazy because of so-called “permitalism” of Elon Musk, when you have these white guys who are ostensible centrist or liberals or moderate conservatives, and they sit around and they fret about the birth rate, and they say that the forthcoming societal catastrophe is a result of women choosing to have fewer pregnancies, but there's almost never women in the room. They're always talking about something else. They're never talking about why it is that people who have the ability to make these choices are doing so, and not just how we might actually make it a safer and better to have a baby. And I think that there is, in unbearable, I really try to lay out the fact in many cases, these are individuals who desperately wanted to be pregnant, and the state and the medical system including for-profit healthcare are making it so hard for them. I think we also have better information now about what pregnancy can mean and people are better able to imagine a life without becoming a parent.
(36:49):
And for me, I love being a parent and it's been an incredible thing that I chose when I was ready, which is a privilege that I would like everyone to be afforded regardless of what the outcome becomes. But imposing a particular script on women, and there's a white woman's script and there's black woman's script that needs that is imposed, and there's a script on different immigrant women that is imposed. It's not being written by the pregnant people in these scenarios. And it's a very old script that has to do with women's place and that is further segmented and made more higher guys by racial inequality.
Andrea Chalupa (37:31):
And what's the script would you say for non-white women?
Irin Carmon (37:34):
So I think there is, it's interesting because, so one of the people that I profile in the book is the incredible reproductive justice scholar, Dorothy Roberts. And she observes that at different times, there have been different scripts depending on the context for the control of black women's reproduction. And so under slavery, black women's wombs, she says, were of direct economic interest. So when J Marion Sims is experimenting on enslaved women, the owners of these women are interested in them having more babies because the transatlantic slave trade has ended and they would like to have more forced labor on the planet.
Andrea Chalupa (38:15):
Europe ended slavery far sooner than the US and they didn't need a war to do it. They did it through their political process and through abolitionist groups. But go on.
Irin Carmon (38:23):
This meant that they were no longer able to import humans for forced labor, and that made reproductive control of enslaved women more important. And that is how we got, that's how the speculum was invented. That's how we got modern obstetrics. He later became the president of the American Medical Association, J Marion Sims. He held these women for years in a tent in his backyard with no anesthesia. There's a couple of really incredible books, one by Deirdre Cooper Owens and one by Harriet Washington that tell this story very deeply. But I tell a kind of short history of this in my book. So that was the script at that point, at the point at which through the end of the Civil War and through the liberation movements that led to more recognition of the rights of black people, it becomes more of a story of limiting black reproduction as a way to hold onto white supremacy and power.
(39:15):
And so at that point, eugenic sterilization becomes a factor in post sterilization. Medicaid happens around the same just after the opinions that made segregation illegal on paper. So then it becomes a story of how are black women treated within a healthcare system that historically excluded them? And so then it becomes all about criminalizing black women's behavior that the crack baby panic. This becomes about whether black women are fit mothers and should they have the choice to reproduce or should somehow the state or a benevolent huge organizations be able to step in and say Who deserves to be a mother? The through line in all of this is a lack of respect for the individual autonomy of the person who is going to be pregnant. And I think it was also really important to me in the book, having learned so much from reproductive justice to think about the control of pregnancy.
(40:14):
And its opposite true reproductive justice, also being about the ability to give birth safely and to parent your children. And so you do have Dr. Robinson, who herself was a young mother twice before she graduated from high school and managed to become an OB GYN and provided abortions in Alabama when it was so hard. Every moment of every day you have her fighting for access to save for birth options in a courtroom that is just down the street from where Jay Marion Sims imposed his experiments on women who had no choice in the matter. And so when she stands in front of Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy's monument, the statues made by this artist Michelle Browder, and says that she's going to fight for better birth outcomes. It's a correction of that history or it's a resistance to that narrative that is really being led by a black woman informed by reproductive justice in her own experiences as a doctor and as a patient.
(41:21):
And then at the same time, one of the central tragedies in unbearable, the loss of a black mother. And the fact that I also write about a white woman who had the same doctor and the same life-threatening experience, but only one of them lived to raise her son and to have another baby. And in the other her daughter who's the same age as my daughter has no mother and is being raised by heroic single dad who's fighting for better healthcare outcomes. These are not just historical stories. These are shaping the lives of people. And I really wanted to have the story include the full richness of the ways in which reproduction is being controlled even in a blue state. The story I just told took place in New York City, but we have accepted yawning inequality in our medical system, interpersonal racism and structural racism undergirding these experiences where, again, whether you need an abortion, whether you need infertility care or just to exercise your right to leave the hospital with your baby after you give birth with your dignity and your health and your life intact, it shouldn't be too much to ask. This country has the worst maternal mortality rate out of any wealthy country. There's been some quibbling about the numbers. Even if you, for control for every way in which the numbers could be measured differently, the rates could be measured differently, this country would still be at the bottom. And it's disproportionately women of color, especially black women who are affected by that. And how can it be that we are the wealthiest country in the world and we tolerate treating people at their most vulnerable moments this way?
Andrea Chalupa (43:09):
Absolutely. And I want to also point out one of the reasons why the white male oligarchy doesn't want to pay their fair share in taxes, and they're greedily addicted to the crack cocaine of their tax cuts is because they don't want to invest money in communities because God forbid, that would then allow free childcare, robust good health system, good public schools, affordable housing would empower non-white people to start families and have more children, and there goes their white genocide and all that stuff.
Irin Carmon (43:43):
And empower is the word. Because I think also there is the benefits of certain people to have a workforce, whether it's an unpaid workforce in the home or a paid workforce that doesn't get benefits or treatment that every human should have. Who does that benefit? It only benefits them. And so I think also having women popping out babies, whether they're ones that are part of what they consider their empire or in service of their empire, it'd be more workers who don't have access to any kind of leverage or autonomy. It's nice for them, right? It's nice for them to have women perform the reproductive and emotional and home labor unpaid because they have a boss and that boss is daddy.
Andrea Chalupa (44:30):
What is giving you hope right now? What is a movement in America that is working to reverse this dangerous trend and even build the groundswell that we need to bring back the rights of Roe v. Wade federally? I know it depends on the Supreme Court, and right now it's 6 to 3, but that's not going to last forever. So is there a movement that is getting ready, that's building a much needed groundswell?
Irin Carmon (45:00):
So it's such a good question. One day I want to write a story about the long-term planning that is or isn't happening, but for now, I would just say that what gives me hope is that in the meantime, people can't wait for the healthcare and the respect that they need. I'm honestly not sure about the answer. I'm not trying to dodge it about whether there are people who were thinking about the longterm. It took the right 50 years to get to where they were, and they were absolutely relentless and broke every possible rule and norm to get there. I don't see strategically that kind of focus, but what I do see is that at the grassroots, the abortion funds and the reproductive justice informed doulas and the midwives and the organizers at the local level where there is at least it's not politically impossible or even where it sometimes feels like it is.
(45:56):
I think what inspires me, the people that I wrote about in Unbearable, my book Jose, the fiance of one of the women I wrote about who lost her life giving birth in a completely enraging and preventable way because of an underfunded hospital and a broken system, Jose, despite this horrific bereavement, he's raising his children, he's got his hands full, has become a maternal health activist. He is lobbying for better legislation. He is mentoring other fathers who are in the same position of having lost the mother of their children. He is actually training to become a doula. And this is somebody who had no connection to activism before. He grew up working class. He is a tattooed guy who drove a truck before this all happened. And I'm so incredibly inspired by his vision and his dedication to this. It's only been, hasn't even been two years since the passing of his wife.
(46:56):
I'm really inspired by Dr. Yashika Robinson, who's one of the other five women that I write about in Unbearable who despite the fact that it would be so much easier for her to practice medicine, reproductive medicine anywhere, but Alabama refuses to abandon her patients. And similarly, Robin Marty, who's the director of the clinic in Tuscaloosa, both of them looked for ways to keep helping after abortion became illegal. And that included in Tuscaloosa's gender affirming care and the post miscarriage care that one of the other women I write about needed. And in the case of Dr. Robinson, it's so ironic. We talked about the control of medicine. We're familiar with the fact that the state passes all kinds of laws before they could actually ban abortion. They passed all kinds of laws to make it really hard to run an abortion clinic with all kinds of fake regulations, right?
(47:49):
Turns out that they were willing to do that when it came to opening up a birth center if it threatened the monopoly of doctors in the state of Alabama. And so she ends up looking at these laws about opening up a new birth center, which has not been allowed because again, doctors have such a stranglehold over birth and she decides that she's going to go to court to fight it just like she fought the abortion clinic restrictions. And finally, she was able to open up this birth center in the former abortion clinics building. So instead of, obviously in an ideal world, she would continue to provide all kinds of reproductive healthcare, but instead of cutting and running, and there's a lot of great providers working in blue states for people and contributing in their ways. But for the women of Alabama, a state with a huge African-American population that is not getting the healthcare that they deserve, for them to have a highly qualified, brilliant black woman doctor who is going to fight for their right to have a safe birth, whether it's in a hospital or somewhere else, I find that to be really, really inspiring and it's so much harder than you would think it would be considering this is a place that loves to talk about how pro-life it is.
Andrea Chalupa (49:10):
Our discussion continues. And you can get access to that by signing up at The Truthteller Level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can give the gift of membership. Bonus shows invites to exclusive events. Get all shows a free and more at patreon.com/gaslit. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show.
(49:33):
To help Ukraine with urgently needed humanitarian aid join me in donating to Razom for ukraine@razomforukraine.org to support refugees in conflict zones. Donate to Doctors Without borders@doctorswithoutborders.org and to protect critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry. Donate to the orangutanproject@theorangutanproject.org.
(49:57):
Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our associate producer is Carlin Dagel, and our founding production manager is Nicholas Torres. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners.
(50:13):
Original music and Gaslit Nation is composed by David Whitehead, Martin Berg, Nick Farr, Damian Arga, and Carlin Dagel. Our logo design was generously donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the design firm Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
(50:29):
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Patreon and Higher Ice Bear is Defiant. Li Wachowski, Ruth Ann Harnish, Todd Dan Milo, and Cubby Ann Bertino. David East, Diana Gallagher, DL Sinfield. Jan Sra Rasmussen, James D. Leonard, j Bardo, Joe Darcy, John Scholer, Katie Urus, Kevin Gannon, Kristen Custer, Larry Gossan. Leah Campbell. Marcus j Trent. Mark. Mark, Nicole Spear. Randall Brewer, Sherry Escobar, Ellen McGirt, Carol Goad. Tanya Chalupa. Work for Better Prep for Trouble. Thank you all for your support of the show. We did not make Gaslit Nation without you.