Janine Jackson interviewed URGE’s Preston Mitchum about reproductive justice and Roe for the May 21, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: The New York Times says that by taking up the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court is “plung[ing] back into the contentious debate over abortion.” But the right established in Roe v. Wade of the individual—and not the state—to decide whether to terminate their pregnancy prior to the point at which a fetus could live outside the womb is not really contentious. Majorities of the US public support it and, for some 50 years, courts have as well.
As Rewire’s Jessica Mason Pieklo noted, there is not a single federal appeals court decision upholding a law, like the Mississippi one under contention, that outlaws abortion at 15 weeks—a date with no medical meaning, that even proponents can’t explain. Pre-viability bans are always unconstitutional. On Dobbs itself, lower courts declared the ban plainly unconstitutional, and a federal district court judge called out state lawmakers’ motives, noting, “The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign.”
But as some will recall, Donald Trump announced on the campaign trail that if elected, he would create a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe, and here we are, with the court considering a case which, as Pieklo explains, doesn’t require them to endorse Mississippi’s 15-weeks ban, but only to ponder whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. Does that mean the end of Roe? What would that mean?
Preston Mitchum is director of policy at the group URGE, Unite For Reproductive & Gender Equity, as well as adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Preston Mitchum.
Preston Mitchum: Thank you so very much. I’m happy to be here.
Janine Jackson: When we spoke with URGE executive director Kimberly Inez McGuire in February, she explained how abortion being legal and abortion being accessible are very much not the same thing.
Acknowledging that the right that Roe v. Wade codified, of a pregnant person to decide whether to continue that pregnancy pre-viability, recognizing that that’s not been a realizable right for many women for some time, and for some really ever, that’s not to say that Roe didn’t matter, and it certainly wasn’t to say that losing Roe would not matter. What weight are you giving, or how are you responding, to this latest turn in the legal landscape?
PM: Kimberly is absolutely right: Roe is not enough, has never been enough, and we still need it.
JJ: Mmm-mm.
PM: And what I think is really important to recognize here is that legal abortion, of course, is on the line. But keeping abortion legal is only the first step. And so what Kimberly was really speaking about is a thing that many of us are starting to speak about, and that many others have been speaking about for quite a while: that legality alone is not and has never been enough, because the legal right to abortion access really means nothing if the same people who have the right can’t access their right. You know, there’s a difference between having a choice and having the ability to effectuate that choice.
And so what we think about is our vision, and the vision being bigger: committed to creating communities and centering communities where our loved ones are able to receive the abortion care that they need. And unfortunately, even with Roe, many have been forced to give birth because, of course, Roe established the right, a very important right, to abortion pre-viability; the one thing it did not establish was that people need access to abortion pre-viability.
JJ: The Dobbs case that’s coming forward, that the court has said they’ll listen to, it’s not unique; listeners will know that. The Guttmacher Institute says that 2021 may be “the most damaging antiabortion state legislative session” in a decade, and perhaps ever; there have been more than 500 abortion restrictions, including more than 100 outright bans across some 46 states.
So I guess my question is, what’s the difference between state and federal here? We hear Biden saying, whatever the court does, even if the court overturns Roe, we’re going to still push for Roe rights. But so much of this seems to be happening at the state level. So what is the federal role here? What could be meaningfully done if the court makes this decision?
PM: First thing I’ll say to that is, the Biden/Harris administration needs to actually say the word “abortion” to speak about abortion care and access.
JJ: Mmm-mm.
PM: To date, we have minimally heard the Biden/Harris administration actually talk about abortion as “abortion,” right? It’s centered on Roe. People don’t go into the clinical setting to get a “Roe”; they go into the clinical setting to get an abortion. And so that’s really important to name explicitly some of the issues related to why the Biden/Harris administration aren’t talking about abortion care by name; it’s one of the first things that’s just incredibly important.
The second thing I’ll name is that there is something Congress can do. And what Congress can really start to do is passing legislation to protect the right to abortion care, such as the Women’s Health Protection Act, or WHPA. URGE has actively worked on the Women’s Health Protection Act that will be introduced in the coming weeks in the 117th Congress with our friends at the Center for Reproductive Rights. What’s really exciting about WHPA is that if passed, it will protect the right to abortion access throughout the United States, and really guards the curtailing of those rights, like the one we see happening in Mississippi. So there is something that the federal government can do, that Congress can do, pretty immediately in the coming weeks, and that’s co-sponsor and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act.
JJ: In terms of media coverage, I’m always incensed when I see media present abortion as a cultural issue, as if it’s kind of a soft issue, as opposed to a “serious” issue like economics. If there’s anything more central to economic life than the ability to decide whether and when to have a child, I can’t imagine what it is. And yet, again and again, in media we see even Reuters talking about this, “Supreme Court Jumps Into US Culture Wars,” you know….
I feel that the way media talk about abortion, it kind of lines up with the White House, where you don’t say the word “abortion,” because that’s icky, so you don’t present it as a central, economic, core, integral right for human beings to have; it’s instead something that, you know, religious people care about or something.
PM: Exactly. And what it does is, it continues to drive a wedge that shouldn’t be a wedge. You know, when we’re talking about abortion, we’re talking about life-saving treatment that people actually need; it’s medical care, it’s healthcare. And all statistics show that abortion care is in many ways safer than giving birth.
JJ: Right.
PM: And so you know, those are statistics and facts that many people, unfortunately, who are driving this “culture war” narrative don’t want people to believe or understand, but it’s true. And, unfortunately, what it does is undermine the necessary conversation we must have around reproductive health, rights and justice, especially reproductive justice, right?
Preston Mitchum: “Reproductive justice is more than abortion; it’s comprehensive. We’re talking about the human right to maintain bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
So of course, reproductive justice is more than abortion; it’s comprehensive. We’re talking about the human right to maintain bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. Abortion access is a critical part of maintaining reproductive justice for Black folks, for Indigenous folks, for Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. And we must center it on the work where people can create a future for themselves, where every person can make their own decisions with dignity, with autonomy and with self-determination.
And you’re absolutely right: When media coverage and narrative is about culture war, it creates this idea that only some people should have abortion access, that the people who do want abortion access are the people who are against what is actually the moralistic framing of this country, and it creates this divide of good and bad. Abortion is not about good or bad; abortion is about access and creating the families and the communities that we want, that we can see, and that can survive in the system that we have today.
JJ: Just finally, I guess I would say I think so many elite reporters can cover abortion as an abstraction because, if you’re a reporter at the New York Times, nobody you know is going to have any trouble obtaining an abortion, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.
PM: Exactly.
JJ: I just think that you don’t have experience of what it means to have to ask your parents, or have to get on a bus and travel two states over…. I guess I would ask you, finally, whose voices could media be listening to that could reshape the understanding that they’re putting forward about abortion rights and access?
PM: That is such an important question. And I think that is the question that we should all be asking ourselves. This is not about uplifting particular politicians’ voices more than anyone else’s. This is about centering the people who abortion has been out of reach for since Roe, and will certainly be out of reach if Roe is suddenly pushed back and overturned by the Supreme Court.
We should really be listening to abortion patients and those who have had abortions, those who may want abortions in the future. And that includes Black people, that includes women, of course, and other folks capable of becoming pregnant, like trans and nonbinary people and queer people. That includes young people especially. That includes places where abortion access has been chipped away time and again, like the South and Midwest. It includes poor people and people who are struggling to make ends meet. And it really includes the communities that the media so often forget about, and never talk to, and certainly don’t center in their conversation.
Abortion care and abortion access is a racial justice and it’s an economic justice issue. And until we have those honest conversations, we’ll be in the courts, hoping that they save our lives time and again.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Preston Mitchum, director of policy at the group URGE, Unite For Reproductive & Gender Equity; find their work online at URGE.org. Preston Mitchum, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
PM: Thank you so much for having me.
Justice is a superlative. It cannot have an adjective. Something is either just or it isn’t. When you modify justice, you are simply saying, this new thing isn’t justice, it is something different. Social justice isn’t about justice. It’s about changing things in society to make some groups feel better or receive something at the expense of some other group (a group that may not have even harmed the other group).
Abortion justice is likely fraught with subjectivity as well – far from justice
Justice is a superlative. It cannot have an adjective. Something is either just or it isn’t.
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You’re pulling that one outta yer ass.
You’re right in that it’s original. You’re naïve and don’t understand the syntax of English if you think that there are different forms of justice and that it accepts an adjective. Much like the word time. You only sound like a moron if you say personal time or me time. Time accepts no modifiers it is absolute (just like justice).
Sez you. Prove it.
I don’t need to. It’s simple English.
No, it’s you pulling it outta yer ass. Prove it.
If you think “alone time” is correct, you’re a dolt. If you think social justice is justice, you’re a dotard.
Tim: If you think “alone time” is correct, you’re a dolt. If you think social justice is justice, you’re a dotard.
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Well, mostly what I think is you’re refusing to provide proof of anything you wanna allege and that you’re a coward and a liar.
Who the fuck appointed you as the final arbiter of what idioms mean?
John: I don’t understand English. I want proof.
Go to high school.
Tim: I expect everyone to just buy the bullshit I peddle without question.
Go fuck yourself. Once again: who appointed you the final arbiter of what idioms mean? Put up or shut up, coward.
John: “Go fuck yourself.” IOW, I’m either too dumb to read up on English, too lazy to understand the language fully, or am too much of a coward to call people out on their misuse of words.
Whatever, asshole. Again: You have absolutely no claim to any kind of authoritative voice of what the English language and its idioms mean. You think you do, but for all anyone knows, you’re 10,000 monkeys typing random strings of characters on keyboards until some halfway coherent sentence pops out.
You are the one positing that there’s some problem modifying the word “justice.” You present no evidence to back up this assertion. What’s freely asserted without evidence is freely dismissed without evidence.
You could end this farce by citing me to one single fucking English textbook or style manual or something that says you can’t modify the word “justice” and that idioms invoking the word “justice” are null and void. You can’t google such a thing and post a link, and you’re calling me stupid? Fuck off.
John – a classy charmer.
Tim,
Are you saying that “justice” is the highest order of magnitude of fairness, as in the “justest” or “most just,” position or something?
I’m all about trying to understand what people mean before I toss it in the garbage…maybe we are all trying to say the same dang thing and just arguing about the best words to do so?
IDK,
Something like that. Either something is just or it is not. If you put a word in front of justice, you are describing something that is no longer just. It is impossible for the new term to be justice (by definition). Social Justice is “just” for blacks who may or may not have been harmed. It does this at the expense of whites who may or may not have been wrong. If the black receives “justice” or the white is robbed “justice” then neither have experienced justice. It robs the word justice. Similar to the word rape. If a woman can call unwanted sex the next morning, rape, we have lessened the word.
Reproductive justice may help out a woman who wants an abortion. It does so at the cost of a child’s life. Where is the justice for the unborn? What if the father wanted the child? Where is his justice? This is not justice. It is the reduction of a fine word.
@Tim: So, no citation to anything, then?
No. Just common sense – which escapes you.
So how come there’s lots of idioms and expressions involving the word justice in common usage? Maybe your idea of common sense ain’t so common.
No. There are alot of well intentioned, evil people who have an agenda and can fool leftist, useful idiots (like yourself). The weak minded who see the term social justice and think that it is obviously good because it includes the word justice. They pass harmful laws based on “justice.” You couldn’t care less if others are punished in the process. You just want to feel good about yourself by supporting the giving of some black or brown man some money. Who cares if he’s actually been harmed. You’re going to tell your friends how good of a person you are putting it to the man. The harm that it does to the economy be damned. You couldn’t care less if it sows division. “You’re a good person because you care.”
Huh… Well, I’ll be: You can debate the merits of any policy without just foreclosing it by declaring– without support or evidence– that “there’s no such thing as [modifier] justice!”
If you could do that, why did you go off on this linguistic/semantic tangent about “no such thing [modifier] justice!” BS?
Don’t lecture me about sowing division, pal. Last time I checked, only the conservative side of the debate was calling for the arrest and execution of people because they didn’t like the results of an election.
Execution? Name the person
Tim,
The topic of this thread reminds me of a few things a philosopher named Bernardo Kastrup said…(paraphrasing):
“Meaning is everything. Taking words to be literally true is to rob them of their meaning. It is like claiming the map is identical to the territory. We forget that words are only meant to be descriptions, the words are not the things in and of themselves.”
…another one
“All of the world’s religions can be thought of as a hand pointing in the same direction. When we take religious myths and symbolism to be literally true, this is akin to obsessing on whose finger is doing the pointing instead of looking at where it is pointing.”
Maybe this is true, maybe not… -IDK
Spew, what a bunch of LEFTIST dribble
Will,
The rightists are no better, and will fail at being “protectors of your 2A rights.” These weirdos in 2021 calling themselves “Republicans” are ALL just as clueless, and indignant as our modern left. You do realize every major gun control act in our lifetimes took place under a Republican president, right? Like yelling into a tornado…oh well.
@ Tim: Name one? I’ll name several.
Trump Attorney Lin Wood:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-pence-wood-firing-squad-b1781554.html
Several January 6 Insurrectionists:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-video-shows-capitol-mob-calling-for-the-death-of-the-vice-president-plaskett-says
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/26/marjorie-taylor-greene-facebook-violence/
@Tim: Well, there’s more than 1, but Trump’s attorney Lin Wood springs immediately to mind for calling for Pence to face a firing squad.
Lin Wood took a legal route and offered evidence (of which I don’t believe). James Hodgkinson (a Democrat) took matters into his own hand and actually tried to kill people.
And that’s significant because… ?
You’re an idiot. He actually tried to murder Republicans. You showed me people who talked about it.
John Wilkes Booth actually murdered a Republican. He supported the Democrat south (you know those Democrats who actually owned slaves).
Lee Harvey Oswals actually murdered (he was a socialist – much like you).
Democrats from the 1870s started the Civil War. Many people died there due to their slavery beliefs.
Hodgekinson, actually shot people.
Loughner, actually shot people.
Anyone but a fool like yourself would rather be threatened than murdered (the reason why the sentences are much worse for murder).
You might want to stop while you’re behind (by hundreds of thousands).
I’m an idiot? At least I ain’t the one connecting dots that don’t connect.
There’s been hundreds of political murders and other acts of violence committed by both right-wing and left-wing actors and organizations going back through history. But to connect them to the current influential voices of the current political parties is completely idiotic.
However, the current Trumpist wing of the party loudly and repeatedly calls for and endorses violence and repression (as cited in a comment above); pointing out that an anarchist shot President McKinley doesn’t undo that. It’s a non-sequitur.
And I’m not a socialist.
Hand waving.
Let’s include left-wing, non-US history. Communists have murdered many more people in the name of their ideology than any other ideology. Mao – 75M, Stalin 12M, Pol Pot 2M.
You leftists leave a wake of destruction behind you. All in the name of doing something good. You then point to some threats as if that is worse! You’re amazingly stupid or amazingly naive.
@Tim: The political violence I allude to on both sides, in response to you opening this stupid door, is hand-waving but you dismissing the Trumpist propensity for violence and sedition isn’t hand-waving, huh? Makes perfect sense! [jerk-off motion]
Breaking into Congress to try to hang politicians and overthrow the government is pretty fucking violent, I’d say. People were injured and killed last time I checked. Mowing down protesters with a vehicle is pretty fucking violent, I’d say; and what’s the GOP response to that?– it’s to pass laws to insulate people who drive through protests from liability.
Here’s the critical distinction, though: people at a BLM protest WEREN’T in charge of the government. Trump was. His lawyers were in power. Trump personally exhorted his followers to be violent. Taylor-Greene is in power. Seb Gorka was in power when he called for Fauci’s head to be put on a pike. FFS, there’s a HUGE difference if a school kid starts a fight than if the principal drops the gloves and starts throwing fists.
Also: Even if I buy this idiotic idea of yours that every act of left-wing violence that ever happened in history of the whole world somehow redounds to the modern US Democratic Party, it STILL doesn’t excuse the threats and sedition committed by Trump and his supporters. They’re BOTH wrong and shouldn’t be acceptable to you.
So I can assemble a bunch of people outside your house, with nooses and gallows and carrying zip-ties and restraints and all geared up like some Seal Team 6 wannabe and shout “Let’s get Tim!” and if I end up not being able to kill anyone, then it’s not violent, huh? Yeah. Right. [jerk-off motion]
Where did you state that they shouldn’t have stormed the Capitol? I ain’t seeing that anywhere here.
No, BLM violence doesn’t get a pass because it wasn’t part of the government. But it’s much different when government action and power is backing up violence or threats of violence, to wit: when the people in power are making threats and condoning the violence they wanna condone, they get to cling to power and the ends justify the means. Which is exactly what happened: Trump-supporting insurrectionists tried to overturn the results of an election so Trump and his allies could remain in power. There’s a huge difference between doing that and being an actual cold-blooded murder, but they’re both way, way wrong.
You wanna hear me condemn violence by BLM? Fine. It’s hereby condemned by me. But violence by a group of people who don’t control the reigns of government and who are not trying to overthrow the elected choice of the voters is vastly different than what Trump and his deluded followers are doing. I ain’t about to vote for any BLM protester who set fire to a car or building or did whatever; but the GOP (and you, apparently) have absolutely no qualms with letting someone whip a mob into a violent frenzy, assist them with their attempted coup, and then just let them continue to enjoy their high-paying government jobs like it’s no big fucking deal! It ain’t murder and it ain’t killing (although if those insurrectionist mob had been luckier, I’m pretty sure they woulda killed Pence and some others and I know this because that’s what they fucking said they were gonna do, by the way) but it’s still a big fucking deal and it’s still a threat to democracy and the Rule of Law. Criminal acts by protesters are being prosecuted all over the country; the GOP rolling over (at best) or actively supporting (at worst) Trump’s attempted coup is receiving no consequences at all and that’s not right.
There’s only so far that this ridiculous “it’s not actual murder, it’s only threats of violence backed by the power of GOP politicians and their supporters so it’s no big deal, nothing to see here and no reason to actually do anything about it” defense is gonna take you. At some point, you either gotta acknowledge that Trump and his allies in power are responsible for sowing a shit-ton of this division– Remember that phrase?; it’s why you went off on this stupid rhetorical tangent to begin with– in a fundamentally different way than a leaderless nationwide group of protesters who hold no government offices and who have no political power could ever be.