Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that gave women in the U.S. the legal right to an abortion, has now been officially overturned. The Supreme Court rarely reverses itself. The ruling means states can set their own laws around abortion. Many plan to ban it outright. How did we get to this point?
For decades, mostly White Evangelicals and Catholics joined forces to put political pressure on Republicans to oppose abortion access – which has serious implications for communities of color. Reporter Anayansi Diaz-Cortes talks with Jennifer Holland, a history professor and author of the book “Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement,” and Khiara Bridges, a reproductive justice scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, about the racial dynamics of the fight over abortion.
Most abortions now happen with pills rather than a surgical procedure at a clinic. The ability to get the pills via mail and telehealth appointments has helped expand access to abortions. Now, religious anti-abortion activists are promoting the unproven idea that medication abortions can be reversed. Reporters Amy Littlefield and Sofia Resnick investigate the science and history of this controversial treatment called abortion pill reversal.
But there’s another religious voice that often gets drowned out by the anti-abortion movement. Reveal's Grace Oldham visits the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, which back in the late ’60s was part of a national hotline for people seeking an abortion. Callers could be connected with clergy members who would counsel them and give a referral to a trusted doctor who would safely perform abortions. We hear how the church is continuing its legacy of supporting abortion access today, helping people in Texas who want abortions get them out of state.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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from the centre for investigative reporting mp, are ex. This is reveal a mallet. After almost fifty years. Women in the
the west will no longer have the constitutional right to an abortion. Writing for the media,
party justice, Samuel Alito, said that roe v wade was a grievously wrong and on a collision course with the constitution. From the day it was decided.
A dramatic reversal of this historic moment in the nineteen seventies at
time. Sarah Weddington is twenty. Seven years old, she standing in front of nine supreme court justices almond she's there to argue that all women in the united states
should have a constitutional right to safe illegal abortions. We do not ask this core to rule that abortion is good or desirable in any particular situation. We are here to advocate that the decision as to whether or not a particular warm and will continue to carry or will terminate a pregnancy is a decision that should be made by that individual that, in fact, she has a constitutional right to make that decision for her
seven justices agreed with waiting to only two dissented walter Cronkite delivered the deuce,
in a landmark ruling. The supreme court today legalized abortions up until this moment
orson was largely unavailable outside of four states. A basic legal fight is in effect over.
courting to the roman catholic church. The moral fight will never end and it didn't it outside the high court. On friday, the reaction from both sides was lost,
what an immediate the call
everyone, no matter how deeply they care about this decision to keep all protests: peaceful, peaceful, peaceful, peaceful president Joe Biden accused the supreme court of two
The country back to the eighteen, hundreds with your vote, you can act,
can have the final word. This is not over
very much more to say the least,
reveals a yancey D s cortez breaks down how he got to this point with the help of Jennifer holland, a history professor, at the university of Oklahoma. She wrote the book tiny you, a western history of the anti abortion movement. Here's an iatse, Jennifer holland has been researching the history of the anti abortion movement in the us for years, but we're going to jump right into nineteen. Seventy three when she says that are mostly white conservative group of catholics.
are outraged that women now have the legal right to an abortion. There are starting right that the state is no longer going to be punishing people who get abortions. Professor HOLLAND says they're trying to figure out how to fight back, but their worried
framing the issue around religion alone.
This is a moment in time in the united states, where a lot of americans are sceptical, they had a vision of religious movements as book burners as zealots, and so instead they land on this idea that abortion, just like Jim crow and slavery, is a civil rights.
issue, in that it devalued and potentially allowed for the murders of some group of merit, and also that that it was akin to the holocaust. This group of americans was fetuses. She says the movement conceptualizing the fetus as detached from the women and argues for its human and civil rights. They put forward much more of rights, bits arguments and arguments about genocide alongside what they create pretty quickly, which is futile, imagery and structure that the gory photos that become really the touchstone of this movement. But something else was happening to HOLLAND argues that to try to distance itself from a racist legacy, this most
the white movement uses anti abortion as a kind of moral make over the others. Wait. Conservative activists who say wore black children have died of abortion than died in slavery and they're making this argument, and they they believe it. This movement is buried under a higher calling of civil rights, but now the movement needs a party and a night. His own sex is the first time that there are public and party puts at least a tentative antiabortion plague on their platform. At the time, the republican party wasn't necessarily the obvious choice, but in the anti abortion movement republican seal, loyal voting block to gain power, the antiabortion movement seeks out other religious people who share the same
these two round, abortion and europe wide even jocose, really join up with white catholics, and this would be incredibly powerful that you have a growing number of antiabortion voters. They have a party, they have voters, they have a message and slowly, over the span of a few decades, they begin to elect people and start to make some progress. Medicate stops paying for abortions and states begin to pass laws. They require things like seeing a councillor before getting an abortion, but it's not enough. In the midst of late nineties, the anti worker movement put split down with the republic and party in a really important way. If you dont commit to this and follow through in the ways you can, then we are not going about anymore,
HOLLAND says, the ultimatum worked and by twenty thirteen state legislators start to restrict abortion before twenty four weeks, even though they know the laws will be considered unconstitutional and blocked by the courts. And yet you could see the enthusiasm and the hope that some of these could work themselves up. Of course, you need a court. There was going to be receptive to that and the movement got both the right case Dobbs, for instance, jackson out of mississippi that bans abortion at fifteen weeks and a president who secured a receptive supreme court donald trump. He didn't have a past in this movement, but what he did know is who his base was and what was expected of him trump would go on to nominate three supreme court justices. They all voted to overturn roe v wade,
The. So that's the history on how we got here, but what's next, how this will play out for tens of millions of americans will depend on race, gender and status. We are not preventing abortion. We are forcing birth. That's professor kiara bridges, she's, a reproductive justice scholar at u c berkeley and she's going to talk to me about consequences. First, let me just talk a little bit about plato's method. You see
bridges is also a constitutional law professor, so she can help going their justice. Samuel Alito considers himself in a regional list. She tells me original them is trying to figure out what the framers ments away back when, when they drafted the constitution, a leetle wrote the majority opinion that first,
at lie to the press in may. The opinion remains largely the same and bridges says it's influence by original is thinking and, of course, the framers weren't thinking about women's rights. There is a sort of sense of like these guys, hamilton and madison watching did in Benjamin franklin like their god. They're like demi gods, and so we have to like give their will continue,
it alive in conservative circles. The constitution is where our rights are derived from and where state and federal power is defined. So if we stray too far from the literal words of the framers, the- u s, republic can be put at risk, but for professor bridges is, it seems like the perpetuation of exclusion right, the perpetuation of exclusion of people. Like me, the opinion is one hundred and eight pages, long bridges read it all, but what stood out most to her was an obscure footnote. Yes, I read the footnotes leader says some. Such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the african american population and it is beyond dispute that row has had that demographic effect, a highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black. This footnote brings to mind
What professor Jennifer HOLLAND was talking about earlier: the appropriation of civil rights language by the anti abortion movement. I read that I saw how dare you, how dare you and bad this freak dicky s argument that abortion is black genocide into this opinion: birth control, abortion access are tools of racial justice right, not racial genocide, bridges notes that this was also a talking point among some black men who consider themselves black nationalists in the sixtys and seventys. A black feminists rejected that idea,
Until recently, abortion was legal in all fifty states, sometimes up to twenty four weeks. Although some state faint texas managed to pass and enforce a six week, bad getting an abortion will come down to whether you can afford to travel, to have your bullshit or not, people who are present.
It will always be able to terminate a pregnancy, they were able to terminate a pregnancy before roe v wade was decided, they'll be able to terminate a pregnancy safely. Even after row falls it's unprivileged people who will be forced to carry pregnancies to term, and she says this will have serious. Simply
since for black women. In the u s, because black women are more likely to die during pregnancy and while giving birth, specifically black people with a capacity for pregnancy, die at three to four times to rate of their white.
parts, and I also want to mention that there's nothing inevitable about that. Like the black people, don't have a gene that causes them to die of when they become pregnant. This is a purely social problem.
High rates of maternal mortality among black women is well documented and it's a combination of things, from disinvestment in black neighborhoods, to lead to poor health outcomes, to a medical care system that ignores and devalues black patients. So when you are forcing birth and your foresail black people, particularly sick, maintain pregnancies and to give birth, you are forcing them to engage in a task that they're just simply less likely to survive than their way
counterparts and that's cruel right. Abortion rights advocates often make the point that criminalizing abortion doesn't stop abortion, it just pushes people underground and into dangerous situations. But bridges believes that that will change.
Now the medication abortions are more than morn and are easier to access if you can just safely in just a pill prior to ten weeks gestation, I think
Gonna save a lot of people from for. You know that the code hangers in order to terminate a pregnancy and this access to abortion pills, the bridges- is talking about it's the next stage for the religious right.
Then they may have won a major court victory, but the anti abortion movement is not resting. A religious anti abortion doctor pushes a treatment to reverse the abortion pill. That time. I think it really was a holy spirit. Movement next on reveal
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from the center for investigative reporting in p r ex this is reveal I'm mallet.
In the idaho city of meridian to beige buildings face each other across a parking lot. One is a planned parenthood that for now offers abortions. The other is a stanton healthcare clinic with a logo of a purple flower
It offers to reverse abortions. Randy swindell is the founder, stanton healthcare.
And doing the last twelve to eighteen months is trailing our abortion pill reversal process and making sure that it's working and that we have our procedures,
place. Brandy and evangelical christian who's been a part of the anti abortion movement since early twenties she's about to go
While promoting abortion pill reversal, we are launching a campaign, a very aggressive campaign nationwide. On
of course impel reversal because, as you will now, that's the direction that it's going less surgical and more at home chemical abortions. As of twenty twenty, more people in the? U s, having abortions with pills, then through procedures in a clinic and that has antiabortion activists worried their claiming that you can reverse and abortion after you, ve already taken a pill to end a pregnancy reporters, Amy little field and sofia resnick habit.
Instigating how religious anti abortion movement is pushing this idea into the mainstream, even though major medical groups say it's not scientifically proven, or ethical amy picks up the story. It was back in two thousand and six that brandy
I'm dead, stanton healthcare randy's mission is to put plan parenthood out of business by copying its health care model. With a twist
He doesn't believe in hormonal birth control, so that's not an option, and instead of offering abortions, she offers a treatment that stanton advertises on a sandwich board outside the clinic in meridian change of heart. Abortion pill reversal, walk in or call now we talked with someone who did have a change of heart, so we can understand what it's like to go through. This process were calling her by her first name only to protect her privacy. I am jennifer, I live in ready and I have seven kids, it's a hot day. She's got
the ac on. I did have to go to my cart so that I can have some peace and quiet and not make hits coming. Jennifer attempted a medication abortion last July. She felt ambivalent, but did it anyway, so I've always kind of been a little bit like. I don't think people to get abortions, but I do know people very close to me have had them. So try not to be so judging about it, but I just thought that this was the best thing. First, she took
oh, called missy presto at planned parenthood. Missy pristine blocks the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for pregnancy to grow. After taking the pill, Jennifer went home that night. She couldn't,
sleep. She knew that within forty eight hours she would need to take a second medication called misoprostol.
That would cause her uterus to contract, so she could complete the abortion, but jennifer's head was spinning with second thoughts. If I didn't take the other bills like they sent me home with another pack of pills, would I basically what I keep the baby? Did I cause like damage for the like? Have defects and stuff like that? So when I started googling the stuff, I don't reversal stuff, she finds the website for the abortion pill. Rescue network
its run by heartbeat international will explain more about them later. At this point, its two or three in the morning. There's a chat box on the website. Jennifer sends a message. They called me and I I declined the call and I asked them. Can you text me because I'm lying in bed with my baby and my husband, their sleeping and then
that's it for like an hour. The hotline refers her to stand in healthcare and soon
Four has an appointment for the next morning. I happened to be the one with after hours phone that night and
able to schedule an appointment and just get her right in samantha duty
It stands director of clinical services and a physician assistant. She gives jennifer a prescription for progesterone that she supposed
every day until the end of her first trimester. The idea is that
progesterone will overpower the effects of that first abortion pill, the one that blocks progesterone and help Jennifer keep the pregnancy the produce
Her own makes jennifer feel lethargic and gives her food a weird tee, so she went up stopping at a couple weeks. Airily, seven months after taking
Abortion pill. Jennifer gives birth, got
Everything was normal and my by healthy, and he just turned four months old stanton considers Jennifer one of its success stories.
knowledge. The data is limited so far, but this is also our personal experience at our clinic that it's, a very successful stanton told us. It seen five abortion pillar versus clients, including jennifer, and four of them continued their pregnancies, but that record is misleading. As stanton told us. Two of those clients never took the progesterone treatment. There are born.
And failed on their own one took the full medication. Abortion regimen and the other only took the first pill like jennifer, it's rare for the full regiment to fail. But when you just take one pill
The failure rate can be anywhere from eight to forty six percent. So it's hard to know whether jennifer carried her pregnancy to term because she took her just around or because she skipped the second medication groups like stanton claim it's because of the produced around, and they hope this treatment will help them
ass, the rise and medication abortions good evening, everyone let people get to their seats,
In february, the american association of pro life obituary ends held a conference in nashville tennessee and dr christina
the regime is showing a group of doctors. How do you get abortion pills online? Not because I'm encouraging each do so, but I want to show you how easy it is, and I encourage you to check this process. She compared to online shopping, and then I picked one of em and like it, it was like you put it in a shopping, cart lake. Like amazon, I mean this is now, but it's not that simple, because some,
states have pass laws that restrict medication. Abortion, including banning abortion outright in
idaho brandy says, Stanton will try to help track where pills come from by asking it's abortion pill reversal clients where they got them still. These laws can be hard to enforce
so groups, including these anti abortion doctors, are trying to convince people to reverse their abortions. Instead, dr Christina francis urged every clinician at this conference
to offer abortion pill reversal or a pr, she calls it. We
need more a pr providers y'all. There is no reason why every prescriber
This room should not be in a pr provider. I'm going to make that very hard
I don't know a reason why you would not be in a br provider. Dr Francis sits on the board of this anti abortion medical group and so does
DR jorge Delgado, the lead
turkey or behind abortion pill reversal journalist, so fear
investigating him years ago, we used to work together.
and we re united to work on this story. High amy, yes, I have been looking into doktor delgado. He painted the whole abortion perverse alone.
so you might think he's an image you, anna biochemist, but he's not he's a family doctor based in southern california. Train did a catholic approach to reproductive healthcare called natural procreative technology? Is that where you track your cycle instead of taking contraception or using condoms rate, but he goes even further than that doctor Delgado says. Even if your married, you should consult with god
for you try to avoid getting pregnant even using this natural method. So he's really following the most conservative teachings of the catholic church when it comes to his medical practice, exactly okay, how did doctor Delgado's start trying to reverse abortions? So it was back in two thousand and nine. This anti abortion activist named terry palm quest. She called doctor delgado to tell him about a woman in Texas who had just taken the aboard.
in and changed her mind. Doktor Delgado at the time was using produced to try to prevent miscarriages early in pregnancy. Any thought- maybe I could stop the abortion, though
He tells the story on a show, that's put out by the ruth institute. It's a religious group, that's antiabortion and anti gay rights. Their stated mission is to quote defend. The family are suitable, terry, I've. I've never heard of anybody stopping a medical abortion, but let me think about this:
Their time, I think it really was a holy spirit movement and I got the idea will be
If I could supplement progesterone out, compete them if a pristine and save the baby. Okay. So after that phone call, Dr Delgado found a doctor in texas willing to give this woman progesterone and, according to him her pregnancy survived. Then he started to promote this treatment. He published his largest research outcomes in twenty eighteen, any launched the very same hotline that Jennifer contacted. You know I tried to talk to Dr Delgado, but he didn't respond. The anti abortion movement has really latched onto his research. Saying he's proven that this treatment works. But then you have expert groups like the american college of obstetricians and
an ecologist who say it's not real science. Here's the organizations led for equity transformation, doktor, jennifer, viva censier, literally every single step that is required of a rigorous scientific study. That would then be peer, reviewed and accepted for publication has been missed in this study doctor
that, as research had no standardized protocol and no information on any safety outcomes for the women who took this treatment. The only complications he did report on regret the facts and premature birds.
Which weren't any higher than average. So if this isn't a scientific study, what is it? Well, it's just a summary of outcomes reported by three hundred and twenty
A provider is from all around the world who gave varying amounts are produced round to women after they had taken the first abortion pale, so some women got progesterone injections, others took it orally or van generally, and experts say that just reporting outcomes of a brand new treatment like this is an unknown to prove that it works, but the researched
get published in a journal called issues in law and medicine. You looked into the journal where'd you find well. I learned that it was cofounded in the eighties by an anti abortion legal group and the american association of pro life ob g wagons, and it's peer reviewed by long time.
anti abortion activists. So let's go over the results of Dr Delgado's case series, because you- and I have looked at them pretty closely. He tracked about five hundred and fifty women rape about half of them went on to deliver babies right, but then groups that promote abortion pill reversal often cite a higher success rate from delgado study. Sixty eight per cent yeah, but that sixty percent success rate is only for a subset of patients who took high dose progesterone pills. But here's the biggest flaw in this report. Amy, it doesn't tell you what happened to the nearly three hundred people for whom this treatment failed. Did any of them have serious complications, we don't know, but you- and I did talk to this other doc,
or who studied abortion pill reversal, yeah, I'm going to take a minute and tell his story. Dr Mitchell, Cronin is an ob g Y n at the university of California Davis he's an abortion
The writer who's been researching the topic for thirty years and he wanted to find
Whether abortion pill reversal really works here.
and enroll forty people who had decided to have an abortion, but were willing to wait, so they could be part of his study. They would take the first pill in a medication. Abortion then begin
in either progesterone or a placebo, but he had to stop at ten because once he started the study, three patients hemorrhage agreed to talk with me about that turns out. The first person got pretty
thrown in the other two got placebo doesn't matter. They all have reached the required transport by ambulance
to an emergency room. These were not normal outcomes, doktor kind, and how much bleeding are we talking about here right? Because patients who have a modification abortion do have quite a bit of bleeding
leading that these participants in the study had was significantly more than that. I have never in mind
The career had somebody say, I'm sitting in the bathtub, while blood is
we ought to be waiting for the paramedics to get here, and this was a patient who had take
in the placebo, but had waited several days after taking miffy per stone without taking misoprostol
If she was now out about forty five days, Dr Cronin called off the study. So all we could take from this was there's a safety
So, in the end, doktor Cronin study couldn't prove whether abortion pill reversal works or not. A sample size of ten just isn't enough to say, but it does raise the question of whether it
be risky to interrupt him, education, abortion and only take the first pillar in the regimen, particularly if the patient is past about eight weeks like those who took the placebo and then hombre judged
It's unclear whether DR delgado patients had similar complications, because his report doesn't say in fact he doesn't report on any of the people for whom his treatment failed. This safety
Since that doctor credit study raised about abortion pillar, versatile, haven't stopped antiabortion activists from pushing it. There are continuing
collect data in real time from people like jennifer to try to show that this works cement
duty from stanton sent the data on jennifer too. That organization I mentioned before heartbeat international. It's a seven
million dollar a year. Conservative christian organization, heartbeat has a
it's in seventy nine countries. It claims that, since twenty twelve more than
Three thousand women have reversed the abortion pill, but the group won't tell us which countries or states those cases happened, and we
turkey for data on complications from abortion pillar vessel? They wouldn't tell us instead the
sent us a photo of a toddler it claimed was saved by the process, even if we could very
by the numbers. They still represent a sliver of a percent of the roughly nine hundred thousand abortions in the u s each year, but it's still grabbing the a
and of conservative lawmakers. Since twenty fifteen states have been passing laws that require clinics to tell patients who are taking abortion pills that the pill can be reversed if they
their mind. Kentucky Louisiana and the brass guy are among eight states with active laws on the books, so is west virginia, which just passed a law that takes it even further. It protects doctors from
being sued for prescribing any non fda d approved treatment to counteract the abortion pill, even if a patient dies when we
ass, the FDA about west virginia law. It said the fda does not o pine on state law, north Dakota past
The abortion pill reversal law in twenty nineteen, but it was blocked by a judge that was
the american medical association, the country's leading organization for doctors sued, Madeira
CEO, the american medical association, doctor madera, said north Dakota's law threatened doctors, freedom of speech, by forcing them to provide false information about abortion pill reversal, is not medically supported. Scientific.
play supported and to imply that it is, is a falsehood. I mean miss goes back to the snake oil treatments or the pandemic that were first introduced and really had to vigorously fight against, not as well so. This is
another form of snake oil, abortion pillar versa. Laws were blocked in four other states where lawsuits are also pending. Utah is the only stay
that puts a disclaimer in the law that refers to Dr Cronin study and the patients who hemorrhaged and arizona the first state to pass an abortion pill. Reversal law actually agreed to repeal the law because it couldn't find any experts.
Willing to defend it in court. Now that roe v wade is overturned, these laws won't be as relevant, where states
abortion outright, but they're spreading this past legislative session. At least ten states considered bills to promote abortion pill reversal
Doktor Dr Delgado, wouldn't talk with us about abortion. Pill saw, but I did talk with a leading supporter of his doctor Donna Harrison. I am aboard board certified
we do. I am I'm currently the ceo of the american association of pro life obstetricians and gonna colleges. I asked her how abortion,
pillar verse all fits into the movement strategy. Would you say that it's the anti abortion movements response to the spread of application? Abortion? No, I would say it's. The common sense use of the principle of talks linen antidote poison in the internet. Doktor Harrison has
years, promoting the idea that abortion complications are under reported. So I asked her about the
It are on abortion pillar of our saw. There are over three thousand babies that exist now, because they had the option of abortion cover
I'm glad you mentioned that three thousand number, because I wanted to ask you: what is the breakdown of where those cases were what
its they were and where some of them international and outside the EU s what's the deal.
on those three thousand lifers amy. I dont know because
heartbeat international runs the abortion pill rescue network. So we don't keep those statistics I mean. Is it something you feel
comfortable, participating annan and encouraging, if you, if you don't, have the numbers absolutely because the principles common sense.
I don't get doktor harrison's input on one last finding of ours that nearly all of the states with aboard,
and pillar versus laws aren't tracking its use either. I'm asking your profession,
opinion as a doctor, whether you think that there should be
state regulation oversight of this method of trying to reverse the abortion power which, as we discussed, has limited evidence and data behind it. I would disagree with you again limited evidence and data for swifter years data of safety on production. There is evidence that we know exactly how miss approach works. So there isn't like little data on that. There is actually a lot of data on it and it's very common sense and we don't have
the state telling people how to prescribe antibiotics. It's true. There is a lot of data on using progesterone for things like treating women with a history of miscarriages and fertility issues, but not under
sing the abortion pill and there is one state tracking this controversial treatment, nebraska officials there told us it Hasn'T- been used in the state once and that's not
so surprising. The window to use abortion pill reversal is very narrow. A patient would me
I feel, immediate, regret and seek out the treatment quickly. Studies show
motions around abortion can be complicated, people often feel and mix if things, including sadness or regret, but at this
the vast majority, also feel relief and like they made the right decision, there's a whole new.
and challenging this idea that people who have abortions should feel regret or shame. My name is renee bracey, sherman and guess what I had an abortion jennifer. The mother of seven who took the abortion pill reversal, wasn't about to shout her abortion attempt from the rooftops. I felt like there wasn't anybody to talk to even in family and sucks, because I was ashamed of what I was doing when she found out she was pregnant. It fell to jennifer, like all roads, lead to shame. I dunno how many kids all of you have, but once you start having so many kids, people are no longer congratulatory they're more like. When are you going to stop there shaman both sides of it? Really there felt shame like oh people are gonna. Look at me like seriously a seventh,
If he had, then also the abortion felt shameful to me, too, we told jennifer about our findings on abortion pill reversal, but she still felt like the treatment is worth knowing about doctor jennifer via a sense
theo from the american college of obituary and says she would agree if there was
solid evidence behind it. If there is a possibility to reverse medication, abortion that is safe for people who want that, I want to find out what that is. I'm not opposed to that. But right
now she says, patients like jennifer are getting medical information grounded in religious ideology, not science and that intersection,
incredibly dangerous
back in meridian, idaho plan parenthood still sits across from stanton clinic, but soon it will have to stop providing abortions, because the state is about to ban the procedure entirely, but stand
it, can keep offering abortion pale reversal with no one keeping track except harpy international those reporter Amy little feet. She reported the story with Sophia resnick and it was produced by catherine gasket. Abortion pill reversal is making its way into the mainstream. It's been fuelled by movement. That's mixed religion with science.
but there's another religious movements dating back to the sixties. That's trying to increase women's access to abortion.
Six days a week,
today. That's next on reveal from the center for investigative reporting and p r x.
The
hi? My name is Michael Montgomery and I'm a producer, and reporter here at reveal reveal is a nonprofit news.
innovation and we depend on support from our listeners donate today.
Reveal news, dot, org, slash donating! Thank you so much
center for investigative reporting and prx. This is reveal I'm a legend. We just heard about abortion pill reversal in the ways that anti abortion religious groups are promoting it. Our last story today looks at a different kind of religious community, one that seeks to protect abortion access and has been doing so since, before roe v, wade
it starts fifty five years ago. The last time abortion was largely illegal. In the u s, a group of twenty one protestant
in Asturias, and jewish rabbis in new york city had gotten together two strategies on some.
They were seeing in their congregations. People who are looking to get an abortion were coming to them for advice,
They would later tell the new york times in a front page story that it was their pastoral responsibility
and religious duty to help, they called themselves the clergy consultation service on abortion and in spring of nineteen sixty seven, they launched a telephone hotline. Anyone calling could talk to a clergy member and get a referral to
network of trusted doctors who are willing to take the legal risks to perform abortions. Reverend Howard moody was a co founder.
The group wants you let the respectability of the church and the synagogue to this issue, which, for many women it was a moral issue and consequently, to have the religious institutions with them. Affirming their decision was very.
Orton of that time. The clergy consultation service would expand beyond york to thirty eight states in texas. They were affirming patients to a young doctored named Curtis boyd. I was in the boardroom shook phase we
ten hours a day, and they wanted me to do more and it was incredible I said: gonna have to have time to eat and sleep like to stay my wife and children. Occasionally DR boyd was connected to the group
his faith as a unitarian universalist and he was performing abortions out of his clinic in athens about an hour southeast of dallas town
You could drive in the town of volkswagen bus into
I note with a number of people coming in and out of the clinic doktor boy
Operation was drawing a lot of attention. They knew what I was doing.
I never saw what I was doing. I never said what I was doing, but they do if he got caught, he risked losing his medical license, losing his practice and even going to prison. So doctor boyd moved his office to a bigger city dallas and when even that felt too dangerous, he moved out of state. I decided to go to satisfy arizona, liberal mecca. I didn't think they were putting out all that much and I don't, but the people doctor boyd, left behind in Texas still needed abortions. It was a ten hour drive between the two cities, so the clergy consultation so
I just came up with a plan b, put the patients on planes everyday there for the fly come out everyday to albuquerque. We picked them up in a van ten. Fifteen people brought them to satisfy yeah was everyday, and then they take them back the next morning to pick up another group, DR boyd, says these trips went on for years until january.
nineteen, seventy three. When the supreme court decided on roe v wade, doctor boyd was at his clinic when the news broke on the radio. Abortion was now a protected right. We hurt each other and started crying tears of joy, and I thought oh it's over it's over at last, it's over.
After row, the clergy consultation service, close down its hotline and shifted focus, doktor boyd would spend the next fifty years
up abortion services in the south west, his train
more than one hundred doctors, not just on the mechanics of the procedure, but also his motivation behind it.
So that's the issue. I want to see our doctor to know everything about women's place in society, abortion.
doesn't define who a woman is it's event in her life, even before the supreme
court ruled to overturn roe texas enacted a near total.
Abortion ban in september of twenty twenty one and it created once again the demand for DR boyd's new mexico clinic to receive patients from dallas.
Regular flights are being organized by the same community that first recruited doctor boyd more than half a century ago. The first unitarian church of dallas, a reporter grace oldham, grew up in that church and she went to see what those trips look like today. Please remain standing as we say, the affirmation and doxology of our church. You can find my
in school. To joke that I went to a hippie church. Love is the doctrine of our and a typical sermon.
you're, just as likely to hear a sufi poem as you are excerpts from the bible, or it's definitely known for being a progressive, come as you are type of community in harmony with the divine the churches
connected set of modern buildings and one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in dallas. When my family attended
mrs there on sundays, we typically have two loop around the block just to find parking, but there were only a few cars in the parking lot. When I went back to the church this spring,
the sun hadn't even come up. Yet are you traveling with us today? No I'm! Actually the radio reporter that's gonna come along for just this morning. That's a church volunteer, she's out front greeting the people
will be travelling this morning to new mexico for an abortion. She moves on to the next car and start stretching people up the stairs
the church. How are you good? It's good to see you reverend Daniel
canter standing at the top of the stairs screening travellers, as they arrive, he's been the senior minister of the church. Since I was a kid and these trips, where his idea we done five or six troops like this so far, I think
you know it took a while for us to get organized, but this is what we're doing taken twenty patients twenty travelers every two weeks.
not the daily trips that the clergy were operating in the early seventies, but patients,
still arriving to a clinic owned by doctor boyd in new mexico, a separate
innovation handles the trip, logistics like plane, tickets and transportation to and from the airport. The group is
all the new mexico, religious coalition for reproductive choice and brittany de facto as their programme managers. We are not.
are a religious organization that helps women and people get access to abortion care here. New mexico,
The travellers are sitting in chairs along the walls of a room. That's normally used as a classroom and the centre there's a table of snacks that are left most san touch, brittany, hands out boarding, passes and two other documents, one with the rules for the trip and the other,
as a legal waiver future the environment in texas is just like a precaution to keep everyone safe. Please no pictures or social media, especially of other patients or our clinic you're, not going to hear from any of the patients
I was only able to observe this part of the trip on the condition that I'm not speak with any of them on this morning in April, there's
thing on the books and texas law that says it's illegal to help someone get an abortion in another state, but legal experts predict. Some states will try to pass
as that punish anyone who helps a person traveling to get an abortion, no
how the laws change
to reassure the travelers they'll, be supported by this church for fifty years, has been trying to make sure that you have this choice. It's actually more like sixty years,
in nineteen sixty three, the national arm of the unitarian universalist church, announced its support.
woman's right to abortion. Ministers at this church,
even started driving people down to the gulf of mexico to get abortions on ships in international waters. The church,
He also had a women's group setting abortion. They were panels
doctors, activists and legal experts include
one of the lawyers who represented Jane row- reverend canter, shares some of this history with the mostly silent room. The travellers are quiet, they ve all been here for about an hour and soul
very early in the morning. I want you to know that you're in a safe place here that I'm the senior pastor of this church and I believe, strongly
that you have the right to decide what happens to your body when you are pregnant or not pregnant.
If only one of the criteria or wisdom, you don't want anything. Every trip a different dallas clergy member goes with the patients to albuquerque and back this week it's reverend Bruce mackenzie she's the last one to address the room. When I was a young woman, I was pregnant and I had an abortion and it was a hard decision for me, but it was
and I promised myself in that. If I ever had the opportunity to help others, I would help because people help me as she speaking a charter bus pulled into the church parking lot. The group as a final
check you down here and they back outside
I like the football team bus there, the so just get the reality of this they're traveling twelve to fourteen hours, to take a pill, be monitored for thirty minutes and get a prescription to come home and have a pill tomorrow. This kind of inconvenience, because of the laws in texas is absurd. After the bus pulls out, I meet reverend can turn his off
as I asked him about the travellers he's met on these trips. We don't know all their stories. Many of those travelers today are college students who, if they get derailed by a pregnancy, their whole
if, as is james now, some people will say: oh that's just what their chose to do, that's what they should character, but it's not true. Not everybody can can pivot like that. For months, reverend canter has been talking with other faint leaders. Too.
pair for this moment, they're planning to reboot a modern version of the clergy consultation service to help people get to states where abortion is more accessible, the loud voice
yelling about how evil this is.
Louder than ours, but we're we're gaining strength and we're organizing all over the country.
Reverend Canter knows the religious arguments against abortion. He's heard them from protesters in front of them.
church and angry letters and emails and he's not upset by the differences in theological opinions. It's okay for them to have that
for them to impress their ideological positions on everyone else is not.
America as about really
it is not done as any favours, because its put a lot of shame on sexuality in general, which is come straight out of patriarchate control over women's bodies. In his practice of faith, reverend counters priority is to support the lives he can see in front of him, not the potential for life. A lot of people of all faiths do not believe
abortion is an evil. Do not feel that the people in that room this morning should have feel any shame and
we're expressing what we feel strongly about, which is that we love one another and that we try to help one another.
That story was from our investigative reporting. Fellow grace old. This latest fight overboard,
is just beginning, democrats are promising to pass federal laws that would protect abortion rights.
justice, clarence thomas, has his own ideas in a separate concurring opinion thomas said in future case
The court should reconsider. Other rulings, like ones that protect access to contraception
same sex relationships and same sex marriage.
Early producer, for this week show is catherine, was gasket jet lots of hell
come on anti ds, cortez, just a ringer and richard Yang, since
rod, regis and jenny, casas edited to show things to have.
they need a martin and our former colleague emily Harris Emily
Miss you so much special thanks to the physicians for reproductive health and choice, project at columbia, university center for oral history for the archive.
Audio of reverend howard moody, Nikki frick is our fact checker with help from Kim freedom Victoria
net gives our general council our production, Andrews, amiable, stafford score and sound designed by the dynamic dual j breezy, Mr Jim briggs. If a nando, my man, you're a router, are postproduction team. This week also includes catherine style martinez.
Our digital producers. Sarah Merk, our sea eel is case our camp
so may I go, walls are editor in chief in our executive producer is Kevin Sullivan. Our theme, music, is by comrade o lightnings.
For for reveals, provided by the reva and David Logan foundation. The John D and catherine t macarthur foundation, the Jonathan Logan family foundation, the ford foundation the highest
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The centre for investigative reporting in p r x amount lets him and remember. There is always more to the story,
prx.
Transcript generated on 2022-07-29.