Reproductive autonomy isn't just about the right to choose; it's also about the ability to shape one's destiny. Host Leslie is joined by Jill Filipovic, a former lawyer turned journalist, who is dedicated to the critical issues of women's rights and reproductive freedom.
Reproductive autonomy isn't just about the right to choose; it's also about the ability to shape one's destiny. Host Leslie is joined by Jill Filipovic, a former lawyer turned journalist, who is dedicated to the critical issues of women's rights and reproductive freedom.
Jill shares how her early disillusionment with media coverage of the Iraq War led her to pursue a law career initially, before pivoting to journalism full-time to focus on human rights issues impacting women globally. She explores the evolving landscape of women's rights, examining the profound influence of reproductive autonomy on women's physical, mental, and financial health and the broader implications for society in areas such as climate change, migration, and conflict.
Jill and Leslie also share personal insights on the privilege of being able to choose whether or not to become a mother, and how this has profoundly shaped the trajectories of their own lives and careers. The episode concludes with Jill highlighting the intersections between her journalism work and her passion for leading international yoga and writing retreats that foster community, creativity, and self-actualization within feminist spaces.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Show Credits:
Leslie: Welcome to The Nature of Nurture with Dr. Leslie Carr, a podcast for your mental health. I'm your host, Leslie. If you're watching this episode right now, you can find the audio version in any podcast app. And if you're listening, you can also watch this episode on YouTube at The Nature of Nurture. You can find that link in the show notes.
Today we're chatting with my pal, Jill Filipovic. Jill is a journalist, a lawyer, and the author of The H Spot, The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness, and OK Boomer, Let's Talk, How My Generation Got Left Behind. She's a weekly columnist at CNN.com, a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and an all around badass.
Seriously, I have so much respect for this woman, and I'm thrilled to be sharing her and her work with you today. The reason why I invited Jill onto the pod is because, in addition to everything else I listed above, one of Jill's areas of focus as a journalist is the right to choose and women's access to reproductive health care.
I know this topic is loaded for so many of us right now. Since Jill and I know each other and have hung out, we've also had private conversations about how this issue has impacted us personally. So you're going to hear us talk about that too. This episode was filmed in New York. So in a hot sec, you're going to see me teleport into a different studio.
But without any further delay, please join me in welcoming the incomparable Jill Filipovic. for doing this with me today. Thanks so much for having me. Can we just back up a little bit and will you tell our listeners a little bit about the history of your career? Like, how did you go from being a lawyer to being a journalist?
Jill: Sure. Um, so I studied journalism in college, always wanted to be a journalist. And then went through a period, uh, very much influenced by the U S going into Iraq and the post nine 11 period and feeling a little cynical about how, uh, the media covered that war in particular, not being sure I really wanted to be a part of that particular apparatus.
Um, and was more interested in being an advocate, knew that I wanted to focus on human rights, women's rights in particular, and then kind of reproductive rights, even within, within that, uh, bigger topic. And so I did the thing that a lot of young, idealistic people do, which is that I went to law school, uh, being like, I'm going to be an international human rights lawyer.
Um, so as, as I was in law school, I was still writing. So I had a feminist blog that, uh, I was writing for through most of college and then through all of law school. I was also an editor at the website Alternate, which is a sort of progressive left wing website when I was in law school. Um, and I freelanced.
I wrote for places like the Huffington Post and eventually the Guardian, uh, and then ended up going to a big law firm, which is a longer story, but the short version of it is Big student loans, not sure how to be a lawyer. Um, so I started practicing, uh, at, at a big Manhattan firm, did that for about three and a half years.
And it just became clear I had to pick a path, you know, I was working very long days as a law firm associate, and then also very long days trying to have a freelance career. Um, and essentially got sat down by the, by the, the lawyers at my firm who said like, you got to pick, like, this is not working. Um, so, um, I became a journalist full time, and I've been, for the most part, freelance since then, um, covering mostly women's rights, but also global human rights.
Leslie: That's incredible. Yeah, the human rights part of your career, I have not followed as closely, but it makes a lot of sense that that would also be part of what you do. Just knowing you, that makes sense to me. If you think about the sort of women's rights, reproductive freedom, that kind of stuff, will you say a little bit about just kind of what, what sparks your passion around that or kind of what fuels you in your work there?
Jill: Sure. So we're half the population, right? Slightly more. Yeah. Um, And when you look at kind of, I mean, any, anything in the world, anything from climate change to conflict, to family formation, to our most intimate interactions, um, I think so many of those things are impact women in a particular way. And women are also historically cut out of the solutions and out of the power centers that determine how so many of these issues play out.
Um, and so that is interesting to me. So I do cover specifically, uh, reproductive rights because, uh, from my vantage point, there's kind of nothing more core to the ability to plan your life than what happens, you know, Within the walls of your own body.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: And whether you can or can't decide when whether and how many times to become a parent And so that's that's been a driving Issue for me just because to me it seems like it shapes so much right it shapes Everything else that women and girls can do with the rest of our lives But behind reproductive rights, I've also been Um, covered issues of migration and climate change and conflict in post conflict settings and how all of that relates back, uh, to women and our freedoms.
Leslie: Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm thinking about what you're saying about just sort of the sense of agency or our ability to kind of make decisions about how we want to live our lives. And I'm also thinking about how long you've been working in this space because it was very much so pre Dobbs, pre the fall of Roe that you were covering this stuff.
What has it been like for you as a journalist since Dobbs came down just to sort of witness this landscape and cover it? What, what have you noticed?
Jill: Um, I mean, it's been devastating, you know, I started my career in the U. S. and mostly writing, you know, op eds, um, about American politics and American feminism.
And then a lot of my work took me overseas, and particularly on the abortion access issue. Um, I've reported on that, I mean, quite a bit outside of the US and often in places where abortion is criminalized or unavailable and looking at all the huge downstream impacts of that. You know, what happens. Yeah.
But a lot of times, when women, and some of the most vulnerable women on earth, you know, women who are rape survivors, women who are in post conflict settings, who are living in refugee camps, what happens when they can't access safe abortion, right? They can't access contraception. And the answer to that question is a lot of bad stuff.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, it, it's, I mean, it could be, you know, it's, it's own, It's a podcast. All the downstream negative effects that happen when women can't make these really, really fundamental decisions. And so it's been, it's been interesting. Interesting, and certainly extremely depressing to see in my own country that we've now rolled these rights back for women nationwide, right?
And now it is so dependent, when it's always been dependent on where you live and what your financial background is, if you have access to safe abortion, um, you know, but now the fact that we've just cut off, uh, this, what I think is a very, very basic human right for women, um, you know, in more than a dozen American states is.
It's devastating, it's depressing, um, and it has effects that are much broader than just individual women's lives. Um, I really do believe that when you live in a country that says women are second class citizens, women don't have the same rights as a corpse, right? Like you can't, um, and now I'm, uh, there's a great, um And of course I'm blanking on her name now, but an essay, I believe in the Irish Times, um, essentially spelling out how corpses when, before people die, they have the right to determine whether or not they donate their organs. Right.
Leslie: That's so funny. I think I know what she's talking about.
Jill: It's Sally Rooney. Sorry. Just a slight, slight brain fog. Absolutely.
Leslie: Absolutely. And we know you have some jet lag
Jill: Um, you know, she makes the point that. We can decide what happens to our bodies after death and yet we don't give women those same rights in life and you know, how just What that says about a broader society's view of what women are for.
Leslie: Yes.
Jill: Whether women are people. Yes. Um, and of how I think fundamentally disrespectful we are of maternity, of everything it takes to carry a pregnancy, to birth a child, to raise a child. Um, and that affects much more so, much more than just the gender. The women and girls who are forced to continue pregnancies they don't want that affects me that affects you that affects every woman and every man in our society, right, if we're formalizing these patriarchal abuses.
Leslie: Yeah, that's all so well put and one of the things that it makes me think of the way I often think about it for myself is Is so we're talking about this tremendously complex issue that gets so flattened in our super polarized discourse in the United States. So, you know, you've got people on the right talking about, you know, late term abortions and partial birth abortions and all of this stuff, which as you and I know only happens really only happens in instances where women are experiencing medical emergencies and that kind of stuff.
But the idea that a woman shouldn't be able to get an abortion from inception. Conception..
Jill: you know
Leslie: I am not jet lagged lagged, but apparently tired. Um, the idea that a woman can't get some, you know, that according to the right, the Republican right in the United States, women shouldn't be able to get abortions from conception makes me feel like.
We're not just second class citizens, but third class citizens, because apparently we matter less than a literal clump of cells, you know, like in a country where there should be a separation between church and state. I don't know how you make an argument for that. That isn't rooted in religion. Right?
Like, I don't, I just don't know how you could possibly make that argument in a way that's not religious. So if I don't believe that the soul inhabits the body starting at conception, and if I want to be able to make a decision about my own body, really early in a pregnancy, it's, you know, that's the way I always think about it is like, we're not just second class citizens, we're third class citizens.
Jill: Well, it's interesting, you know, I think if you, if you scratch the surface just a little bit on anti abortion ideology, which does say, you know, life begins at the moment of conception. No one actually believes that right even the people that say that they believe it and perhaps think they believe it Something like 50 percent of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus and are naturally just washed out of the out of a person's body right, um If we say that life begins at conception, do we suddenly have a 50 percent pre implantation mortality rate?
Right. And if you are I'm like
Leslie: What happens to all of those souls, Jill?
Jill: Right. And if you are a person who believes life begins at conception, why is there not a single dollar spent on trying to figure out why half of these lives Mm hmm. The moral equivalent of a six year old, right, is dying before birth.
I mean, that's crazy. And I think when
Leslie: Right
Jill: you say that to folks, to, you know, pro life folks, what they'll say is, well, it's natural. Well, okay. I mean, children, infants dying is pretty natural. Women dying in childbirth is natural. Up until very, very recently, infant mortality rates and child mortality rates were through the roof, right?
And still are relatively high and in developing countries, um, but have decreased significantly, significantly because we've spent billions and billions and billions of dollars trying to figure out how to help infants and children survive, um, So, you know, this, this idea that any fertilized egg is the moral equivalent of, you know, a three year old is just belied by the fact that no pro life organization is paying to figure out what happens to all these, why all these fertilized eggs are naturally dying.
Right. Right. And so you'd think, you know, again, if 50 percent of three year olds were dropping dead, we would do something about it. Um, but they don't. And, you know, so to me, that really suggests that, do you really believe that a fertilized egg, Is, you know, the moral equivalent of a child, you just don't, and that's okay, I mean, most people don't, right?
Um, I agree with you that it's not the moral equivalent of a six year old. Um, but so much of the debate just starts on what I think is a pretty dishonest premise.
Leslie: Yeah. Well, so, just out of curiosity, since you do follow this stuff so closely, If it's disingenuous, what do you suppose is really happening for them?
Jill: I mean, think there's a couple, I don't think it's totally disingenuous, right? I do think that there are a lot of just like average people who vote in the U. S. who find abortion uncomfortable, or they do think it's morally wrong, or they find it icky or whatever it is, right? It's not that I think every single person, who's like casually pro life, um, secretly like doesn't care.
Leslie: Well I think a lot of people just haven't even thought about it.
Jill: Exactly. I think a lot of people haven't thought about it. And I think that when you look at most major anti-abortion organizations in the U. S., most of them, as you say, are either religiously affiliated or there's deep connections between these organizations and conservative religious institutions.
Um, most of them are not just advocating for an end to abortion. As far as I know, there are not really any major anti abortion organizations that also are really active in pushing for access to contraception, including Most effective forms of contraception, things like IUDs, um, and other long acting methods.
Um, so we don't see a big effort to try to prevent pregnancy, right? Right. We know that what the reason most people have abortions is because they're pregnant when they don't mean to be. Right. So I think that tells you something, right, about how much this is about, uh, preserving life and preventing abortion and how much it is about trying to funnel women into certain roles and trying to make sure that American families look a certain way and look a traditional way.
You know, there's been, um, some really interesting, uh, surveying done about, uh, Kind of which political views are held concurrently and what, you know, what views drive which other views. And one of the tightest associations, uh, between viewpoints for being anti abortion is also holding some pretty deeply sexist misogynist views.
Absolutely. Right. Um, I think it's very difficult to be a person who wants not to be a person who's personally anti abortion, but to be a person who wants to outlaw abortion for everyone and to not be pretty. deeply sexist and you see that come up in the polling. Yeah.
Leslie: Yeah. It's, I'm, I, uh, it's hard to disagree with that.
Certainly. Um, so just to go back a step, when you were talking about the downstream consequences of an individual woman, not being able to get an abortion, can you just say a little bit more about. Kind of what you've noticed in, in covering this space, like what are some of those downstream consequences?
I don't, in some ways it feels like it would be easy to guess at what they are, but I don't want to leave people guessing. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
Jill: Sure. So we actually have a pretty good idea of what the downstream effects are for individual women, right? There's something called the turn away study, um, which looks at different outcomes for women who sought abortions later in pregnancy.
Um, Some of whom were able to get those abortions because they were kind of right before the cutoff, right? And some of whom weren't who were turned away.
Leslie: Yep.
Jill: And so this study compares these two groups of women Um, and it does, you know, try it kind of evens out for things like education and income and you know, all of these pre existing Uh, I don't want to say pre existing conditions, but uh pre existing circumstances.
Yeah And so what it found is that when you compare women who were able to get abortions, they sought and women who wanted abortions, but we're not able to get those abortions. That second group of women, the turnaways, uh, were more likely to be in poverty, more likely to either still be on social welfare programs or having needed to seek out social welfare, social welfare programs, uh, were more likely to still be tethered to abusive men.
Right. Right. So the women who were in abusive relationships were much more able to leave them if they had ended their pregnancies.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: Um, their children had worse outcomes. You know, more than half of women who end pregnancies are already mothers, right? So. Existing children of women who weren't able to terminate subsequent pregnancies, uh, had worse outcomes and sort of a variety of measures, were doing worse in school, had more behavioral problems, um, The women who were not able to end their pregnancies had more health problems, and they were more likely to have died.
Right. Um, so, there was really no good, there was no better outcome, and also more likely to struggle with mental health. Right? Depression, anxiety. Yeah. So there was kind of no measure on which the women that were forced to become, by the force to have children that they didn't want to have, wound up better off.
Right. Sort of by almost every measure, they wound up, they wound up worse off. So we know that, right, on an individual level. And then you think about, you know, one in four women in the U. S. and roughly one in four women worldwide will end a pregnancy in her life. Mm hmm.
Leslie: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Jill: So what happens when a huge number of women are denied that basic ability, that basic right?
Um, and they then wind up kind of in this second group, right? Poor, more likely to be stuck in a violent relationship, less healthy, may be dead, less able to take care of their kids, um, just struggling. When you do that on a whole society level, right? You wind up obviously exacerbating huge gender inequalities, but you also end up exacerbating the inequalities that make it so that some women are Like me, could afford to buy a plane ticket, go pay for a procedure out of pocket, and some women, women who are poor, women who are more likely to be Black or Hispanic, can't.
Right. Um, so you exacerbate inequalities online on the lines of gender, you exacerbate inequalities along the lines of race, and you certainly exacerbate inequalities along the lines of place. Right. So when you look at the states that have criminalized abortion, we're talking about states that are already pretty conservative.
They're clustered in the South as well as in the Midwest. Um, and. They have much worse outcomes for women and for children than states where abortion is broadly legal on average, right? So when you look at the states where children, the highest percentage of children are living in poverty, where, you know, the lowest number of women have access to healthcare, um, these are so, you know, so called pro life states, right?
So these states that already are pretty terrible places for moms and for babies, um, are going to get so much worse. Totally. By their own, right? Not, not by the citizen's own making, but their leader's own making. So when you stretch that across a whole country, I think what we're going to see are widening inequalities.
Leslie: Yeah. Um,
Jill: just kind of a doubling down on some of the worst outcomes that we already see. In the U. S. and that affects everyone. When women as a class in the United States are not able to chart our own paths.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: Right. And when the women who are already the most vulnerable are the ones that we're kicking further and further down.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: That makes a society that is poorer, uglier, less equal, rougher, just a worse place for all of us to live.
Leslie: Absolutely, and it's so interesting. I mean, first of all, that is a lot to take in, just in the sense that, like, it's, I think you unpacked that incredibly well. And I just sort of want to pause, because I'm sure the people listening to this are.
Jill: That was a lot, sorry.
Leslie: No, no, no, don't apologize. It's just, it's, you're so spot on, and I think it's a lot to take in, in the sense that it's It's hard for me, I think it's hard for so many of us to really mentally grapple with like the full scale consequences of all of this. And for me personally, just in terms of what I do and what we're here for, what this podcast is all about, I always think about just the mental health consequences of these things.
And you have more than once talked about poverty and the economic consequences. And I think it's really important to think about that as part of the mental health consequences, because you can't separate a person's economic status from their mental health. And, you know, these two things are deeply intertwined.
So, and then also there's physical health consequences and all of that stuff. But when you think about everything writ large, it's just, A lot to take in and I wonder if this actually might be an interesting time just to sort of shift gears a little bit and kind of get a little bit more personal because you're talking.
You've mentioned a couple times over the course of this conversation, you know, the ability to sort of chart your own life and make your own decisions and something that you and I both know that we have in common with each other is that we are two women that have consciously made the decision in our own lives to not become mothers.
And so we know a lot about sort of what the ultimate consequences are of being able to make that choice for ourselves. And to be able to successfully make that choice for ourselves, right? To be able to carry it out. And I wonder if you can share a little bit of just like how you think about this issue in your own life.
Jill: Yeah. I mean, it, there's no way that I would have the life that I have, which is a beautiful life that I have worked really hard to build. And that brings me a tremendous amount of satisfaction and that I'm very lucky to have. Right. Um, Um, if I hadn't been able to not get pregnant when I didn't want to get pregnant, right?
Um, and I think that, I think about it as well for my own mother, right? I mean, so much of what we're able to achieve in life, um, comes from those who went before us and comes from just the random luck of being born into whichever family or circumstance we're born into. Absolutely.
Leslie: Absolutely.
Jill: Um, and you know, my mom had me at 30, 29, 29, um.
And she frankly, uh, you know, I, the only reason that she even had me was because her doctor was like, you're getting old, you know, you're in your late 20s, this is not in the 1980s. Um, if you want kids, you better do it now. And she, she was on the later end of childbearing for that era. Right. But it meant that, when my parents decided to have me and my sister, they were relatively financially stable, you know, they were not rich, but they, they felt like it was a good time. And I was a, I was a planned pregnancy and a planned child. Um, and I came into a house that was full of love and. had adequate, more than adequate resources for two children.
Um, and all of that, I mean, set me up on this platform, right? To be able to then kind of jump off and have, have to extend this like sort of pain metaphor, have like a pretty nice, you know, a safety net, a familial safety net. Um, and so, so many of those privileges, you know, so many of the ways in which I I'm sitting on this couch today, just come from that fact that my own mother was able to make these choices, right?
Um, and then for myself, you know, if, gosh, I, the idea that we would make women's shoes between having a sex life, right, being able to be sexually active, um, and being able to then, you know, have a life that you get to plan and that you have some control over is crazy.
Leslie: It is wild.
Jill: Right? It's totally crazy.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: I mean, I look back to my 20s and my, I didn't get married until I was in my mid thirties. Um, there was no way I met my husband in Malawi on a reporting junket. Like there's no way that I would have met him, that I would have had the job that I have. I would have had the family that I have if I hadn't been able to have control over my, over my reproductive life. Um, it's everything.
Leslie: Totally. It really, really is everything. And there's so much of what you just said that I relate to because I have been able to create and build a life very much so of my own choosing. And there is absolutely no question in my mind that I would not have been able to do that if I had had to become a mother at the same time.
And it's interesting to think that lots of women absolutely, you know, have families and also pursue a career. But I think we underestimate collectively how unbelievably hard that is and the incredible amount of sacrifice that goes into it. And just really more than anything, to not be able to, to make that choice for yourself.
I mean, I think that for me personally, I don't think that I would have had the capacity, like in the end, If I had had to become a mother against my will, I would not have the life that I have now. I wouldn't have the career that I have now. Things just would look and feel very, very, very different. And I feel so grateful for the life that I have.
And I know from knowing you as I do, and, and to the extent that I've been able to watch your life unfold as I do, you know, it's like, it's very obvious that you have lived a life by design, that you do live a life by design. And I think that Every woman should be able to pursue that in the same way that men get to pursue that.
It's not even a question. I mean it is, I mean, I do think we have to acknowledge that men do sometimes become fathers when they're not ready to, either because, either because the women in their lives weren't able to choose in the very way that we've been talking about, or because a woman is making a choice that maybe a man wishes she wasn't making kind of thing, so I, that's a thing that happens, but nonetheless he's never gonna have Parenthood subsume him the way motherhood subsumes women, you know, and it's just amazing the privilege to be able to make that decision and just to sort of braid some of the things that we've been talking about together here, the difference between financially being able to make that choice and not to think that there are so many women in this country, just even since Dobbs came down where The only thing that is standing in the way of them and the abortion they want to have is stuff like travel costs.
You know, being able to take time off of work if you're in a state that has like a mandatory waiting period and that kind of stuff. It's insane.
Jill: No, I mean that, all of that really, really resonates. And I guess what I would add is that There's actually some really interesting data on how men benefit from safe and legal abortions.
Leslie: Yeah, I think that's so important to get into.
Jill: If you look at, you look at the outcomes of men who became fathers in high school, right? Right. Um, and men who became fathers later in life, and the ones who become fathers later in life do much better. Yeah. Right? Even controlling for things like education and income and, you know, again, these kind of pre existing, uh, statuses.
Um, And one of the dynamics that we've seen happen since the advent of accessible and, uh, highly effective contraception as well as safe and legal abortion is that we've seen women and men alike have children kind of later and later. Um, we've seen, Children wind up for the most part healthier, you know, it's been this kind of this onslaught of really really positive outcomes And what we're seeing is that women are delaying childbearing and many women aren't having children at all often by choice, although not always but One outcome of that is that men also have more of those young years to pursue their careers, to find the person that they want to be with.
Right. Um, to pursue meaningful romantic relationships, to pursue meaningful, uh, professional and employment opportunities. Um, so. I, I, I think a lot of the time we, we do kind of rightly leave men out of the abortion debate because it's so vested in the body, right? Yeah. Um, but when you look at how much safe and legal abortion benefits whole societies, I think it is really valuable to point out the fact that the ability to plan pregnancies and to choose whether or not to bring a child into the world benefits men tremendously, right?
Yes. It's tough in terms of when you choose not to have a child, but yeah, for most parents, I know they'll say that their children are, you know, among the greatest sources of joy that they've ever experienced. And the idea that you would force that on someone rather than let them enter into it joyfully and willingly is also crazy.
I'm trying not to use the F word. Um,
Leslie: Oh you can! By all means.
Jill: This is otally fucking nuts. So, I mean, to me, Part of how you facilitate joy, how you facilitate life meaning and pleasure and connection, right? Yeah. Is by making it possible for people to, to, to choose what they want. So, it's part of the reason why a lot of reproductive rights advocates talk about reproductive justice.
Yes. How do we make it possible for Um, women and men alike to have children and then be able to parent those children, you know, in financial security, in physical safety. Um, that's the other side of this. You know, we also don't see the so called pro life movement really embracing. Um, you know, but, but to me, it's so huge for me, of course, it's been huge to be able to say no to having children.
But I would also love to live in a world in which people got to joyfully and freely say yes to having children, right? And we don't live in that world either. And so to me, it's very much the feminist movement that's trying to make this possible. That's trying to say, how do we make This place, a better place, a more welcoming place, a warmer place, a safer place, right?
For every parent who wants a child. And then how do we also make it a world in which we get to say, we get to make that choice freely and joyfully and it's not forced on us by the state and it's just as acceptable. Culturally to say, actually, no, totally. Um, and to me, you have to have both of those things in concert, right?
Absolutely. Instead what we see on the other side of things is an attempt to both make it harder to raise children and then Make it more likely that women are forced to have them.
Leslie: Absolutely. You know, you're making me think of two things right now And we'll see if there's a question in here. But there are two things that I can't help but think about One is that I'm thinking about the mental health consequences for the child when a person can't choose in the sense that something I believe very strongly as a psychologist that people really underestimate is just the role that trauma and early childhood stress plays in mental health conditions later.
So when people are born into families where they were not wanted, and then you think about, you know, sort of all of the downstream consequences of that, that does not set people up well for later in life. But you also mentioned, um, kind of in passing this idea that more and more people are choosing not to have children altogether.
And I think one of the things that's really interesting, uh, when you look at, so for Gen Z, for example, and a lot of this is just related to climate anxiety and climate stress. People are not wanting to have children because of what is happening to the planet. And the idea that people would be forced To have children sort of on a, as of right now, dying planet is also fucking nuts.
So, you know, I don't know if there's a question in there, but if you want to respond to it, certainly you can.
Jill: Yeah, and I do think an underexplored area is the trauma in being forced to have a child, right? Yeah. I mean, you think of what it takes to carry a pregnancy in your body for nine months. Yeah.
There's no way to do that without having permanent physical changes, right? It doesn't happen.
Leslie: 100%.
Jill: Um, and then to undergo child, childbirth, which is, you know, among the most, you know, physically arduous and painful and also beautiful and powerful and miraculous and all the things, right, that a human being can go through.
Um, you know, there was a piece, this was now probably like, I don't know, seven, eight years ago, I believe by Laura Beale in Cosmopolitan magazine about childbirth injuries and about just how common it is that Women have babies, and then you walk around and you're incontinent, or you have a fractured pelvis, you know, or you have permanent back pain.
Yep. Um, And over and over what women hear is essentially, well, that's normal. Mm hmm, absolutely. And, you know, I think that if men wound up with fractured pelvises and peeing their pants just because they had sex for pleasure, that would not be an accepted social thing, right? Absolutely. But we sort of assume that women should have to undergo physical pain, whether to prevent pregnancy, you know, don't typically give women painkillers when we're inserting IUDs.
Leslie: Exactly. h my God, that could be its own episode. Don't get me started on that.
Jill: Um, or if they have a baby, it's like, well, you got the baby, that's your reward. So why are you complaining that like, yeah, you have a partially prolapsed vagina? It's nuts. Um, so we already don't even talk that much about the very, very common physical trauma of childbirth. Yes. And then how little our medical establishment does. Yes. To, to correct that or to make it so that women can have. Sex for pleasure and it feels good again, right? That is a great taboo for mothers than wanting to have like good sex lives. Exactly. Um, and so we're definitely not even getting anywhere close to the mental health consequences that come with a lot of sex.
Um, a lot of childbirth stories. I mean, I talk to friends and acquaintances all the time about so many, you know, traumatic events that go along with having even a wanted child.
Leslie: Absolutely.
Jill: And then you think about how that gets compounded if you're essentially being forced by the state to give birth. You know, something that I think we understand pretty well, right, at this point about rape and sexual violence is that the trauma, of course, comes from the physical violation, but it also comes from that profound lack of control.
Leslie: Absolutely.
Jill: And particularly from taking something that should be pleasurable and turning it violent and ugly. Yes. And I think that there's a parallel there. Yes. When it comes to the state of violence. Forcing you against your will to carry a pregnancy determined. Oh 100%. Right, so I don't see a universe in which that isn't Essentially like a mass trauma that we're inflicting on women And then of course as you say, you know how that impacts the children that they have, and their ability to parent those children well.
Um, which doesn't mean that every woman who is forced to have a, you know, forced to have a baby doesn't love her baby and is not a great parent. That's not, it's not what I'm trying to say. No, I don't take it that way. But I do think it has these kind of downstream, Um, you know, familial effects.
Leslie: Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. No, I'm really glad that you're going there because I hadn't thought to talk to you specifically about that. But it's something that I think about a lot. I think childbirth is a lot more traumatizing than a lot of Men want to think that it is and for women, I think, you know, there's just, um, a big knowledge gap between, for the most part, women that have gone through it and women that haven't, you know, obviously there are women like me and you that have not had children and are still, uh, curious about the experience, have heard the traumatizing stories and that kind of stuff.
But I think even if you just think about mortality rates, you know, it's like. Maternal mortality outside of the United States, like in the developing world, is like 50 percent of women die in labor. And that is what, I mean, that's like real and wild. And before we had modern medicine in the United States.
Up to 50 percent of women often died in labor. So it's like, I think we live in this world where it's like, Oh, well, your body is built for it. And it's like, not exactly. If it was built for it, it was built pretty poorly. And the reason why that feels important to me right now is I'm just sort of thinking about that old chestnut that we sometimes get from the religious right of like, well, if you got pregnant, you know, and didn't want to carry the baby to term, you could just give it up for abortion, give it up for adoption.
Excuse me. As if like, Carrying a pregnancy for nine months and giving birth isn't an incredibly significant life event with its own mental health sequelae to be very technical about it.
Jill: Yeah, I mean, that line of like, well, just give a baby up for adoption. I mean, the just in that line is just a lot of work.
The idea. Yeah, that, that, that anything is, is a, is a, oh, it's just, oh, it's just, it's just pregnancy, it's just childbirth. It is so deeply, fundamentally disrespectful to To maternity, right? To carrying a baby, to the emotional aspect of carrying a child, right? The idea that just because you want to end a pregnancy doesn't mean that as you go through that pregnancy there's not going to be an attachment is crazy, right?
And just flies in the face of everything that, that we know about human behavior.
Leslie: And attachment and yeah, exactly.
Jill: Exactly. So You know, that to me, again, just says a lot about what we think women are for, um, how much we value the, the literal labor of childbirth and of pregnancy. Um, it's just, it's, yeah, it's, it's so deeply disrespectful, you know, when it, this is not what you're asking about, but related to maternal mortality rates, you know, I think something that's really, again, interesting when you look at the data in the US is that we talk about maternal mortality, we're not just talking about deaths in childbirth, right? We're also looking at deaths, um, during pregnancy and then for, I think it's roughly a year after you give birth and one, Significant driver of maternal mortality in the U.S. is death by suicide. Yes. And so when we're talking about the mental health consequences of pregnancy, right? We know there's huge hormonal changes. We know there are huge life changes. Um, There is a, you know, a, a not insignificant number of women who die in pregnancy or shortly thereafter by suicide. Um, and that's obviously all of those deaths are preventable, right?
With the right resources, but we're not extending those to women.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: Um and that's also so taboo still, right? Um, that we ignore it. We don't do enough about it. And when. So a lot of anti abortion legislation is coming down the pike. A lot of it has already been put into place and there's a lot of debate happening around exceptions, right?
What should, what should be an exception? And health exceptions have become exceedingly narrow in many, many anti abortion states. Um, even the life exception is, is extremely narrow in many of those states. And one thing that the anti abortion movement has pretty effectively stripped out of every single Um, anti abortion law is an exception for mental health, right?
So, which they kind of treat as a joke. Like, oh, you're depressed and you get an abortion? Like, give me a break. Right. Um, even though mental health is a huge driver of maternal death.
Leslie: Yes.
Jill: Um, and so I just wanted to raise that. We don't talk about it enough.
Leslie: And, also, our health matters, I just want to say, like, for Pete's sake. I mean, I think I think we're at a point in history where things are changing a little bit, but it's amazing to think that, I think we live in a world where the paradigm is such that it's almost like it all, it only matters whether you're alive or dead, you know, like, come on, it matters whether we are, you know, traumatized or just like, it has tremendous implications for our quality of life and that kind of stuff.
So.
Jill: And our ability to parent well.
Leslie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, so I just will say right now for the sake of our listeners that in season one, I did an episode specifically on this a merely positive. It's episode six, season one interview with Lisa Abramson, where we talked about postpartum depression and psychosis and how some of these issues apply to early motherhood.
So I just want to kind of give that a little plug if anyone wants to it. Hear more about that. They can listen to season one of The Nature of Nurture, episode six. But so I want to shift gears before we wrap up today. Before I do, is there anything that you want to add to the conversation we've already been having that you haven't gotten to say yet?
Jill: Um, Yeah, I mean, I guess I would just say that, you know, if you're somebody who's listening or watching in the U. S., this issue is not done. Yeah. Right? This is still an ongoing battle. An ongoing fight. Uh, it's a global fight. The U. S. is a pretty significant outlier when it comes to changes in abortion laws.
Leslie: Mmhmm.
Jill: Overwhelmingly, countries are liberalizing, countries that are changing their abortion laws are liberalizing them, right? So you've seen abortion be either decriminalized, um, or restrictions loosened, you know, in Mexico, in Colombia, in Argentina, in Thailand, um, in Kenya. And unfortunately, the U.S. is one of only three countries in the past decade or so that have tightened their abortion laws, is the U.S., Poland, uh, Nicaragua, Nicaragua. All three of those countries have seen essentially, um, the rise of an authoritarian government and a real decrease in constitutional protections and in a backsliding in liberal democracy.
And so you, you see these things go hand in hand, right? You see as countries become more democratic, you also see those countries embrace human rights norms and you see them embrace women's rights and you see them loosen abortion restrictions. And as countries become more authoritarian, what we're seeing is, you know, crackdowns on immigrants, on LGBTQ people and on women's rights.
And. So I think when we see the U.S. going in the direction that we're going with abortion rights, it tells us something about what's happening much more broadly in our culture and our politics. And so even if you're a person who's not super engaged in the issue of abortion rights specifically, that should worry you.
And also that we're part of a much greater kind of emerging global, uh, bifurcation.
Leslie: Yeah.
Jill: Right. Of a world that is moving to world toward liberal democracy and a world that's moving away from it. And I do think we need to ask ourselves which side of that we want to be on. Um, so if you're someone who's not already kind of involved in this fight and not seeing it, um, also as a global issue, not just as an American issue and not just as a women's issue, uh, I guess I would encourage you to, to get in because it affects all of us.
Leslie: That is such an excellent point. And do you have any advice for people about how they can get involved? What do people do?
Jill: Yeah, I mean, oh my gosh, there's so much to do. So you can donate to an abortion funds.
Leslie: Do you have one you recommend?
Jill: You know, the National, I think it's the National Abortion Federation has a whole list of them.
Okay. Um, and No, kind of no matter where you live, there's definitely one in your state. I think there is an abortion fund in almost all 50 states, if not all 50 states. Um, there's also a national network of abortion funds that you can donate your money to and that will distribute them. Um, the Bridget Alliance is a very good one.
Um, you know, I think just spending your money in a way that gives women access to reproductive healthcare is never a bad thing.
Leslie: Yes, yes. And the Center for Reproductive Freedom is doing some really incredible work. They're the, uh, organization that's leading all the lawsuits Center for Reproductive Rights Center
Jill: Center for reproductive rights
Leslie: Center for reproductive rights.
Yes. Thank you.
Jill: And they're, they're amazing. Yeah. They're representing the Texas women who are suing. Um, yes. Go for that. Over Texas is multiple abortion loss.
Leslie: Yea, they're they're one of the things on my map that makes me feel hopeful for the future So I'll just give them a little plug.
Jill: They're amazing. Um, and then you know as cheesy as it sounds like you got you do have to vote Oh, yeah, it's not like I also am a bit frustrated at how a lot of Democrats are not Pushing this issue.
I think as hard as they should um But, we live in a two party system and they are much better than, uh, the opposing party. Yes. Um, so we do have to turn out for pro choice candidates. I think we have to turn out and really push the candidates that we vote for to prioritize this issue. Um, and I would also say, I mean, this is like such a small thing, but, um, Talking to family and friends about it who may not be super engaged, um, you know, abortion remains pretty stigmatized and I think part of the work here is to talk about just what a normal part of women's lives this is, and all of the ways in which kind of we individually and then we as a society benefit when women get to decide for themselves whether and when to become mothers is huge.
Um, so working to decrease that stigma is something that all of us, all of us can do just by having conversations like these.
Leslie: Absolutely. Thank you so much for that. Um, so just to shift gears a little bit because I want to share this, this bit with our listeners before we wrap up. So when you were talking earlier about having a really wonderful life, it feels to me from witnessing your life from the outside that a big part of what makes it so wonderful is that in addition to everything that we're talking about today, which is such, um, brilliant and beautiful work that you're doing as a journalist, you have this whole other side of your life. That as a yoga instructor and someone who leads retreats all over the world.
And, um, in addition to just, I'm sure some personal travel that brings you all over the place. And that is also how you and I know each other. How we met in the past was that I attended a yoga retreat of yours in Kenya in March, which was life changing and incredible. And so I just want to take a minute here to chat with you a little bit about.
Can you just tell everybody kind of how you got into that and how you kind of got that off the ground, no pun intended?
Jill: Yeah. So, I mean, I often feel a little silly talking about this stuff in the context of a much more serious conversation. Um, well, and
Leslie: Also let me ask you really quickly, does it feel too much like a radical? Departure.
Jill: No, no, no, no, no.Not at all.
I mean, what I was going to say is that to me, these things feel quite integrated. You know, my first book was about feminism and happiness and part of what drives kind of my work in all directions is that I do fundamentally think that all human beings deserve lives that feel good, that feel meaningful, that feel purposeful.
Um, and I think that, you And that in order to have that, we have to have, we have to feel good in our bodies. We have to be financially secure. We need to have, uh, social support systems around us that both, um, kind of create that foundational support that all of us need, right? A place to live a roof over our heads.
Uh, food to eat, health care, all those basics. Yes. Um, but that also facilitate the kind of connections and interpersonal relationships that human beings generally need to be happy. And so, Part of the sort of philosophy behind these retreats, which combine travel as well as yoga, as well as writing, um, is to create spaces for people to hopefully feel embodied, right?
To be in their skin, to own it, um, to hopefully feel good, right? Uh, to also have a space for creativity, um, which I also think is pretty fundamental to the human experience, right? Um, to be able to make something, um, To me, creativity, for me, it's writing, but it, you know, it could be painting or photography or a million other things is a way that we, that we make sense of our lives and that we make meaning in the world.
And then these retreats are also group trips, um, typically among like minded people, mostly, but not all women in a way that fosters connection. And we need that. I mean, I think COVID.
Leslie: Yes.
Jill: And the lockdowns were a very, uh, sharp lived example and painful for many of us lived example of what happens when we are separated and isolated.
Um, and so for me, I hope the retreats become space for community building. Um, you know, again, mostly, but not entirely between women and the kind of magic that happens when those connections are fostered, particularly in a space that's so You know, explicitly feminist and, um, you know, we're talking, having conversations like these is not so outside the norm for sure.
Um, so I started hosting these retreats, gosh, I think about five years ago now. Um, I now do them in, well, they, they change, but typically Costa Rica, Tuscany, Kenya, I'm doing one in South Africa this year, um, Greece, and then we added Scotland and Morocco this year. Yeah. Um, so there were a lot of fun and as much as you know, I know it can sound a little frivolous, like, oh, yoga and writing retreat, um, not to me. I actually think they create a space for these really fundamental and really necessary human experiences. Um, so yeah, and, and they're just great fun.
Leslie: Yeah, they, they are. But I also just want you to know that I really hear you on how all of this stuff goes together, because I think it's really, important and it's really significant.
There is this theme that's just been sort of been being braided through this conversation, this idea of just being able to make life choices that are in keeping with, um, with what we want for ourselves and to be able to kind of, to really sap as much joy as we possibly can out of the time that we're here.
And in my mind, absolutely. You know, like yoga is a big piece of that just because I'm a yoga practitioner, but also relationships. Absolutely. I mean, if there's anything the pandemic taught us, it's that being able to be in connection with people and to be able to do that in person and to have it not be online.
And, um, is a very, very important part of being alive. And this is just my personal belief system. But I also think. Seeing the world and travel and the knowledge that we gain from being able to see the way other people live and that kind of stuff. It's, um, it isn't frivolous at all. I think we're talking about self actualization.
And so I just want you to know that I love seeing you be so self actualized in the world. And I hope that people will, um, just follow you and take a page out of your playbook and that I, it's my hope for all of us that we will all be so self actualized. So thank you again for doing this with me today.
Jill: Thanks, Leslie. It was such a fascinating conversation.
Leslie: You've been watching or listening to The Nature of Nurture with me, Dr. Leslie Carr, and I want to thank you for joining us. You can find Jill at jill.substack.com and onthe groundretreats.com. On Instagram, I'm @DrLeslieCarr. Many thanks to Jill for having this conversation with me.
And to all the people who worked behind the scenes to make this happen. Full credits can be found in the show notes. If you found this conversation valuable, please let me know by leaving a review or rating, or by sharing the episode with at least one person who you think might enjoy it too. You can also like or subscribe on YouTube or in any podcast app that you can get your hands on.
Thank you again for tuning in. I'll see you next time.