Can Roe Be Reinstated?
33:07 Share

Do you love reading as much as we do? Well, you're in luck because we're launching our first ever Betches Book Club in partnership with Nutella Biscuits because they know the best moments are even sweeter when you share a great snack with your friends. If you're in New York City, come hang out with us IRL at the Betches Book Club.

On October 28th, Aileen, Sammy, and I are hosting a book discussion with author Margot Harrison, where we'll be discussing her brand new novel, The Midnight Club, and snacking on Nutella biscuits. No, I won't be sharing mine because I'm truly obsessed and they're actually my new favorite snack in the world. But don't worry, there's going to be plenty for everyone to share. Head to bit.ly slash book club IRL to grab tickets for you and your friends. That's

bit.ly slash book club IRL for tickets. Grab yours before they sell out.

Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Today, we are joined by authors Lisa Lehrer and Elizabeth Diaz to talk about their new and very necessary book, The Fall of Roe, The Rise of a New America. A worse America. That's not in the title. I just added that.

Welcome and thank you for joining us to talk about your wonderful yet terrible book. Thanks for having us. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah.

We're thrilled to speak to you. I do want to give you compliments on the book. It is really, really incredibly well written. And somehow you're able to incorporate cliffhangers into a story that I feel like we kind of know the end of, or at least the ultimate end of. The way you've told this story and have demonstrated the point of the way that Roe was taken down and how this is really so much bigger than just this court case is

The way you did it was amazing. It is really terrifying to read, though. Thank you for exploring these really harrowing topics, first of all. Oh, thank you. It was really important to us that we told the story of how Roe fell. But we also sort of explained what we believed was a central like premise in this whole thing, which is, yes, abortion is about when you're

and whether somebody can end their pregnancy, but it's about this much bigger thing. It really is about the role of women in American democracy and an American project. And it's about these conflicting philosophies between a conservative Christian minority that effectively wants to roll back the sexual revolution and curb all kinds of rights from

abortion rights to same sex marriage to trans rights, and this broader majority that wants to keep those things in place and sees that as the direction the country should go. So this is, yes, it is about abortion, but it is like this conflict about the future of America at the grandest scale possible. And at the center of that is really like, what is the role of women in this American project? You know?

Can I just ask something upfront that might be a spoiler? So when we say like, oh, the Southern Christian evangelists want abortion to not be an option, they wanna roll back the sexual revolution. Oftentimes I'm thinking of like,

Yeah.

Well, you know, it was so interesting for us to chronicle who the especially women are in the religious right, the modern religious right. These conservative Christian communities who are really pushing not just to end Roe, but all of these things right about rolling back the sexual revolution. And it's really easy, like you said, to think about that.

I guess the stereotypes of what the religious right is, is it ingrained, especially for younger folks, you know, like, oh, that's, that's from the eighties and the nineties. And actually there is this rising contingent. It's a minority it's really in the country, but it's quite strong with very intense views and a committed agenda that

uh, based in their, the deep roots of that, right. Or in their Christian theology, which is not how everyone understands Christianity, but it is how they do. And we, it was really interesting for us to kind of get into the lives of those, those women and who they are and why they believe what they believe. Uh, but you're right. It's interesting. Every time there's a Supreme court decision or really like anything to do with the anti-abortion agenda, you see in all the pictures, the students for life,

crowd, which is like women in their 20s often, and they've got the signs and it's them every single time. Can you talk a little bit about what does motivate them? Like when you spoke to them in that depth?

At heart, you know, this really is about a broader Christian mission for them. I think there's been an effort to not use religious language. Sometimes that's a very conscious effort because there's been a sense that, oh, and we had people talk to us about this, but if you actually are talking about, oh, this is our Christian agenda type of thing, then you lose because they feel that that can sideline them in the argument. So they've framed

their work really as, for them, the biggest moral battle of the modern age. They equate it to not just the civil rights movement, but they talk about abolishing abortion. They compare themselves to ending slavery. And at the heart, though, when you listen to what they're saying, they have some very deep

deeply held convictions about what does it mean to be human? When does life begin? What is suffering? When is suffering okay? These kinds of questions that are just not how

in the mainstream talk about abortion or what it means to be a woman. I also think this is a more radical movement in some ways than the Tammy Faye Baker generation that you were talking about, right? These, they've been along as the Republican Party has gone into issues that once seemed like things

Things our politics and Republicans wouldn't touch, like denying the results of the 2020 election, storming the Capitol. This movement has radicalized along with the Republican Party. And so now that's part of why we're now having these conversations. After they won this big victory when it came to Roe, we're now having these conversations about IVF, about some forms of contraception.

And whether those things should be restricted or banned. And, you know, I think it's really hard if you want to understand what's happening in this election and you want to know like where things are going. You just it's really important that you understand how we got here and what this movement is and how Roe fell. And that's really part of a big part of what our book like tried to explain.

To your earlier point, and I think this is really the most important thing to take from this, you know, even more than the specifics, is that this is about more than just

ending a pregnancy. It's about all the progress that has been made for women since the sexual revolution. It's about our right to have a credit card, our right to sign on a loan without a man. Do you get to go to college? Do you get to banks? Will they do business with you? But that does not really seem to be the mainstream argument. It

It seems like people don't really understand the gravity of this because they think it's just about the procedure. And there will really be an exception in the case if the mother's life is threatened, then they'll be fine. But is there a way that we can convey this more effectively, that this is not just about when you're going to be pregnant or not?

So it's so interesting you say that because my theory about the politics that really came out of our work on this book is that people do kind of understand that even if they don't vocalize it. And that's why abortion has been such a powerful issue in our politics since Roe fell. Like, you know, for decades when Roe was in place, abortion, the abortion issue motivated the right, the anti-abortion far more than the people who support it. And like,

That makes sense, right? If you're opposed, no one's like, I am here fighting for the status quo. It's not much of a rallying cry. You're going to be stronger on something you're trying to change. And then what we saw was after Roe fell, the politics scrambled immediately. I've covered a lot of presidential campaigns, other kinds of campaigns. I can't remember a time when

in American politics where the politics shifted so overnight. And I think that's because people do understand, certainly people who support abortion rights, that like, yes, this is about something bigger, like the symbolic meaning of this fight for them at a very like innate emotional level resonates. And that's why you see people, abortion rights supporters being all of a sudden these strong voters. And it's this coalition of

liberals, independents, and really moderate Republicans who want this. And some of those people are of reproductive age and some of them are not. But this is something that's so deeply human. If you've had a baby, if you know someone who had a baby, if you were a baby, you understand how this all works. And for

for that reason, because of its universality and its intimacy, it has this symbolism that's bigger. And I think people do get that even if they're not saying it. And that's what we see in like the political shifts. That's how I interpret those at least.

Do you want to stay up to date on the news but find it stressful and also you don't have any time? We got you. The Morning Announcements is a daily podcast from Betches Media that's here to help you make sense of the chaotic world and its nonstop headlines. I'm Sammy Sage and I'll fill you in on the biggest news of each day, delivered to you in five minutes with some light, snarky commentary. The Morning Announcements was also the winner of the People's Choice Podcast Award for News and Politics in 2023, so tap the banner to listen to new episodes of The Morning Announcements on Spotify.

Fever. Cough. Congestion. When the symptoms keep coming, but you've got to keep going, you can rely on Mucinex Fast Max All-in-One. Just one dose of Mucinex Fast Max All-in-One relieves up to nine cold and flu symptoms, helping you get on with your day. Need cold and flu relief? Get Mucinex Fast Max All-in-One and Dunn Relief. It's comeback season. Use as directed.

There is this constant focus on use of the word abortion specifically and whether a politician will say it or they won't say it or Vice President Harris is the first woman to say abortion on television and all this business, right? So do you think that if people had been more open about using that word, it would be taken for granted less? Like, is there anything pro-choice believers could have done to stop the conservative takeover of the courts or like to have

to have made saying the word abortion not such a like taboo thing that now people are really kind of understanding it better.

It would be easy, right, if there was just sort of one thing that someone could have done to prevent a giant outcome. Part of what we found in all of our reporting was the right didn't just create kind of one plan, right, and benefit from one thing to win. It was like everything. They made a million plans. They had contingency plans, plans on contingency plans, right? It just went on like this.

And it's interesting you ask about, well, the word abortion itself, because even that is like, okay, well, what does this mean when we're talking about abortion as the symbol for womanhood? It's those bigger questions that it's pretty clear from what's happened in the current fights going on that, as Lisa was saying, America has not actually...

reconcile, like what, where is the place of women in the American experiment? Like this is actually a very live question. And so when we kind of reframe what it is we're actually talking about here and what the stakes are, what are those bigger issues involved? I mean, I think

Those are the questions and conversations that we're really interested in hearing from readers of our book, right? Because part of the reason we wrote the book was to get that to... Once we saw the connections of what abortion meant in the American consciousness and how... Why this is so complicated and messy for so many people beyond just the messiness of the procedure and access and all of that itself and even the religious meaning, right? It's just...

Until the conversation starts to broaden out, to understand the role of women in America and what is going on with that in general, I wonder about just sort of

turning the ground here. Do you think it's important to use that word abortion though? I mean, like my parents don't want to use the word abortion, even though they have experienced the need for that procedure because they're like, it wasn't an abortion. That's terrible. Don't say that. That hurts mommy's feelings. And I'm like,

mom, then what do you call it? And she's like, it was a DNC. The baby was, you know, you know, that was terrible for me. I'm like, it's terrible for everybody. But now we've gotten them to the point where, you know, we went through the phase of like, don't call it that too. Oh yeah. V calls it my abortion too. Well, when I had that procedure and when I had the abortion, they talk about it in ways where now we've taken a lot of the shame that the boomer generation has off of it by using that word so much. Do you think even now with the fall of Roe, it's important that people continue to use that word?

So I have two thoughts on that. My first thought is like, I think part of the conversation that's happened since Roe fell is people are all of a sudden understanding like what you call determination or a DNC or a miscarriage was in fact an abortion and would be illegal in many States. And that's part of why we see this political engagement. It sounds like that's what like your parents have done. However, so that's, that's,

That's good. We should call things what they are. And in the book, we endeavor to call things what they are as like clearly as possible. Right. That's a general thing. However, I think that pro the abortion rights movement, the left spent a lot of time trying to destigmatize the the procedure. Right. They threw out safe, legal and rare. They worked really hard to get people to tell their.

abortion stories. They got it. You know, you remember that movie Juno and plot lines and Grey's Anatomy and, you know, they wanted to do this cultural change. And there was a belief that if they just destigmatized abortion, then it would just be

become more protected and people wouldn't feel shame about it. And that would, you know, cause these restrictions to be dialed back and whatever. That's not how this went, right? While the abortion rights movement was working on, you know, trying to destigmatize and convince the public and win public opinion, basically, the anti-abortion movement was working on securing the levers of power.

They were getting state legislatures. They were getting judges that would have conservative views in important places. They were working the Trump administration. And they had a totally different theory of change. And their theory, like the way we think about it is what you're sort of outlining, right? You change public opinion. Politicians respond to public opinion. The law changes. But in fact, what our book shows is something really different happened here.

They captured the levers of power. They didn't break any. They subverted a bunch of things that were norms. They didn't break any laws. They captured this power. They changed the law. And now they have forced a cultural change on the country. So I guess I think it's good to call things what they are. And it's good to destigmatize abortion if you support abortion rights. However, that's not how this all got done.

Right. Power matters. Power matters a lot, you know, and power not just at the White House, but in small places matters, too. That's actually one of, I think, the biggest takeaways why it's a whole book and not just a book about the month before Roe fell or about the Supreme Court arguments, which is that the history of abortion rights and how public opinion has shifted within both parties is

has not been the same since Roe was, since the decision came out. And I think we can actually use Republicans' relationship with Planned Parenthood as sort of this measuring stick to tell the story.

And I was surprised to read, although I did sort of instinctually know that made that, you know, Republicans and conservatives had become more extreme on abortion. I was surprised that they had actually used to support Planned Parenthood. So can you explain what happened there and how they became this extremely hard line anti-choice party rather than in support of it, but for their own reasons?

Well, it's a good point and one that people often forget. It's interesting, even this week, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest evangelical denomination, largest Protestant denomination in the US just voted to oppose IVF. But right after, you know, when Roe was decided, the Southern Baptist Convention supported abortion rights. This was not like they supported Roe. This was not an issue for them. It was the way that politics

politics and former President Reagan's rise, the political goals of all of that began to influence their own movements. I think we think a lot about the ways that Christianity

influences politics, but also a major storyline of the last many years has been the way that politics is actually changing religion. And so this is part of that story as well. But even more recently, you look at the hardening of the anti-abortion movement over the last decade, right, with former President Trump's rise.

And even since the overturning of Roe, this doubling down on the segment of the movement that wants to criminalize abortion, even in some cases, I mean, this is a very, very minority view, but it's gaining some traction, right, at least in their ambitions, but wanting to criminalize, like punish women for abortions. And then that moved toward what they're talking about as fetal personhood, giving rights to a zygote, an embryo, a fetus.

as a full born person. It's this, the way that all of the politics have shifted in that Overton window, basically of what's possible has shifted has also then shifted

radicalized the movement. I mean, I think social media plays a big part. We can probably have a whole other episode on the role of the internet and echo chambers, right? And in how people double down on their views and that increased polarization, but it is a long arc, right? That's why you have to look at the whole history. It's easy to think things were always one way, but actually the movement has changed.

I mean, I'm not surprised the Republicans were into Planned Parenthood because it was originally founded by Margaret Sanger, the famed racist and eugenicist who believed in a lot of horrible things that some of the most far-right parts of the Republican Party similarly ascribed to. Now, Planned Parenthood is since separated from Margaret Sanger's ideas, especially because of those things. But

I also think we think of politics as this linear thing that was so normal and that everyone's always held the same beliefs when it's gone back and forth, right? It's been, you know, the Republicans, Abraham Lincoln used to be a Republican and I don't know if he would belong to the party of today, but it is interesting how they invoke different figures when it benefits them and then want to throw them out when it doesn't.

For

Can you elaborate a little bit on something you just said about how politics is changing religion?

I think if you look at, let's just take conservative Christianity for a bit. I think before Trump became president, there was this, and everyone, don't you remember, I mean, it was a long time ago now, but everyone was sort of surprised, like how are all of these conservative Christians supporting this man who's been married several times, doesn't know the books of the Bible, right? All of this, right? And who's flip-flopping on abortion himself all the time. Two Corinthians.

2 Corinthians. Yeah, there you go. Hey, 2 Corinthians, the famous, famous 2 Corinthians.

When conservative Christians, especially evangelicals, voted in force for him, it started this line of questioning about, okay, what's going on with the church in America? What are the actual priorities right now? How is it different from maybe just typical culture war issues? And we learned a lot about the sense of grievance that a lot of especially white Christians felt about their place in a changing country.

And, you know, there was that famous, what became famous speech that Trump gave when he was running for president about how he could, if he stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he could shoot someone and no one would, all his supporters would still go with him. But the other thing he said was,

in that same speech was he was actually at an evangelical college when he made that speech. And he said to the group, like Christianity will have power if you elect me. And there, that need for power and a restoration in their minds of their place in America, uh, was so important for them. And there's a lot of wrestling right now for a lot of

um folks in evangelical churches i mean about what even their faith is at this point now that everyone is just it seems like so often it could be like going to church for them i hear people talk about oh it feels like a political rally now right instead of a worship experience is this question that people talk to me about like what are we worshiping right it's why we're seeing

There was an exodus of Black people from white evangelical churches, a lot of young women. I hear even this week, with all this sort of crackdown on IVF, there's a lot of millennial evangelical women who use IVF to build their families and are really wondering about their place and their understanding of life.

Jesus as a God of love, right? So there's a lot of conflict here, but it's really, it's just one of the biggest stories I think in the country right now, politics changing Christianity. And one of one thing that people don't realize that I learned in the course of this book is in 2013 is the point at which white Christians became a minority in America. They had always been a majority. And back in the nineties, they were like a super demographically

majority. They were like 66% of the country, two thirds plus or minus. And at that moment, when Obama was elected president Obama to the second term, they became a minority and they began to feel this sense that the country was moving against them, right? Like shortly after that gay marriage was legalized by the court, um,

And, you know, you had, and oh, right, the health care law, the Obama, Obamacare made birth control free. So all these changes were happening in the country and their share of the country was shrinking. And so that is that's really why we we focused our book on this 10 year arc. And we think that that's the moment like you're talking about how politics aren't stagnant. Right. That is such a clear moment when you can see these politics change. And I think people tend to put that moment.

at 2016 when Trump wins. But there was there was things happening before that that got the country to that point. And then, of course, Trump just, you know, really blew up everything here in a lot of different ways. So I do think we're at one of these political inflection points where things are changing. Both parties are changing. And it's really important to see how we got here. What's your take on.

the idea that Roe can be put back. So often President Biden will come back and he'll say, we're going to make Roe the law of the land, but we can't. It would be a different law, wouldn't it? So there's many problems with that promise. It's funny because I was just at a breakfast this morning with a Democratic senator, you know, for my day job covering elections for The Times. And it was, you know, it was off the record. So I won't tell you who. But when I asked that question,

can Roe come back, Biden's saying this all the time, there was some eye rolling, I'm not gonna lie. And there was eye rolling because even if there was consensus on what this new Roe, right, that's really code for some kind of federal abortion rights would look like, which there is no agreement on what that should be and where that standard should be set within the Democratic caucus,

even if there was agreement and even if they could craft it into legislation, you need 60 votes to get it through, which Democrats do not have and are unlikely to have after this next election because the Senate map is very difficult for them. And if you don't have 60 votes, you have to get rid of the filibuster, which would allow Senate Democrats to pass this on a simple majority, which they don't have support to do that either. So, you know, both

From the lack of agreement perspective, a policy perspective, but also just like a pure politics perspective, it's really hard to get that done. And that's part of why you see all these state referendums happening where various people are trying to groups are trying to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions, because that is likely to be a much more fruitful, potentially fruitful path.

I just had like a vision of us having to go back and forth for decades over Roe, not Roe, Roe, not Roe. Do you think there's something peculiar or specific about America? You know, because now I feel like

people who are pro-abortion or pro-choice are so much more galvanized. Whereas before, the anti-choice movement was super, super galvanized. And that was the thing that was turning them out. But in Europe, they're not fighting over it in this way. That's not the thing that is driving voters out. Is there something about America that you think makes this issue particularly divisive? Well, I think

Well, I think there's several things. It's a big question that we actually engage in our book. What is America becoming? What actually is America? What are real constitutional principles? What kind of country do they create?

It's a really live question. I mean, you could look, you could pick it apart. We could have a whole other episode, right, on this question. You know, now abortion rights is returned to the states. Each state, like we're a system where states have, you know, it's a republic. States have their own constitutions and make their own laws. And we're a country that is very divided right now, right? Not so...

States north-south, right? But just sort of this patchwork of states with different rights for women and women.

you know, also, you know, you mentioned Europe. I mean, healthcare is different there, kind of just the way, you know, childcare is different there. All of these systems, societal systems are different. Europe is also increasingly secular, right? It's not, that's one of the things a lot of American evangelicals and some Catholics talk about is their concern is what if America goes the way of Europe and the role of the church is

changes. I mean, there's a segment that really believes fundamentally America is a Christian nation. They believe that's why America was founded this, you know, to be a Christian nation is why they left Europe in the first place. So there's a lot of,

myths and stories about what America even should be, right? That's why these are all these bigger themes that are so important to examine. And the fall of Roe is a way to understand that. If you understand that storyline of what's going on with that, and you can count, that's why our subtitle is The Rise of a New America. What is that new America?

I also think we're in a period where a lot of things that a majority of the country held as inviolable, right? Like things like Roe or, you know, the integrity of elections that like people accept the electoral results or, you know, separation of the Justice Department. Those things are, you know, from politics. Those things are all being thrown into question right now in a lot of different ways. So I do think we are in this period where

where the system for a lot of people on both sides isn't working. There's no trust. There's very little, there's widespread distrust of politics, of government, you know, at all levels. And that's causing people to reconsider a lot of things and prompting these sort of really big changes and reckonings, not just on Roe, but on all these other topics.

We have one last question. In the book you write, if women are to secure their faiths, they need more than liberalism has to offer. Icons are no replacement for conviction and strategy. So where do we go? Give me the plan. I'm ready to go.

Well, I think what we see the abortion rights movement doing is in some ways they're stealing a play from the anti-abortion movement, which was willing to go to the most local, like they would go the dog catcher election. You know what I mean? If that felt that they could get something going there that would restrict abortion and then work that way up through whatever state. Right. So I think we're seeing the abortion rights movement kind of steal that play a little bit with these state referendums and just really go, you

into the states. You can't do that everywhere. It's going to be really hard to do in conservative

states, those things will be very hard to pass. So we've seen some evidence that they can pass. And in a lot of those conservative states, you're fighting against state legislatures that are trying to change the rules to make those things, of course, harder to get through, even if you do have a majority support for them. But I think that's part of what we're seeing, that that seems to be the new strategy. And it's a strategy that really is lifted in a way from the anti-abortion movement, which is...

That's what they did for decades. I think it's an important point you make there that they've been at this for 50 years. We're not going to turn this over in one election and we're not going to turn it over from the top down. The president cannot make an executive order that makes federal abortion access legal. So we'll have to put in the work and folks need to run for office and get involved at a local level and definitely be petitioning even your Republican governors for abortion access at the state level.

Thank you guys so much for being with us today. I appreciate everything about what we learned. Can you tell us again where we can find you?

So our book is The Fall of Roe, The Rise of New America. You can buy it at any bookstores. Go to your indie bookstore and buy it there because we got to support our indie bookstores. We're doing a campaign with women to own bookstores to support them. So yeah, you can find that on Bookshop. We have our website, thefallofroe.com. You can get more information there about the book. And of course, you can find us at The New York Times where we report.

Fantastic. Well, thank you again for being here. Until next time, I'm Vitus Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sous-McCatt, Jorge Morales-Picot, and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sous-McCatt. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Betches.