HEFFNER: I am Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, professor Krystale Littlejohn of the University of Oregon, author of the book, Just Get On The Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics, and also editor of the new volume, Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade.

Krystale, an honor to be with you today.

Thanks for joining me.

LITTLEJOHN: Thanks so much for having me.

I'm happy to be here.

HEFFNER: Let me start with this, and I'm sure this is not the way you begin most of your interviews about the overturning of Roe.

It's my contention that had reproductive autonomy been authorized, granted, whatever you want to say, by the United States Supreme Court under the auspices of the First Amendment, freedom of expression, that it would not have been eroded.

Had a decision been made not on the basis of privacy rights, but on the basis of the First Amendment.

Your reaction.

LITTLEJOHN: I think that's a fascinating contention.

From my perspective, I believe that when people are interested in eroding a right, they will find a way to do so, excuse me, by whatever means necessary.

And so while I think that it could have provided some protections, were that the case, I'm not sure that I think that it would've been the solution in the end, just because we know and we've seen the ways that people will find loopholes the way that they will try their best to erode and violate people's rights using, whatever means they possibly can.

So I think it's a fascinating idea.

But I wonder how it would play out, in practice, given the ways that people that are anti-abortion will just do whatever they can to advance their agenda and in the end violate people's rights and their bodily autonomy.

HEFFNER: Fair enough.

Appreciate your consideration of that hypothetical.

Is it not relevant though, Krystale, as we look at what will be the architecture potentially that upholds and preserves reproductive liberty in the future.

Now that Roe is gone, the protections that Roe guaranteed are still available in some of our 50 states.

But after reviewing the essays and curating the essays in your volume, you must have some thoughts on whether the new jurisprudence should pick up where Roe left off, or should it build anew?

LITTLEJOHN: I think that is a very, very important question.

And one of the things that really comes across in many of the essays and the volume is that Roe was really a floor, right?

It wasn't the starting place that we could imagine creating a vision of a future that would guarantee people the liberties that we know that they should have.

And I think that one of the important things to consider when we look at these essays is the ways that people really push us to see the limitations of Roe.

That even when Roe was the law of the land, there were people that didn't have access to abortion.

People that, for a variety of reasons, whether they were incarcerated, whether they just didn't have access to clinics, whether there were other abortion restrictions preventing them from accessing abortion.

There were a number of different challenges that made it hard, if not impossible, for them to have access to abortion.

And one of the things that the many essayists really encourage us to do in the volume is to think expansively about what the future could look like.

What are the ways that we can incorporate reproductive justice into our vision for abortion care?

And how can we unite and ban together and form cross coalitions to try and make sure that we can do whatever is possible, whether they're restrictions or not, what can be done to try and give people access to abortion and reproductive justice more generally?

HEFFNER: Would you consider Oregon to be a blueprint where you are or other states, um, in the laboratories of democracy that do protect reproductive health and freedom?

What is the best model and also what is the most realistic model to enact in a state where it more or less is 50-50?

You saw remarkable enthusiasm in states considered conservative like Kansas for initiatives and referenda that are protecting reproductive health.

So it may skew above 50 in the pro-abortion access column, but there's still many states where it would skew against abortion, or it would be really 50 50.

So I'm curious from both a legal perspective and a historical perspective, if there are states that are getting it right now.

LITTLEJOHN: I think we should really be looking at what states are doing across the board rather than necessarily just looking at a single state, because different state contexts have different histories, have different population needs.

And so I'm not sure that I think a single state is going to provide the blueprint necessarily.

I think that looking at what states are doing and what local governments are doing can be really helpful.

We have an essay in the volume by a council member in Texas who talks about or who writes about what their office did when the Texas Abortion trigger law took effect when it took effect 30 days after the Dobbs decision.

And the council member and staff members write about how when that happened, they knew that, and actually they started taking action even before the Dobbs decision happened when they first heard about the leak.

So within 24 hours of hearing about the leak, they developed a working draft of their legislative response, and they decided that one of the ways that they could try and help people is by directing and deciding how to use resources.

And they did, they ended up deprioritizing criminalization of abortion in terms of how to deploy their resources.

And so I use this as an example just to say that even in the state where there are such extreme abortion laws on the books after Dobbs, they see how people on the ground were coming up with really innovative ways to help get people, either, whether it's access to abortion in some cases or in this case, how they could try and help protect people from criminalization, when it comes to, when it came to getting an abortion.

And so I think the way that I see this is there are people in different contexts all taking really different actions and doing things that they need to do to be able to protect their, whether it's their constituents or whether it's just their community members.

And I think that if we do that rather than looking at one state or one location for a model, then we can, it will really allow us to get the best and utilize the best activities and strategies that people are deploying, to be able to protect abortion access, because it is such a challenging landscape, and there are so many different strategies that anti-abortion legislators and folks are enacting.

And so I think if we can just try and, and see what's happening across the board, then it can give us a good idea of different strategies to try.

And that was what was so exciting for me about Fighting Mad was seeing how people across domains were doing their best and are doing their best to try and develop innovative strategies to protect abortion.

HEFFNER: As you said, the movement to stop abortion or reproductive health access it has not ended as a result of Roe being overturned.

There is a movement to federalize it, to make it the law of the land.

Based on the recent case in Idaho, in the trajectory of the Supreme Court, could you envision in America in which a national abortion ban is upheld by this Supreme Court?

LITTLEJOHN: I think it's a very scary proposition and one of the things that activists have long been warning people about is that what people imagine as a nightmare scenario that could never happen can in fact take place.

And so one of the things that is really motivating for me from a reproductive justice standpoint is seeing the ways that activists have fought for people to be able to get what they need without relying necessarily on what the courts are doing.

And so one of the things, obviously, we need to look at the courts, obviously, right, where we know how important it is to have these rights enshrined in law.

But I think one of the things that activists have really inspired in me and in many of the people that they work for and fight for is the centrality of recognizing that the courts are one avenue of giving people access to the care that they deserve.

But there is a need to constantly agitate for getting people supported on the ground.

And we see what that looks like.

So even in the aftermath of Dobbs decision, where we've seen horrifying restrictions and bans that are leading to horrifying consequences, we also know that there were more abortions in 2023 than in 2022 by volume.

And I think that is a result of people fighting.

They're continuing to fight to try whatever they can.

We know abortion funds are doing really important work, trying to get people access to abortion, whether that's via travel funds or whatever the case may be.

And so I think obviously we always need to keep our eye on the courts, but activism and activists have also demonstrated the centrality of making sure that we as everyday citizens also do whatever we can.

Because while there's not as much we can do about what happens at the Supreme Court and elsewhere, there's a lot that we can do in our everyday lives to try and continue fighting for people to get access to the care that they deserve, even if those rights are being violated by the courts.

HEFFNER: You wrote, and I think this was before Roe was overturned, your thesis was why access to birth control is no substitute for abortion rights.

I mentioned your first book in the introduction.

How has your thinking evolved in light of Dobbs, your contention here they're not synonymous access to birth control versus access to abortion rights.

I'm curious in the wake of Dobbs, how you've, if you have altered your thinking about this at all, and if so, how?

LITTLEJOHN: I think that is such an important question and the answer for me is that it hasn't It hasn't changed my thinking.

I think that we're seeing even more how important it is.

One of the things that I stressed in that essay and that I stress in the work that I do is based on my research and based on the research of others, we know that people that use contraception also have abortions, and that people that have abortions also use contraception.

And so, while some people try to argue that we can substitute abortion by just making sure that we increase access to contraception, or make sure that people can get contraception when they need it, the reality is that people need both access to contraception and abortion.

And in the aftermath of Dobbs, we've seen how even with bans, people are continuing to try and access abortion care because they do need abortion care.

We cannot substitute contraceptive access and contraceptive use for abortion.

I think it is a strategy that anti-abortion activists try to use to suggest that we don't need this if we have that.

But my research and the research of other people shows that that's just not the case.

That abortion is a crucial healthcare need, and that people need to be able to have access to it regardless of whether or not they have access to contraception.

HEFFNER: When Roe was still the law of the land, the Democratic Party in this country, which has been the primary vehicle championing reproductive health made it a mantra in a way to triangulate and appeal to the center and to the right.

This idea of rare, safe and rare.

Former President Clinton talked about this.

It wasn't adopted by Planned Parenthood and company, but it certainly made an impact in the way folks were thinking about it.

And also the Freakonomics book and its assertion that while legal, abortion was decreasing, and there are groups that work to try to prevent unwanted pregnancy to prevent abortion, even if they support access to it.

How has Dobbs impacted your thinking on that argument, that part of the discourse?

It must have had some effect on how you want to react to that safe, legal and rare idea?

LITTLEJOHN: The safe, legal and rare idea is from my standpoint, a problematic stance.

I think that it is often based in a stigma about abortion care, and the idea that when we're trying to give people access to abortion, that it should be something, is as the statement says, is a rare phenomenon versus, versus recognizing that people need access to abortion, and if they need access to abortion, I'm not sure what that has to do with making it rarer.

I think that the bar that we should be studying is that when people need access to abortion, they have access to abortion and abortion care is a form of healthcare, like any other form of healthcare that people have a right to access.

And so I think what we see from the Dobbs decision is that even when there are such extraordinary attempts, and successful attempt to ban abortion and restrict abortion, people are responding by demonstrating that their needs for abortion have not gone away.

That they still need abortion care.

No matter how many hoops and obstacles are that no many, no matter how many hoops they have to jump through, no matter how many obstacles they face, they're still going to be trying their best to get access to abortion because they need it.

And I think that when it comes to thinking about our stances with this idea with safe and rare, it really to me is doesn't prioritize the person in need of abortion care, right?

We're talking about statistics about abortion versus the needs of people getting abortion.

And so, in my view, a better approach to take is to say that it should be safe, accessible, and available when and whenever people need it, when and wherever they need it.

And that obviously is directly at odds with a statement that it should be rare.

HEFFNER: You hear about grassroots movement, you hear about mobile reproductive healthcare, so that folks in states without legal access can as seamlessly as possible access it in a neighboring state or even a few states over.

But you don't hear how the champions of reproductive liberty are going to win back the Constitution.

We know that ultimately it might take adding seats to the US Supreme Court, but before you even start there, you have to talk about the jurisprudential lens through which this is going be achieved.

LITTLEJOHN: I do not at all disagree with that.

I think there has to be a multifaceted approach to being able to win back rights and to be able to ensure that people have constitutional protections for abortion.

So I don't at all disagree with that.

I think it has to be multifaceted.

As a sociologist, my work focuses on the experiences of people, with abortion and with abortion access with contraception, et cetera.

So that is where my focus has historically been.

But it is not at all that I don't believe.

And even when I was talking about reproductive justice activism, it's not at all that I don't believe that we shouldn't also be making sure that we are entertaining all kinds of options, including options and thinking about what this should look like in terms of legal arguments.

And while I'm a sociologist and not a legal scholar, that's a really crucial thing to be doing.

I know and I have faith that even if these things are not being publicly addressed or being things that are being considered in the mainstream, I do know, and I could see in the work that I've done in this book, and just in my experience, in this field, that there are people trying their best to think about things from all kinds of different directions to try and advance a strategy, and multiple strategies, that have the best chances of winning.

And so for folks listening to this, for folks reading our book, I think that it's a really important idea to enter into the conversation for sure.

HEFFNER: The book, again, is Fighting Mad, resisting the End of Roe v. Wade.

How about the hypocrisy factor?

Those who are intellectually honest, whether in the academy, in the judiciary, in the body, politic, your neighbors friends, whether they're conservative or liberal, or somewhere in between, uh, we know they're hypocrisies in all forms of groupthink.

There is just an inherent hypocrisy in some ideas of liberals, some idea of conservatives.

So when I hear the drumbeat of decisions from the US Supreme Court that has tended to favor liberty in areas outside of reproductive care and control, but not on this issue and totally omitted on this issue, I don't mean this as a partisan point, an ideological point, it's hard to stomach.

I think it's why people are increasingly turned off by the Supreme Court.

What was the best insight you gathered from Fighting Mad and your conversations with the authors, uh, and your own insight into how to deal with this hypocrisy most effectively?

LITTLEJOHN: The biggest thing for me was the idea that this is a long fight and that we have to keep at it.

And I think with everything that's going on, thinking about how Roe wasn't, or the Dobbs decision, right, is it's been part of a long term battle over reproductive rights and reproductive justice in the United States.

I think one of the things that has come out of the book for me is seeing how people have been fighting this fight for a very long time, as we're talking about on multiple fronts.

And it can become easy to, or it can be easy to become disillusioned right by when you're trying and you're trying and you're trying, and then things, you know, there's horrible things happening and you think things are going to get better, and then there's multiple steps back, right?

It can feel demoralizing.

And one of the things that really came out of Fighting Mad for me was seeing how even with everything going on, there are so many people who have dedicated their lives to continuing to fight in whatever way they can.

And obviously we all have our eyes on what's happening in the courts, but what Fighting Mad showed me is that even for people who don't know anything about what's happening in the courts, there are ways to be involved and there are ways to try to support other people, whether or not abortion is understood as an issue that deals with them or not.

And I think that was one of the most impactful things working on this book, especially when we started working on this book even before the Dobbs decision came down because we knew what was coming.

And it gave me the inspiration and motivation to just keep going, right?

When every time I heard something new that was happening in the news that was horrible, I was also on email with people telling me what they were doing to try and make things better.

And so I think that's what I would say is, is the biggest takeaway for me.

That even as these things continue to unfold, and it can be easy to feel helpless, and as we're talking about it can be easy to feel disillusioned with our political leaders and landscape.

We also know that historically and contemporarily, this is just part of a long-term battle that people have had to wage.

And it's not going to end today.

It's not going to end tomorrow.

It's just something that we have to keep fighting for until ideally we reach a point where people have access to the care that they deserve and that they have a right to, even if that right is not being recognized by the government.

HEFFNER: In other words, you're optimistic.

In the few minutes we have left, Krystale, I want you to put your sociologist cap and I understand the tendency to answer this question in an evenhanded way, but I hope you might resist that, unless you truly believe that an even-handed answer is warranted.

That is social media today in its corrosive and corrupting impact on people.

And what incentivizes people in institutions means that it's hard to rally a nation around “I have a dream” or any kind of aspiration for equality confronting bigotry or unfairness in society.

There's a laziness, there's a paralysis.

I'm sure you see some lights at the end of a tunnel, but I can't help but think that social media is going to forever handicap us in some way from true movement-building.

There something about it that just makes the March on Washington less feasible.

There were movements around Parkland and survivors fighting for school safety.

There were protests in response to Dobbs.

And yet I'm left feeling somewhat desensitized in the culture that we live in today about the potential for grassroots meaningful change.

LITTLEJOHN: I always have my sociological cap on, so I will keep it on and also say I don't know if this would be considered a kind of an even-handed response.

But I have to say that even as I'm not a person that's on social media a ton.

I do believe in the power of social media to change things.

We know that it can also have very negative effects and in part on exactly what you're talking about.

But I also think that our society has changed in so many different ways.

And I think that social media is both a reflection of that change, and also obviously a consequence of that change.

And so I am often hesitant to say that because we don't necessarily see the same kinds of agitation going on, on the streets, as we might have seen or expected in the past.

I'm not sure that it means that there isn't an equivalent amount of work being done, even if it's being done in a different way than we might have expected and seen in the past.

But this might reflect, like you said, I am an optimistic person, and maybe that is, that is a reflection of my optimism.

I think that young people and folks in general are using the tools at their disposal in a different way than we might think of or that we might think that they should be doing.

But I do think it can be powerful.

And I do think that the ways that people deploy technology on social media to spread their messages and to get people to think differently is really powerful.

So I have to say it might be my optimism.

I also often teach my classes asynchronously, so this is the way I communicate with my students, often via video.

So I put all that out there to say, it might be that it's my positionality that makes me think that way.

But I do have hope for the ways that that social media can help affect change, even if it is going to look different than it did in the past.

HEFFNER: Krystale Littlejohn, author of Just Get On The Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics and co-editor of Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade, thank you so much for your insight today.

LITTLEJOHN: Thank you so much for having me.

It was a really great conversation.

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