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[00:00:00] The Crayon Box Politics, where we strive to color outside the political lines.
[00:00:18] In this second episode of our podcast and the second installment in a series on reproductive
[00:00:26] rights, we're going to cover the period from Roeverse's Wade all the way to the Dobbs decision.
[00:00:35] It is important for me right now to take a pause before we dive into the details.
[00:00:42] You see, the reason that I wanted to come out with a discussion on reproductive rights
[00:00:48] is because it's one of the major issues of this year 2022.
[00:00:55] It's a major political issue given the freshness that is the Dobbs decision.
[00:01:03] What I didn't realize is that this topic is so complex and so massive that it's nearly
[00:01:12] impossible to cover everything in three episodes.
[00:01:16] After the extensive research that I have done, I can honestly say that my personal views on
[00:01:22] this matter haven't changed.
[00:01:24] But my insight into the complexity of this issue and the discussions that have been had
[00:01:31] both on the left and on the right are far greater than what I initially thought.
[00:01:37] And what I initially imagined, the biggest lesson came from the research that I did in
[00:01:43] the previous episode.
[00:01:46] The research that showed and demonstrated that reproductive rights specifically abortion
[00:01:52] was a common practice in early America, something that I didn't know and didn't comprehend
[00:01:57] at the time.
[00:01:59] It was an until I read through the history of America and discovered that the gradual decline
[00:02:07] of the practice came out of a societal shift, a societal mentality where we went from
[00:02:14] believing that life begins when the baby moves in the womb to life beginning at conception.
[00:02:23] And when we determined that life began at conception, we created rules in order to preserve
[00:02:29] that life that we as a society had deemed had begun at conception.
[00:02:35] And yet in doing so, we took away from the rights, we took away from the privacy that women
[00:02:42] had long enjoyed from the birth of our nation until those laws were made.
[00:02:49] My research has confirmed to me at least what I've already known and what I've already suspected.
[00:02:58] And that is that our nation, like the people that make it up, the people that govern it,
[00:03:04] the people that lead it, it's imperfect.
[00:03:07] And sometimes decisions made with the best of intentions are made in a way that aren't
[00:03:12] considered of the second and third order or effects that don't take into account the repercussions
[00:03:20] of those decisions.
[00:03:22] And while it may seem like a good idea at the time, a theme to the day, it's a bad decision.
[00:03:28] And we have to own those bad decisions and we have to own our understanding of our past
[00:03:33] so that we can make sure that we don't repeat those decisions in the future.
[00:03:38] We have to make sure that in making rules, in laws, in statutes, in order to preserve our
[00:03:49] way of life, we have to do so in a manner that will preserve our way of life that effort
[00:03:56] is a complex and complicated effort.
[00:03:59] And 90% of the time we're going to get it wrong, we're going to make mistakes as a nation,
[00:04:05] we're going to make mistakes as individuals and we are going to have shortfalls.
[00:04:11] But the important thing is that we have to talk to one another and we have to communicate
[00:04:16] with one another and we have to have an open dialogue.
[00:04:20] And that is why Kranbach's politics is this.
[00:04:23] We are here to foster that open dialogue.
[00:04:26] We are here to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table and that the lines that
[00:04:33] have been drawn in the past aren't permanent lines that we are forced to color within,
[00:04:39] but they are there so that we can see where we've been.
[00:04:42] You see, we chose Roe versus Wade to come out swinging.
[00:04:46] We chose abortion and reproductive rights in order to come out and say, we mean business.
[00:04:56] Because not only is this a major topic in the United States in the year 2022, but it
[00:05:03] has been a major topic of discussion and a major topic of debate since the birth of our
[00:05:10] nation.
[00:05:11] There has been an issue that has been ongoing since the founding fathers created the idea
[00:05:18] that is the great experiment of the United States of America.
[00:05:22] 50 years, 50 years of supreme court precedent is what was established and followed after
[00:05:32] the decision from Roe versus Wade.
[00:05:35] 50 years of rulings on privacy and what I didn't know is that the decision in Roe
[00:05:40] versus Wade extended beyond the discussion about abortion, that the decision in Roe versus
[00:05:48] Wade is a blueprint for how certain other decisions have been made, namely the right
[00:05:57] for same-sex marriage.
[00:05:59] The right for access to contraception.
[00:06:02] Roe versus Wade was linked directly to the right for multi-racial marriages.
[00:06:10] Every decision that supreme court makes is tied to another decision that it is made
[00:06:15] in the past.
[00:06:16] That's why the Supreme Court has a precedent's rule.
[00:06:21] I plan on getting further into a discussion about civics and the way that our government
[00:06:25] works in the future.
[00:06:27] So for now, let's go ahead and dig into the topic of Roe versus Wade.
[00:06:32] Let's take a look at that case.
[00:06:33] I don't want to start by talking about a woman by the name of Jane Roe.
[00:06:39] You see, when I was doing my research, I didn't know that Jane Roe was a pseudonym.
[00:06:45] It was created in order to allow for the mother in the case to remain anonymous in public
[00:06:49] to prevent her from being targeted by pro-life individuals.
[00:06:57] And see Jane Roe's real name was Norma McCorvey.
[00:07:01] Norma McCorvey was a divorcee who had become pregnant.
[00:07:06] She wanted to have an abortion, but instead of being able to do that, she was restricted
[00:07:13] because the abortion she wanted to have didn't meet the exception criteria of preservation
[00:07:19] of a woman's life set forth by Texas statute.
[00:07:23] So she sued.
[00:07:24] And she took her case all the way to the Supreme Court.
[00:07:27] The reality is that the decision was made long before the Supreme Court even decided.
[00:07:33] And that's because of the fact that a district court, a three-judged district court ruled
[00:07:39] in favor of Norma McCorvey.
[00:07:42] Something I vaguely knew but didn't really register until I was joined by research
[00:07:46] is that Norma McCorvey, while she championed the right to choose 10 years after the ruling
[00:07:55] in her favor, she came out in favor of the ban on abortion.
[00:08:00] Now some of you may ask the why?
[00:08:02] Why do women who support abortions?
[00:08:07] And sometimes even get abortions turned around and become proponents of abortion bands
[00:08:14] and in the research, and in my discussions with individuals who have gone through that
[00:08:22] process, what I have learned is that sometimes the abortion process can be stranyous and
[00:08:29] traumatizing.
[00:08:30] And there's always some form of regret that's associated with the abortion.
[00:08:35] It's inevitable.
[00:08:36] So Norma McCorvey, if we're looking at the lines that were drawn, changed sides,
[00:08:43] became a public figure who supported banning abortion.
[00:08:51] Interestingly, the fact not known to me is that the case of Rovers' Wade wasn't just
[00:08:58] about Jane Roe, it was actually a class action challenge to the Texas State criminal laws
[00:09:04] that prohibited abortion, except in the case where necessary for the preservation of
[00:09:10] the life of the mother.
[00:09:12] If you'll remember from our previous episode, in 1873, Congress passed a law that made it
[00:09:18] illegal to send obscene, lood, lascivious immoral or indecent publications through the
[00:09:25] mail.
[00:09:27] This included publications that discussed methods of abortion and drugs and contraceptive
[00:09:34] medications in order to ensure an abortion or to prevent pregnancy.
[00:09:42] It was this law that spurred the fight initially for abortion rights to be restored
[00:09:53] to the women of America.
[00:09:56] The commstock law began to fall apart in 1965.
[00:10:01] When the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Griswal versus Connecticut, that the
[00:10:07] banning a distribution of contraceptives to married couples were unconstitutional based on
[00:10:13] its violation of the couple's implied right to privacy under the Constitution, specifically
[00:10:18] the 1914th Amendment.
[00:10:21] In years later, in 1972, in the case of Eisenstot versus Beard, the Supreme Court ruled
[00:10:29] that banning of contraception distribution to unmarried couples and unmarried adults, violated
[00:10:37] the same right to privacy that married couples were entitled to under the Constitution.
[00:10:45] Right around that same time, states like Colorado became the first in the nation to
[00:10:54] broaden legal access to abortion.
[00:10:56] 11 other states, including Colorado, brought in that access and increased the number of
[00:11:06] exceptions that would allow for abortion access in those states.
[00:11:11] In 1970, Hawaii, New York and Alaska completely decriminalized abortions.
[00:11:18] Although Hawaii is the state only legalized abortions for its residents.
[00:11:23] So in the state of Hawaii, if you weren't a resident of Hawaii, you couldn't get an abortion
[00:11:28] in Hawaii.
[00:11:29] In 1973, the Supreme Court heard two different cases.
[00:11:35] These cases focused on the same argument, which was the challenge to state's abortion
[00:11:42] events.
[00:11:43] One, Rovers' Wade, came out of the state of Texas.
[00:11:49] The other, Doe versus Bolton, came out of Georgia.
[00:11:55] Both Rovers' Wade and Doe versus Bolton were seen by the same three judge district court.
[00:12:04] In both cases, that district court ruled that the laws that were being challenged were
[00:12:10] unconstitutional because of the violations of a person's 9th and 14th Amendment rights.
[00:12:18] So why two cases?
[00:12:19] Well, you see Doe versus Bolton was a case brought by a couple who were childless.
[00:12:27] But sued the state of Georgia on the basis that the law infringes on their rights in
[00:12:31] the event of a future possibility of contraceptive failure.
[00:12:36] Pregnancy, unrepairness for parenthood and impairment of the wife's health.
[00:12:42] Whereas in the case of Rovers' Wade, the plaintiff was a single pregnant woman who argued
[00:12:48] that the anti-emborsion laws or friends on her rights by banning abortions except in situations
[00:12:54] were medical advice recommended abortion on the basis of preserving the mother's life.
[00:13:01] Interestingly, in the case of Doe versus Bolton, the district court ruled that the
[00:13:07] does did not have the right to receive judgment.
[00:13:13] Purely based on the speculative nature of their case.
[00:13:16] You see, they weren't pregnant, they weren't expecting a child and they hadn't experienced
[00:13:23] anything that caused them to have the rights infringed at the time.
[00:13:29] And now with standing, the district court did rule that the Georgia law, which at the
[00:13:36] time was far more generous when it came to determining a right or access to abortion,
[00:13:44] was on its face unconstitutional because of the violations of the rights to privacy under
[00:13:50] the 9th and 14th Amendment.
[00:13:52] So when the cases were both brought to the Supreme Court, they were argued in the same
[00:13:58] manner.
[00:13:59] And while both cases were decided on the same day, the decisions were similar yet different.
[00:14:05] You see, the Supreme Court ruled that the district court was right in their decision
[00:14:12] that the does did not have substantial right to a judication simply because of the fact
[00:14:19] that their case was speculative in nature.
[00:14:23] But they held the district courts ruling that the Georgia law was unconstitutional on
[00:14:28] its face.
[00:14:29] In the case of Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court held up the district court's decision
[00:14:36] and supported the ruling that not only did Roe have a standing to sue, but she also had
[00:14:45] experienced her rights being infringed and her rights to abortion were infringed because
[00:14:52] the Texas State law prevented her from having the right to privacy and the ability to
[00:15:01] make decisions within her own person, in her own lifestyle.
[00:15:05] Those decisions which were guaranteed to her under the Constitution.
[00:15:11] You see none of these decisions actually came out and outright stated that abortion was
[00:15:17] protected under the Constitution.
[00:15:20] Instead, they said that the privacy part, the right of a woman to be able to make decisions
[00:15:27] in the privacy of her own home, that was protected under the Constitution.
[00:15:33] And no state had the authority to infring on that right.
[00:15:39] Curiously, had we been left with only the ruling under Roe versus Wade?
[00:15:45] There would have been guidelines established by the Supreme Court that stated that
[00:15:50] the woman's right to determine her path, her decision to carry to term the child,
[00:16:00] what was growing inside of her belly, was restricted to the first trimester.
[00:16:05] Specifically, it was restricted to viability of the child outside of the womb and that
[00:16:10] soon as a child was deemed to be viable outside of the womb that the state then had
[00:16:18] the right to step in and protect the interest of the child.
[00:16:23] Not before them because according to the Supreme Court prior to viability, the fetus
[00:16:28] was not a human being.
[00:16:30] It was potential life.
[00:16:33] And because there was no law on the books in the United States that protected potential
[00:16:40] life or determined potential life to be citizens of the United States or even human beings,
[00:16:49] that the state had no place to step in.
[00:16:53] They can only step in after viability.
[00:16:56] The decision in Doe versus Bolton furthered the Constitutional right to abortion.
[00:17:03] By ruling that the state could not limit access if the procedure was sought for reasons
[00:17:09] of maternal health.
[00:17:10] The Supreme Court actually defined maternal health as all factors, the physical, the emotional,
[00:17:19] the psychological, the familial and the woman's age as being relevant to the well-being
[00:17:26] of the patient.
[00:17:28] So while the decision in Roe allowed for state intervention after the first trimester,
[00:17:36] the decision in Doe allowed for the right to privacy through the entire process.
[00:17:44] So long as after the first trimester factors were brought into bear that included the
[00:17:51] maternal health.
[00:17:53] I'm going to pause here because many arguments will be made that Doe versus Bolton didn't
[00:17:59] legalize abortion beyond the first trimester that Doe versus Bolton only allowed for a medical
[00:18:08] practitioner to make a decision.
[00:18:11] But you see the reality here is that the way that our nation works, the way that our
[00:18:16] laws work, is that an individual who is accused of committing a crime does not have the burden
[00:18:23] of proof placed on them.
[00:18:26] But instead the accuser has a burden of proof placed on them.
[00:18:32] You see, the defendant doesn't have to prove that he or she is not guilty, the defendant
[00:18:38] doesn't have to prove anything.
[00:18:40] It's beholden upon the prosecutor, it's beholden upon the individual's saying that someone
[00:18:45] has committed a crime to prove that that crime was committed and it was committed with
[00:18:51] intent.
[00:18:52] So when maternal health is so loosely defined, is putting together all factors, the physical
[00:19:00] emotional, psychological, familial and age, it becomes hard for a prosecution to prove
[00:19:10] that a medical practitioner was incorrect in their determination than an abortion was necessary.
[00:19:18] In short, combined both the role ruling and the doe ruling effectively made abortion legal
[00:19:25] from conception all the way through all three trimesters.
[00:19:30] Almost immediately once these two decisions were released to the public, they came under
[00:19:39] attack from pro-life proponents.
[00:19:42] One major pro-life organization, the National Right to Life Committee, or NRLC, which
[00:19:49] was originally formed under the National Conference of Catholic Bishops or the NCCB, became
[00:19:55] an independent organization and began to take advantage of a newly-infigurated pro-life
[00:20:01] movement as a result of those rulings.
[00:20:05] Going so far as to officially make access to abortion, it can't pay an issue in 1974.
[00:20:15] In 1976, a pro-life congressman by the name of Harry J. Hyde introduced an amendment
[00:20:22] to the 1977 fiscal appropriation for Medicaid, known today as the high-dement.
[00:20:31] It prohibited the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortion procedures, except
[00:20:36] in cases where the life of the mother was endangered.
[00:20:40] This of course made it hard for mothers and women who were from the poor side of America
[00:20:49] to gain access because they no longer had government supplementation to their health care.
[00:20:56] You see, the high-dement made it clear that the government didn't see abortion as
[00:21:03] a method of health care for women.
[00:21:06] Other attacks to the decisions came from key leadership within pro-life organizations,
[00:21:12] men like Victor Rosenblum, the vice chairman for the Americans United for Life or
[00:21:18] AUL and John Nune, a pro-life law professor at the University of California at Berkeley,
[00:21:25] compared the ruling that fetuses were not human to the ruling in the dreads'
[00:21:32] God case that black people were not considered human.
[00:21:35] Nune and even went so far as to call for our constitutional amendment, called the human
[00:21:40] life amendment, to be added to the constitution in order to ensure that the constitution
[00:21:45] had the teeth it needed to protect human life.
[00:21:49] Ironically enough, an attempt was made to actually fail to pass through Congress in the
[00:21:58] second came in the form of a failed attempt to initiate a constitutional convention.
[00:22:04] Over the course of the nearly 50 years following the decision in Rome, there were
[00:22:08] winds and losses on both sides.
[00:22:11] Pro-life pro-choice, they all had winds with the Supreme Court, they all had losses
[00:22:17] with the Supreme Court.
[00:22:19] Laws were passed in order to achieve loopholes that were found in the decision
[00:22:24] and challenges were made to those loopholes.
[00:22:27] Pro-life organizations lobbied states to pass various forms of laws in order to restrict
[00:22:33] abortion access.
[00:22:35] Some came in the form of bands, those bands included method bands, essentially bands
[00:22:41] where a type of procedure was prohibited from being conducted to reason bands which focused
[00:22:50] on the reasoning for why a woman wanted to have an abortion.
[00:22:55] Some of the reasons cited were for racial purposes and then finally bands on self-managed
[00:23:02] abortions or SMAs.
[00:23:04] Other laws appeared in the form of restrictions, specifically targeted restriction
[00:23:09] of abortion providers or trapped requirement of parental involvement in the case of miners
[00:23:15] and consent laws.
[00:23:17] Laws that required the perspective of mother to go through a process by which she had
[00:23:24] to understand what was occurring during the abortion to her child so that she could make
[00:23:30] consent only after receiving information.
[00:23:35] So I wanted to dig into these bands just a little bit here.
[00:23:38] Within the method band there was one band that to this day is still very well known, it's
[00:23:44] one of great controversy and that is a band on a procedure called dilation and extraction.
[00:23:52] You see in a dilation and extraction the mother has her cervix dilated and the child or
[00:23:59] prospective child is removed partially from the mother's womb and killed before completing
[00:24:09] the abortion.
[00:24:10] Excuse me, the delivery.
[00:24:13] In 2001 Congress passed a law that made it illegal for dilation and extraction abortions to occur
[00:24:22] and in 2007 the Supreme Court held up that law as constitutional
[00:24:28] many other method bands didn't live up to the same standard and it's likely that dilation
[00:24:36] and extraction bands held up under the Supreme Court solely because of the nature by which
[00:24:43] the abortion was carried out also by the way that the pro-life movement portrayed dilation and
[00:24:52] extraction procedures.
[00:24:55] Reason bands were far less frequent and they didn't stand up to challenge nearly as well as
[00:25:04] the parcel birth abortion bands.
[00:25:08] Simply because a reason band delved into the right to privacy.
[00:25:14] Interestingly the targeted restriction of abortion providers and the criminalization of self-managed
[00:25:21] abortions, well those bands came from a more historic method.
[00:25:29] If you remember in the first episode we discussed how the American Medical Association lobbied
[00:25:36] states and Congress to pass laws that made it harder and harder for midwives to practice
[00:25:43] maternal health and to be part of the health of a woman during the pregnancies.
[00:25:50] It made it harder for a midwife to be there and to carry out abortions or to be there for the birth of the child.
[00:26:01] And instead put a woman's health primarily in the hands of male doctors.
[00:26:09] Well in that same sense, in that same notion, in that same process we now have
[00:26:16] or we used to have those targeted restrictions of abortion providers and the
[00:26:23] criminalization of self-managed abortions. Under the targeted restriction of abortion providers you had instances
[00:26:29] such as the case in Missouri where because of the restrictions, the entire state had one abortion facility.
[00:26:40] Because the restrictions were so strange that abortion facilities just couldn't afford the
[00:26:45] requirements. They couldn't afford to pay for the licensing, they couldn't afford to pay for the facilities
[00:26:50] that were required and thus they had to close because our practice had become illegal under the law.
[00:26:58] Parental involvement laws, they succeeded as well because in instances where a minor was pregnant
[00:27:05] many states held that the minor didn't have the option to make a choice that would benefit them
[00:27:11] because they weren't of the appropriate mental maturity level and that they didn't understand
[00:27:18] the decisions that they were making. And so they allowed for the parent to make the decisions for them
[00:27:23] and consent laws. Consent laws allowed for some of the most barbarous education processes
[00:27:31] that we've ever seen. Forcing pregnant women to sit through videos and photos and presentations
[00:27:40] that showed grotesque images of aborted fetuses that demonstrated just what the baby was going
[00:27:50] to go through in an abortion and left out anything that made it easier to accept what came with
[00:27:59] having an abortion in a 1992 decision from the case of Casey versus Plant Parenthood,
[00:28:06] the Supreme Court reaffirmed the road decision. They ruled that a state cannot ban or interfere
[00:28:12] with the woman's decision to have an abortion. However, it did uphold laws that required a 24-hour
[00:28:19] waiting period and parental consent for minor seeking abortions. Now as we all know
[00:28:27] with time and innovation and the rise of technology, our understanding of the world around us
[00:28:34] our understanding of our bodies, our understanding of our place in the universe has grown.
[00:28:41] Specifically our understanding of the human body and through medical innovations and medical
[00:28:47] capabilities growing, the ability for doctors to detect and understand the growth of the human
[00:28:53] fetus during pregnancy increased exponentially. As a result, a new form of abortion ban rose
[00:29:01] in the 2000s and 2010s. This ban was commonly or is commonly known as the fetal heart beat
[00:29:10] abortion ban. These laws placed a ban on abortions after the detection of what is known
[00:29:16] as the fetal heartbeat. Now, opponents to this bill will say that what is deemed to be the fetal
[00:29:23] heartbeat as early as 15 weeks, actually as early as six weeks, is it really a heartbeat at all
[00:29:30] but just electrical pulses because the heart hasn't formed. Meanwhile, proponents of these bills
[00:29:40] and proponents of these bands pointed to those electrical impulses is proof that life begins
[00:29:48] at conception. As proof that if a fetus has a heartbeat that it's alive and it can thrive
[00:29:57] and it is a human being and therefore abortion is marked. In 2021, Texas introduced a fetal heartbeat
[00:30:04] ban, but created enforcement technique that proved to be difficult to challenge. You see,
[00:30:12] this ban was also called a vigilante law. The enforcement of this law didn't fall on the state
[00:30:19] prosecution process but instead was left up to the individual private citizens of the state of Texas.
[00:30:29] Essentially, it stated that it was up to the citizens to sue anyone that they suspected
[00:30:39] of conducting supporting facilitating or having an abortion after the six week time frame in
[00:30:52] which a fetal heartbeat was heard. Now, naturally, challenges were made to the Texas law.
[00:31:00] One such was carried by the Justice Department and the challenge was made by the Justice
[00:31:05] Department against the state of Texas but when it reached the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court ruled
[00:31:12] that the state of Texas wasn't the correct defendant. That because Texas itself was not enforcing
[00:31:19] the law that they could not be sued and that decision allowed for the six week ban
[00:31:26] two remaining place. In 2022, the latest culmination in the fight over abortion rights
[00:31:34] came to a head and that was a challenge to a Mississippi law that prohibited all abortions
[00:31:40] with minor exceptions that occurred after 15 weeks. The challenge in that case now knows
[00:31:45] the doves versus Jackson resulted in a scotist ruling that completely overturned the ruling in
[00:31:51] row by invalidating the decision and it did termining that there is no protection for abortion
[00:31:58] in the constitution. Specifically stating that the right to privacy does not cover
[00:32:06] the right to abortion. We will dig into the doves decision and how it came to be
[00:32:13] on the last episode of this series. So stay tuned because the end is near
[00:32:20] and because of the nature of the final episode, I want to put this out there. If you have thoughts
[00:32:25] or opinions or questions or if there is some argument that you want to have brought up in the next
[00:32:31] episode, please. Please feel free to visit www.cranboxpolitics.com. Click on the contact us
[00:32:44] tab and write a message. I'll get it. I'll read it and maybe I'll include your thoughts
[00:32:51] into the final episode here. I know I'm not a big podcast, I know that I have a very small following
[00:32:58] but if we all come together and if we all have conversations and if we all communicate our thoughts
[00:33:07] in our opinions and we find that middle ground, we'll be able to color outside the political lines.
[00:33:15] If you like this episode and you like the podcast, please buy all means in your favorite podcast
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[00:33:31] to know more information or if you want to find out where my sources were at and want to do your
[00:33:37] own research go to www.cranboxpolitics.com. That's it for now. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.