MXMFW 10: Abortion Part 1

In this episode, your lovely hosts tackle the topic of abortion. They start out by discussing the latest Texas abortion ban and then circle back to the beginning of human history to track the legacy of abortions through time.  Once the history of abortion has been sufficiently addressed, they delve into what religious institutions have thought about it throughout time, the precise year that the Catholic Church decided to care, and what the actual scripture even says about it. Maggie's favourite phrase "woman box" makes an appearance, Theo gets to find out what the quickening is, and Bridget references a project she did for a class she flunked in high school.

Episode Transcript Available Here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wvo6H4S0p_gVvGrhzNBhxDN1gKH3ElI4/view?usp=sharing

This episode's references:
-Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court Case

-Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby

-Women’s America 9th Edition edited by Kerber et. al. 

-New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

-Terror in the Mind of God by M. Juergensmeyer

-Spring Awakening book and lyrics by Steven Sater, music by Duncan Sheik

-Portrait of a Lady on Fire directed b Céline Sciamma

-“Abortion Has Never Been Just About Abortion” New York Times article by Thomas B. Edsall

-Sawbones

-Shout Your Abortion

-Friend of the Podcast Liz Behlke

-As always, Bridget’s love of Reproductive Health

Transcript

Theo (singing): In the beginning, God made three lesbians who liked to talk, and they loved each other, and they loved God, but they have a few questions, and they think you might have a few questions too, about religion, gay stuff, and life. So, come join Me, My Ex, and My Future Wife

Bridget: Hello, welcome to My Ex and My Future Wife, I’m Bridget

Theo: I’m Theo, I’m the Ex

Maggie: And I’m Maggie, I’m the future wife.

B: Woohoo!

T: Feeling a little silly today it seems

M: I’m in a silly goofy mood. So, Bridget can you also talk about abortion, is that something you can talk about for a little, maybe?

B: Is that something I could talk about? 

M: Yeah

B: I don’t know, I’m not sure I even know what that is, hahaha just kidding (laughter). I would love to talk about abortion. Let’s start out the podcast with a shoutout to abortion.

M: I have an actual shoutout, can I give an actual shout out? 

T: Please

B: Yeah

M: Actual shoutout to Liz Behlke, Aurora Behlke’s mom who Facebook messaged me this week a New York Times article on the history of abortion, and was like “hey I think you should talk about this on your podcast”. 

T: Our first suggestion from a fan!

M: First suggestion from a fan! Liz Behlke I love you, thank you for cleaning my kitchen

B: Friend of the podcast Liz Behlke, we really appreciate the suggestion. I would like to give a shout out to the organization Shout Your Abortion and Lindy West herself. Lindy West, alum of the same high school that we all went to, shoutout Lindy West.

T: Shoutout Lindy West! 

B: Thank you for normalizing talking about abortion

T: Big fan

B: Huge fan of Lindy West, and because this is a lesbian podcast, I have to say what a beautiful woman

(Laughter)

T: We do have to say that, and you’re right

(More Laughter)

B: Okay, moving on, so religion, no, abortion! 

(Even More Laughter)

M: Tell us in the comments below

B: I love Maggie’s commitment to maintaining that this podcast has comments. So,abortion is a big hot topic in America all the time. Thank you, so much fundamentalist Christianity and the Republican Party.

M: Thank you also Texas, recently?

B: Texas just passed one the most restrictive abortion regulations of all time in the United States history, since Roe v. Wade. It’s a six week ban, yeah?

M: Yeah

B: So, it’s like you can’t have an abortion after six-week kind of rule.

M: Hey Bridget, when do people usually find out they’re pregnant?

B: Like 4 or 5 weeks, maybe 6 pretty standard as well, ummmm

T: Not a whole lot of time in there to…

B: Not at all

T: To get that whole process going

B: Nope. So, that’s also often referred to as a “Heartbeat ban” I believe, right around that time is when you can detect a fetal heartbeat, and obviously there’s already a lot of legal action being taken to strike this down because a lot of these things. Well they’re aren’t very much unconstitutional, so a lot of the times when legislation like that gets passed, it can’t actually stay existing because it will bop bop bop up to the supreme court, and the supreme court is like “yo my friends, this is very unconstitutional, so actually you have to take it back” and then legislators are like “man, I wanted to do this piece of discriminatory legislation, gosh darn it the constitution”. However, our supreme court is now stacked with people who hate reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, so that’s why this is really big source of concern right now, is that if this goes to the Supreme Court, there’s a very real chance that the Supreme Court would uphold it, and then it would just be, like, Roe v. Wade never happened functionally. And Maggie, you are the one who read the article, I’m just saying this out of “I think I know”, is this all-correct information? It did become law

M: It did become law, I read that in the Skimm

B: Nice

M: So, you probably saw an Instagram infographic about it

(Laughter)

T: You probably did

B: I probably did, I also just am like, I was not following it super closely, I’m on a bunch of email lists and auto texts lists about this kind of thing, so I always see they are happening, but I’m very familiar with the legal process surrounding laws of this variety, which is why I said all that about it. Everything that I said about why this would be concerning going to the supreme court and what kind of bill this is, that’s just not even based on my knowledge of this specific law, but just around my knowledge of the way that these things work, if that makes sense. Anyways, abortion is once again, as always, unfortunately really relevant right now for a really unfortunate reason, and because when people talk about abortion in the political sphere and when people talk about abortion, especially in the context of American legislation and society, there is pretty much always an element of “people are anti-abortion because they’re Christian or because of religious reasons and it’s against their religion to allow abortion to happen”, and you always hear that, and we wanted to dig into that a little bit on the podcast and we also wanted to dig into why that thinking is a little bit problematic. That sound good everybody?

T: Yes

M: So Bridget, right now abortion is a really hot topic, hot button issue

B: Yes

M: But has abortion—how long has abortion been around?

B: As long as humans have been getting pregnant my good friend, abortion has been around. 

T: Which is pretty long, a few years, probably

M: At least ten, maybe more

B: So, as long as uterus owners have been getting pregnant there have been ways that people have been able to end unwanted pregnancies and strategies people have used to end unwanted pregnancies. One of my favorite ones to cite is that there’s—okay a lot of these were herbal, it’s always been known there are herbs to induce miscarriage, the way that there were throughout human history lots of ways that people would use birth control, like birth control has also existed for pretty much as long as human society has existed and humans have been getting pregnant. So, pretty much, there’ve always been herbal ways to reduce or eliminate your chances of pregnancy and there have always been herbal and other ways to induce miscarriage, which is kind of the way that you would have an early form of abortion. And, a lot of ancient historical ways that people would induce miscarriage in themselves also involved, like, shoving things straight up past the cervix, which is I’m gonna say, right now, NOT good for you, and I do not recommend it

T: Not good for you, and also extremely painful

B: Oh 100%! In Ancient Egypt, I think one of the things people would do was shove, like, rotting pieces of animals up past the cervix to induce miscarriage. I’m not kidding. A lot of times animal dung was something—that not just ancient Egypt, but that’s something people would shove up past the cervix.

M: So, abortion plus now infection, seems

B: Yeah

T: You have an abortion and then you die like in Spring Awakening

B: Another classic way to induce miscarriage that people still do when they don’t have access to safe abortion or contraceptive methods is just have someone punch you in the abdomen really hard repeatedly. 

T: Yeah

B: Which, it works sometimes, but

T: It turns out if you hurt your body grievously enough, you won’t have a healthy child 

B: It can also really mess you up

T: You could definitely get internal bleeding and die, which is true for a lot of these methods. It’s like yes you have a miscarriage but then you also die

B: It has also resulted in uterine rupture, which no one wants, you know. So, those kinds of things absolutely have been happening for a really really long time. It’s been well documented that those things have been happening for a long time, abortion or things akin to abortion have existed forever, I’m just gonna say.

T: As long as people were getting pregnant, people did not want to be getting pregnant. 

B: And people did not want to be getting pregnant always. The first reported condoms that we know of in history

T: Oh yeah

B: Were actually from 3,000 BCE

T: Nice

B: Anyone have any guesses about what kind of materials those were made out of. I have three options here on my little sheet.

T: Wait, there are three different materials they were made out of?

B: Yeah

T: I’m gonna guess animal skin is one of them

B: Kind of, not skin

T: Or like, organ

B: Organ

T: Yea

B: Animal intestines

M: Good start

B: Which is similar to sausage casing, kind of makes sense

T: It is sausage casing you could say

B: Two of them are technically, we have mammal intestine and also fish bladder, and then the other is linen.

T: Which was probably pretty ineffective and also pretty uncomfortable

B: uncomfortable, yeah

M: Don’t use linen condoms straight from My Ex and My Future Wife podcast.

B: Don’t recommend them

T: I know that sometimes people put, I think, moss inside of there

B: Oh people would put anything inside of there

T: But like for contraceptive whatever, as a barrier

B: People used really, I’m gonna say, inventive barrier methods prior to being…

T: I’m gonna say intestines kind of effective

B: Yeah probably, it’s not so dissimilar from a latex condom

T: Yeah, it seems similar to me

B: I’m gonna say probably higher likelihood of bacteria passing through that, yeah. Okay, but now let’s do a little bit of a fast forward because this is not a podcast about ancient history, as much as we will touch on that always a little bit, and as fun as ancient history is

M: We are a gay religion podcast 

B: We are a gay religion podcast and we do tend to focus on American history because it’s relevant to sort of the way that we’re doing a gay religion podcast, like we talk about American Fundamentalist Christianity and American Judaism.

T: That’s our realm 

B: Those are the experiences we’re pulling from. So, let’s do a little flash forward to when did conversations around abortion start becoming really a big thing in American culture?

M: Dooowowowowowow

B: LOVED that flash forward, Maggie

T: Was that a time travel noise, I liked it

M: That was my time travel noise 

B: So, where do we wanna start, do you wanna give me an era, Maggie?

M: Umm I’m thinking Victorian America

T: Let’s talk about Victorian 

M: 1850s vibes

T: You said a really fun word that I want to hear more about

B: The Quickening!!!

T/M: THE QUICKENING!!

T: What does that mean?

B: Really good question Theo! Maggie, would you like to do the honors of explaining Quickening?

M: So before modern medicine, how did you know you were pregnant?

B: QUICKENING

M: You felt a baby

(Laughter)

M: Which is, you felt the baby physically kick you. Hey Bridget, when does that happen?

B: In don’t actually know if I can tell you

T: I got you

M: Like four or five months into your pregnancy is when you feel a child kick you

B: And I believe in the Victorian Era, that’s when they thought that they were like “this is when the baby is attaching to the Uterus”

M: Ohh that would make

T: They knew nothing, stupid Victorians 

M: After quickening, they were like, that’s a baby in there

T: For sure there’s something in there!

M: For sure that’s a baby, can’t touch that shit.

T: I know that is not indigestion!

B: Around 16 weeks, so that’s about 4 months I believe

T: Damn that’s so much longer than six. 

M: But before that, most women knew they were pregnant, cause they stopped having their period or got sick, but a lot of times they didn’t want to be pregnant, so they went to their doctoer and said “hey I have blockage, my woman box has just so much blockage in it”

B: Maggie back at it with the woman box

T: Bringing back the woman box!

(Laughter)

T: MY uterus is wandering all over my body, I need you to prescribe me some arsenic and cocaine please

M: And the doctor said, gross, that’s a woman’s body and that shit gross, please get the fuck out of there

B: Ever seen a women’s body

T: (gag) hate it, cannot stand it 

M: That’s not exactly what happened

B: That’s very similar to what happened. Oaky, it was like if a woman came in and was like “body gross”, the doctor was like, well what did they do Maggie?

M: Do cocaine about it

B: Yeah, and if a woman came in and said my mind is gross, the doctor was like no problem I’ll just finger you

T: Yeah, that is what happened

B: And then here’s some cocaine about it

T: Cocaine, arsenic sometimes, opium mostly, not cocaine

B: The source I’m gonna cite for all my information about what doctors used to do for women’s health problems is all of my experience going to the New Orleans Pharmacy museum, a museum that I highly recommended, sponsor us New Orleans Pharmacy museum, I love you, you’re a really good museum

T: I’m citing Sawbones the other podcast that I listen too

M: I’m citing Women’s America 9th Edition, which was the textbook for my History of Women class I took

T: Nice 

M: Anyways, so

B: I’m citing historically accurate text the Yellow Wallpaper

M: So Victorian Era was like once you felt a baby kick, they were like goddam that’s a human bitch, so crazy. Probably shouldn’t kill that. But before that, it was like women’s bodies mystical, controlled by the devil? Here’s some cocaine and herbs to relieve your blockage, which just meant induce a miscarriage it what that was.

B: When we say “induce a miscarriage” that’s also what people refer to as aving a medically assisted abortion. Medically assisted miscarriage, which is something you still can have today, that’s the same thing now as the abortion pill. Also, intentionally inducing miscarriage and having an abortion aren’t different things, and I want to be

T: They are the same thing

B: I want to be clear on that

T: People think that abortion is exclusively sucking the baby out of there, and that is not what it is always

B: I do wanna be clear on that and obviously there’s some minor legal sort of caveats about what exactly certain things mean, but intentionally inducing a miscarriage falls under the definition of abortion

T: Good to note, in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, you know when they have to do an abortion, induce a miscarriage, which is also an abortion. Anyways I’ve just been thinking about that this whole time, I don’t have any contributions. 

M: Thank you that is important

B: That is important I’m glad you brought that up because that another example of how it did exist, and everybody…all the “women” knew about it, just like I think for a long time “men” just didn’t really know it was happening because like midwives were responsible for women’s healthcare

T: For birth and stuff, and also if you were gonna have an abortion, you would just not tell your husband because he doesn’t need to know.

B: Or your husband is onboard and hush hush about it. 

M: The Victorian Era was so gender segregated that telling your husband about your abortion was really weird, also what I read was that abortion was the most reliable form of birth control there was, which is terrible but sometimes you wanna have sex with your husband who you love and not necessarily get pregnant

T: I guess

B: Not relatable but okay

M: Sorry, let’s use our imagination my friends

T: If hypothetically

B: I can think of only one good reason to have sex with my husband who I love (laughs)

T: And that’s to conceive a child

B: Obviously

T: With my husband, who I love!

(Laughter)

T: The only media examples of abortion in the antiquity—not antiquity, but you know, in the past—are Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Spring Awakening and that’s all I got (laughs).

B: Spring Awakening is not a good one, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a pretty good one

T: Pretty accurate, takes some herbs, gets a little sick, has a miscarriage, it’s like pretty true, and then in Spring Awakening she goes to an underground doctor and she fucking dies

B: Which is worse

M: I will say, it is important to note that it is usually wealthy white women who have access to better abortions, and poor women at this time, and Black women, were a lot more likely to die from abortion related complications than white women. So, was Spring Awakening…Venla was a fairly wealthy white woman, so she would probably have access to better abortion services, and I would imagine that the man writing that, the only concept of abortion was disasters that happened to poor women because of racism and classism, so he was like “ah yes, abortion, this is what this is”

T: A common cause of women’s death, which it was but also

M: It is, but Spring Awakening said no race or class analysis, only abortion scary vibes

T: Yeah basically that. It was like abortion you shouldn’t have it, and you shouldn’t have sex because you shouldn’t ever have to get an abortion cause you’ll die. It’s just like in Mean Girls.

B: At the end of the day, everything is just like Mean Girls. Plenty of people were having abortions and it was kind of like just something that people did and it wasn’t a huge deal.

M: It was like that’s your business

T: Which I think is great

B: I’m thinking in my mind, which is the 1860s, I guess I have dates open on my other window right now, so I can make sure I’m not messing up dates, abortion were fully legal in the Untied States, and they had not been condemned publicly by any major religious institution.

T: What a cool time

B: However, in the 1860s, abortion started to become more common and people were finding out that it was happening and a lot of “men” were like, “yo what the fuck? We didn’t say this was okay, so why are people doing things without us white men saying it’s okay?”

T: I’m uncomfortable when we are not about me.

B: Yes. So what happened is that in 1869 the Catholic Church publicly condemns abortion

T: Really not very based move of them

M: 69 Nice

T: I have to say

B: In 1895 they then go on to say that, even if it saves the life of the person who’s pregnant, we still condemn abortion at the Catholic Church. So, as time went on in the 1800s, the Catholic Church got more, not less, intense about it, just for the record. Now I’m going to go back in time a little bit because I missed something before, which is that while prior to the 1860s whatever, abortion was pretty much just accepted and fairly legal and blah blah blah, in 1821 Connecticut, the State of Connecticut, passed the first state law against abortion, and I don’t remember what they were, but that’s when the first law in the United States against abortion happened. And that was not a huge deal, it was just kind of happening in Connecticut, but then in 1873 is when the Comstock laws happened. The Comstock laws are a prohibition of contraception and abortion or any kind of information about how to access or use contraception or abortive measures. So they criminalized written material

M: Fucked up if true

B: Or anything relating to contraceptive and abortion and claimed that it’s immoral and obscene

T: I think it’s funny that they’re like “anything lewd, or whatever”

B: lascivious

T: Lascivious, when it’s just talking about abortion, like I would not consider abortion lewd

M: That involves a uterus, Theo, that’s lewd!

B (whispered): And sex!

T: It doesn’t though!

B: Someone had sex to get there!

T: If you didn’t see it, does it count?

(Laughter)

B: That’s in 1873 and that’s when we start having abortion and contraception become this intense legislative issue in the United States, that’s when it gets big, and a lot of times it’s kind of complicated because a lot of stuff about contraception and abortion was mostly meant to control people who weren’t married, and people who were married, it was kind of like “okay whatever this is a little bit more within the marriage”, it’s not that big of a deal. 

M: That’s your business

B: As long as you’re not telling anyone else about it, probably nobody’s gonna come after you for it, if that makes sense, which again is a way that wealthy white women tended to be the ones with access because they had they social power to be like, “it’s okay, I’ll just do this secret thing that’s illegal but no one’s gonna tell anyone and I’m just gonna pay for it to be safe”. The Comstock Laws are the start of the whole thing with abortion legality being this thing that was very challenged in the United States, because again prior to that, besides one little state law in Connecticut and blah blah blah, it just was not something that people considered to be a legal issue, it was a personal issue and no one was trying to legislate, no one was trying to legislate it. But then 1873 rolls around and suddenly it’s a lewds and lascivious and then 1880 rolls around and abortion becomes federally illegal in the United States.

T: What if I was federally illegal in the United States?

B: That would be, you’d be in prison, 

T: lewd and lascivious

B: Maggie do you want to talk about how any of that might have been related to Christianity.

M: I don’t know specifically in the context of Victorian Christianity, I do know, like you said, abortion was mostly “can’t have any unwed mothers” like in this time period!

B: That was so big! People were really afraid of unwed mothers!

T: Wait what about unwed mothers!

M: They didn’t want them!

T: I do!

(Laughter)

B: I don’t want to go super in depth into Roe v Wade because I will never stop talking and Roe v Wade was a landmark Supreme Court Case, 1972-1973, 1973 was when it actually went to the Supreme Court, 1972 was when the case was originally argued, I believe in Texas? Basically, there’s a woman named Sara Weddington, she gets a person named Norma McCorvey, who is pregnant and wants an abortion but abortion is illegal in Texas. So, Sara Weddington basically files a lawsuit saying that Texas’s abortion laws are unconstitutional, a lawsuit against the local Texas legal authority, the District Attorney. Roe v. Wade is initially rulled—okay Roe is Norma McCorvey’s anonymous name as a plaintiff because there was another big case about abortion that was being argued at the same time that already used Jane Doe, so they used Jane Roe as the pseudonym, hence Roe v. Wade because the legal and medical pseudonyms are typically Jane and John Doe, again there was already a Doe going on. So, Sara Weddington wins the case, the State of Case actually appeals to the Supreme Court, and is like “no way is this lady gonna say that our abortion laws are unconstitutional” and the case is heard by the Supreme Court, so Roe v. Wade is taken to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules, again—upholds the original Texas District Court Ruling and Roe v. Wade…the Supreme Court is like, “yes, Sara Weddington was right, the lawyer who argued the case was right, making abortion illegal is unconstitutional”. And that happened in 1973. The story gets very complicated when you dig in a lot, complicated in an interesting way, in a legal way it’s actually pretty uncomplicated, in my opinion with my understanding of constitutional law, this is one of the cases that is less confusing to me, because Roe v. Wade was decided on the grounds that abortion is a private medical decision that should be between a person and their doctor, and it honestly was a legal ruling that gave a lot of deference to the authority and discretion of medical professionals. So, it was not even about reproductive rights, it was kind of just like a legal thing. 1973 and the year following, like 1973, 1974 right around then is the most unrestricted access to abortion that we have had, like, ever after. 

T: Very sexy

B: So 1973, 1974 there was like, everyone was like “okay, amazing, this is great, abortion is legal, and relatively unrestricted”. And then, state after state after state was like time to do everything that we can to find out all the ways that we can restrict abortion as much as possible without technically making it illegal. That’s kind of where we get into the…like enter the rise of the religious right. Roe v. Wade is decided—not passes, it’s not a pieve of legislation, it’s a supreme court decision—it’s decided in 1973 and by 1976—three years later—the Hyde Amendment has passed, which says that federal insurance, like federal agencies, don’t cover abortion. So that quick, people were like “no no no”.

M: The rise of the Religious Right, I think as the Christian on this podcast, this is my time to shine. I’m drawing mostly from the article sent to me by Liz Behlke in addition to Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby. In Color of Compromise, Jamar Tisby talks about how a lot of people think that Roe v. Wade and the arguments about abortion catalyzed the religious right movement and was like what drew it together. Surprisingly that is not what happened. Actually, the religious right was born out of racism, are we shocked, I am not.

B: Can I drop a statistic really quick that’s related.

M: Oh, always drop a statistic, please Bridget I love your statistics

B; Very soon prior to Roe v. Wade, so in the year 1969, 75% of the women who died from abortion, which were mostly illegal and unsafe abortions, were women of color. So, 75% of the women dying from abortions were women of color. 90% of people accessing legal abortions were white patients in a private institution.

T: Yep.

M: So, abortion is about racism

B: There is the racism

M: In fact, in 1971 the Southern Baptist Conference was like, there officialtake was that “as Christians we needed to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fatal deformity and careful ascertained evidence to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother”. So, not the most liberal take on abortion, but still

B: It’s a little surprising considering…

M: It’s the Southern Baptist Convention’s official take in 1971

T: Right, that seems like somewhat better than it is now.

M: So, what actually catalyzed the Religious Right is that the government actually started taking away funding from schools that refused to desegregate, and surprise, surprise, most of the schools that refused to desegregate were private Christian schools, and so the government started taking funding away from private Christians schools, and the Christians said “this is an attack on Christianity” because of course.

T: Christians are always getting attacked for no reason

B: Kind of their favorite thing to be doing

T: They love to just be getting attacked all the time, happens all the time to them, so much they say

M: So that’s kind of like what I learned from Color of Compromise, which was like “Ohh that’s crazy”, but this is kind of like drawn no from the article that Ms. Behlke sent me, which was that the religious right took on the issue of abortion as a very strategic decision because they didn’t want to be associated as “the racist movement”, so they were like abortion, Roe v. Wade just happened, this is a perfect opportunity to distract from our racism and just be like “the secular liberal elites—little blood libel just for kicks—are trying to take over Christianity”. So, taking on the issue of abortion was incredibly strategic, and was to distract form the racism in the Religious Right movement. This is a direct quote from the article, “and of course, the beauty of defending a fetus is that the fetus demands nothing in return: housing, healthcare, education. So, it’s a fairly low risk advocacy”.

B: Oh, yeah that’s a very common thing to say about how fetus was a really easy thing to pick to advocate for because it doesn’t actually have any needs.

M: And so, the religious right can say, can be like “we’re not racist, we just hate when people kill babies” and hating when people kill babies is like a pretty, you know, that’s like—I also hate when people kill babies

T: Right, we’re anti-baby killing on this podcast, we’ve talked about it before

B: Nothing actually, and I say this so genuinely because I’m thinking of real times people have killed babies, and nothing is more chilling and upsetting and viciously awful to me than people killing babies

T: It’s like really fucked up and horrible, one of the worst things

M: So that’s the history of the religious right, so it’s a very strategic decision 

B: I want to say this is maybe the third or fourth time we’ve brought up how much we hate when people kill babies, it’s like insane how much we have to say that.

T: Very anti-baby killing

B: Such a big fan of babies being alive, I love hanging out with them

T: It’s because 2/3 of us are Jews so we really have to defend our stance as not wanting to kill bodies

B: So pro babies staying alive!

T: We love when babies stay alive and don’t want to eat them even a little bit.

B: But also we’re three people who love babies, I think

M/T: It’s true

B: Based on what I know about both of you and how you both feel about babies.

M: So, Bridget, the Religious Right says that God calls us to save the lives of the innocent and that we shouldn’t murder babies, so tell us a little bit about the religious justifications for abortion and all of that good, fun, and sexy things.

B: I’m gonna say that you don’t even really…okay…obviously, as usual, I’m speaking from a Jewish standpoint and I’m gonna say that it’s not really so much a religious justification of abortion, but the fact that there’s not religious resistance to it, if that makes sense. The idea that a fetus is a human life is just not really a thing in Judaism, there’s a lot of references to—okay I’m not even going to say a lot—there are references to fetuses in Jewish law, and none of them imply that a fetus is equivalent to a human life. Human Life is prized more highly than anything else in Jewish Religion, one of the most important pieces of Jewish practice and belief and law is that to save a life you can break any commandment because it’s the most important and sacred thing in the world, and life is valued so highly, and we just don’t talk about fetuses or embryos that way at all because there’s kind of a Jewish belief that life begins at birth, and a lot of times that’s referenced as life begins at first breath. So, once you’ve taken your first breath, once you’ve been born—again this can be a little bit iffy because it can either be first breath or once a person giving birth is in labor, that’s pretty much when that life has begun, like once you’re being born. In Jewish law, you kind of have to be born to be alive, which when you say it, makes sense

T: Makes sense, doesn’t it, sounds right to me

B: To me it sounds right, there’s not really a lot of pushback to the idea of abortion because that’s just not seen as taking a life and there is a lot of very clear specification on what life is, and again, life is something that is so highly valued and important that we wouldn’t mess that up. So, for the most part, Judaism is very comfortable with the idea of abortion, even the most fundamentalist sects of Judaism are not as anti-abortion as your average Conservative Christian in America. There are ultra-Orthodox Rabbis who are like “abortion is bad, but obviously if there are extenuating circumstances including extreme strife for the pregnant person, allowances can be made”. So there’s already that element of even in—and I’m not even gonna say sects of Judaism because, again, textually and in Jewish Law, Jews for the most part are pretty fine with abortion.

M: It’s important to emphasize that the idea of life beginning at conception is a pretty new concept

B: Very new concept, not showing up in any Hebrew Bible or Rabbinic Commentaries or anything like that especially because if you look at ancient society and you look at when the Bible was written, like we literally talked about in the Victorian Era, which is the 1800s, and they’re concept of quickening, early understanding of conception in a medical sense just wasn’t there. 

T: Didn’t exist, you had no idea when you were conceiving.

M: They knew that sex was correlated with pregnancy, but that’s about it.

T: Like they wouldn’t know which time it was

M: Also, sometimes when you drank water you get cholera, so like, shit just be happening. 

T: It seems like Jews and Christians both want to preserve life

M: Can my concluding statement be quoting from our fave transphobe Mary Daly?

T: Are we concluding?

B: No Maggie’s concluding, I’ve got miles to go

M: My concluding statement before Bridget keeps going is Mary Daly talks about how the issue of abortion for a lot of people who can get pregnant is really complicated and so far removed from religion for a lot of them, and a lot of people who take up the issue of abortion don’t take it up because they like to philosophize about it, they take it up because it’s like a very real aspect of their life that they have to face on a daily basis

B: Do you not have more to say on the ways that the religious right influenced the policy changes in the wake of Roe v. Wade

M: Oh, yeah 100%, they poured so much money and power behind it it’s absolutely sickening 

B: I want you to say more about that

M: The religious right has so many monies because white people are behind it, and so they have monies because of systemic racism, so a lot of the post Roe v. Wade because the religious right didn’t respond to Roe v. Wade, but started responding to abortion after Roe v. Wade, they were like “oh fuck, this exist, I guess we’ll just have to like, do other things about it”. So they used their money and resources to do things like create the Texas abortion ban right now.

B: Two more questions. One, how has politicizing abortion and linking it to Christian been advantageous for the religious right and two, how has the restrictions on abortion pushed for by the Christian Religious Right been racist. I thought you might want to answer those two questions.

M: Those are two very good questions that I think about a lot of the days. I’m glad you asked them. So, you’re first question about the politization of the Religious Right, I got into that a little bit of abortion within the religious right. So the religious right very strategically took on the issue of abortion to kind of hide their racism just a lil bit, just for kicks, just for fun, and so they turned it into an issue of like abortion represents how the secular world is encroaching in on us and how we need to fight back, so fighting back against abortion politically became a way for people to express their Christianity and so politics and Christianity started to kiss a little bit. And also, we talked about in the History of Purity Culture just the history of the religious right becoming enmeshed in politics, it’s like fun and quirky

T: What is it they say, church and state something about those two

M: They’re the same

T: Oh right, that’s what they say, that’s it

B: Something that I was reading when I was prepping for this episode about why Jews are so fine with abortion being legal said that Jews are some of the biggest advocates for separation of church and state because we have cultural lived experience with what happens when church and state become too enmeshed and when 

T: We get killed en mass

B: And when Christian ideologies become the reason for legislation and policy, and we don’t want that to happen again

T: Yeah, basically all we can do is try to avoid another Holocaust.

B: Not even just the Holocaust.

T: Yeah, you’re right, not even just the Holocaust.

B: Anyways

T: Have I mentioned the Holocaust?

B: I don’t want to bring up the Holocaust, but the Holocaust, the Holocaust was a really big deal!

T: Remember that we suffered

M: My Violence in the name of God class we talked about Far Right Militia groups and white supremacy, and like we said, the Religious Right was founded on white supremacy and the idea that segregated schools is a good thing, that kind of founded the religious right, and then the religious right adopted the issue of abortion, and so the issue of abortion got some racism into it. Interestingly enough, people who are anti-abortion have a higher likelihood of holding racist tendencies and ideologies, so that’s just like a fun statistic to think about and is interesting and, but also this issue is complicated.

T: Do we have anything we want to say before we conclude our part one on abortion?

M: Stay tuned for part two where we talk about nuance and dialectics

B: Stay fucking tuned

T: We have a lot more to say  

B: I feel like I’ve barely begun 

M: My Ex and My Future Wife the podcast about abortion tune in every week

B: Can we pivot because I think I could talk about abortion every week and never repeat myself. Okay My Ex and My Future Wife where I literally didn’t even talk about coat hanger abortions yet and I meant too, so I’m gonna need to circle back to the 1960s.

T: We’ll talk about it next week probably.

M: Okay Bridget, close us out

B: Okay, I love you guys. Thank you for joining us on My Ex and My Future Wife. If yoy enjoyed please like, follow, subscribe, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

M: Comment down below

B: Save us on your spotify! Email us at mxmfwpodcast@gmail.com with any questions, comments, concerns, compliments about how beautiful our voices are, or hate mail. Just kidding, don’t send us hate mail it will make me fully cry and I’ll have a really hard time.

T: Send me love letters

M: No hate mail, thank you

B: If you have anything you want us to talk about, just like this episode, where Ms. Behlke sent Maggie that article and boom boom boom here’s this episode. Also, follow us on our social media @mxmfwpod on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok, even though I’m scard of posting Tiktoks, we will post on Instagram and on Twitter, we have so much fun creating this content and being silly, and talking about history.

T: And we love you

B: Yeah (laughs)

T: Deeply and carnally

B: I’m Bridget

M: I’m Maggie

T: I’m Theo

B: Until next week, be gay and question God. 

Theo (singing): My Ex and My Future Wife