The “Pro-Life” Movement with Megan Burbank

During what should’ve been Roe v. Wade’s 51st birthday week, Sarah and reproductive health policy reporter Megan Burbank take a look at the movement, decades in the making, to tear down abortion rights in America, starting with the hypocrisy at its root. Is what we know as the pro-life movement a religious effort or a political movement? And how did a veneer of sincere belief conceal a toxic combination of racism and fear of paying taxes? Join us as we take out the trash — and look for the helpers who are cleaning it up.

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Two recent pieces by Megan:

The Brand New Anti-Abortion Law That’s Steeped in an Old Moral Panic
Planned Parenthood awarded $110K after Spokane clinic protests

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Sister Song
Yellowhammer Fund
Northwest Abortion Access Fund

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Links:

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https://meganburbank.substack.com/
https://newrepublic.com/article/171804/idaho-abortion-human-trafficking-panic
https://crosscut.com/news/2022/12/planned-parenthood-awarded-110k-after-spokane-clinic-protests
https://www.sistersong.net/
https://abortionfunds.org/fund/yellowhammer-fund/
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Transcript

Sarah: I suspect that no one in the history of the world has ever been self-aware for more than five seconds.

Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and today we are learning about the quote unquote “pro-life movement”. Our guest today is journalist Megan Burbank. We last had Megan on five years ago in an episode about Roe v. Wade. Some things have changed since then, some other things have stayed the same. And I wanted her to come on to give us a biography of a movement that claims to have certain goals, but whose unstated goals are far more telling. And also to give us a State of the Union about abortion access and reproductive justice. 

This is a topic that's been important to me for a long time. I love finding ways to talk about abortion on the show. We also did an episode in October of 2022 called Your Abortion Stories, where we had listeners send in their own experiences with abortion, to create a patchwork of what it's like to get an abortion, what it's like to need an abortion, and just the voices and the people out there whose lives abortion has changed for the better.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, something that despite so many of us feeling it was inevitable for so long, was still no less awful. I think it was especially overwhelming for many people to stay updated on a developing story that seemed to be going nowhere good faster and faster. And so if you, like me, need a friendly voice to update you on where we are, what's been happening for the past few decades, and how we can try and build a better future, this is an episode for you. 

We hope you like this episode, and we're also going to be donating this episode's net proceeds to four charities, The Northwest Abortion Access Fund, Jane's Due Process, Sister Song, and the Yellow Hammer Fund. And if you are looking for actions in your community where you can help protest for a ceasefire in Gaza, one of the places you can find them is at ifnotnowmovement.org. And if you want to donate to direct aid for Palestinian citizens, you can go to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, pcrf.net. And whether you have time, money, or a little bit of energy, we hope you're able to contribute some as well, wherever you are, whatever community you're in. There's a need for you. Thank you for everything you can and will do. Here's your episode.

Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we talk about how the myth of American progress is often just that. And in fact, in many ways, it's not. Things are getting worse. With me today is Megan Burbank. 

Megan: What an intro. 

Sarah: I'm sorry. 

Megan: I love it. It's perfect. 

Sarah: This is a time of resolutions, and we're all like, I'm going to drink water. I'm going to make my bed in the morning. And I'm so happy for all of us doing that. And also, I think it's good to, as I suspect we're going to do today, be like, things have gotten worse than they were 50 years ago. We have to give up on the myth that in America things are just going to keep getting better and better, that throughout history people get smarter and smarter. Because they don't.

Megan: Yeah, no, I was thinking back to the last time I was on this show, during which I think I was like, Roe vs. Wade, yeah, that's bad, but things are already bad, so you shouldn't feel so bad about it. And now I'm just like, they did get worse, it turns out. 

Sarah: Yeah. And so yes, you came on this show in like 2018, 2019, the very early days, it felt in many ways like an episode about telling Michael Hobbes about the State of the Union regarding abortion. And we're here to talk today. I've asked you to give us basically a biography of the American pro-life movement, which behaves as if it's been with us forever, but is probably actually younger than…It's definitely younger than Jeff Bridges, right? 

Megan: Yeah, although with roots that go back much further. 

Sarah: I want to actually start by being almost ridiculously basic, but I think this will be a good way to approach it. And so I'm going to ask you, Megan, to start. What is an abortion? 

Megan: Excellent question. And also, the answer to that question has changed a lot over the past couple years. So an abortion is a termination of a pregnancy. It happens anywhere from five weeks of pregnancy onward. You can have later abortions. They exist. They're rare, but they exist. And when someone doesn't want to be pregnant, and they are, they have an abortion. 

And the way that they do it is you can have a procedural abortion, which would be going to a clinic and having a quite uncomplicated procedure performed by a practitioner, it might be a doctor. Oftentimes, it's an advanced practice clinician like a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner. It takes 5 to 10 minutes. It has a very low rate of complication. 

And then, of course, we have medication abortion, which is becoming a much more common option. Which is where you simply take two kinds of pills, mifepristone, which of course is the controversial one. The subject of that lawsuit that's been in the news everywhere. And misoprostol, and they induce an abortion at home. So you can have an abortion in the privacy of your home. 

To me, an abortion is just a pregnancy termination. But within that, we also have to acknowledge that abortion is a treatment for miscarriage and other medical conditions that can come up during pregnancy. 

One abortion procedure is known as a D&C, Dilation and curettage, and that is something that happens when someone has a miscarriage and it's incomplete. But it's medically identical to an abortion procedure. And one of the things that I think comes up when we talk about abortion, is there's this idea that an abortion, an elective abortion, and miscarriage management are two different things. But they are medically identical procedures. So we are talking about a whole swath of different types of reproductive healthcare.

Sarah: Yeah, we spend so much time talking about the fight for abortion access that we lose sight of what it actually can be like for people. And of course, then there was also Norma McCorvey, the Roe in Roe v. Wade saying first that she had become pro-life. And then I think the very end of her life being like, yeah, no, that wasn't, I just did that for the money.

Megan: Yeah, that was a deathbed confession. I guess it wasn't quite a deathbed confession because she did it in a documentary. That's really good, it's called, AKA Jane Roe, and it's available on Hulu. Everyone should watch it. 

But yeah, she was Jane Roe in Roe vs Wade. And then she had this conversion, this alleged conversion, where she was like, “I know that I was Jane Roe, but I have in fact changed my mind about this.” And she was this incredibly useful character, or like a celebrity almost, of the pro-life movement, where she was trotted out to say, “I really have changed my mind about this.” She was a really powerful symbol for them. And then of course later on she revealed that she'd been paid for what she had done, and she had really just done it for financial gain.

But it's very interesting to look at what the true motivations are for a lot of people who are claiming to have had these powerful conversions. Because what's more incentivizing than money, right? 

Sarah: Yeah. And certainly the left has plenty of ethical compromise and charismatic leaders and grifts. I do think that compared especially to any kind of movement involving or focusing on fundamentalist Christianity in America. there's so much more money in being on the right and being a figurehead of a movement for the right. It seems to me if I really wanted to just make some quick cash, I would become a conservative demagogue, not a leftist one.

Megan: Yeah. You'd get red pilled. 

Sarah: There's incentives, yeah. My understanding of all this is that abortion doesn't have to be particularly tough on your body or your mind, but that we socially have made it really hard for people in both those ways, potentially.

Megan: Yes. I also want to give space to the complexity that people can feel around abortion. I think we've talked about this before. My personal opinion is, I literally don't care how people feel about abortion on an individual level. If you feel complicated about it, that's fine. Life is complicated. I think where the issue comes in is that we actually have these huge systems in play that are using the complexity of a potential experience around abortion to do things like mobilize behind legislation that's really harmful. That's where the problem for me comes in. 

And I think within this, what makes it complicated is that opposition to abortion can be a really sincerely held belief. I have pro-life people in my family, and I don't think that they're trying to make any cash off of this. I think they really feel complicated about it. And I think there's room for that. 

But in some ways, the people who have really sincerely held beliefs around this issue, end up occluding the real motivations that are behind the movement itself more broadly. Which has much more to do with celebrity and power and political influence than with any sort of interesting, theological conversation about terminating a pregnancy.

Sarah: And one thing that is so left out of the picture, except in Maude notably, is that so many people who have abortions already have children. 

Megan: Yes, more than half. And that is something that figures into the decision to terminate a pregnancy for sure, because we don't really live in a country that's super nurturing or helpful or has much of a social safety net for raising children. So if you are living in poverty and you already have two kids and you're pregnant, you can't really afford that. 

And one of the things that I would encourage people to look into if they're curious, is there was actually a study done on women who presented for abortions, this was before Roe vs. Wade, and were turned away because of the gestational age of their pregnancies. Like they were too far along to legally meet the requirements of the state they were in. So this study followed them. 

The women who had received abortions and the ones who were turned away, it's called the Turnaway Study. And what it found was that the economic and psychological outcomes for the women who were turned away for treatment were significantly worse than the ones who actually received the treatment that they had sought in the first place.

And so those factors like having other children, having other responsibilities, having caregiving responsibilities that you have to do, perhaps having a limit on your income, those really can be factors that if someone has an unplanned pregnancy, having an abortion becomes the difference between being able to continue living your life at baseline versus getting sucked into an ongoing cycle of poverty.

Sarah: Speaking of the biography of the quote unquote “pro-life movement”, abortion has been with us for a very long time. The pro-life movement has not really, at all. And I would love to know where you begin our tale. 

Megan: I think the pro-life movement itself, as we know it today, begins in 1973. Because you don't get it without the decision of Roe vs. Wade. However, its roots go back much further than that. 

The other thing that I also want to clarify is when I talk about the pro-life movement, I'm talking about the convergence of Evangelicals and Catholics on abortion. Because when we talk about the reality of this movement, there's often this idea that before 1973, nobody opposed abortion, and that's not true. The Catholics are pretty on record as being opposed to abortion. 

Sarah: Famous for having a lot of children. 

Megan: Yes. So there's Catholic opposition to abortions well established. However, what makes the pro-life movement as we know it into the sort of political force that it becomes, is that we get the involvement of Evangelicals. Which is really what brings it to a critical mass to have the influence over American politics that it has.

So I think if we don't get it, the activation of the Evangelical wing of the pro-life movement, we don't get the pro-life movement such as it is today. So that's why I say 1973. But people have had wacky opinions about abortion for a long time before that. 

But what's interesting is that its origins, at least on the Evangelical side, have nothing to do with abortion or talking about when life begins or anything like that. But it all goes back to taxes and not wanting to pay them. 

Sarah: We really have been obsessed with taxes as a country since before we were a country. It's really important. I love it. All right. When is this?

Megan: This is before 1973. This is when the country is going through a process of desegregation, and we are desegregating schools. The Evangelical schools, like Bob Jones University, want very much to stay segregated. They're like, we understand the rest of the country is doing this, we don't like it. we'd like to remain segregated. But if they remain segregated, what's going to happen to them? They're going to lose their tax-exempt status.

So they basically lose this battle. And they realize that if they want to have more control over things like maintaining their tax-exempt status, despite having horrifically out of step views, they're going to have to have more political influence. And what's interesting is if you look back on the positions of Evangelical communities before 1973, there's not really a lot of consensus on abortion.

There actually are a couple situations where there is support for repealing abortion bans, like laws against abortion that preceded 1973. Probably the most visible evangelical is Jimmy Carter. That should tell you what we're working with. Basically, what happens is they're like, “Shit, we're not winning hearts and minds with segregation. Now we're going to have to pay taxes. This is so upsetting. Who among us?” And so they're like, we have to find some kind of issue that we can just get our teeth into and get some more influence with the government so we can have more control. And they land on abortion.

It's an issue that they see as being a potential wedge issue. Because remember, this is a time before we're in the polarized political moment we're in now, so abortion is not really a Democratic or Republican issue at this time. You have pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats, so it's a way to curry favor with people on both sides of the aisle. It's also a way to sow discord. 

What ends up happening is that they also begin to layer onto it this deep, emotional appeal to bring more people into the movement. And of course, the Catholics are already there. If you bring in the Evangelicals, then you can have this really gigantic voting block, and you can have more control over what happens politically in your country.

So this, to me, is why whenever I'm giving a small speech about how I think that it's a political movement, not a religious one, this is what I mean. Because it's not about having any kind of complicated theological conversation about abortion. It's literally about what gets us from point A to point B. Point B being political power. 

Sarah: Yeah, and the ‘70s are such a funny time. Because we have, my understanding of it anyway, is that women's lib has reared its head and freaked people out a little bit. And then the development that we have that also is hard to remember wasn't always the case is evangelicals entering mainstream politics.

Megan: The Evangelical involvement in politics that we've seen over from when you and I were children to now is new. It's a new phenomenon, and this is part of it. It's because they were able to land on this issue that becomes very inflammatory, and it's a way to bring people in. And it's interesting to me, because when we look at politics now, it's like a mainstream Republican position to be pro-life. But without the events of the past couple of decades and with the efforts of the pro-life movement, that's not happening. 

And also, you're right. If we look at the 70s, that's coming off of a period where states are beginning to repeal their old abortion laws, and there's becoming just more and more public support for abortion access. And so then when we have the wholesale ruling in Roe vs. Wade that this is legal nationwide, then that's what sets up this political battle to carry forward. 

And it's interesting to me. Because I think sometimes we get really caught up in the details of, it’s not really about babies. Why are they saying it's about babies? And it's like no, it's not about babies. But of course it's not about babies because it never was. It was always about political control. And so if you can look at it through that lens, you couldn't have chosen a better issue to just be a vehicle for political control and power. And because this movement is rooted in bad faith to begin with, it becomes this way for people to come in with pretty iffy motivations and profit off of it, and actually have this profound impact on public policy, that the impact is people not getting the health care that they need. But it's because it's not really about that to begin with. 

Sarah: And could you talk for a second just about what is Evangelism in America? Because this is a term we use so frequently, just because we need to use it to describe what's happening politically. But I feel like it's easy to forget what we're literally talking about here. 

Megan: Yeah. And I also think it's sometimes really hard to extricate what Evangelical is from how Evangelicals have impacted American politics.

But essentially, the basis of Evangelicalism is you're taking the Bible literally. So it's a literal reading of the Bible. Evangelical communities, they actually tend to have a lot of deep reading of the Bible, but it's a movement within Protestantism. And there's this idea, one of the key tenants, is this idea of being born again. There's this emphasis on personal conversion and a personal relationship with Jesus. And I think having a personal, spiritual experience is a huge part of like many different faith traditions. 

But one of the things that we see in Evangelicalism is also this strain of conservatism, where you see things like… I think a lot about the 90s purity culture, and that comes out of Evangelicalism. There's a lot of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and a lot of emphasis on traditional gender roles. 

One of the things that Robert Schoeck writes about in his memoir is literally being a patriarch in this church and preaching against birth control, while using birth control with his wife. One of the things that you encounter when you look at this is there is this sort of strain of hypocrisy that flows through a lot of these communities. Because they have these sort of hard line, traditional gender roles, stances, and then yet a lot of this is really about centralizing power for the people who control these church communities.

And I think it's also important to say there are lots of Evangelicals. This is a big group of people within American Christianity, and there are different views on abortion within Evangelical communities, too. And honestly, one of the things that's been interesting is there's been a lot of deconstruction among Evangelicals, I would say, over the past decade. And there are now more groups within this particular religious community who are pushing for more progressive changes and who have different views on abortion and gun control and things like that. So it's not a monolith. Nothing is. But that's who we're talking about. 

Sarah: And I feel like it's fair to say that we're living in an era of these past few decades of long game having actually come to fruition. And I know that I never shut up about this, but I'll say it again, because I really believe it. The obsession, in part, with alleging a gigantic satanic conspiracy to control the country that we had in the satanic panic and continue to have now, I think is some kind of a projection of the fact that not all Christians - but certainly Christians within a certain stripe - have plotted to take over the country and largely succeeded. And have done it all out in the open and have homeschooled their children with the explicit goal of sending them forth and making them into doctors and senators and lawyers, and continuing to influence society, and writing laws and changing districts. And we are living inside of an organized takeover. and I'm not trying to make that sound more dramatic than it is. I just think it's true. 

Megan: Yeah, I think what you're talking about is just that it's a massive political movement, and we are seeing the effects of that today. We're seeing that in terms of the massive dissonance between what's going on with the Supreme Court and what the makeup of that court looks like, versus what popular opinion on abortion policy actually looks like across the country. I don't know that I would call it a takeover, but I would say it's an infiltration, let's say, of American politics.

Sarah: Like we used to accuse communists of doing. 

Megan: Yes. Not unlike that. And that's exactly what it is. And sometimes I think people have this idea that the pro-life movement is silly, or goofy, or dumb. And I think that people have that impression because of things like “pro-life across America” billboards, or… 

Sarah: The art of Kirk Cameron.

Megan: Yes, exactly. It's a little campy, right? 

Sarah: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think Kurt Cameron exists to make us feel less scared. 

Megan: Yes. 

Sarah: Because we're like, anyone who makes art this bad couldn't truly be smart enough to be dangerous. 

Megan: Okay, but that's it. I think that's the impact that those things have, is they give it this valence of unseriousness. Even though it's so serious, and it has been serious for a long time. And it's been so serious that now you can't get an abortion in Idaho. But yeah, I think a lot of that goofiness is distracting, and I wouldn't go so far as to say I think it's intentional.

Sarah: We don't believe that people do conspiracy theories with a great amount of intent in our leftist think tank. We just think they muddle through and do things that are effective, even if they're not self-aware about them.

Megan: Yes, exactly. That is how I feel about it. I actually think most people, when they do bad things, are not, I don't think anyone is really a criminal mastermind.

Sarah: I suspect that no one in the history of the world has ever been self-aware for more than five seconds, 

Megan: They talk about being self-aware. I do think that this movement, this political movement, is smart on a policy level. And one of the ways that they are smart is through sort of a centralization of policy decisions that they're trying to propagate across the country.

So of course the pro-life movement's goal, which it's now achieved, was to overturn Roe v. Wade. But while Roe v. Wade was in place, one of the things that pro-life groups did was to propagate pro-life legislation in states that would effectively erode access to abortion while remaining within the legal sort of barriers of Roe.

So one of the things that you would see would be what are known as ‘trap laws’, which are targeted regulation of abortion laws. So those would be things like your abortion clinic needs to meet the same standards as an ambulatory surgical center. They're almost never medically necessary. They're generally pretty arbitrary, and what they're intended to do is to be burdensome on clinics, so the clinics won't be able to operate. That's one kind of route that they take. 

They also set up these waiting periods. If you go to a clinic to get an abortion, you would have to go home for 48 hours and then come back. And then, of course, they have certain things, like they're very into a 15-week abortion ban. Which actually that kind of abortion ban is the basis of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case. There are all of these things that you can do to make abortion, if not illegal, then really inaccessible, or inconvenient, or difficult. And so they start to do that. And the way that they do that is through disseminating model legislation.

So they craft legislation or come up with policy ideas, centrally with groups like National Right to Life, and then they distribute them among the states. And so the legislation that you're seeing pushed, in say Louisiana or Kansas, is the same legislation. So it's really smart, there's an efficiency to it.

And I've even encountered this in my reporting. I did a story last year about a law in Idaho known as an abortion trafficking law. Which, to be clear, abortion trafficking is not a real thing. 

Sarah: Where would the money be in it, for one thing?

Megan: I'm just like, it's very satanic panic vibes. If you think about it at all, it doesn't make sense. 

Sarah: And what are they claiming is going on with that law?

Megan: They're suggesting that minors who are pregnant, who don't want to have abortions, are being trafficked into states where abortion is legal by abortion traffickers and forced to have abortions.

Sarah: Oh, yeah. I did spend last weekend doing that. And there is so much, especially I feel like in conservative political cartoons, a lot of rhetoric around young, pregnant women who clearly want to continue a pregnancy being forced to abort. Which I just, to me, the greatest threat in that regard and kind of the only threat I can think of is if you're coerced by someone you're in a relationship with.

Megan: Right, and that does happen. Reproductive coercion does happen in relationships as a tool of abuse. It's just not happening. But anyway, this was the basis for this law that of course is set up to be copied elsewhere. 

And I did a story on it, and I looked into its origins. And the origin of this policy can be traced back to a letter that was sent to National Right to Life from a conservative law firm. And they were basically outlining ways that states could keep people from having abortions if, even in banned states, prosecutors were not following the law. And so banning abortion trafficking was one of the suggestions. 

And then lo and behold, it happens where they launched it in Idaho. A lot of these laws are launched in states like Idaho. Yeah, this is really crafty and targeted and organized, and it's a massive undertaking that's decades in the making. 

Sarah: Yeah, if you're going to choose an issue out of thin air to make your issue, this really is a good one. Because especially if people are brought up on this being their issue, then you can be very easily persuaded to get attached to this idea of the eternal baby that you're protecting. Like the ‘tomb of the unknown baby’, which is actually a joke from Citizen Ruth, and that it's easier to love the vague idea of every baby than any actual person. 

Megan: Yeah, and I think that's the way that we get to one of the weirder parts of this whole thing. Which is that even though this movement is rooted in bad faith, it doesn't start as any sort of sincerely held religious belief. Because it's so successful, it's become a sincerely held religious belief for many people. The sincerity is not where it started. It came later. 

Sarah: What's the story with that? 

Megan: It's just what it sounds like. So I read Schoeck's book. He's like a big source for me on this, because he's one of the few former leaders who speaks about it pretty openly. The pro-life movement early on did a lot to bring people in using emotional appeals. Some of the things they did were pretty wacky. They were big into pamphlets, kind of like chick tracts. So that was one way to do it. And it was all about that messaging of this is murder, it's murder. And so repeating that often enough, it becomes something that people really respond to.

Because if you really thought that babies were being murdered down the street from where you live - and you don't have the internet, you can't fact check it - and maybe you're having a bad day and you feel like, I don't even want to justify why people think this, but I think that it is compelling for a certain person in a certain situation. And so I think that they capitalize on that. And then the stakes are set pretty high, because that's what they begin with is, this is murder. And so that becomes a way to bring people in. 

And then one of the things that is interesting about this whole situation is the importance of narrative and storytelling within it. Because this was a movement started by men, but it concerns an issue that affects women and people who can get pregnant. They actually needed to recruit women to join them in the movement, because otherwise, how would they have any credibility. 

So they start to do that. They bring people in. They have people testify to the experiences that they've had that have been damaging. And they use those stories to incite a very specific emotional response in people that then gets them to join the movement. And that's how the movement grows. It's through identifying people who have stories and having them share them publicly in almost a theatrical confessional way. 

Sarah: Yeah. Which does remind me of the Stranger Danger Panic of the 80s. Which is, you take something that actually happens very occasionally in America, which is a child being abducted by a stranger. Or to take a more timely example, Trump and people within the broader Trump anti-immigration movement trawling for people who had relatives killed by people who are in the country without the necessary documentation. As Michael Hobbes has said in the past, it's a big country, you can find examples of whatever you want.

Megan: Yeah, it's very much like that, and it works. And they also compensate people, like they pay people to do that. There are other incentives too. People who share their stories can become famous within the movement. They can become leaders themselves. And so there is this motivation to take part, and that allows the movement to grow.

And then there's also the development of early pro-life tactics like clinic blockades, where people would go and stand in front of clinics in huge groups and try to keep people from going in. 

There's actually a law against that as a result of that, because it was such a problem, the FACE Act. One of the things that early leaders of the pro-life movement do is they carry around real fetal remains almost as a performance art thing. It's really gross. And it also just doesn't seem very respectful to do that with anyone's remains. 

Sarah: There is also such a strong culture within very conservative Christianity in America, I think, of you get to be exposed to extreme gore and horror because it's cautionary, and that's how you get to do that. And it's just, go see a Saw movie. 

Megan: Yeah, there are better ways to explore the macabre than using literal human remains to make a point. It's one of those things where even if you understand the political thrust of the movement, it doesn't make sense. It's a very bizarre behavior. It's not how I would choose to spend my one wild and precious life, there are some alternatives. 

Sarah: Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I feel like there's this idea in conservative culture in America that fantasy will damn you to live out what you once thought about one time. And in reality, it seems like a lot of their culture is about not having enough fantasy life, and therefore doing really weird stuff just on main.

Megan: Yeah, being weird on main. But, I think also part of it is that it works, and it does get them publicity, and, it's like they get arrested for their clinic blockades, and that becomes a point of pride. And I think part of it is that is you're showing how deep your conviction is. It's like, “I'm willing to carry around baby parts and get arrested and have to go to court. It's because I believe this so much”. Yikes. 

Sarah: And you get to be an avenging angel, hero, holy warrior, whatever. One of the things that really began to strike me as amazing the more I read about the history of anti-abortion stuff in America, and how at the extreme end of it you have clinic bombings and people who perform abortions being murdered, is it's remarkable that we have not branded this terrorism at any time. But we don't think of it as terrorism if Christians do it.

Megan: Well, it fits the FBI definition of terrorism. Domestic terrorism, I should say. 

Sarah: And I'm sure it's called that occasionally. But just stuff in the 90s, things you would hear as a kid on the news about, I think we called it political extremism, but the idea that this was terrorism is something that feels to me like it hasn't clicked for us. The way anyone with melanin in an airport is still a terrorist, as far as America is concerned today.

Megan: If animal rights activists were going around committing mass murders, would we think about it differently? I think if any other movement in America had the body count that the pro-life movement has, I think it would be really hard not to call it terrorism. Because we have a whole series of assassination attempts and successful assassinations, and clinic bombings, and all of that. And I talk to people who work in abortion clinics and run clinics for my work, and security is always a concern. 

Officially the pro-life movement, leaders of the pro-life movement, have disavowed that kind of violence publicly. But I look at it in a sense of, if you are using really inflammatory rhetoric and saying that this equates to murder, and someone in the wrong headspace at the wrong time hears that, what do you think is going to happen? But they've done a very good job of really distancing themselves from the violence of it. I don't know why we don't call it terrorism. I think it's because the way that we approach abortion more generally is very much this two sides issue, and we can't appear to support one side over the other. 

Sarah: I'm really tempted in a way, that I feel I know I'm almost positive is entirely about nostalgia. I want to say that 20 years ago everything was a shit show, but maybe the right was more in touch with basic human decency. And then I think, when has anyone with real political power in America ever been in touch with basic human decency? It's just not our thing. And it could be our thing hasn't been yet in any kind of an across-the-board way. There's always people who exist in every period who are leading the way morally, and then the rest of us, we just have to deal with that.

Megan: Yeah, I think that when we look back on the political era that launched the bizarro trajectory that brings us to where we are, and it's rooted in not wanting to pay taxes, I think that says a lot. I think that we in America have a lot of this, ‘I don't want to pay taxes’ energy. And when it's concentrated at the top of a political or religious group with a lot of control, that sort of narrow mindedness, self-serving behavior can have really drastic consequences. 

And I think it's pretty funny, in a not ha-ha but a tragic way, that we now find ourselves in this position where we have rolled back a fundamental human right because of a movement that began because a group of people wanted to stay in the past. 

Sarah: Yeah. And when you put it like that, I think if you have a crucial mix of people who truly believe in the cause and will do anything for it, people who are out for themselves and know how to maneuver things accordingly, and then people who maybe want to get stuff for themselves but can believe that they're doing all this out of virtue, then that's very powerful.

Megan: It is. And it's what's gotten us to this point. And I think part of what,, if anything is going to get us through is understanding that when I talked to Rob Schoeck about this and he basically said that he feels like his religious community has done huge, long-term damage. And so part of figuring out what to do now is repairing and looking at that damage. And I don't have a solution for that. I'm a journalist. I like to look at this stuff and figure out what's happening, and help people understand it in the moment and look at the mechanics of the problem.

But I think part of any sort of forward movement is going to require being really truthful about the motivations that bring us to this kind of a situation. Because we see power being considered more important than human dignity and privacy, which are things we should all have access to.

Sarah: I also went to the National Right to Life Conference the year it was held in Milwaukee, because I wanted to see what everybody was talking about. And something that actually came up a lot was letting people die in hospitals. I went to an absolutely unhinged talk by a guy who was claiming that geriatricians, which by the way my mom was before she retired, are intentionally killing patients in hospitals by not giving them enough water. Which is insane. So this talk basically about there being an organized plot to kill off seniors in our nation's hospitals. 

And there's something at this conference, the values that I could see were never accept death, force everyone to live. And how that actually, in my opinion, is not a very humanist value. Because it's the question of, how do we get the largest quantity of life, both in terms of how many babies we're encouraging people to have potentially, and just this belief that death in any instance is an evil to be worded off. 

But if people want to die on their own terms, that to me, is pro-life in the realest sense. And allowing people to access abortion so that they can give themselves the lives that they want, and be able to grow and to take care of themselves and the people in their lives, and potentially their other children, that's actually pro-life, is what I think.

Megan: Yeah, all of this is complicated. And I think the dynamic you're describing, as well as the origins of the pro-life movement more broadly, are preying on the discomfort people have with complexity. And we come by it, honestly, it's hard to be a person. Death is scary, time is short. And there are ways to make yourself feel better, that I think that these types of political movements really prey on. 

But I think what I've found is, so I cover abortion policy, so I think about this a lot. And I have spoken to people who have all kinds of opinions about it, people disclose their abortion stories to me all the time, I've heard a lot of them. The more I learn about it, the less simple it becomes, the more complicated it becomes, the more difficult it becomes. And the more clear it becomes to me that that decision is something that can only be left up to the person whose body is involved. And it's not because it's simple, but it's because it's complicated. And I think the appeal of a movement like the pro-life movement is not that it allows for that complexity or even that it wants to engage in that complexity. It's all about erasing that complexity in favor of a much more comforting lie. 

Sarah: Yeah, and what is the lie? How do you see that? 

Megan: Oh, I think that's a big question. I think the lie is that pregnancy is simple. And that everyone who has a baby is going to be a good parent, and they're going to have enough resources, and it's not hard to make that decision.

But the thing is, if we lived in a world that had a lot more support for parents and where we didn't have the like huge financial striations we have in our society, maybe it would be easier for people to just have tons and tons of children. But the reality is that we don't live in a society that has those supports at all. 

And of course there's like the life and death question. My mom and I were having a conversation about this recently. And she was like, when you get pregnant, it's going to end up somewhere. You're going to have a baby, you're going to have a miscarriage, or you're going to have an abortion. And I think the lie that the pro-life movement is selling is that's not the reality of it. That if you're pregnant, you're going to have a baby. And that would be great, especially when we talk about people who really wanted to have their pregnancies. 

I'm 36, by the time you get to be our age, people who've had miscarriages, and it's very common and it's a really isolating experience, or it can be. And part of that, I think, is because we don't have a really nuanced space to talk about this stuff. And I think part of the reason that we don't have it is that we have set the terms of the debate. like I said, at this default where it becomes a conversation about should abortion be illegal or not, and not how can we support people in their pregnancies and in their experiences of miscarriage and abortion moving forward so that everybody is happy and healthy and supported? And I don't think that's a question that the pro-life movement really wants to ask. 

Sarah: I feel like there's some kind of basic misconception about what people are at play in all this. Because it seems like one of the basic ideas behind taking away abortion access is if people can't get abortions, then they won't get pregnant. If they can't fix the mistake, they won't make the mistake. It’s a very dated metaphor, but this is like saying that if you don't sell liquid paper, people won't misspell things. But we do. And to quote the title of a Degrassi episode that wasn't allowed to be aired in this country, Accidents Happen.

Megan: I remember that Degrassi episode. But yeah, right? Life is messy. People have wanted pregnancies that have horrific complications. Like people are on birth control, sometimes it doesn't work. People get pregnant with IUDs, that can happen. 

So I think part of what becomes so complicated with this conversation is abortion fits within that context where when you are pregnant, and you can't be or you don't want to be, having an abortion is what allows you to continue living your life. Those are the real stakes we're talking about here. 

Sarah: And where does that leave us? Where are we today in beautiful January 2024? 

Megan: There was polling before Dobbs to suggest that most people, like a majority of Americans, supported Roe versus Wade. There was some sort of idea that there was popular support for abortion access. And what we've seen is that not only is there popular support for it, there's electoral support for it. 

Actually, most people are pro-choice, and pro-choice encompasses a lot of people. I think people feel all kinds of ways about abortion but still support basic access to it. And that's not an extremely progressive or leftist position. It's just normal. And I think that we now have very clear evidence of that. 

And I think we also have very clear evidence that the position that became this wedge issue for the right wing, for the pro-life movement, actually is relatively unpopular. That doesn't really help us with who is on the Supreme Court at all, but I think that it helps to know that. Because it shows where our values are as a country, that is actually how people feel about it. And I think it's forced people to clarify their own beliefs around the issue because I think that there was a lot of complacency.

I cover this issue, I report on this issue. And I can tell you that before Roe vs. Wade, not very many mainstream legacy outlets were covering abortion policy. It was unusual to do it. And now it's still unusual to do it. But now there's much more support for it. People have really caught up. And I think that it's pretty clear that it's an issue that is important for people to understand. And I think there's value in that. But I also think we're talking about a movement that, while younger than Jeff Bridges, extends back to well before both you and I were born. So this was really a long game, and I think that dismantling it will also take a very long time. 

Sarah: That's annoying news, but it makes sense. But I really do find it extremely heartening to think about this being, first of all, a manufactured issue where it almost feels like a bunch of fundamentalists could wake up tomorrow and say, “We are against breast implants, we're going to make this our issue. We're going to find people who've had traumatic breast implant experiences and get them to speak and write tell all’s. We've realized it's a way for women to gain more autonomy than we're comfortable with, and we're against it.” 

And I really do think that you could take that issue, it's not as good of an issue, but it connects with a lot of other stuff. It gets into some fraught territory and whip people into a fervor about it and got them to forget that how they really feel is basically that even if they would never want to get breast implants for themselves, they really don't care what other people do. Because it's normal for us to simply not care that much what other people do, unless we're yelled at about how we need to do it.

This is a bigger country with more people in it than any of us have time to personally meet. And so we rely on statistics, and more usually, the way the news makes us feel. Statistics are happening to understand where people around us stand on the issues we care about. And it is truly shocking to me to be told that only a quarter of people are actively against abortion access in this country. It feels like more. It feels crushing and giant. And to be told that it's even a crumb smaller than I imagined it to be feels really good. 

Megan: Yeah. After the Dobbs decision happened, the Pew Research Center found that 62% of Americans said that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and 37% said the opposite. But within that, a much smaller minority of just 8% said that abortion should always be illegal with no exceptions. Which is really the worldview that's animating this type of legislation. And I think it's also worth noting that after the Dobbs decision, 57% of Americans disapproved of that decision, and then 41% approved. But again, even within that group of people, only 25% strongly approved. 

Sarah: It is like the media diet that we get, or at least that I'm used to getting, I think. Partly because it's impossible to conceptualize over 300 million people and what they're thinking and feeling and believing. That, as with everything else, those that shout the loudest get heard the most. But it's incredibly heartening that we have an 8% minority in the ‘strongly agree’ camp. 

Megan: That's not very much, is it? It's not a broadly popular mainstream position. And I think that part of the work of the pro-life movement that's been so impressive, is that they've made it actually seem like a more mainstream position than it is.

But it gets back to what you're saying about who is the loudest and who is, in this case, the most theatrical and the most long running. But not as long running as we think. 

Sarah: If people want to stay more engaged in the day to day, I'm just asking for myself, if hypothetical listeners or me, want to stay engaged with this issue and know what's going on, but also keep up with it in a way that doesn't just make us want to hide under the covers, how do we do that? And also, what can we do? How can we help? 

Megan: I think you should just always be curious about it. I think the issue with abortion is that it's been pretty undercovered, historically. And it tends to get a lot of attention around specific news events that make coverage necessary. The reversal of Roe vs. Wade is a great example of that. There was a ton of added attention on that issue during that time, but it wanes after that happens. And actually, when I talk to people who work within reproductive rights and abortion care, they often will tell me, “We get a spike in support, but then it gradually goes away because people become less and less engaged.” 

So I think the best way to really engage with it is to make sure that you're paying attention to it all the time. And you can do that by looking into the policies going on where you live. And actually, if you very reasonably don't want to become clinically depressed by exposing yourself to this stuff over and over again…

Sarah: If by some fluke you're not already, and want to continue not being. 

Megan: Listen. Who among us has not spent some quality time with the angsty depresh? But, anyway. 

Sarah: The depresh mode, if you will.

Megan: Yes. I get that. I think we all need to respect our limits as people and not go around carrying the trauma of the world in our bodies. I think that's a good thing to avoid. 

But just, I would say seeking out coverage that's local to where you live that's focused on policies around abortion is a really good way to do that. And you're in Oregon, so you probably have a ton of excellent local policies to look into. Actually, I know you do because I've covered some of them. Including things like public funding for the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which is the regional abortion fund for Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. And that's something that happened in Oregon after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

And so I think it's very Mr. Rogers, look for the helpers. But I think that finding ways to engage with the issue, their focus on people who are doing the sort of solutions-based work around it can be helpful. It's a way to make sure you still are informed without just reading all of the really depressing stories that are coming out of banned states.

There are a number of organizations that are doing really important work in banned states right now. There's one called Jane's Due Process, which is helping teenagers in Texas get connected with abortion resources. There's another one called Buckle Bunnies Fund, which I think is also in Texas. It's similar, it's an abortion and practical support fund. And I think finding those groups in your communities and just supporting them is a good way to feel like you're not part of a problem. 

I feel like there are so many stories that are just like, we sent out a reporter to find the most tragic story we could possibly find, and the headline is, “a woman dies after being denied treatment for her pregnancy complications” or “a 10-year-old girl was denied an abortion after being raped.” And I actually think focusing on those stories. I think it's important to document them when that's happening. But sometimes I think that kind of reporting can almost get into a tragedy porn situation where those stories are not really shifting policies or making the material situation of the people that they're about any better. It depends on the story, right? 

But I think that they can be really numbing to read over and over again for people who just want to stay informed. So I think giving yourself a little permission to step away from that coverage and lock in more to what's going on for you locally can be a really good way to engage in a boundaried way that feels good and isn't going to make you want to go cry in a corner.

Sarah: Yeah, any movement that claims to boil things down to right and wrong, and to declare itself an epoch and seize control in that way, it's just standing on a foundation of dust. And it feels good to point at that and say it.

Megan: If there's nothing underneath it. I think it's, fall down. It can just fall down. And actually, I think that we are starting to see that. Because I think one of the things that's come out of the past couple years is this greater awareness of popular support for abortion rights. Which means that politicians don't really have that as such a tool anymore. It's not as effective. And I think also that's in a bad way. That's why we're seeing the pivot to all of the sort of attacks on gender affirming care and things like that. That it's a desperate grab from a group that is losing power. It's a pretty empty victory.

And I think, if anything, it shows us how important it is to have something true and meaningful at the core of our politics. When you don't, it causes outsized harm. And when you do have systems of mutual aid and support, that actually is what allows people to continue surviving and doing okay under these really oppressive circumstances.

Sarah: Yeah, and that we are here for each other, like we always have been. That if we're combating this logic of we have to be heroic, we have to go out and save people, we have to wage this battle, that the appropriate response to that is not to marshal your own soldiers and your own force for the battle but to say, we're not going to save anybody, we're going to take care of the people around us, and take care of the babies, and take care of all the other humans. Who although they might not be quite as cute as babies, are equally deserving of love and care, shockingly. 

Megan: I think that's true. And I think that what you just described, I think, is a more radical and potentially spiritual grain to start from than anything that's just about power. It's hard to be a person, it's hard to go through life. Babies need a lot of help. Have you seen a baby? Babies can't do anything for themselves. I don't know if have you seen a baby?

Sarah: Those fuckers are pathetic. 

Megan: Have you seen what they're like?

Sarah: Absolutely no motivation. Don't even bother lifting their own heads. 

Megan: It takes a village to help a human being grow up and become well adjusted, that takes everybody. And I think that is such a much more meaningful place to begin than to talk about something that in a way has nothing to do with that, which is policing pregnancy. To me, those two things couldn't be further apart. 

Sarah: Yeah. Megan Burbank, thank you so much for being with us and giving us this history and these instructions for the future. Where can people find your work. What have you been up to? What are you looking forward to in 2024? 

Megan: So people can find me, unfortunately, on Twitter, where I remain. I don't know why, because it's a sinking ship, but you can find me there. My handle is @MeganIreneB, because I'm a millennial. 

Sarah: You're like Tommy Ryan. You're bashing down gates and saving the people in steerage. 

Megan: That's right. I got that fire axe out of the container it was in. It's going to be fine. And I also have a newsletter that I send out twice a month. It's called Burbank Industries, which is misleading because it's just me, but I like the idea that it sounds like a big conglomerate. 

Sarah: It sounds like a tax shelter. I love that. 

Megan: That's exactly the vibe I'm going for. It's meganburbank.substack.com. Megan spelled the normal way and Burbank like the city in California. And you can find me at various outlets throughout the Northwest and nationally. And you can read my coverage if you want to know more about how things are going in terms of abortion policy without Roe, hopefully in a way that makes you feel more informed and less terrified. 

Sarah: I'm so excited about getting to do that this coming year. And just thank you for all of the work that you've done covering reproductive justice for all these years, and for being a helper Megan.

Megan: Thank you for being a helper, Sarah. This has been really delightful. Thank you for having me.

Sarah: Thank you so much to Megan Burbank, our illustrious guest. Thank you so much to Miranda Zickler for editing. Thank you eternally to Carolyn Kendrick for producing. If you liked this episode, and especially if you're one of the people who over the years has asked us for an episode on Mary Kay Letourneau, you should listen to this month's bonus where we have Megan Burbank back again, and where she and I are discussing the movie May December. 

And if you happen to be in the Bay area and would like to see a live You're Wrong About, you can catch me and Chelsea Weber-Smith at San Francisco Sketch Fest, February 2nd at the Great Star Theater. We are going to be talking about alligators in the sewers. It's going to be a good time. That's it for us. We'll see you in two weeks. Seacrest out.