Fast Politics with Molly Jong-FastTalking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall joins us to talk about the state of the presidential race. Executive Director of the West Alabama Women’s Center Robin Marty discusses the horrors she is seeing in post-Roe America.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Trump was asked about raising his kids. He went on an eight minute rant calling for the death penalty, and actually I listened to that rant and it was wild. We have such a great show for you. TPMs Josh Marshall joins us to talk about the state of the race. Then we'll talk to the executive director of the West Alabama Women's Center, Robin Marty, about the horror she's seeing in post rural America.
So, Molly, you and I have been pretty obsessed with the state of Florida not being able to be insured by many insurance companies. And after these foods this article today in The Times, it sent me what did you see here?
So I just one of the big problems in Florida is inflation. And inflation in Florida is much higher than in other places. And part of that is because insurance. Housing insurance in Florida is insane, and that's because of climate change. Right, It's more and more expensive to ensure waterfront property or even property that's just in low lying areas because of flooding, and in North Carolina this has become such a big deal that a proposed forty two percent rate hike and then they just had another hurricane, Hurricane Helene, which was like this hurricane where you know, more than two hundred people died, major, major flooding, people you know, cut off from food and water and internet and power. What insurance is like the first canary in the coal mine when it comes to climate change, and we're seeing this firsthand. And now the question is will people vote on the fact that some of the inflation is actually caused by climate change? And the answers we don't know, but it certainly is an issue, and especially in North Carolina, which is a very tight state where it's possible that Vice President Harris could actually win that state. Jesse Cannon, I saw a movie this week.
Let me guess it was Beetlejuice.
Yes, it was Beetlejuice. That's a deep cut and a callback to Lauren Boeberg.
That's not sure there's a new Beetlejuice in theaters. Lauren and I saw it the other night and it was great.
Oh that is something.
But what I think you went and saw is a movie that a lot of people are kind of pissed about because they thought that this was going to be like a big activism movie that changed the voting base, like it did when Michael Moore would put out movies before elections. Would you see here?
I don't know that that's actually true.
That's what my Twitter feed is saying.
Oh okay, well, then that's even more likely to be untrue. But The Apprentice is a movie about early Donald Trump and Roy Cone, and it's quite actually very interesting. It has a lot of very controversial stuff in it, including a rape sea in that again has been in books about Trump. Again, I don't know. I thought it was quite good and pretty interesting. It's going to open this week in seventeen hundred and forty theaters nationwide, so there's a real opportunity to see it if you want. It does not yet have a streaming service attached to it, but hopefully it will. Pretty interesting movie. I'm not sure that it does anything for the selection, but it's still worth seeing Trump's origin story played out on the big screen. Interesting stuff. When it comes to weather, huh.
Really, there was a weather event here, a thing that really seemed to scare everybody. This week. Aside from the impact of the storm, was just how crazy the reactions to Democrats could draw the weather and other things were. But there were some interesting details with this hurricane, Milton, what did you see?
Okay, so Republicans doubled down, or at least Marjorie Taylor Green did on the idea that they quote unquote likely was Jews. Though then some of Maga world said that actually the government is doing cloud seating. Now, I just want to pause for a second to talk about cloud seating. That is something that exists, and it's in the very very early stages. Nobody is moving hurricanes around with it. They are able to do some very minor stuff. I don't think it's anywhere near where it would need to be to be an active government controlling the weather. But there is a little bit of a like with so many conspiracies, a little bit of a gem of information here that is real and then a lot of bullshit. So Jews are not controlling hurricanes and Democrats are not controlling hurricanes. And by the way, hurricanes have always hit in places like Florida and North Carolina. I mean that is you know, that's where they hit. It's very unusual for them to hit places that are not where you know, where the water is warm enough to start a hurricane, and then for it to continue on and tends to be on the coastline. So this is pretty crazy. There are definitely Trump supporters who believe this, which is wild. And I would say there was also really some interesting stuff that there was a sort of reverse storm surge and the water was sucked out of Tampa Bay by Hurricane Milton. But in the end, the good news is that while there was damage, it wasn't nearly as bad as a lot of people thought it was. And while they got the path right and ended up being just a category three and not a category five. And while the storm storm surge was bad, it was not as bad as people had forecasted. So that's quite good news. And a lot of people have you know, a lot of people don't have power, but they're getting their lives back to back on track, so that's great news. I want you to talk to us Jesse Cannon about Trump versus cities.
Well, previously he had said that San Francisco was great in a certain era. It happened to be with Gavin Dus some of his least favorite governor and Kamala Harris were both in charge of San Francisco, so that was funny. But now he's demonizing Detroit. He loves demonizing other places. He called Milwaukee a horrible city. You and I and Molly were just in Milwaukee. We thought it was a lovely city and had some great pizza there.
We really had some good pizza there. And I want to point out this is his way of dog whistling. Right, He's saying that the cities are not good and that Harris will make all of your suburban areas cities. And what he's saying, right, is that he's saying that cities which where sometimes they have a larger black population, that if Harris it becomes president, then she will make your suburbs more black. And it's a racist dog whistle. It's totally just, but no one is surprised by it. Donald Trump this week went to the Detroit Economic Club and instead of talking about anything particularly relevant, he spent the time trashing Detroit. This is so much a part of his playbook. Molly.
The election is a mere twenty five days away now, as I can see from the countdown clock on my desk, that I have here that counts down my anxiety. But this new pupil says that the election will probably come down to a mere thirty percent of voters who are still persuadable.
Yeah, but you know what, I'm going to say one thing. That's a tight election. And Pew found it eighty two percent of voters locked in forty two for Harris and forty for Trump, and there's five percent who has no preference. And you have about thirteen percent of voters who are still persuadable. Get out there, talk to your friends, talk to your kids, talk to your kid's friends. This is the moment. Twenty five days is a lot of days, right, you have a chance to go and talk to people and make the case and remind Americans what is at stake here. You know, a lot of people have mothers, daughters, cousins, sisters, aunts. Right, did they want to have children? Do they want to have medical care? Do they want to be able to, you know, if they are having a miscarriage, do they want to be able to take the medicine that they need for that? Because if they do, then they want to vote for the vice president. And twenty five days is a lot of days, so he's got to keep going.
Agreed, Somali. You and I, between the two of us five dogs. We are very big dog lovers. Normally we would not devote time on the show to the story of a dog, but you pulled my heartstrings and I gave it.
That dog situation is making me completely crazy. So in Florida, a state trooper found a dog that was tied to a pole. The dog is safe, he's been rescued. His name is now Trooper. He's at the Lyon County Humane Society in Florida, available for adoption. So whoever put him on that, whoever tied him to that, Paul, you know it's just a disgusting thing to do, and really atrocious, terrible stuff.
Agreed that. I know you're trying to hedge here and not say something bad, but just know that every bad thought is in our heads.
Yeah, really true.
We have even more tour dates for you. Did you know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have Fast Politics Maleijug Fast are heading out on tour to bring you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall or in LA on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest. We'll be at the Bavariam in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. September thirtieth, will be in Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be in affiliate City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh as we get through this election and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives in a golf club again, we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead of cry your way through this election season and give you the inside analysis of what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio.
Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Josh thanks for having me.
How worried are you about those elections?
I would not say I am more worried than I've been at other points.
Oh. Interesting.
You know there's a thing that pilots, people who fly planes. I'm not a pilot, if anything, I'm a little I'm not a big fan of flying.
But would you say you had a f are flying. I'll see myself as yeah.
I know, but in fact I get the reference. But in fact, but in fact, I've been sort of an aerophobic my whole life. Actually I have it under control now I fly. But in any case, pilots are taught you have regular flying rules, then you have instrument flying rules. And this is something that pilots are taught that when you are in certain conditions, you are taught to ignore your sensations, what you think is up, what you think is down, all of that stuff. You look at your instrument pans, and your instrument panel tells you where you're going, tells you what is up, what is down. Because it is one of these established things over the century plus now of people flying that your perceptions in a storm, in bad weather, your perceptions get wrong. They're unreliable, and so they are taught to I don't know if it's a zen thing exactly, but to ignore completely nor your phenomenology of flying what you feel is happening, and you watch your instrument panel. And I have seen over the last you know, I think everybody has seen over the last week. The Democrats are really freaking out now about the election, and I am not immune to that. But I am looking at the instrument panel and I actually don't see much changing on the instrument panel. And I try to keep my eyes closely on the instrument panel. So that's that's where I am. I think we are basically in the same election that we were in two weeks ago. There has been some sort of fractional tightening in the polls tents of percentage points. When I actually look at the details, it's not clear to me. That's not noise in different polsters, you know, different posters polling more over the last week and stuff. So that's where I'm at, you know, I try to be an instrument panels guy precisely because there's so many inputs, there are so many sensations we are getting at this point in an election. I think what we have to hope, although I know from experience that this is not always the case that the people actually flying the plane. You know, we're passengers on the plane, right, you hope the people flying the plane are also going or doing instrument panels flight. I know from experience that is not always the case, right, they get freaked out themselves. But that is where I am.
Yeah, I think that's interesting. Polls are not really not a science, and then there are partisan polls getting added into the averages. Right.
Yeah, there's no question there's a few a few of the aggregators downweighth them more than others. But yeah, there's a lot of there are a lot of partisan polls in the mix.
Yeah. The fundamental truth here is that Harrison's campaign wants you to think she's losing and Trump's campaign wants you to think he's winning. Is that correct?
Yes, that is basically correct. But I think there is a deeper sociological truth there. I've been doing this for twenty five years and I've seen this. I've been through this movie many times. Democrats always think they are losing and Republicans always think they're winning. It's a basic sociological fact that goes beyond what they want you to think. Like so, for instance, yes, Harris has made clear she wants to be running as the underdog for good reasons. Right, there's good reasons why they want to.
Well, twenty sixteen is a good reason, right.
Exactly, Well, twenty sixteen, twenty twenty. There's just a good logic there. You don't want to be sort of sitting on a lead. You don't want to be over comfortable. They want to be running in that way. They want their supporters to think they are running in that way, and there's a lot of good reasons for running in that way. There's also unquestionably a Trump campaign thing to think, oh, we're doing a rally in New York Man, We're going to run this. You know, we're going to run the table. But what has always been the most interesting thing to me is that, by and large, whatever the reality on the ground, Democrats really think they are losing, or if there's any question, they think they're losing, and Republicans always think they're winning. It's not just a matter of what they want you to think. This is something in the mindset of both groups, and in a way it's not that surprising. It's the same story about you know, civic democrats and authoritarians. Authoritarians always think they're winning. It's the nature of the way you think about authority and power. It's all those things. It's all those things, you know. One let me just add one little thing here. People talk a lot about the twenty twenty two midterm and the red wave stuff and all that kind of stuff. Some of the people who were most bought into the red wave were Democratic campaigns. Oh yeah, it's a basic sort of sociological reality about the two big factions in American politics, right.
Right, No, I think that's exactly right, and a big question So and then the larger question is like can this country understand sort of the danger that is Trump? Right, I mean the danger to democracy? I mean in twenty twenty, part of what Biden did, which I think he did despite a lot of naysaying on the other side, was he made the case that Donald Trump was in fact a danger to democracy. And this was maybe not a four year election, you know, he did make that case. You know.
One of the advantages that he had is that Donald Trump was president, right, he didn't have to like kind of jog people's memories. People were experiencing what Donald Trump was Like, I mean, in some ways Trump's twenty twenty campaign, the fact that he you know, that it remained close was that I think that case had kind of been made, and then Joe Biden was someone who was a particularly good person to make the case to reaffirm the case. The reason it was close is that the Trump campaign, I think, you know, sort of early in the pandemic, early in the campaign, whatever however you want to say, basically said I am an idiot and a big threat to democracy. But what about Antifa and what about the brown people riots that are tearing down our cities? And who's going to protect you from that? And so, yeah, of course IMO a threat. You know, in a way, they kind of gave up that argument and went with this other thing, and that's how they ran the campaign. So can people realize that it's a funny thing because forty percent of the country doesn't care. Forty percent of the country is on board, so it's not a matter. They do realize it. They want another serving, And so when we get into this conversation, you know, what can the country realize blah blah blah blah. You know, in some ways, we have a great consistency over these campaigns, Donald Trump gets about forty six forty seven percent of the vote, and it's what happens on the other side. And so to a great extent, an unfortunate extent, a sort of a frustrating or mind numbing extent, what you have is the people left over are the people who neither care about or know much of anything about politics, which puts us into this kind of Kafka esque political reality where it's sort of like, Okay, you people who know nothing about politics, you're truly ignorant.
Right, I'm going to decide what happens to us.
Yes, and you don't care to cease to be ignorant. I think, you know, Jamel Bouley has this. I think he's no longer on Twitter, he's on Blue Sky, so I see him talking about this sometimes, and I love how he has just a very frank way of putting it that you know, you see these panels of undecided voters, like, let's be honest, these are panels people who are just idiots about politics. They know nothing, right, And so you know, since I'm not running a campaign, and those people, since they don't care about politics, are not listening to this podcast, right, So we can make fun of them till the cows come home and it doesn't matter. But that is the reality, and that is what makes the whole thing a very weird.
Kafka asks, yeah, because again, they don't follow it, but they're gonna decide it.
Yeah, exactly.
So let's talk about two hurricanes in the span of two weeks. Terrible damage, but not as terrible as some people had thought it might be. One of the things I'm struck by is I was listening to Ron DeSantis de Santis's press conference on the hurricane, and it is a very hard circle to square when you have someone like rond Santis, who is largely known for don't say gay and going to war with New College and all sorts of authoritarian stuff. Is six week abortion ban, which is wildly unpopular in a state. This guy very partisan, very divisive. He's doing this presser on the hurricane, which is largely not meant to be partisan. It's meant to be just when I listen to it, I get a little bit of a set of what Maga must be feeling when Biden speaks to them, right, even though it's not the same at all. Right, Because you'll remember Biden has tried very hard to be nonpartisan, especially about things like a natural disaster. But there is a sense where it's the other side of the same coin. And I just wonder where that puts us in the grand scheme of things.
Well, it puts us not in great place. I mean, I think you are right to the extent that it is helpful sometimes to think about perceptions. And when you are in a real public crisis, it is very unnerving to have someone who you perceive as untrustworthy and predatory calling the shots. You know, that's the person who's going to decide who the relief goes to and stuff like that, and that's unsettling. And that's part of the political reality that we live in.
And we saw Trump, right, We saw Trump say things like, you know, when he was in office that California had all these wild fires, he didn't want to give federal aid to California because they didn't support him. Those weren't his people, that kind of thing. We saw that, And I wonder how much when we thread the needle there, you know that people remember that. And also I want to like go back to COVID, which the massive pandemic which changed all our lives, but now none of us talk about anymore. The lesson that Right got from COVID was that healthcare workers are nefarious and don't have your best interests, which is an insane lesson to get right from a global pandemic, But it was very much influenced by social media and a lack of local news, et cetera, et cetera. We're coming down the barrel of another thing that is like the pandemic, which is climate change. Again, there's an opportunity for people to accept these things as what they are and see them clearly, or to see them politicized. And I'm just curious, is there any way to take any lessons from the pandemic and apply them to climate change or now?
The real information is easy to get right. If you want the real information, you can find it in a second. Not everybody wants the real information. And I think what we're often really saying when we have that conversation is how do we help the people who don't want the real information to get the real information. That's challenging. How do you get the people who don't like spaghetti to go to the spaghetti restaurant?
That's tough.
We have seen over the last week the beginnings of a trajectory where we move seamlessly from enough of your George Soros back to fake climate science.
Right.
That's preventing me from rolling coal to be mean to me and deny me my fun to George Soros is paying Peter Struck to kill genocide conservatives with hurricanes. And that's why we're seeing all these hurricanes because the Democrats are doing it because they're in league with the deep state. So you do have a sense of sort of like maybe there's always been this sense, kind of a grim sense for people who follow the trajectory of the global climate that at some point people are going to see that this is real. And I think what we're seeing the beginnings of is that people are seeing that the climate is actually changing, but they have come up with a new self referential story to explain it to themselves. I don't know what the good answer to that is.
Were you surprised to see Marjorie Taylored Crane go for the jug or not and say, I mean, now, there is a substantial percentage of Republicans in this country who believe that the government can in fact control the weather and by the government. We all mean they, yeah, they.
When I saw her tweet about that four or five days ago, I'm embarrassed to say I was a little surprised. But then I saw and I kind of dug into this a little that that thing has. Like when she did the Jewish space lasers thing. There, if you if you dug into that, there was not a Jewish space lasers ground swell. Right, there is a weather manipulation ground swell. It's it's actually a thing. I'm not saying it's up there with the big Lie yet, you know, in terms of being universal, but yes, it actually is a thing. And when you dig into it, people say, well, you know, what about seeding clouds, which obviously has been a kind of marginal thing for decades. Right, if you have if if there's a chance it might rain, if you put a little piper cub up there, and I don't know, there's some crystals you spread around, it might you know, marginally increase the chance of rain. And there is a new science of geoengineering, which is a controversial offshoot of climate thought of sort of like if we lose the battle on carbon emissions, are we going to have to come in here? And try to reverse it by some you know, risky the efforts. Can we use science to actually turn back the clock on climate change? So people are seeing these things and that's the evidence, Like, oh, you're saying we can't engineer the climate, then why are these conferences happening if this isn't real? So it's what are you going to say?
It's not great?
It's out there. No, it's not great. It's not great, not good, suboptimal, not.
Great, suboptimal. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Josh absolutely always a pleasure to come on.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube And if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a podcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, So please watch it and spread the word. Robin Marty is the executive director of the West Alabama Women's Center and the author of the New Handbook for a Post Row America. But first the news. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Robin.
Of course, I am always always happy to fop you, moli.
You are one of my go tos when I want to know what the fuck is really happening with reproductive rights in the Red States. Tell us what you were doing when we first met, before the post Row Handbook, when the salad days of women having some reproductive.
Rights, well, I mean I wouldn't call them the salad days nice because it was still a really front lance.
And you are in the state of Alabama, which is a red state, like a real red state.
It is a real red state. I think that is like if you could get blood red, that is I mean literally our blood. At this point in Alabama, even before Row was overturned, there were three abortion clinics that were active, and the one that I had been working at was the West Alabama Women's Center, which was responsible for about half of the abortions in the state of Alabama, and what that meant in the pre road days was probably around three thousand people coming through in order to access abortion, mostly Alabamians, but some Mississippi people because there was only one clinic in Mississippi. Also Florida people because there weren't any safe clinics in the Florida Panhandle. And then in the year right before Row, that also meant Louisiana and Texas because Louisiana was losing its clinic access and also being overrun by tech sins because Texans had lost access in September of twenty twenty one for as early as anything after six weeks.
That was state builite.
Yeah, we were essentially there to take in the flood of people who needed care, and then Dobbs happened and we had to shut it off immediately, and ever since then we have been dealing with what I mean really feels like the aftermath. I think that we knew that bad things were happening. We knew them internally seeing the reports that are starting to come out through like say pro Public. Understand that these are reports that are coming out about death from people who were unable to access safe abortion care or safe follow up care. And these reports are coming out now because the reality is that for this population who's most affected, which is largely poor, largely black, there wasn't a sense of recourse for people to say something was not right here. We want an investigation or to go to the newspaper, like when we look at real time data and the people who are being turned away and the stories that we hear about this person couldn't get an abortion in the hospital even though she was getting sick. This person had to travel out of state to get an abortion even though the baby was non viable. These are almost all entirely privileged white women, and that's because they have since the injustice happening to them, but they feel like they have the ability to fix something, whereas these are families and women who honestly they have always been treated like shit by medical practitioners. Amber Thurman didn't just die because of lack of legal abortion. Amber Thurman died because an entire team of hospital people stared at her and watched her deteriorate and not only didn't intervene, but didn't think that anything that happened was wrong. Enough to report the doctor or go to the hospital board, or stay to the family. You know, you should file a lawsuit because something went wrong here. And so this is what we are seeing in Alabama, and this is what is coming out now. Imagine what is happening at this moment that is not being made public because it's to a community who thinks that there already is no hope.
That's a really, really good and important point that you're talking about, Robin. So explain to us. The white women come forward because they're not afraid of being prosecuted too, right, Yes, And the black women or the women who don't have money or can't speak English, they sort of think this is normal.
They think this is normal. And one of the things that we've become really incognizance of post ROW is that our community care, we are still treating the same patients that we always did. What we are doing now is, rather than being able to offer them access to an abortion that they want, we're primarily providing the prenatal care that happens because they weren't able to get an abortion and they weren't able to avoid pregnancy. And so we continue to hear from these patients how they're being treated by other obgyns, if we transfer their care over to a different doctor because we can't deliver, or if they move to a different doctor because they have complicated pregnancies that can't help with and we had a listening session. We are now part of the Maternal Health Task Force in Alabama, which makes perfect sense to me. But also if you went back like three years ago and told me that, I would have laughed in your face. So we hosted a listening session for them of our community members and what it's like to give birth in TUSCALUSLA, which has just two hospitals for two hundred thousand people, and primarily people who give birth in our hospitals are black because the women who have more means they go into to Birmingham. And we know our hospital's racist, and that's something that we hear a lot from our patients. But when we started hearing stories, like you know, one woman said, I had a really good experience actually giving birth. Yeah, it really sucked that when they had to do the C section, they didn't have time to give me anesthesia, but the rest of it went really what I know.
Pain, Yeah, yeah.
Exactly, And this is what I mean, and these are patients who they don't expect anything different, so they don't understand until they can talk to us that this is not how medical care is supposed to work. That is obsetric violence that was practiced on this person because of racist doctors who think that black women can't feel pain in the same way. And we're gonna go right in for the baby because that baby is the thing that matters, not the person who is carrying it. So this is about helping people undo I mean, centuries of violence to them. And that's why what we're hearing in real time is from white women who know that people should be treated better, but we're not getting that from our population. And so it's not just what charactern we provide, but it's also how do we teach people that they do have a right to bodily autonomy and that these doctors aren't They're not gods and they don't know everything. And you have the right to say this is not okay, or I need more care, or you're not listening to me.
So I want you to explain to us about a phenomenon that has been going on. You explain this to me so well that has actually been going on for a long time, but that I just learned about because I live in a Blue state and have had this very privileged life, which is arresting pregnant women because they are endangering the life of the child. Explain to us what this phenomenon is. You saw it before row was overturned, you're seeing it now. Explained to us what it is.
Yeah, So there are organizations out there like Pregnancy Justice, which is a fabulous organization. Everybody should know everything about them, that have been trackingating the instances of people who are pregnant who are prosecuted and put in jail because of something that they would probably not have been prosecuted for had they not been pregnant. And so this is specifically out here. What we're seeing this mostly in regards to is chemical endangerment. And what happened is in two thousand and seven ish, I think the dates were before me, the states in legislature essentially passed a bill that was supposed to try to protect the abundance of meth labs that were happening in Alabama, and so in order to be able to do additional punishments for people who had meth labs in their home. The idea was that you could be charged with chemical endangerment if you had children in your home that was also discovered to be a meth lab, and so it was supposed to be extra extra deterrence.
In itself, not a terrible idea. You should probably not have children in your meth lab.
Yeah, we always tell people if you're going to have a meth lab, keep your kid out. No, we don't actually say that, And I should probably be because I never know what could suddenly be used against me in literally, so that was a joke. We'll stop right.
Yes, it was a joke, but it's not a legislation that seems like it should theoretically be anti WOMUT. Right, you could see where it might seem like a reasonable thing to vote on. Yeah.
Inherently, what you can always assume in Alabama is that if there's a law that is passed, it will be used in some sort of way that is vaguely defined, so that anyone who wants to be able to misuse it in a way that will prosecute people that they either do not like or do not respect, or in some way they want to have power over. That's how every law in Alabama is every law is extraordinarily vague and vast so that prosecutors can use their discretion to let their friends off or attack the people that they don't like. Proniosm exactly. And this meth lab law ended up being used to say that if a person is pregnant and they use any sort of drug at all, and we're not even just talking like that means we're talking, okay, there is marijuana in her system, that person can then be put in jail for chemical endangerment and essentially held indefinitely because the rule for allowing the person out of jail is that they have to be able to sign into a residential treatment program, which are extraordinarily hard to get into. But also, nobody's going to put you in a residential treatment program because you smoke a join if you have no money.
It's also a gazillion dollars.
Billion dollars part is different because the reality is in my opinion and I have no empirical data to back it up. It's just what I've experienced down here. The idea is to put people into Christian based organizations, because Paul rehab is buying God, and then you will give up your drugs. So they're more than willing to pay money for anything that will help turn somebody into a Christian. So you put that aside, and so over the period of time, especially now since twenty eighteen, which was when Alabama had a vote that said that we were going to add the concept that life begins at the moment of conception, and that the state has the right to protect anything from the moment of conception and has interest in that potential life becoming life. And so these two things together made it so that inherently the legal system can step in at any point when they believe that a pregnant person is doing something that might endanger the fetists or the embryo, in order to protect that embryo. And that come to mean jailing people and keeping them in jail in order to keep them from potentially doing any sort of harm. Now, the reality is there is no situation in which a pregnant person in jail will be getting better medical care than a pregnant person who is not in jail. It's just not gonna happen. You got violence, you've got lack of medical care, You've got literally, as we have seen people miscarrying in the middle of their cells not able to get any access to help. So this is about punishing. Obviously, you were an unfit mother, you did not do things correctly. We are going to hold you here. But this is also about allegedly protecting the fetus so that it will be born. But then not only can that be taken away because okay, you are an unfit mother, you were in jail, so we are going to take your new born baby from you because you should not have it, but also any shouldering that you already had, they will be able to take that away too. And so one thing that I want to make really clear to everybody is that in the now we're starting to work on three years since Dobs happened, there has been nothing done in this state to actually improve conditions for pregnant people. The own laws that have passed are ones that make it easier to relinquish the rights of being a parent, so ending prints right so that you can take away children, and making foster care easier. And so what this is is there's been nothing to help people get access to contraception. So people are still getting pregnant just as often as they were before. There's just no ability to not carry that pregnancy to term. And what this is doing is this is essentially killing black women. We know it's killing black babies because our black infant maternal or our black infant mortality rate has increased, even though our white infant mortality rate has decreased. Since Dobs, I want you to explain into us, just for a second, what it means when you arrest a pregnant mother, because you're doing it for two reasons.
Right, You're doing it because the fake reason, right, or the reason that they say they're doing it is to protect the fetus, right. But one of the other reasons they're doing it is because when you're pregnant, if you're arrested, the state is more likely to be able to take your children the next time. Explain that.
Yeah, so, once you have been put into the Child Protective Services system at any point, every time you give birth, you will always end up being visited by a case worker, and so any child that you have from any point there on, you will still be on the radar. You will still be in the system. And what people don't understand is that CPS exists in a way that is targeted at communities, but also it is targeted at poverty, and so obviously the idea and it's like the meth lab, it's a good idea on the surface. Yes, we would love to see all children raised in homes where they have abundance and it can be given everything that they need. But that's not what homes are like.
It's not what homes in very poor areas are like in Alabam.
Well I mean, and honestly, that's not what I mean. It's a judgment of who is a good and bad based on physical resources. One example that I can give you is so we had a patient who came into our clinic. She actually didn't come to our clinic. She reached out to our doulas. And doulas they are birth workers that help a person while they're giving birth, but they do not do delivery. Just be clear when people get midwives confused. This woman reached out because she wanted a doula to come to her home where she wanted to do an unassisted home birth. And what that means is she wanted to do a home birth, just go into labor with absolutely no medical professional whatsoever around. And it was because both as someone who had been violated by the medical system before and also somebody who was pregnant because of a sexual assault. She did not trust any member of the medical community, absolutely not because this was a black woman. Ourdula was a black woman. If anything went wrong, everybody would end up in jail because this is highly, highly illegal thing. And then our Doullah talked her into since she was already in labor, into going into our local hospital and that she needed to be seen, that she needed to be evaluated, she needed to go into labor at a place where she could safely deliver. This patient went into the hospital with our doulas, and the first thing that happened was she was berated by the ogyn that was on call for not having had any prenatal care, which the patient avoided prenatal care because she did not want to have any interaction with the medical system because she was scared of it. She was told that her baby was likely to do and it was her faults. This was all done without any actual evaluation, and then they induced her labor because they wanted to make sure that she had that baby right then while she was being seen by everybody, so that she couldn't disappear again. They induced her labor with what's known as a catheter balloon, which is a very invasive process, which did that after they heard that she had been a victim of sexual assault. So that was a punishment. This is what I mean by obstetric violence. And then after the labor, which ended up being completely fine, and the baby came out beautiful baby boy. Everything was utterly fine, and the doula tried to get them to allow her to do skin diskin contact and start breastfeeding right away, and the nursers were like, no, we have to take this baby and make sure everything's okay. And they drug tested in because that's what happens with any child that comes in and happens with an unattached patient. They are automatically drug tested. If they have no doctor, they're automatically drug tested. They're on medicaid, they are drug tested without any sort of consent. And the assumption was, well, if she was hiding and not doing prenatal care, she must have been doing something that she wanted to hide that was hurting the baby. There was nothing, There was no drugs in the system. Nothing had happened. It was just a mother scared the system, and they liked to take the baby, and she was sent home and then they called Child Protected Services on her. Wait why because the act of not having prenatal care while pregnant, they said, was violence to the baby and that as such, she needed to be monitored because clearly she was an unfit.
Parent, right, that's crazy.
You had to help make sure she had legal coverage. We had to make sure that she had everything that she needed in the house, because you could have your child taken away if you don't show that you have a specific place where that baby to be sleeping, if you your home is too dirty, like all of these things that are just poverty workers. We had to make sure that everything of a set for this visit so that we could be certain that her baby would not be stolen from her. And the reality is she is probably going to get pregnant again at some point, and she is never going to go near a hospital again. Never.
Oh, thank you so much, troubin. I hope you'll come back.
I need to even want me at this point.
I do want you're back because we need to know what's happening, right, I mean, just because it's dark, just because it's the reality of what it's like, you know, living in a red state when you don't have money. I mean, we need to know, right, there are people on this podcast, myself included, who don't know what it's like to be poor and a woman of color in Alabama and have no one advocating for you. So I appreciate you a lot.
And I will never stop comunicating. So anytime you need me, I'm back.
Thank you. Robin No No Jesse Cannon smiling.
Last night I was scrolling the interwebs and I saw Roger Stone saying some pretty fucked up things about how they're plotting to steal this election over in Maga world, and I was like, is this bluing on? Is this bullshit? And then this morning I woke up to see that this is all true, and it's pretty scary. What do you see gear?
Roger Stone said that he wants to send armed guards to dispute the election in Detroit and imprison former Attorney General Bill Barr if Donald Trump returns to power. Honestly, if he wants to imprison Bill Barr, I don't have a horse.
That was not the part I found horrifying. I was kind of like, yes, that's good.
To be I'm okay with that. I mean, Bill Barr said he's going to vote for Trump. I mean, you know that's what Bill Barr wants.
Make your bed lie in it.
Yeah, I mean I would be really surprised if they weren't playing real bad stuff. I think we all know that Republicans are going to do anything they can to try to win this election or steal this election, so none of the surprises me. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds in politics make sense of all the chaos. If you enjoyed this podcast, please send it to a friend or an enemy and keep the conversation going.
