Ep. 6: Reproductive Justice with Dr. Cara Delay

In this special episode of What IFF?  we are joined by historian and professor Dr. Cara Delay as she helps us reckon with and interpret the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade during the summer of 2022. Keeping intersectionality at the forefront of her approach, Dr. Delay explains how participating in a greater discussion on reproductive justice, as coined by historic black activists, can help us achieve the fight for bodily autonomy. This means having conversations about contraception, gynecological and obstetric care, childbirth, and abortion, as they are all important factors in the larger issues at hand.

Music by Ketsa

Transcript

00:17

MH: Welcome to yet another episode of What IFF? This is a podcast where we consider how to apply intersectional feminism in our everyday lives and in our social activism so that we guarantee ourselves and generations to come a more just and equitable future. I’m your host, Marissa, and I’m joined today by Dr. Cara Delay, a history professor at the College of Charleston whose research focuses on the history of gender, reproduction and midwifery in the American South and in Ireland. Dr. Delay has received several awards for her work including the Research Fulbright at The UCD Humanities Institute in Ireland. She’s the Recipient of grants and awards from The American Association of University Women, and the Coordinating Council for Women in History to name a few. She also has more than 30 peer reviewed journal articles and chapters on the topic of reproduction, so stick around, and I think we’ll learn a thing or two. 

1:10

MH: Today we are having a very important conversation, one that has been on a lot of people’s minds this year especially and that is the issue of reproductive rights around the world. I am really excited to have Dr. Cara Delay joining me today to participate in this discussion.

1:27

CD: Glad to be here thanks, Marissa.

MH: Of course. I’m excited that you’ll help us learn a little bit about the current state of this issue by maybe filling in some historical gaps for us and helping us imagine a future where every person has full bodily autonomy. So, hi, Dr. Delay. Thank you again for being here. 

CD: Thrilled to be here, thanks so much.

MH: Of course, you were one of the first people that we thought about when we wanted to make sure that we had this conversation on this platform. I really value your perspective on this issue. Not only because of the fact that you were my professor back in 2021 and one of my first introductions to the history of reproduction, but also because of your level of dedication and expertise in this area of study. 

2:12

MH: So, let’s jump right in. This summer, the Dobbs decision in Mississippi became the catalyst for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. This meant that a person’s right to a safe abortion is no longer federally protected and instead is now in the power of individual states. So, in South Carolina, we have a 6 week fetal heartbeat bill, but the research I’ve seen says that this has not yet gone into effect. 

CD: Correct. Right, it is under legal challenges. 

MH: Okay, so where do we stand here in South Carolina?

CD: So, right now in South Carolina we essentially have a 20 week ban on abortion. So, technically abortion is still legal in South Carolina up until 20 weeks, but, like you said, Marissa, the 6 week so-called fetal heartbeat bill- which, I say ‘so-called’ because there’s no real heart beat in a 6 week clump of tissue or fetus- you know has been passed and probably will become implemented soon. It’s undergoing some legal challenges. And then some state politicians want to take it further, so they’ve proposed a near total ban on abortion. That, right now my understanding is that it is sort of dead; it didn’t make it out of committee. But, certainly this is not over. I think we will have the 6-week ban and maybe more restrictions coming down the road. 

MH: It’s really interesting because it seems like there’s not as much of a clearcut division in terms of where people stand on this issue as maybe both parties try to make it seem.

03:27

CD: Right. Yeah, and I mean, I think it’s really interesting if you look at South Carolina, to see how Republican representatives and senators within the state are definitely not finding some common ground. There’s definitely not support formally for a total ban. There was support for the 6-week ban, but then after the Dobb’s decision and a lot of the stories that were coming out, even republican politicians have changed their tune even wanting to maybe loosen up on the 6-week heartbeat bill. So, it’s interesting, and what that tells you, and as a historian what my mind goes to is it’s always been the case that there hasn’t been uniformity on abortion in terms of: should it be legal? If so, under what circumstances? And then there’s the larger issue of if people don’t really agree, there’s no consensus of when life begins if that is the debate you want to have. 

4:23

MH: So, I have heard you use the term ‘fetish of legality’ when talking about the United States and the emphasis we hold on law.

CD: Yeah, that’s actually not my term. It’s a legal scholar named Kraus, it’s her term.

MH: Kraus, okay yeah. Well then the fetish of legality refers to the idea that we decide where something is morally right or wrong based on the actual legality of it. This is the case for many issues: drugs, sex work, abortion, etc. But the importance of pointing it out in this discussion is that whether or not abortion is legal, people will still seek them, so it’s obviously important to point out that access matters as much if not more than legality. I mean, the United States law has never been a good standard of morality for our country. 

5:18 

CD: Right. 

MH: So, what do we do when the law is unjust?

CD: I think it’s great that you just brought in that word, ‘just,’ because the way to approach this is from a reproductive justice standpoint. So, reproductive justice is an approach that was created by black women, black american women, in the 80s and 90s to kind of address what at the time was, and maybe is still true, but was certainly true then, this focus on abortion rights in terms of legality and in terms of individual choice. So, this choice rhetoric? So what people involved in creating reproductive justice did was exactly what you're saying; they were looking at things like access, right? What does it matter if abortion is technically legal if you can't access it, right? If you don't live anywhere near a place where you can get an abortion, if you can't afford it. If you have to go through all these hoops like ultrasounds and waiting periods? That requires taking time off work. So, these black women that created the reproductive justice movement, they wanted to recognize context. And, also they wanted to kind of push back against the white, middle class ‘individual choice’ rhetoric that just didn't work, you know, more broadly.

06:19

MH: So this idea of choice is really subjective. It’s like a mirage of choice. 

CD: Right. So, in order to actually have a choice, you have to be able to make an informed choice that actually has a potentially good outcome, you know what I mean? Sometimes the choices we have are between one bad thing and one slightly less bad thing. So, I do think this rhetoric of choice which has become so ingrained in the abortion rights movements, not that it can’t be helpful in some circumstances, but I think it has derailed us a little bit from looking at larger issues. It also places a lot of responsibility on individuals who can become pregnant. And this rhetoric ‘you have a choice’ when maybe you don't have a choice or the circumstances that you're living under don't give you the same access to choice that other people have. So, it is in many ways a limiting rhetoric.

MH: Yeah, I also think this idea of reproductive justice is a great way to talk about this issue, because abortion is just one part of that. I think that reproductive justice also considers approaching these issues in a way that's gender expansive, in a way that looks at, again, all social categories because, you know, not all women have children, and not all people who can get pregnant are women.

CD: Right.

MH: So, it's so important for us to follow these leaders in this fight. 

07:39

CD: Right. I think the issue of non-binary people, or trans people, you know, needing access to abortion is really timely right now because I think people are starting to wake up to that reality. But, I also like the way that you framed it, like putting abortion in this wider context of reproductive justice is helpful because it really recognizes that abortion is just one element of a person’s reproductive life, right? Often, I think we consider abortion as a separate issue, unrelated to things like birth control or pregnancy or postpartum care, but they're all intertwined. And, reproductive justice also recognizes what SisterSong, one of the main organizations, would say is that reproductive justice is about the right to have a child, the right to not have a child and the right to raise the children that we have in safe and sustainable communities. So, it's recognizing that all of these are encompassed together, right? You can't sort of just pull one thing like ‘is abortion legal?’ out of that larger context.

MH: Exactly. It’s such an interesting perspective to be so against this issue when to me, it’s so obvious that our country truly has bigger fish to fry.

08:44

CD: And you know, when you look at the historical evidence, the way that, you know, people in our past, the American past, but in a lot of different places, historically, they never did view abortion as this separate issue, right, as so-called ‘deviant practice.’ Abortion was really woven into daily life and was very much considered to be a normal part of a person's life cycle or  reproductive life. So, the way we've kind of compartmentalized these things doesn't really fit with the way most people historically understood them. 

09:15

MH: Yeah, there is this false narrative about the kind of person that has an abortion, the situation that surrounds a person’s decision to have an abortion. Did you attend the reproductive justice event in October, “You’re the Only One I’ve Told?” 

CD: I could not make it, and I wish they had had other dates because I was dying to go.

MH: It was a great event that showcased several monologues that showed the wide range of experiences that lead a person to have an abortion. People on the side of anti-choice make it seem like this is about baby hating when to me it seems like it’s less about babies and more about controlling a person’s reproductive right. 

CD: I mean it's not about babies it's not really about fetuses. It's not about that. I think it is about control and power. And, what you were saying about the abortion stories project, you know, what these like stories help us realize is that, you know, sometimes we think there's a typical abortion and there's your rare case abortion. But, everything is a normal abortion.

MH: Yeah, all of this reminds me of when I was in your class, and one of the biggest lessons I took out of it is this idea that abortion is ordinary, like you said historically, it’s an ordinary thing.

CD: Yeah.

MH: So, why do you think that that is such an important takeaway, especially now?

10:18

CD: Yeah, I mean, again, I think it helps us reframe the issue because even many who would call themselves abortion rights advocates or pro-choice advocates would sometimes think of abortion as like a necessary evil, right? It's the idea that, ‘oh, nobody likes abortion. We all want to eradicate abortion, but for now we have to have it.’ And I think that's really damaging because you know what history teaches us is that for people who could become pregnant, you know, women in the past, but also entire communities really didn't see a moral judgment or didn't have a moral, I guess, view of abortion that would fit with what many people have today. It was just considered to be something that was necessary.

MH: A medical procedure.

CD:  Yeah, and often not even. Like, often it was kind of like a self, something that was done outside of official medical circles, but in women's homes. So, that actually made it even more ordinary, so ironically one thing that Roe vs. Wade did was actually, I think, medicalize abortion  more, right? Like, moved abortion into clinical spaces which a lot of people who need abortions describe as being really uncomfortable. So, I'm not saying that things were better before abortion was decriminalized, but before Roe vs. Wade in the United States there were, you know, makeshift clinics and healthcare professionals performing abortions, but there were also ordinary lay women giving other women abortions in spaces that were more comfortable for them like their own homes. So, one thing I think is interesting is, you know, in this moment now with Dobbs is, if we get to a place in the future where it turns again, and nationwide abortion is decriminalized. What is that gonna look like? I mean, I wonder if re-medicalizing it again is the best way forward because that doesn't necessarily produce the best experience for people. 

12:09

MH: Yeah. When did this change in culture in terms of how people viewed abortion, when and where did that start to shift? 

CD: Well, the first thing to say is it hasn't shifted that much because if you look at all the polls, the vast majority of Americans want to protect abortion rights legally. So, in this most recent election that just happened a few weeks ago, it was really interesting, like, any place where abortion rights were on the ballots, people came out invited for abortion rights. So, I think that that does tell you that there has never been a widespread movement or a majority of Americans who have opposed abortion on moral grounds; that's just a fallacy. However, in the 1980s, I mean, I guess it was maybe earlier than that, you know, after Roe vs. Wade, but especially in the 1980s with the new conservatism and the rise of the religious Right and evangelicalism. Those folks kind of linked hands with the Catholic Church and created I think this massive propaganda campaign that we don’t necessarily recognize to convince people that life begins at conception, and that abortion was a moral issue. What's interesting is some people were convinced, but again, never a majority of people.

MH: Have you seen Mrs. America?

CD: I saw parts of it. 

MH: I think it's so good. Cate Blanchet, she's incredible, but she plays-

CD: Phyllis Schlafly.

MH: She plays Phyllis Schlafly, and I learned a lot about the ERA and they really shine light on the way that conservative women kind of took that up in that Phyllis Schlafly was like: “Hey, Christians, this is actually, this is an issue you should care about. You should come out and vote against the ERA. 

CD: Right.

MH: And, like, that was when it was politicized. Really interesting. 

13:52

CD: Yeah, so I think we have this impression that there's always been moral condemnation directed towards abortion at a popular level, right? And, it's just that, you know, a lot of students come to my classes with this impression. But, it's just only in the 1960s and 70s with this crazy feminist movement do we get Roe vs. Wade, and now, maybe we're going back to what many people see as normal which is, you know, a prohibition on abortion, but it's actually the complete opposite. Abortion being legal in most parts of the United States up until the 1870s, 1880s, and even after it's criminalized state by state at that time, there is very little moral condemnation. So,  historian Leslie Reagan, who’s written kind of, like, the book on the history of abortion in the United States, talks about an alternative popular morality: that there's a morality that increasingly religious leaders, politicians, and even doctors are talking about which is anti-abortion, but they never are able to convince the majority of people that it’s wrong.

MH: It's crazy, and yet our government doesn't reflect that.

CD: Right, which, you know, tells us that the landscape we’re in today, it's not about codifying and law what people want. 

MH: No, it's about control and money.

CD: Right, it's about control and money and regression, you know, and it's a backlash against, I think, all the accomplishments that movements like Feminism and Black Lives Matter and Me Too, all those movements have brought. 

15:16

MH:  Yeah. Now, one of your points biggest points of interest is midwifery, specifically so, and of course, again, reproductive justice is about way more than just abortion, and from your class, and also having taken that sexuality of childbirth class, right afterwards, which was just like right a dream part of my education, honestly, I learned how important midwifery was for healthy outcomes, for maternal mortality rates, for issues that people say that they care about right, and the idea of knowing that how how a nation treats its women, it's people who give birth, and its children is a pretty good reflection of how the rest of the country is doing. In those situations, in childbirth, so many of the in like inequalities that happen in our country come out of the darkness and yet people still wanna hide them away. So of course, we know that this issue can be broken down by race and by social class. So in your experience, what role then does midwifery play in righting these inequities. Let's go there let’s take it there.

16:13

CD: Let’s talk about midwives. It's funny, my students this semester in my History of Reproduction class were joking that the class should be called “I heart midwives” because they do a lot of this work. So, gosh, there is so much to unpack here. But, again, if you look historically at healthcare and women's health care in the United States, and even globally, it's not really until the nineteenth century that you get the professionalization of OBGYNs and kind of what many people view as this, like, hostile takeover by official medicine. By the early twentieth century, a lot of positions, the American Medical Association, they were really trying to eliminate local midwives. But, up until the 1960s in some of the country, midwives were operating and assisting at the vast majority of births. And in the South, specifically there's this tradition of African American midwives, who are sometimes called granny midwives, who gained their skill, in some ways, during the era of enslavements when they had to care for pregnant women and didn't have, you know, access to official healthcare. The doctors that cared for enslaved women, were you know, like J. Marion Sims, torturing them, experimenting on them, using them for different purposes. So, what happened there was a really interesting combination of traditions from West Africa and indigenous Americans and European traditions that on Southern so-called plantations made black women experts on reproductive healthcare. So, these women, we could probably call them lay midwives, they cared for enslaved women, but also white women enslavers. And so during reconstruction and the Jim Crow era in the South when black Americans still did not have access to healthcare, especially in Jim Crow during segregation, these black women who learned these skills from their ancestors and their communities continued to practice in the local level. Traveling across thousands of miles, sometimes in it a week in rural areas, allowing black women to have safe at home births. And, so, this tradition of black midwives, I think, is one of our greatest healthcare traditions and legacies in the United States that we often don’t talk about. Of course there were also native American midwives working in the Southwest and the west, so the way that the medical establishment came in and through several public health campaigns and legislative actions kind of pushed midwives out of reproductive healthcare, I think, is a huge loss for all of us because all of the stats we have: There was a woman in Maine, a eighteenth and nineteenth century midwife, Martha Ballard, and then there's, here in so South Carolina, Mod Calen was one of those African American midwives in the twentieth century

MH: Ina May Gaskin

CD: Yeah! Ina May and the farm midwives. Across time and space these midwives had excellent results. 

18:58

MH: Right, so then these misconceptions about midwifery, actually not misconceptions, this was purposeful propaganda against midwives. They pushed these ideas that midwives were uneducated and unclean. I remember that was a big emphasis in the documentary we watched in your class called All My Babies.

CD: It was wrapped up in the hygiene movements that were going on at the time. 

MH: Even though despite these false ideas, these births were incredibly successful, so then we see a transition to the medicalization of birth and with it, an increase in negative outcomes. I watched that documentary that you recommended to me last week called Aftershock which really displayed the ways that the overmedicalization of childbirth has undoubtedly and unnecessarily lost us so many lives and, disproportionately, black lives. I mean, seriously, there should be public outrage to know that the United States spends the most on obstetrics, the most on the entire birthing process, and yet we still have the highest rate of maternal and infant mortalities  among any country that we’d ever try to say we’re better than. So, where is that money going? And where are our priorities? These are facts, you know? It’s upsetting.

20:08

CD: Yeah, I mean the system is broken. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but the medical system is really broken in a sense because, you know, I say this to my students on the first day of class that, you know, the minute you walk into a hospital to give birth, you increase your chances of dying as compared to if you went to Birth Center or gave birth at home with a skilled  midwife. No one believes me, but by the end of the semester they see how and why that came to be. But, the maternal mortality and morbidity crisis that we're in today, it's about money  because you know physicians want to use technologies if they have them available, right, they get incentives to use technology, so the whole process of giving birth in the hospital is filled with these so-called technological advances. Fetal heartbeat, or constant fetal heartbeat monitor, has been shown, studies have shown that it actually leads to interventions like Cesarean section. Pitocin, right? Things that induce labor then, of course, Cesarean sections, because  physicians want to schedule their time, and maybe they want to be home at night. Birth is unpredictable in its so called natural state and can take a long time. Cesarean section allows you sometimes to schedule a procedure and to know exactly how long it's going to take. Whereas, if you, you know, wait for a person giving birth to do so without medical intervention, it can take days.  

21:37

MH: Right, and in our system of capitalism. Some people don't think they have the time for something like that.

CD: They want to be efficient, Right? Efficiency. 

MH: I learned in my Sexuality of Childbirth class that the number one time for a scheduled C-section is Friday at 4PM

CD: Interesting

MH: Like, statistically, that is the number one time that a doctor will be like, “we got to get you in the OR.” It’s crazy. And these are, again, lives that we're putting on the line, and this idea that you had to have a C section. Our C-section rate, according to the Aftershock documentary, our C-section rate is 500 times higher than it was in the 70s.

CD: Yes. Absolutely. 

MH: Because it's more necessary? No. It’s not more necessary now than it's ever been. It saves lives. We know that. 

CD: We need them, right? The World health organization estimates that maybe 10% of births require a C-section. In the United States, we’re over 30%. I think in South Carolina we might be at 40%, even higher than that. So, what that tells us is it's not that birth is getting more dangerous and we need more interventions, you know what that tells us is that we are intervening too much. But, it's interesting, I was talking to my students about this the other day. I feel like we're a society that once we have technology, we have this compulsion to use it. So, it's very hard in many cases, for an OBGYN to sit there and wait and watch, and as midwives would call it, catch a baby in a kind of passive role rather than you know, looking at all this equipment and surgical tools, right? So there is this compulsion to use them because the idea is that if we're using technology, we're more advanced, but that is not the case.

23:07

MH: No, and it’s also the fact that performing the surgery at that point is, in a Doctor's defense in a legal standpoint, the most that could have been done, right? So, then at that point there’s this anticipated cascade of intervention that a lot of people giving birth don’t even realize that they’re falling into. So what is this cascade of intervention for listeners at home who don’t know? So, in a “natural” birth, oxytocin is that love hormone that runs through the body of the person giving birth as well as the baby being born. When a person decides to be induced or a doctor decides that the best thing for that person is to be induced, what they do is they give them pitocin which is fake oxytocin. So then by inducing a person and giving them this pitocin, the events of childbirth start to progress much faster than they would have if given the opportunity to naturally progress, right? Meaning that now their body is going into hyper mode. Contractions come much faster, all of those hormones are rushing in faster than they would have naturally, so now the person is in pain, so now the person wants drugs, and now the person wants an epidural, and now the baby’s heart is in distress, and now the baby’s heart is in the distress, and now we have to go to an OR. 

CD: That’s exactly the way it goes. 

MH: That is exactly the way it goes! I am such an advocate for birth stories, and we’ve talked about this. The idea that even if people just shared their birth stories more, we could help each other take this back into our own hands and call out the injustices we see. 

24:36

CD: Yeah, and that goes back to the issue of choice. Like what choices do people giving birth, who are pregnant and are gonna give birth, what choices do they really have? You have to be informed to have a real choice, and like you said, there's no real discussion about these other options. I know plenty of people who are academics, and have babies in their thirties, and they were like, “how did no one ever tell me that this is what it was like?” So, yeah, we need to change the communication, and we need to empower people to make informed choices. But, one problem with that is that even if you have all the knowledge, right, and you wanna have a birth, a certain way, if, from a clinician's perspective something “goes wrong,” then that power can be taken away or that choice is taken away from you really quickly. You know, anyone who's considered high risk. Some high risk pregnancies should move to a hospital setting. But, you know, like, if you're over 35 or whatever the age is, you're a geriatric birth. So I think there are all these structures and systems set up to actually disempower people and to take away choices.

25:39

MH: Yeah, and it’s important to know that an increase in c-section rates is directly correlated to higher rates of maternal mortality, and we also know that this disproportionately affects black women. Black women are 4 times more likely to die during or after childbirth and that increases significantly when there’s a C-section involved. 

CD: Right, and that's mostly our historical legacy of racism and structural racism because every study has shown that any kind of health professional doesn't listen to black women, so if they have a symptom that you know should ring a bell in a clinician's mind that maybe something's going on, they're gonna dismiss it as, “oh, they're just talking about their pain but that's just because-

MH: “that’s just pregnancy” 

CD: Right. “Go home, rest. You’ll be fine” So, categorizing certain women as irrational, right? Black women, women of color as irrational and not able to know their own bodies and describe their symptoms. That's the problem there.

26:35

MH: Right, absolutely. And too many people that go to give birth in a hospital don't know that this is something that is super common for people to experience. I think if we made it more of a habit to talk to each other about these things, we could stop them in their tracks. And there's this, I think, really important issue in all of this. We're talking about reproductive justice, abortion even just contraception comes the issue of eugenics, which just flies right over everyone. So, eugenics, literally meaning good creation, is the process of attempting to “eliminate undesirable, genetic traits to create a more…”

CD: “perfect?”

MH: Right, and in US history, white, and middle-class,

CD: Able-bodied

MH: Able-bodied population, so what does this have to do with reproductive justice? Just about everything. 

CD: Yeah, everything, and you're right to kind of describe eugenics as kind of like being at the underbelly of all this, right, like kind of underlying a lot of this rhetoric. And I think you definitely see it today, right? Some of these studies on let's say the crisis in black maternal mortality today  has kind of shown that there is this underlying belief that a lot of clinicians have that, “oh, black women, you have so many babies,” right? Like welfare babies and these kinds of things, and that that actually contributes to these clinicians not listening to black women because they think that you know black women are over producing or they're doing so outside of marriage or something right, whereas if someone sees a middle class white woman walking down the street with for kids in tow, they’re like “oh, what a cute family.” If someone sees a black woman walking down the street with four kids in tow, think about how that ingrained racism kicks in for many people, right? You know, some people’s minds will go to welfare, will go to different fathers and these kinds of things, so that, I just think, absolutely permeates everything about our healthcare system in general, today, but the reproductive healthcare system, yeah. And of course, you know, this idea. I think we often look at eugenics as outdated: that maybe it died with Hitler or something. But, the fact that people were forcibly sterilized in this country: African American girls, Mexican women up and through the 1970s. 

MH: Native women. 

28:54

CD: And the fact that in ICE detention centers, even in the past couple of years, there are reports of forced sterilization, right? So, I think that these are things that are super timely right now because we still have this idea in this country that certain people should give birth to create a certain type of society, and then negative eugenics is the flip side. Well, what that means is that we have to look at who is giving birth that we don't want to give birth, right? So this fear of immigrant births, people of color giving birth, right? A lot of the language that's used is that, you know they're gonna “swarm” white people. It's like this sort of takeover. I think that's absolutely essential. I think you're right, I don't think we talk about it enough because I don't think we wanna recognize ourselves as this society that is still deeply eugenenist, but we are. 

29:37 

MH: Absolutely. So, my sociology professor often repeat the quote, “history casts a long shadow.” So in other words, we are still affected today by the choices made in the past. You know, modern Americans didn’t invent racism, the doctors we’ve talked about didn’t invent these issues, but we all navigate the same historic systems. I think to speak about reproductive rights and reproductive justice, we have to be teaching true history. I like to believe that if given the room to connect those dots, people would accept a new perspective to these issues. There’s just too much misinformation being spread. 

CD: I don’t doubt that some people really do believe that life begins at conception and that it’s, you know, wrong to terminate life, but I think that’s just a very personal view. When you're talking about what's best for an entire society or for other people, you just can't apply that. 

MH: Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting because you and I talked about this a little bit earlier in the episode about Phyllis Schlafly and the role that religion and specifically christianity plays in the rhetoric surrounding this issue, but you know, I was raised pretty religiously and with that came a lot of ideas that are considered right-wing ways of thinking. And my mom is still a religious person, and I was wondering what she thought about this issue, and she said, “you’d be surprised how I feel”, and I was curious, so she said that since god invented freewill it is none of her business and actually goes directly against god’s word to tell anybody that they can or can’t have their own freewill and their own choice. So, I thought it was an interesting view and an interesting way to use that specific religion to form your perspective on this issue.

CD: Well, that's the thing is the anti-choice rhetoric, the world we’re in today, a lot of it is picking and choosing certain things from religious texts or from you know the past, anything. I think that's what academia can offer here, just encouraging people to be critical thinkers, you know? Because, like you were saying, doctors today like OBGYNs, don't intentionally go in to harm women or to be racist, right? But, they grew up in a culture that is ingrained in all of us. So what we need to do is just be active critical thinkers. That's the only way forward, I think. 

31:54

MH: I absolutely agree. So let’s zoom out a little bit and consider a more global perspective on these issues. Now, most of your research regards reproductive issues in Ireland, specifically, so what kind of social justice activism there during your studies abroad? I’m curious what we can learn from them. 

CD: Yeah, it’s really striking because Ireland was a place that up until the 1990s, most people did have this conservative catholic worldview that viewed abortion as morally wrong but also women’s main roles as mothers. There was this culture of motherhood that thrived even when the state was making it impossible in some ways for people to be financially supported mothers. So, it’s so interesting that in the past few decades, Ireland has seen this, like, sea change in popular opinion, so much so that in 2018 by popular vote, the Irish people in the Republic of Ireland voted to overturn their really restrictive abortion laws, and they also were the first country to decriminalize same sex marriage by popular vote in 2015. And so a lot of international scholarly attention has been on Ireland to be like, okay, what were the things that these activists did and how did opinion change so rapidly over a generation? And it was just what we began this conversation with: ordinary stories. So, in the past few decades social media has really helped people get their stories out there. Personal narratives were instrumental in helping convinced voters that abortion was something that needed to be legalized, right? So, things like fatal fetal abnormalities, as they're called, where a fetus is not viable, but a person was in Ireland sometimes forced to see the pregnancy through or travel to get an abortion. Things like that. Those personal stories really helped, and beyond abortion, Ireland has kind of been in this like truth telling mode for a couple of decades now where many people, activists, but some politicians and scholars want to take a look at the country's restrictive past and not just, you know, understand it, but work to overcome it and make amends. So, one issue, I don't know if we've talked about this: symphysiotomy? 

MH: What is it? 

CD: Symphysiotomy. I don't know if we did it in class, but this is a procedure in Ireland, where in a case if a person was giving birth and the shoulders of the fetus were too wide to come out of the birth canal, it's a little gruesome, I'm sorry, but physicians would like break or saw through a person’s pelvis to facilitate that birth. And that was considered, by the 1940s in most places, to be not the way to go; you do a cesarean section because that's a lot better in terms of-

MH: Like cutting, which was very common in the US, right? 

CD: Yeah, but symphysiotomy was the way that Ireland went until the 1980s, and as a result, many women had significant health problems. They often weren't told that they undermined this procedure. So, there's been this movement in the past few decades. There is this great group called Survivors of Symphysiotomy to actually take their case to the government, take it to social media, take it to newspapers and documentary films, anything. And they've actually gotten the government, you know, to sort of apologize and start thinking about reparations for it. So, there's been this national reckoning in Ireland, and it's not perfect, and it's not over, but it is  an interesting example of how, through grassroots activism, an entire country can kind of start to rethink its current policies in light of its past, as well. I could talk about it forever. 

MH: I know, I love it. I mean we could definitely learn a thing or two, and obviously, similar movements are being made here, but it is tricky because this country is just so big, the older I get the more I realize how too big it is sometimes. It’s hard to control. 

35:48

CD: Right, so the state by state issues we have here are really unique. It’s interesting because when I first started working on the history of abortion in Ireland, it was criminalized there and legal here and now it's been a complete flip where you know I've had colleagues in Ireland reaching out to me after Dobba to be like, “oh, my God, what is happening? Can we help?” And 10 years ago it was me reaching out to that and saying, “hey, how can we start talking more about reproductive justice in Ireland?” And just to give a plug for a book coming out: So, my colleague, dear friend, and writing partner, Beth Sundstrom and I have a book coming out in April. It's called Catching Fire: Women's Health Activism in Ireland and the Global Movement for Reproductive Justice. In which we look at things like birth control and HPV vaccinations and abortion, and all these things, and we look at how and why health activists in Ireland really changed the landscape there and what we do argue is kind of like what you were saying, which is that they, these activists kind of did create a blueprint for other places moving forward on how to do this and do it well. Again, not perfectly.

MH: Something to look forward to, though, that is exciting. What will it be available on?

CD: It's published through Oxford University Press, and we're hoping it'll be out in April or May, so at that time you can go to Oxford University Press or any major bookseller or local bookseller would be great. You’ll have to purchase it

MH: Congratulations!

CD: Thanks! I’ll get you a copy, Marissa.

MH: Please, please! I’ll pay for it. I’d pay good money for that. Well, great, I mean, this has been an incredible conversation. We could do this-

CD: We could go on for hours and hours.

MH: Absolutely. This is an issue that I have forced friends to listen to on road trips.

CD: Same.

MH: Yeah, of course. But, before I end the show, I like to do that little speed round, so just some little things I wanna know about you. What was your first job?

CD: Food service

MH: Food service, yeah. Did you like it? 

CD: Nope, as soon as I was, you know, legal to work, I started working and that was one thing that really pushed me to get into education, cause I decided I didn't want to be in food service.

MH: I hear you. 

CD: Like you, through college and grad school, I did all those kinds of jobs, you know.

MH: Oh, yeah, I am hitting that point right now where I'm so tired of my income being dependent on this arbitrary 20% this stranger gets to decide whether or not I earned or deserve. And a lot  of time that's based off of like a persona that I put on and like how I look and how I talk, and it’s really starting to affect me. I talk about it in therapy sometimes [laughs]. 

CD: Oh gosh. 

MH: What chore do you hate doing the most at home?

CD: Unloading the dishwasher.

MH: Really?

CD: Doesn’t everybody? I love loading it for some reason, but I hate unloading it. 

MH: I would prefer to unload. 

CD: Really? 

MH: Yeah, it’s, like, clean already. It’s warm sometimes. 

CD: But, I don’t know there’s something about it. It’s still wet. I don’t know. I think when you load it and turn it on, you can walk away and do other things. 

MH: True. My siblings and I used to fight over that. “I call unloading. I call loading.” Mine is laundry. I just, I always have more laundry to do, and it’s always there. 

CD: Yeah, see that is never ending. 

MH: Okay, I'm all about music recommendations, so do you have a favorite song of all time/just right now?

CD: I don't know that I have a favorite of all time, but just recently I was listening to classic U2 and the song Bad which is, you know, like early 80s U2, which is just great, sort of like, super emotional, and yeah.

MH: I'm putting it on my spotify right now.

CD: Yeah, it builds up so you can give it some time.

MH: I’m all for it. 

CD: But, yeah. I’ve been in this nostalgic mood lately, thinking about my own childhood and adolescence and so that early 80s music

MH: I listen to a lot of 70s, 80s, 60s, yeah. I love music that’s not from today. 

CD: Yeah, you know, I’m a little older, so I’m not that into music today. I love some of it. I love Harry Styles. My cat’s name is Harry Styles. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. I feel like he was on Zoom all the time with us, but maybe I got him after that class.

MH: Oh my gosh, what color cat?

CD: He’s a siamese. White with big blue eyes. He’s pretty and he knows it. Like Harry Styles. 

MH: Of course. That’s perfect. Okay last one. Would you rather travel to the past or the future? 

CD: Hmm, I mean, I gotta say the past just as a historian, you know, there's so many times when i'm in the archives looking at something or even reading someone else's book i'm like, “oh, to be there!” But then I also understand it’s dangerous. Like a lot of these places, I wanna travel to you back in time would have been dangerous

MH: Yeah dangerous for you specifically. Quick travel maybe. 

CD: What about you?

MH: Um, I would say, probably the same. I’m too scared of the future to want to know right now what it looks like. I'd rather it unfold slowly. My mom was always like you were born in the wrong decade. You should have lived in the seventies, and, like she wants me to be like a feminist in the seventies. And I’d love to go back and visit, but again, anytime someone's like, “I wish I had lived in the fifties.” I'm like, “well, you’re actually ignorant to all the social issues that were occuring at the time. Or you were a population that wasn't facing any social issues, right? 

CD: [laughs] Yeah. 

MH: So, that's what my education has taught me. 

CD: Good. Good. 

MH: Well, again. Thank you so much, this has been so fun. 

CD: Thank you! I wish we could talk more.

MH: I know, me too. But, I’m thankful for the time and for the motivation you give us all to just keep pushing forward in this fight for reproductive justice. So, thank you again, good luck with everything, we will talk soon. 

CD: Bye! Thanks, Marissa. Donate to Women’s and Gender Studies!

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42:05

MH: Thank you for spending time with What IFF? After the recording of this episode, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in a 3-2 decision that the 6 week abortion ban is a violation of the state constitution’s right to privacy. This is a big win in the fight for bodily autonomy in The South, but there is still much to be done. If you have enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about the fight for reproductive rights, be on the lookout for Dr. Delay’s new book, Catching Fire: Women’s Health Activism in Ireland and the Global Movement for Reproductive Justice which will be available this spring at your local bookseller. I’m Marissa, and with this final episode I will be signing off your What IFF? host. It has been such an honor to be a creator of this show. I want to thank you all for learning with me throughout this last year and for supporting the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the College of charleston. Of course, I want to give a special and personal thanks to Dr. Kris De Welde and the rest of the WGS program at CofC for years of encouragement and cultivation. I am forever grateful. I hope you all had a peaceful holiday season. Join us in this new year for exciting new content and a brand new host. And keep up with us on WGS Connect at blogs.cofc.edu/wgsconnect and our Instagram @cofcwgs. With love and power, take care and stay feminist, y’all.

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