Episode 2: Reproductive Coercion Transcript

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Sonya: Hello, and welcome to Insomniac Librarians, your new favorite feminist, anti-capitalist book club! I'm Sonya.

Jenni: I'm Jenni.

Kylie: And I'm Kylie, and how are we all doing today? I know that I’ve been feeling like myself lately because it's finally Taurus season.

Jenni: [laughs]

Kylie: Um, I think you guys are both Capricorns, right?

Jenni: Yeah.

Kylie? Am I wrong about that?

Sonya: Yeah we are.

Jenni: Mhm.

Kylie: I… I don't know, I really get that energy from you guys, but especially Jenni with all of the organizing coord that you have going on in your life, but anyway, I've just been really enjoying Taurus season so far and getting vaccinated! How about you guys?

Sonya: Oh my God yes, it’s so nice to be vaccinated. I got my first shot last week. My throat’s been a little dry but besides that, I haven't really had any side effects. What about you guys?

Kylie: Um, I mean I got my first dose, also Pfizer. And I mean like, it was my first dose so I didn't really feel too much, just a really sore arm, which was annoying but I'm doing okay. Jenni, you had Moderna right?

Jenni: Yeah, I got Moderna but I got vaxxed like two months ago now. [laughs] I've been fully vaxxed for over two months, and I think it's just been really cool seeing how everyone else—the general population—is slowly getting vaxxed. Um, I hung out with three other friends the other day, and everyone was vaxxed, so I think that was just a little—that was so different and just really relieving.

Sonya: Oh my God I can't wait to hang out with friends again.

Kylie: Friends. [laughs] Would love to get some someday. [laughs]

Jenni: [laughs]

Kylie: Anyway.

Sonya: I think the last person I like, actually hung out with—besides just seeing at like, my front door or going to their front door to talk or drop something off—was Jenni, back in November.

Jenni: Oh my God.

Kylie: Oh, cute.

Jenni: Wait.

Kylie: Aw.

Jenni: Wait, me? [laughs]

Sonya: Yeah!

Jenni: What did we do?

Sonya: [laughs] We—

Jenni: Oh wait, did we take pictures?

Sonya: Yeah.

Jenni: Yes, yes. [laughs]

Kylie: Oh cute.

Sonya: It was a good time.

Jenni: Yes, okay.

Kylie: Sonya on your birthday, I think I brought Bucky to your house, right?

Sonya: Yeah yeah yeah, that was fun.

Kylie: Bucky’s my dog, he's this twenty-pound Chihuahua-pitbull who had fleas this week, so I just finished giving him a really thorough soak with some really intense flea shampoo and it was not easy, but hopefully he's clean now. Anyway.

Sonya: Yeah keep us posted.

Jenni: [laughs] Okay. Anyways, as we close out Sexual Assault Awareness Month this April, in light of some recent news, we wanted to take some time to chat about how reproductive coercion is an inextricable part of our rape culture. So, content warning—we will be talking about gender-based violence and how that acts as a barrier to getting abortion care and other health care.

Kylie: So, what’s happened? Last week Arkansas’ state legislature introduced a bill to require people who seek abortion care past 20 weeks into their pregnancy to have reported their rape to law enforcement, so, summary: abortion is banned at or after 20 weeks into your pregnancy there, and the only exception is for those who were impregnated by rape, and they’re given no choice but to report their rapes and pray that they’re believed, so. All of this is fucking disgusting, and there’s many levels to it so let’s get into it.

Sonya: So this week we’re actually talking about two articles Kylie has written and reported, one piece in Dame Magazine called “Abortion Bans Are a Form of Gender Violence,” and one in Rewire called “When Your Partner Tries to Control Your Birth Control.” Kylie, want to talk briefly about your reporting before we dive in?

Kylie: Okay, wow. Well, not self plug, but sure! Thanks so much for reading and wanting to talk about my work, you guys.

Kylie: So first, in Dame, I wrote about how the recent proliferation of abortion bans and restrictions in state legislatures, and how these bills are an extension of endemic gender-based violence, in light of, you know, at the time I wrote this, the recent killings of Asian women in Atlanta, the police killing of Sarah Everard in London, and how April is SA Awareness Month—all of that. So none of that is separable from each other.

Kylie: Quoting the piece that I wrote, “These political attacks and acts of state-sanctioned reproductive coercion extend from the same well of misogyny as recent, alarming incidents of gender-based violence, and carry many of the same long-term consequences. Similarly, forced sterilizations allegedly carried out by ICE on immigrant women at the border speak to the disproportionate targets of state reproductive coercion—migrant women, women of color, who are also more likely to experience gender-based violence.”

Kylie: Did you guys have other pull quotes that you wanted to talk about?

Jenni: Another pull quote that we wanted to highlight was, “We rarely see the violent connections drawn between abortion bans and sexual assaults, between police violence targeting women of color and anti-abortion politicians equating health care like abortion to murder—but all are rooted in a greater culture of gender violence. Abortion clinics, including providers and patients, are frequently the subjects of menacing acts ranging from sidewalk harassment to arson and shootings, and the reason is simple: When politicians equate abortion with murder, they incite retaliatory violence against those purportedly responsible.”

Kylie: Yeah, I think there was a report back in 2016 even, that just in the wake of the 2016 election, during which Trump was constantly using his platform to equate abortion with murder, threats against providers really spiked by like 50%. It was insane.

Jenni: And I think this was another really interesting quote as well, because this made me think about how there's a lot of mistrust already between the general population—but particularly minority communities—and healthcare providers, and as a future healthcare provider myself, I think a lot about how the role of healthcare providers is to look out for the patient's best interest in regards to health. And laws like this seriously tie the hands of healthcare providers, because then they're not able to actually look for the best interest for these patients if they can't do what they need to do.

Sonya: This next part of the piece segues into your other report on reproductive coercion and birth control sabotage: “Anti-abortion legislation also dangerously contributes to normalizing intimate-partner violence through reproductive coercion. When state and federal lawmakers constantly attempt to legislate and control the bodies and reproductive health options of women, girls and pregnant people, this sort of coercion becomes culturally acceptable, and is all too often mirrored and reproduced in relationships.”

Jenni: Let me also give an example of how it becomes “culturally acceptable,” from Kylie’s article, she wrote: “In a Saturday Night Live sketch in 2018, Pete Davidson joked about switching out his then-fiancee Ariana Grande’s birth control with Tic Tacs, to uproarious laughter from the studio audience. But for all the tongue-in-cheek cultural jokes about poking holes in condoms or throwing away a partner’s birth control to coerce them to stay in a relationship, this behavior is rarely recognized for what it is: a prevalent act of abuse with violent ramifications for women and pregnant-capable individuals that can last a lifetime.”

Kylie: Yeah and that was in my Rewire article on reproductive coercion like, in interpersonal relationships, so kind of segueing out of what we were just talking about with state abortion bans, so kind of that interpersonal side of things, but speaking of that, Jenni I think that we've talked about this a bunch of times before.

Kylie: I mean, sabotaging or controlling someone's access to contraception, whether that's birth control pills, or refusing to use a condom, or trying to impregnate someone against their will, that's intimate partner violence. And in my other piece, which you just pulled that quote from, I talked to a legal advocate who's been a part of the movement in California to have reproductive coercion added to civil definitions of domestic violence.

Kylie: So Jane Stoever, who's a professor at UC Irvine School of Law, talked to me a lot about power of, you know, naming that, of naming reproductive coercion as domestic violence, and how that opens up more legal options for victims, how that helps clinics help victims and how that can create policy and culture change just through the power of naming that and it's so important.

Sonya: Oh my God, yes. It’s so hard to know that you are something or that you’re experiencing something when you don’t have a term for it—it’s like, is it just me? Is this even a problem? But when you have the term, it solidifies thoughts or feelings that you already had and also gives you something that’s more easily searchable online if you want to find resources or even an online community.

Kylie: Yeah, oh my God, so important.

Sonya: There was another quote from your Rewire article that I really liked. It was: “‘We have a societal conception of sexual violence as stranger violence, and it’s hard to comprehend when someone who says they love you is also someone who denies your autonomy and sexually violates you,’ Stoever said… Reproductive coercion is less likely to be seen as violent in a rape culture that’s conditioned us to equate rapists and violent sexual partners with strangers—despite the fact that perpetrators of sexual violence are more likely to be people we know.”

Sonya: And this just reminds me of our conversation last episode about Know My Name and Chanel Miller’s powerful quote about how she never doubted any of the positive testimony about Brock Turner was true, and how she needs us to know that good and bad qualities aren’t mutually exclusive; just because someone is kind and helpful to the elderly or neighbors doesn’t mean they would never rape someone. Again, we talked about this last episode so I won’t spend too much time going over it again, but the way that rapists are portrayed in film and TV goes a long way in reinforcing this societal conception that sexual violence is stranger violence.

Kylie: Yes, oh my God. So true bestie. But yeah, well, thanks so much for recapping those pieces that I wrote earlier this month with me, and for just reading them and being really good friends in doing that because I know that my writing can be pretty dense and, at times, not the most compelling stuff but I really appreciate it.

Kylie: But anyway, let's get into it. So what does this all mean, why does it matter, and how the heck do we even define violence?

Sonya: Alright, so let's get into it. Why are abortion bands violent? Let's just read off some stats shall we?

Kylie: Okay, well, I love stats. Back in the day I was an AP Statistics student myself, Sonya do you recall? Any—

Sonya: Oh my God, how could I forget?

Kylie: Anyway, um, oh my God, graphing calculators, I don’t—I barely know how to use the calculator on my phone anymore, but anyway, I will read off some pretty important stats about this, and how abortion bans—and abortion barriers in general—are violent as heck.

Kylie: So let's just be clear, first of all, that abortion is hard as fuck to reach, which is awful because every minute of every day you have to carry an unwanted pregnancy is just dehumanizing and violent and awful. Despite that, 90% of US counties don't have an abortion provider, and I think it's six states that have just one. And the majority of people in the US, I believe, live somewhere that's called an abortion desert, or in other words, they'd have to travel more than 100 miles to their nearest clinic.

Kylie: In addition to that, the United States currently has the highest maternal death rate in the industrialized world, and with even higher death rates and states with more restrictions restrictions on abortion access, and even higher death rates, of course, for women of color. So according to the CDC, Black women are 243% more likely than their white counterparts to die from pregnancy or birth related causes, so we are talking about death here people, and that is violent.

Sonya: Being unable to get abortion care can also make someone significantly more likely to stay in an abusive relationship, and four times as likely to be pushed into poverty, among other harmful health and economic outcomes, according to the Turnaway Study—that research, on the economic and health consequences of being unable to afford abortion care, is the focus of an awesome book of the same name, which we’ll probably do a future episode on.

Kylie: Yay! But yeah. And you know what else is violent? Criminalization and incarceration. So, speaking of, we know that anti-abortion laws, feticide laws, and stigma around abortion and miscarriage are really frequently weaponized against people who lose their pregnancies or self-manage their abortions with medication, and we see frequently laws are used to charge them with feticide, or child endangerment, or abuse of a corpse, and really just a lot of other bogus charges, and so, what is more violent, really, than criminalization and incarceration, and we see that so frequently attached to pregnancy outcomes and abortion, even.

Jenni: And there are way too many examples of this, but here are a few: in 2019, a Black woman named Marshae Jones faced charges for manslaughter in Alabama after being shot in the stomach and experiencing a miscarriage. Police pressed charges against her because they alleged she had started the fight that led to her miscarriage, as if that even matters.

Sonya: There’s also the very notorious story of Purvi Patel, an Asian-American woman in Indiana, who faced jail time for allegedly taking medication abortion and having a stillbirth in 2013.

Kylie: Oh my God, I remember covering that in 2016 and that was just so bogus because like, the charges against her were super contradictory, it was like, a feticide charge, and then a child abuse charge and it's like, if there was feticide and like, the quote “baby” was killed then how do you have child abuse? Anyway, it was so idiotic, and she was in jail for significant amount of time for that, which is just fucking awful.

Kylie: So, a real big takeaway here is that when it comes to criminalization of people who have had abortions or people who experience pregnancy loss, you know, those who are victimized by state policies on pregnancy and reproduction, the message is clear that the rights to safety and bodily autonomy still don’t belong to all of us, and women and pregnant people still remain subhuman under the law, which is really scary.

Kylie: And I believe one Oklahoma lawmaker—inadvertently, I’ll say—put it best in 2017. He—I think he was trying to defend a law that required consent of the father of the fetus for someone to have an abortion. And he said, and I quote, “I understand that they feel like that is their body”—he said of pregnant women—“I feel like it’s separate—what I call them is, you’re a ‘host.’” So yes, that is a real fucking quote, and oh my god, I mean…

Sonya: Oh my god.

Jenni: That is just so dehumanizing, to dehumanize women into just hosts.

Kylie: I know, yeah. And it is a real quote, it is like—Google it. Oh my God, anyway. I love and hate that quote because again it's saying the quiet part loud but it's also disgusting, but it's also just making it so clear that the people who are making these laws on pregnancy and abortion do not see pregnant people as human beings, and I mean, thank you for that I guess, but yeah.

Sonya: Alright, so, abortion and rape culture—what’s all that about? Bodily autonomy is obviously a focal point of all of that, but let’s go deeper.

Kylie: Yes, I love to go deep. But—[laughs]

Sonya: [laughs]

Kylie: Um, yeah. So I actually wrote about this in my piece that we were just talking about, on how abortion bans are a form of gender violence, and at the beginning of this conversation that we are currently having, I know we talked about that absolutely disgusting bill in Arkansas that would only allow abortion care for people at or after 20 weeks into their pregnancy to have abortions if they were impregnated by rape, and if they reported their rape to law enforcement, which is—ugh!—awful, just awful. But, okay.

Kylie: First, to be clear, we’re not even going to get into this today, but let’s just state it for record, but people seek abortion care throughout pregnancy for a wide range of, you know, at times extreme circumstances, related to their health, or serious fetal health concerns, or they were unable to get an abortion earlier in their pregnancy because there were too many restrictions and barriers. But no matter what, no one should be policed or interrogated or punished for trying to get the health care that they want and need, period.

Kylie: And second. Why are rape exceptions to abortion bans fucking awful? I know that they sound like—ugh. They sound helpful right, they sound benign, but let's be clear about something. Rape exceptions to abortion bans or restrictions send the false and very harmful message that rape is easy to report and “prove” to police or medical professionals, when it is fucking not.

Kylie: Second of all, we know that rape exception to these abortion policies—they actually help anti-abortion politicians make their horrific legislation seem less extreme than it is, and I mean you know, while we're talking about rape culture, let's be clear about something.

Kylie: All abortion bans are a fundamental violation of consent, because consent to sex has never, ever meant to consent to pregnancy. Like acts of sexual violence, forced pregnancy and birth can amount to a really deeply traumatic violation of someone’s body and life. Again, it's all centered around bodily autonomy, it's all centered around consent and understanding that again I mean—ugh, it seems so simple right?

Kylie: But consent to sex—that’s not the same as consent to pregnancy and so, if you're pregnant and you don't want to be, and you don't consent to be, then, you know, when we're banning and we're putting up all these roadblocks to someone's ability to end their pregnancy that's unwanted, that's just such a clear violation of consent and bodily autonomy, and yeah.

Jenni: Now that we’re talking about rape culture, let’s shift over to where interpersonal violence fits into all of this. So Kylie, in your piece on birth control sabotage, these stats really stood out.

Jenni: 15% percent of women who report experiencing physical violence from a male partner also report birth-control sabotage, or their partner tampering with their birth-control pills to force them to become pregnant.

Jenni: Birth-control sabotage also disproportionately impacts young women and girls—according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a quarter of adolescent girls reported their abusive male partners had attempted to impregnate them without their consent by interfering with their contraception.

Jenni: And 66% of adolescent mothers on public assistance who reported experiencing domestic violence also reported experiencing birth-control sabotage by their partner. Despite the prevalence of reproductive coercion in relationships, it’s very underreported as many victims aren’t even aware that that would count as abuse.

Kylie: Yeah I mean, wow, it's just like, despite how prevalent and dangerous reproductive coercion is, since you know, we talked about how unwanted pregnancy and being unable to get abortion can push someone into poverty or you know, make them more at risk for staying in abusive relationships. We know all of that's true, and yet we still see so many jokes about flushing birth control pills or poking holes and condoms it's like, yeah I mean, remember that awful Pete Davidson SNL joke, I think we talked about earlier, but um, about, yeah.

Kylie: Ugh. But do I still have the occasional sex dream about Pete? Yes. And was that so-called joke on SNL horrific, yes. Um, but I mean, wow, it’s just like—[laughs]

Sonya: [laughs] Duality of man.

Kylie: [laughs] It's just like, crazy to me that people joke about something like that, when it's like, there's such long-term ramifications on someone's fucking life that we just talked about, and it’s like, I don’t know. I don’t even know. It’s so upsetting.

Jenni: I think—I think maybe they just don't think about it, because it doesn't directly affect them.

Kylie: Mhm, yeah.

Sonya: Alright, want to talk about the importance and power of language, naming things, and how that’s the first step to change?

Kylie: Yes Sonya, I always want to talk about this, actually.

Jenni: [laughs]

Kylie: Always.

Sonya: I really like this quote from Jane Stoever: “Reproductive coercion is typically not the only type of abuse experienced in a relationship in which intimate partner violence is present, and it can be challenging to reveal. Naming a problem is often the first step in addressing it. Naming the behavior enables and empowers survivors to identify what they have experienced as abuse.”

Kylie: Yeah, oh my God. Actually I was just thinking now, um, this quote by her really reminds me of this other piece I worked on, I think last summer, where I was reporting specifically on how domestic violence is also like a form of voter suppression, because you know, an abusive partner might vote on your behalf if they get access to your mail-in ballot, or they might go with you to the polls and like, force you to vote a certain way.

Kylie: Or they might just control your access to political information or your access to like, I don't know, like let's say a canvasser knocks on the door and asks for you and they just send that person away and don't let you talk to them, all of that. I mean like, there's just so many different ways.

Kylie: But something really interesting I learned when I was lucky enough to to talk to some survivors of domestic violence about their experience with this, was that I mean like, when survivors do talk about the domestic violence that they experienced or they report it, and they get help, it's like, because that political coercion—which is a form of domestic violence—but because it was just one of so many different forms of domestic violence that they experienced, whether it was emotional abuse or physical abuse or sexual violence, right.

Kylie: It wasn't really like, top of mind in terms of, you know, when they're reporting the domestic violence they experienced, so I think that, again, that really just reminds me of like you said in that quote, just the power of naming things and how—it's hard to name things, especially when they're like, buried or like caught up in so many other different forms of abuse, if that makes sense. There's just so many different forms of domestic abuse, and yet we are conditioned to like, only think of, you know, specific acts of like, physical violence, or yeah.

Kylie: And it's just like, when there are multiple forms, it becomes hard to name all of them for the person who's experiencing that. So yeah I was really glad that Jane Stoever said that on the power of naming things.

Sonya: Well said.

Kylie: Wow, um, well, I loved this conversation that we had, and overall the conversations that we've had this past Sexual Assault Awareness Month overall, and you know, I am proud of us, because this is very personal and intense and also really important to talk about so I'm really glad that we were able to do this.

Sonya: Yeah, me too. Next month is Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and navigating AAPI identity under white supremacy is complicated and important to talk about. So we’re looking forward to some important conversations about that.

Kylie: Yes, okay. So in our next two episodes for next month, we're looking forward specifically to talking about our next book, which is Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang. That book is a lot about the inseparability of white supremacy, capitalism, and predatory banking—lots of fun—as well as the carceral system and surveillance state and yeah, again, all inseparable.

Jenni: And then, after that we’ll be discussing an awesome essay by Mari Matsuda on how white supremacy has often weaponized Asian identity to perpetuate anti-Blackness, and the importance of resisting that.

Kylie: Lots of exciting stuff in the works, so follow along with us on Spotify or iTunes or really however you get your podcasts. And yeah follow our Instagram @insomniaclibrarians as well for some resources, some infographics, some updates, and plenty of shitposting.

Sonya: You can also check out our website for show notes and transcripts, link in description. Anyway, I'm Sonya.

Jenni: I'm Jenni.

Kylie: And I'm Kylie, so thank you for listening, and you know what, we'll see you real soon.

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