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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, friends. I'm Sammy Sage, and this is American Fever Dream, a new podcast presented by Betches News, where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience.
You'll notice that I am not joined by V, but that is because we are bringing you a very special doubleheader mini-sode today. We are first going to be joined by my friend, Emily Amick, a.k.a. Emily in your phone, to do a follow-up on the conspiratization of media and how it pertains to the question of where Kate Middleton was.
And then for the second half of this episode, you'll get to hear V as she interviews Julie Kay of Abortion Access Front to talk about the Mipha-Pristone case and tons of interesting information such as where you can continue to get Mipha-Pristone no matter what the Supreme Court decision is. So with that, let's go to Emily. Hello, Emily. Hi. How are you feeling? Vindicated? Vindicated.
You know, it's always good to be right, but I'm sad that I was right in this situation, obviously, because she has cancer. I know. It's really tragic in some ways, such a like, see, look what you did. Look what you people did.
Well, and one of the things I talked about with Elizabeth Holmes in on her sub stack, so many thoughts was why the conspiratization has suddenly stopped so abruptly and quickly. We are seeing a small trickle online. And I said, I think mainly because it's not fun anymore. Yeah.
Do you remember that like when they first made this announcement, they had said that Kate did not have cancer? So I almost feel like that gave people this like green light. Like it's not going to be that bad. You can talk about it. Not that there aren't a million other things that could be just as tragic. But I agree with you. It's not fun. It's kind of inhumane. And it gave people the – like a nice dose of perspective, including myself. Yeah.
But like you mentioned, so you had an incredible interview with Elizabeth Holmes, not the scammer blood lady. Not famed criminal Elizabeth Holmes, but noted royal watcher. Yes, and royal style watcher. And you had just an incredible perspective on there about how this is so much bigger than where was Kate Middleton in the movie.
Yeah, you know, and this is a little bit been my point all along. And I put out a real article.
Last week where I was like, I've been a Debbie Downer during this process, but that's because I think that this is just one example of a larger problem. And we talked about this on the podcast episode as well, which is the conspiratization of everything and the way the scaffolding of the internet, the infrastructure of social media promotes this and incentivizes this.
And this was just, I think, an example of that. I think there's a couple reasons why this story in particular grew a lot bigger than other conspiracies. I'm already there's already a new conspiracy starting on my TikTok. Like people have moved on. They are beyond it. Don't tell me what it is or do I want to know?
Well, I don't think it's going to get big, but I think it's an interesting anecdote, which is you may you may have seen this also on your TikTok, which is there's a problem where there is a man or multiple men who are just going up to women on the streets of Manhattan and punching them in the face.
Oh, my God. We think people are just talking about this on Slack. Yeah. Yeah. So lots of people are talking about this. And there's last time I saw 13 women that have been identified on TikTok who this has happened to. And immediately, though, the response I started to see from other people on TikTok was I
I don't believe this. This isn't true. This is a sleeper campaign for something, right? They're all clout chasing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which...
in and of itself is clout chasing but also i sort of get it because that is a logical reaction to the the lack of truth that exists online right like there is no way to be able to discern truth from fiction and one of the reasons the royals were such a
an apt target for this type of thing is because they have participated in coverups and putting out misinformation and obfuscation and, you know, being awful to the people who are their so-called family members. And they were a little bit asking for it. But that's why I think they were particularly ripe for this type of treatment. But it's not to say that the scaffolding that has been created isn't going to just keep getting reused over and over again.
That's really the core of why this is so dangerous and also so understandable is because at the heart of conspiracies, conspiracies are a real type of crime, but at the heart of them is usually some kernel of truth or some piece of a real, a real mouthpiece sense that has been covered up by a powerful entity in some way or minimized. And, um,
This has been going on for, you know, decades to some degrees, but there was much higher public trust and I would argue probably less corruption, less money in people's pockets that's that kind of, you know, running things. The worst type of presidential scandal used to be like the teapot dome scandal. And then it was Richard Nixon. And now it's Donald Trump. What certain figures have gotten away with, maybe not like garden variety corruption, but corruption.
our biggest leaders have done is kind of what I mean. Donald Trump's attempt to enact a coup to take over the United States government when he didn't win a presidential election does take the cake when it comes to presidents acting badly. That I would agree with. I think, you know, the thing about what's happened online is that
it's it doesn't it doesn't really matter what the stakes are and there's always in there is always an example and i've gotten really sucked into debate bro tick tock recently um and i will say these dudes they are very skilled at the debate uh and this is something i had seen mostly on the right and i'm now getting sucked into left-wing debate bro tick tock this dude destiny and
one of the things that I think, you know, my dad's a statistician and he always, he thinks he's funny when he jokes that they have some word they use for it, but like you can make statistics mean anything you want them to mean if you really try. Right. And inevitably you can always find a historical anecdote to prove your argument because there's just, the world is rife with anecdotes. And I,
The United States government has most certainly engaged in bad behavior and the CIA has most certainly engaged in bad behavior. And what I saw a lot during this recent conspiracy boom was a reiteration of those bad behaviors as if those are evidence of current and future behaviors, which it isn't necessarily right. Like that's not really how behavior works.
Those were different people. It's not evidence, but people have been conditioned. I think that's what it really shows is that people have been conditioned to be, to have the truth obfuscated and hidden from them. And for reality that they can see with their own ears and eyes and senses being denied by people in power. And it's not that it's, it's not, I agree with you. It's not like everything. A lot of the times,
conspiracies are just like incompetence, like messiness over malevolence. But I think what in these cases, like I don't think it's a coincidence that all of this is coinciding with the fact that we have someone running for president who denies the election. Like this, it's the environment that has made people so skeptical and the Royals are just one example. It's this sense that like no entity, no institution is being truthful.
And I don't know, like how do you think we can increase public trust in institutions and in media and in facts? Yeah.
Yeah, but we also have institutions, corporations, countries that are incentivized to destroy public trust in this country, to sow chaos and to make it so we can't function. And, you know, we you and I were reading an article from the BBC earlier today about the fact that there was a
Now, evidence showing that part of Kate's piracy was a Russian disinformation campaign. And this is not the allegation isn't that these were organs of the state, but rather sort of Russian actors who are endeavoring to sow chaos in the United States. I would guess they are endeavoring to.
build accounts that they can then use in the future. And they were specifically targeting those accounts against France, which has been supporting very supportive of Ukraine. Obviously, Russia has invaded Ukraine and doesn't want Ukraine to get support from France or anyone else for that matter. Yeah. So I'll read what exactly they found, because they actually found evidence that of a particular group of
Right.
It's pretty much been established that there is a link here. And the way that they do it is not as obvious as just making something up. The way he describes it as that these groups will have a large number of accounts where they'll hijack a popular claim just for the sake of injecting more confusion into it. And then to make it harder to separate the disinformation and the trusted messengers from
the untrustworthy messengers. But in this case, what they were trying to do was build engagement off of the Kate's Pharisee things and, like you said, kind of parallel it with information that's targeting France about Ukraine. This is a very advanced strategy. They refer to them as something called political technologists. So this is now a new – it's a real threat.
Yeah. And, you know, I don't want to go all Nancy Pelosi here and say the whole thing is blamed on Russian disinformation because I don't I certainly don't think it is. No, they take advantage of it. Right. Fuel to the fire. And, you know, part of the problem with all of these types of campaigns is we only learn about them retroactively. And.
Over the course of U.S. history, the last couple of years, we have retroactively been learning about these mass events, how there's foreign actors that have been engaged in sowing division and sowing conspiracy. And you take that and you add it on top of the inherent incentive structure of social media, which is to gain virality and clicks and currency via takedowns, via bans,
you know, being dramatic, right? Via promoting conspiracies. And it is a, it is a recipe for destroying the fabric of trust in this country. The end. That is the goal. And it's almost like they're using our hyper capitalism against us because that is how our, our, like you said, like our platforms are organized to provoke emotion, to sow distrust, to polarize, right?
Something that I really have been thinking about a lot lately is that I feel more and more convinced that the entire DEI argument, the argument about DEI, not just the existence of DEI, was manufactured. The way that it gets tied into every single thing that happens, the way that it's mentioned when a shipping container crashes into something
into a bridge when there's a plane crash because the regulations were loosened. All of these things get wrapped up into this. Like, how does DEI even get brought into this? But I've just started to think, like, the way it coincides with everything. Similar to woke, it's now just a word they use to replace when they want to say black. You know, I do think that these things exist. And I think a
a question you asked earlier was like, how do we get away from this? And one of the things that you and I talk a lot about in our book, democracy and retrograde, please pre-order is the, is the, the fact that like all politics isn't these national culture wars, right? Like there is a lot more going on in this country than these few issues that galvanize Tik TOK or Twitter or truth, social, whatever it is.
And there's a lot of people who are totally unengaged in this whole mess. And those things are important. And I think that for people who get very frustrated and overwhelmed by all of these types of things, my suggestion is always like find another political activity to get involved in where you can feel a connection to truth and progress and movement on issues and see it through. Because they do, they certainly exist in this country. There's like a multitude of options.
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This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. I've said this on episodes where we've talked about the TikTok legislation and
And why China even cares to weaponize TikTok and why it is more dangerous in certain ways than American-owned platforms. And it's that other countries, our adversaries, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, they do not have what America has, which is a thriving country built on social freedoms and democracy. Right.
They are only able to have what they have within the context of the leadership that is sort of always at threat in theory of being overturned because it doesn't reflect the people. And they will never be able to conquer us militarily or economically most likely. But what they can do is degrade America, the American spirit that keeps us hopeful, that keeps us engaged, that keeps us
thriving and innovating and reaching for something for progress. That's what they want to destroy by fragmenting us and just completely degrade what, no pun intended, makes America great currently.
Yeah, yet it's always interesting to see people online sort of talk about how life would be better if they were in foreign authoritarian countries, which I do increasingly see online, which is an interesting, you know, I often talk about how the political spectrum is not a line. It's actually a circle. And sometimes people become so far left, they turn out to be right wing authoritarians.
That's been happening. It's been happening. I think for a lot of people who we have been sort of –
lucky to live in a generation that doesn't have foreign conflicts touching our lives. And the reality is the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which are the wars of our generation for millennials, are things that for many, many people did not impact their lives at all. When we left Afghanistan, there were people who were like, oh my God, I forgot we were involved in that war, like a lot, a shocking amount of
And I think that people sort of were not living in the era of the cold war where everything is constantly about this. And one of the things that has happened on TikTok has been a real, like for better or for worse, like for better, a real examination of if we should be engaged in these, uh,
overseas military endeavors. I am personally, you know, in favor of massively decreasing foreign engagement. I don't believe in military nation building, right? All of this stuff. I think those are good things. I support them. But on the other flip side, there's sort of been a disassociation from the fact that we do have...
enemies. There are countries that are working to our detriment and they're not going, you know, I spent a long time representing victims of terrorism who were killed in bombings, who were kidnapped, who were beheaded, all of these things by terrorists who kill them because they are Americans. And they're not doing that type of stuff as much anymore because they've discovered new and better ways to go after America. It's hard. A lot of nuance gets lost.
because everything we consume is 30 seconds and fed to you because you already agree with it. And then in real life, people aren't really together. You don't really encounter other viewpoints as much because people are so stratified by their incomes or just people who are similar to them in their city. It's just a very difficult environment to spread information and for people to get on the same page and
without a sense of what's in it for you or who's paying you. You're already biased. There's just so much information out there. And it's all so complicated. And so much of it is nuanced and involving extensive histories and all the different players and all of this stuff. And it's hard to understand. And what's a lot easier to understand is my team versus your team.
And that's what I see a lot of, especially coming out of right wing conspiracy accounts. That's what a lot of it is. And they have code words. And if you use those words and, you know, this is sort of a conversation taking a left turn. But this gets into sort of my fundamental distrust of etymological activism. Right. Where it's like, that's not really that's not really what this is about. Can you define that for the peeps?
I have noticed this thing where people come very fixated on words and word choice. That's exactly what I hoped you were going to say. And so the example from the left is people's fixation on Joe Biden saying the word abortion. Like the reality is this man is doing a lot to protect abortion access in this country within, within the limitations of his powers, those limitations being like quite severe. Um, and, uh,
Yet the conversation is always he needs to he needs to say a word. And I get people talk about it all the time. And I'm like, I would rather him do the policy. Right. Say the word. And on the right, they have like tons of words that are very specific. I mean, you mentioned D.I. critical race theory. Right. Like critical race theory is not a.
It's not the thing that they were talking about. Woke. And it's just you use these specific pronouns. There's so many that it's just words-based activism that's largely disassociated with a policy goal or a thing. It's about representing which team you're on and which cultural identity you value. Yeah, it's like a jersey. That is really what it is. It's weird how words can be so meaningless sometimes.
And yet so meaningful to some people, to some people. Yeah. And I don't, I'm not going to yuck anyone's yum. You know, if people want to, if people want to engage in that type of activity, it's important to them. I totally respect it and I value it. It's not my thing.
I get it. But at the same time, I do think it is harmful. Like the insistence is harmful because people – it flattens people. It flattens issues into just are you under this banner? Are you under that banner? And rarely does any form of progress or solution just come with one very clear cut mandate and like a flag. It's very – it's complicated. And in reality, there are so many different constraints that are at play.
And that the average person does not consider. So it's, again, no surprise to me that people's attention, you know, people are consuming news in 30 seconds, but they want and they want to represent a policy in one word. And it's just not really it's I don't know. Social media has broken our brains. Yeah. I mean, well, I agree with that. But I think that, you know.
Nonetheless, this is the cards that we have been dealt, right? You know, sometimes when we have these conversations, I don't support the TikTok ban for a number of reasons. Mostly, I think it's unconstitutional and that's a barrier for me. Fundamentally, like, we're not going to... The train has left the station here. And this exists now. And so the question is, how do we figure out how to help people maintain civic engagement, do...
do it in a way that is sustainable and helpful to them and brings joy to their lives. Because, you know, while also still continuing to hold a fire to, you know, accountable, you know, TikTok has been really good at sort of
increasing information awareness for people on holding politicians accountable, the power of political organizing, right? Like there's a lot of benefits to it. The increase in awareness about key important issues. And for me, the reason I sort of harp on the conspiracy stuff so much is A, because I think it can go down a really dangerous path, C-E-G Trump, but B, because
Because I think it is a really powerful machine for changing America for the better. And I want to see it harnessed. And problematically, it's a lot more fun to engage in conspiracy talk than it is to talk about like really boring issues like tax reform or land reform or, you know, whatever zoning in your community. And you're not going to make money.
I guess. I mean, I don't think it's necessarily boring to talk about those things, but it requires a lot of information. And it's a lot easier to engage in a conversation that requires no information other than awareness of what people are saying and what rumors are flying rather than the actual – trying to form an actual educated opinion.
That is true. I do love the speculation, but I'm not trying to think like, what's the most crazy thing that could possibly be? Like, you know, I kind of want to just get to the bottom of it, but not for the sake that it's going to be something so sinister. Do you feel guilty or self-reflective about your participation in Kate's Pharisee? So I don't feel guilty, but I do feel self-reflective. The thing is, I think it's hard to...
put the blame on the public for something that has – for playing their expected part in this play. Was I a Debbie Downer to you during this process? Did I yuck your yum? No. Not at all. Like I know you were saying like people are really like gleeful about this.
What I find interesting about these moments is that it gives me something to chew over in my brain. So your perspective to me is just as interesting as the craziest thing. And I'm much more likely to agree with your perspective than I am to agree with like – At the end of the day. Even at that moment, like you weren't saying, oh, I think this is what's happening to her.
It was similar to what I thought, honestly. And which is nothing all that scandalous. It's just, they don't want to, what was interesting to me was like watching their moves and how they, what were they trying to cover up that they made these moves? Yeah. And I mean, I think that that's going back to something we talked about before. It's why the Royal family was such a good target because they do have this history and there is, there's so much fodder to discuss, right?
I do think what's sort of interesting is I think that they were trying to be reformed actors in this scenario. Like, I actually think that they were trying their best to do better. And they failed. I think you might be right. They just failed miserably. I mean, because they don't know how to do better. I think that one thing that I bring to this that a lot of other people don't is having been an instrument of the government for an extended period of my life and just knowing that
the, the veep-ness of it all. Right. And like the, the joke in Washington is the most realistic show about politics is veep. And it's just like, it, there was just like a couple underpaid staffers in a room trying to figure out what the comms response should be. Do you think she really Photoshopped her own photo? I absolutely think she Photoshopped her own photo. Yes. As an amateur Photoshopper myself, that's exactly what I would do. And I think. And you write that?
Yeah, I would have done the same thing. And when I looked at the photo, I didn't see all of those things. I have – I mean, please, Sammy. I have sent you graphic design that I am so proud of. And you have been like, this is the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I've never said that. That is 100%. I have heard it in the silence of your texts. Okay, well, that was the silence to you. Yeah.
But like I have – like I look at these things – But you're not Kensington Palace. So there's a difference. I just don't have a lot of respect for this idea of Kensington Palace fundamentally. You're right. At the end of the day, Kensington Palace is just a couple of staffers. Like I don't think there are these like brilliant minds of a generation sitting in Kensington Palace. It's not about their –
It's not about their brilliance. You're right. I think we've learned that now. It's not about their brilliance. It's about the structural advantage that they have. Like you look at that and you're like, they should have it all figured out. They have the full range of options and they do this. I don't know. I've not had jobs where people just try to do the bare minimum of work at any given time. Yeah, but do you think people do that at Kensington Palace? Yeah, I do. Yeah.
Maybe. I don't – okay. I looked back at my own Instagram. I looked back at my own Instagram post that I wrote and like basically just it being a fuck up that they kept trying to cover because they couldn't control the situation, which we now know is because they were figuring out her diagnosis. So here's my –
viewpoint of all of this, right? So something I see a lot in politics is the decision makers in politics are like these boomer dudes who have learned a specific way of action. And that way of action involves like calling reporters, right? And doing radio ads and paid spots and da-da-da-da. And when you try to go to them and get them to do digital stuff, they don't know it. And they don't want to do it and they don't understand it. And so they're like...
let me do it my way. My way is the right way. Right. And I have just imagined that Kensington palace has the same situation where like, there are the people in charge who wanted to do it their way with their little agreements they have with the British press. And they are incapable of learning how to open a PDF. That's, that's what I assume is going on. I think you're absolutely right. And, and like, I do think Kate does her own Photoshop. Uh,
What other hobbies does this woman have? Her only hobby is exercise or sportif, whatever it is, and photography. And as like a photography hobbyist, that is 100% something I would do.
I can see that maybe, but they're presenting her as being like sick. And she's gotten away with it before. Right, but has that been her even or has that been someone else? Look, I think you're right. I actually think you're absolutely right about how they were trying to be more open and they maybe screwed that up.
because they're so used to the old way of doing things. And then also you have this whole disinformation environment, this information environment where no one's trusting anything and so easy to go on TikTok. And you have this institution that is unique from any other celebrity or even US government institution. Because something you said in the article was like, it's really hard to get people who are eating candy to eat their vegetables.
And when you have an organization that exists to be seen and exists with a certain pattern of how they conduct their comms, and then when they deviate from it and you have all this pent up evidence of times that they've obscured things and treated certain people unequally, you had that whole Megan discourse come up.
I think it's very hard to then blame the public for reacting in the way that they'd been trained to react. Because if we didn't, there would be no monarchy. There would be no, it would be a massive blow to the UK economy even. Yes. I,
I think this is a very valid point, right? Like the monarchy exists to be consumed and commented on by the masses. That is their only thing. I guess they do some charitable works, but the last one I've heard of that was effective was like Diana when she did the landmines thing and the AIDS work. I,
I think that that is why during my whole commentary process during this event, I have tried to lay off until this very moment, uh, commenting on the actual substance because I don't really knock people for participating in this. I do think some of them went a little bit too far. I think that the comments about her body, the comments about domestic violence were, um, like I, I,
thought those were bad and they shouldn't have done them. But otherwise, you know, I think that they were all sort of engaged in the type of culture that the royal family lives off of literally, but they,
Nonetheless, the implications of the conversations are still meaningful and negative and exist within this broader culture and information culture that we have. And sort of that's why I tried to make sure that I limited my public commentary to those types of things. And, you know, like there will be very shortly another mass event where there's a mass conspiracy. We just we just got to wait another couple of months and this will happen again.
And we will see how everyone has learned or hasn't. Yeah. Do you think they'll learn? Yeah, I think they learned that it works. And I think that there's a lot of people on TikTok who saw how much money other, you know, how many views and followers people gained by participating in this process. And therefore, the next time they'll try to be the one that does it. You're right. That probably will happen.
Mark our words, everybody. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Emily. Everyone should sign up for your Substack. Where can they find it? Please follow me on Substack. I'm Emily in your phone, on Instagram and on Substack. I put some of my more ephemeral and ridiculous content on TikTok, but my best content is on Substack. It's where you'll find my sort of deep dives and things like that. So please sign up. Yeah. Emily is doing a really...
kind of interesting ongoing conversation about disinformation and influencers and how the social media environment on Instagram and TikTok especially are built to kind of send us into this rabbit hole. And this, you know, you described it like a casino where you feel like you're living in this alternate reality. And then you have to come out and take a breath of fresh air and figure out what's really going on. Let's all touch grass.
Let's all touch grass. And so check out Emily Substack. Check out her interview with Elizabeth Holmes. And thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned now for V's interview with Julie Kay of Abortion Access Fronts.
Hey, Fever Dreamers. As Sammy said, I'm here with our pal, Julie Kay. Julie is the executive director and co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access, otherwise known as ACT Access. It's an organization that works to make telemedicine abortion available everywhere nationwide. Julie also has international experience advocating for reproductive freedom as a human right. We love to see it. Julie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on.
So we're here today to talk about how the Supreme Court is trying to mess with abortion access. And you are someone that we were so excited to have here because you've done this not just here in the United States, but also in Ireland, as we'll get into. Now, Mifeprestone's been approved and safe to use since September of 2000. Why now? Why now are they trying to revoke its FDA access?
Well, I think the Supreme Court is responding to anti-abortion folks who are trying to get telemedicine out of women and pregnant people's hands. The mifepristone is the most widely used method of abortion. It was before Dobbs came along and they overturned Roe versus Wade.
And now the popularity is just growing and for very good reasons, both because for many people, it's a preferred way to access abortion. They can take the pills in the privacy of their own home. It's safe. It's a lot less expensive. It's kind of, you know, a two days of being able.
in your home. The doctors that I work with say it's like a flu and maybe like a heavy period. It's not a cakewalk, but it's definitely something that women and pregnant people are choosing rather than going into a clinic. Now,
With the advent of telemedicine, you can get the pills sent to you at home. It's safe to take them. A doctor or other advanced care practitioner does a screening. They figure out what's the right dose for you, make sure you're an appropriate candidate. They mail you the pills. You get them within three to five days. Most providers charge about $150, and almost all of them will waive or lower that fee if somebody can't afford it.
So this has been a really popular option because of the shield laws that have passed. We now have providers offering medication abortion legally to people in all 50 states. So that gets under the anti-abortion folks skin big time. I bet I bet it does. And did they has this been a thing where you could get the abortion pills in person for a long time? Or was this something that sort of started during COVID and now we're getting to keep it?
Well, you could get them in person for a long time. It meant a trip to a clinic and sort of the full cost of a clinic visit. So what has happened with telemedicine is that that has become an option since COVID was really a byproduct of COVID that the FDA rolled back the regulations to allow that to happen.
You know, as you said in the opening, this medication has been proven safe globally for decades now. So there really isn't a need to have an in-person visit. In fact, when you have an in-person visit, they basically hand you the pills and you take them at home anyways. You know, we'd rather that people do that than get back in their cars or trains or buses and things. Right. This is part of a two pill regimen.
to do a medical abortion, but it seems like they're only going after the mifepristone and not the meso. Why just one of the two pills? Well, first I would say give them time. They're coming for everything. You know, they've got to start somewhere. I think that mifepristone is more vulnerable because mesoprostol is indicated for other use. Mifepristone is predominantly for abortion and for miscarriage management.
So you're not going to get as much pushback by politicizing this as you would for other medications and particularly for misoprostol. But, you know, you can do a medication abortion with just misoprostol. Again, the doctors that I work with and the evidence is it's not as nearly as good a patient experience.
So if they come from mifepristone, we can still send pills by mail legally, they would be misoprostol. And we're also looking at other alternative protections at the state level. And we need the FDA to get on board and start saying that they're going to take care of women, even if the Supreme Court does not. Now, I may be a little ignorant to this, because I've never taken these pills personally myself. But what does mifepristone do? So you take it and what happens?
Mifeprofuscin ends the pregnancy and misoprostol kind of expels the contents of the uterus. I am not a doctor, so I could go more than that, but it won't be nearly as accurate as if it was. That's good enough for me. I work very closely with doctors and I usually let them answer those questions. But, you know, again, it's
Your body reacts as if it's sort of a two-day heavy period with some flu-like symptoms. You know, it's incredibly safe. A lot of the conversation at the Supreme Court level was about the safety and a lot of the myths that have come forward about this. In fact, two of the studies that were relied on by the anti-abortion plaintiffs were withdrawn from publication during the course of this litigation, as the journals that have published and recognized this.
that they were filled with bias and misinformation. How many women are taking these medicines in a year? Like how much help do they provide? Well, right now, more than half the abortions that are done in the United States, women and pregnant people are choosing to use medication abortion. About a fifth of those medication abortions are by telemedicine. And our numbers at ACT are showing that about 8%.
8,000 or more women and pregnant people in banned or restricted states are taking the medications through telemedicine every month. Because we were able to pass telemedicine abortion shield laws in six different states, what's now happened is that we've gotten these virtual clinics up and running and they can serve people in all 50 states legally. So what those...
Shield laws do is they provide protections for practitioners in New York, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington, and Vermont. And providers sitting in those states use telemedicine. They serve patients. And those providers have protections if somebody from the anti-abortion state comes after the provider and tries to arrest them or tries to remove their license or bring a civil lawsuit.
And those states will say, you know, we're not going to participate in that action against this provider because they were in our shielded state. They were doing legally protected reproductive health care. And from the patient point of view, it's not a crime to take the pills yourself. In no state is anybody going to be prosecuted for that.
self-managing their own care and taking the pills. However, we've often seen states go after women for behavior during pregnancy. That was happening even when Roe was the law of the land. And it was a racist criminal justice system going after vulnerable women. And that continues to happen. There's a lot of
overstatement and sort of twisting of laws to use them against women for behavior during pregnancy. But taking the medication yourself is not a criminal activity. And so by having these shield state protections, we're making the option available for women who don't want to travel or can't travel because they have
child care or work or school or any kind of limitations, whether financial or other ways that it's difficult and expensive for them to travel. And there's just less exposure for them overall. There's less chance that they're going to be investigated. So in all 50 states right now, you can get medical abortion pills in the mail. Yes. And you won't be in trouble if you take them.
Well, I'm a lawyer, so I always have to say yes and. Yes and. And look, everybody's going to look at what the options are in front of them. You can't be prosecuted for doing your own abortion. Does that mean that somebody is not going to threaten you or come after you? Unfortunately not. We've seen a lot of abuse of prosecution. We've seen a lot of harassment. But if you look at the numbers, unfortunately,
of women who have been using telemedicine thousands and thousands each month. It hasn't been happening and we're grateful for that. But what I can say is there's a lot of huffing and puffing and chest thumping by anti-abortion politicians who are saying you can't
You can't fund somebody. You can't do this, that and the other. Those are untested laws right now. But I don't want anybody to ever kind of put themselves in a position where they're going to be making a choice that's not right for themselves or sort of drawing attention, because as we know, we live in a world that has very.
bias and racist criminal justice system. But we also live in a world where, you know, women and pregnant people can't get access to the healthcare that is their human right. And so, you know, we're doing what works and what works well. I always say to the providers I work with, we can't get your risk to zero, but we're going to try to minimize it as much as possible. And we're going to support you in this. Who is behind this attack on abortion, specifically this telemedicine attack?
So I consider the AHM case a direct attack on telemedicine abortion because they are trying to put back in place the in-person requirement. And if you look at who's behind it, there are a group of lawyers working with anti-abortion doctors. And, you know, they're bringing this litigation. They've been very critical.
creative in many ways with laws coming out of Texas, as we've seen, that have really trampled the right to access reproductive freedom. Specifically, this case, I think, is a result of what we were left with after the Donald Trump presidency, because he appointed the judge in Texas. There's a single judge in one district in the panhandle of Texas, Judge Matthew Kaczmarek, who
who had this case and then sort of, it was like the Disney fast pass through the fifth circuit, all the way up to the Supreme court. And, you know,
Who's to blame in some way? All of us for being asleep at the wheel over the appointment to the federal courts and all of us for not recognizing what's going on at the state level and voting like abortion rights really matter. The good news is we are now. I mean, Americans favor access to abortion by about 70 percent of Americans support the Roe versus Wade framework.
And we got to start acting like it more and more. And I think we are. I think we're starting to show that. I think we're starting to be bolder. We're starting to be more engaged politically. We're starting to recognize how this trampling of people's rights really harms the most vulnerable of us.
You know, these anti-abortion laws have the greatest effect on folks without resources, teens, people in rural communities, people with restrictions on their immigration status or their ability to travel. And disproportionately, we're harming women and people of color in this country with our abortion restrictions.
So I think we're starting to rally. And what I like about telemedicine abortion personally is it provides a solution until we restore these rights and until we indeed expand our rights to reproductive freedom as part of our basic human rights. We have a lot of conversations here on American Fever Dream about when your civil rights kick in, when you are a fully citizenized,
citizen American. And there's a lot of danger right now in Texas due to a different case where a Christian father brought suit saying that his daughter should never be able to access any sort of abortion care or birth control because he, as their father should be the determinant of what medicine they have access to, not them as their own autonomous person. And we're talking about 16, 17 year old girls. At what point,
Is a young girl considered in charge of her own reproductive health? And how will we protect teenagers from these kinds of issues?
Yeah, that case just has such ick factor on it. I mean, I look at, you know, this father trying to sort of politicize and control his daughter's sexuality and doing it in such a desperate way and not a way of communicating with them or instilling values, having conversations, supporting them, anything like that. Instead, you know, it makes me cringe just thinking about it. Yeah.
I co-authored a book called Controlling Women, and I think that whole case just says it all. He's trying to control their sexuality and every other teen in America through sort of squelching it and not...
really recognizing the reality of, you know, that people come to sort of control their sexuality at different ages and stages. But generally, the law has said that when, you know, you're 16 and older, you can do reproductive health care decision making and medical choices independent of your parents. And look, as we always say, in an ideal world, every teen has supportive adults around them or, you know, whether it's an older sibling, an aunt, a friend or anybody. But
those aren't the hard cases. Those aren't the ones that need the laws to protect them. And, you know, we've seen that a lot happening a lot out of Texas for teens in particular, it's difficult for them to travel. It's difficult for them to access their rights. Telemedicine does allow teenagers to access telemedicine healthcare by, through a provider in another state like New York, where those laws would not exist.
apply. New York doesn't have restrictions on teens, so if a teenager is contacting a telemedicine provider in New York, they don't have to comply with any parental consent or laws. So, you know, again, I think what we're seeing in the Dobbs case and in the erasure of the federal constitutional right to abortion is this encroaching on all these so-called privacy rights around contraception. You know, we saw a
The outcry around IVF in Alabama, I don't think that was surprising to anyone, but we're really playing a high stakes game with reproductive health and particularly in a country that has such a high maternal mortality rate and one that is so disproportionately harmful to women of color and particularly to black women in these same areas that are now banning access to abortion and making it more and more difficult for people to access contraceptives.
And so there's a pile on that's really dangerous here. And it's not just here. I mean, you led work in Ireland to get abortion legalized. Can you tell me a little bit about what you did in Ireland and what lessons we could maybe employ from that work here?
Sure. Ireland had a constitutional provision that equated the life of the so-called unborn with the life of the so-called mother. And it was very similar to this idea of fetal personhood that people are really pushing from the anti-abortion side here now.
And it meant that, you know, as with everywhere, when abortion is criminalized, it doesn't go away, it goes underground. And in this case, we have what was called, commonly referred to as the Irish solution to the Irish problem.
which meant that women simply traveled to England or other countries in Europe to access abortion, only it wasn't simple. It was stigmatizing and shameful and expensive and isolating. And thousands and thousands of women each year traveled like that.
I brought a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights challenging the ban on abortion as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. I brought the case on behalf of three women with sort of very different circumstances, because I think it's important we're talking about abortion to not sort of hone in on one woman's experience and start judging and picking that apart. And I want that in all the kind of cases in the work we did.
I did an amicus brief for the recent Supreme Court case, and we had 10 different women talking about why they use telemedicine. I think it's the more stories we include in the broader, the better off we are in showing how abortion is such a common and everyday experience for so many folks.
So anyways, the court did rule in favor of one of my clients. And what was really important in that case is that we used a human rights framework. And it's one that people get. I mean, the decision about whether, when and with whom to have a child to control your liberty and dignity and be free from discrimination.
there's such a basic connection there to reproductive freedom, that it was an idea that really resonated with people in political activism, in elected office, and we really sort of built a campaign around it. So the lawsuit wasn't in isolation, but really part of a bigger piece of work that eventually convinced the government that they had to run a referendum on
to pull that clause, that sort of equating of the unborn and the woman in the Constitution. They ran a referendum. They pulled that clause from the Constitution, and they've had legal abortion there. And so it was a long and winding path. I was one of many, many, many activists who worked on this issue, understood this as a human right, and I think
The takeaway for me in the United States are two things. The first is travel just sucks. I mean, it can't be the only option that we offer to people who need abortion services. And the second is that this is a human rights issue. And it's one that once we start standing up and talking about it like that and not being pushed back and not being thrashed,
threatened with aiding and abetting or funding or all these kinds of, you know, ways that people have been intimidated from helping others, from helping the people who need the help most, who are in the most vulnerable situations, who are the most marginalized, who are at the most risk of criminal prosecution. The more those of us who have the ability to stand up and protect and talk boldly and act boldly, the better.
because that's what won in Ireland. That's what won in Argentina and Colombia and globally. We've seen nothing but the expansion of abortion rights, except for the US, where it's been a political football, where abortion rights were the gift that Trump gave to a lot of his supporters to look the other way and a lot of what they would have otherwise never been supportive of his actions and behaviors and view. We were traded away. Our rights were traded away and it's time to get them back.
I agree 100%. And that brings me to my final question here was, you talked about the vulnerability of teenagers who may need access, of folks who don't have the money to access reproductive health care or live in a state with bands. And now I think we should talk a little bit about
Women who are leaving the ultra-Orthodox and fundamentalist religions, oftentimes they are lawyers, the ones who are putting forth these bills that are attempting to control women's ability to leave a bad situation or to have bodily autonomy. How do abortion rights factor into your work with helping women either regain parenting or leave an ultra-Orthodox fundamentalist religious abuse experience?
My work in representing people who are leaving fundamentalist religions and want to maintain relationships with their children is very similar to the reproductive freedom issue generally, because ideally the decision about parenting and relationships and the most intimate relationships we create with family and partners and raising our children are ones where we have the freedom to make those decisions. The government isn't
kowtowing to a religious viewpoint. And so a lot of times what I see in the work around the parenting rights of people leaving ultra-Orthodoxy is that the courts are deferring to the political power of a very well-established and entrenched community in New York, particularly around ultra-Orthodoxy, the same way that we see a lot of times abortion rights are being traded away for political support from religious groups.
My general feeling is if you don't want an abortion, don't have one. If you don't want to be religious, that shouldn't be a prerequisite for you to have visitation or custody of your child. So, I mean, I grew up with the sort of free-to-be-you-and-me generation, and it seems very basic to me. I mean, I'm not sure we should revive that because I can kind of remember some of the songs like an earworm, but it really is the irony of...
you know, the situation where we're telling other people what to do with their lives and parenting. And if you look at how we're treating trans kids right now in those families and really stepping in and pushing families around, you know, my views, your family, and using political power to take away some of the most fundamental rights and decision-making that we can have in our lives. And I think that's something that,
You know, we really need to push back against. We really need to restore some of the rights we've lost and keep up some of the protections and gains that we have made in the past generations. I do have a very sort of positive outlook overall, because I think these are decisions that people so know intuitively are their rights and are their human rights that they
It's a way of finding ways for people to get involved and for those of us who can get involved and who can be political and have these conversations to have them on behalf of and support of those who are barely keeping head above water some days and don't have the luxury to protect their rights in some ways. Given what we saw sort of preliminary from the Supreme Court this past Tuesday, are you feeling optimistic that Meaf
Medford Press Zone will keep its FDA status or what's your vibe check on that? You know, there's been a lot of optimism after the Tuesday oral argument, um,
I've seen too many cases argued one way and then behind closed doors, you never know what's going on with the court. So I'm not just holding my breath on it, but I'm also, you know, we're still full steam ahead for how are we going to protect telemedicine no matter what they do and how do we keep
getting the word out that this exists so that women and pregnant folks who need it know about it, but also so that we help normalize it so that politicians are talking about it, so that regular human beings are talking about it. So we're not taking our eye off the ball in any way. There's also, in this case, three states that have intervened in the lower court, and they're still
you know, in the mix of this. And I don't want this to be like the, you know, the starfish that loses a limb and grows a new one back down at the district court because they are determined and they know that telemedicine is giving access to abortion that is safe and legal and affordable and they want to stop it. So,
We're holding strong on it. We're keeping on with the work. We're looking at other ways of getting state-level protections. We're trying to get the FDA to really step up and be assertive and say, we're going to stand by this medication. If the Supreme Court does anything to try to put back the in-person requirement, we recognize that telemedicine is one solution to a public health crisis and one that we need to kind of keep the lights on in these virtual clinics.
and keep this available as one of the options that many, many folks have decided is best for them. Well, I'm grateful to know that there's someone like you out there fighting for everyone just to, again, like you said, it's a human rights issue. And I know folks can find your book, Controlling Women, What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom, pretty much anywhere you get books, but where can they maybe connect with you more directly?
Well, I would love people to follow along with what the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine is doing. They can go to theactgroup.org or follow us on Instagram at actaccess. And, you know, I'm grateful that you all are magnifying the voices and the issues that smart people are listening to and are hearing more. And so much about it is just saying, you know,
This is a new technology. It's a new law. It's a new way that's working. And so that people know about it and tell friends about it when they need it. Yeah, they can go to I Need an A or Plan C to find out how to get pills directly and to find out more about the politics and the work that we're doing to support providers and patients. They can go to theactgroup.org for more info on us.
I have to support it because I know as a queer person, if they come for women, they come for queer people. If they come for abortion access and telemedicine, then they're going to come for hormones next. And then after that, it becomes surgery next. There's just no end to it. It's like the worst game of give a mouse a cookie and they'll ask you for a glass of milk. Like give up abortion access and they'll take everything else that we have. I mean, gay marriage is on the chopping block. Everything that's been protected under the 14th amendment is, is,
very much up for grabs if we let even a centimeter slip at this point. And so I'm glad to be in partnership with you and continue to talk about this. Make sure, as we always do on American Fever Dream, be checking your down ballot candidates for your state senators, your state representatives, your governors, your mayors, your district attorneys, your attorney generals, all of their sheriffs that you vote for to make sure that they are pro-abortion and proudly so. It's not a dirty word. It's not a bad word. It's something that
is necessary reproductive health care and safety care for women and so many people who can be pregnant. So Julie, I'm so glad that you're here with us today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I definitely couldn't have said it better than you just ended with, especially with the down ballot and the DAs. And I mean, boy, that matters more than ever now. We're keeping it. I'm Bea Spear, and this has been American Fever Dream presented by Betches News. I will see you next Tuesday.
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.