Katie's Reaction to the Overturning of Roe
The Femtastic Podcast
A raw, unedited, unproduced reaction episode to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Includes advice for how you can support abortion access and fight back, in both the short and the long term. The episode ends with a moment for reflection, featuring a song called "Animal" by Jean Rohe. In Jean's words, "'Animal' is a song about my own abortion experience, but ultimately much more: the things we can choose (or should be able to choose) in the garden of our lives, and all that lies beyond our control as mortal humans." May this song serve as a moment of un-silence,...
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The Loophole That Lets Abusers Keep Their Guns
The Femtastic Podcast
It’s no secret that our country’s gun laws are riddled with loopholes, but one is killing women specifically. Since the beginning of the pandemic, murders linked to domestic violence have risen dramatically, up 58% in the last decade. Guns are the most common weapon abusers use to kill their partners, and victims are usually women. And many of these perpetrators are not even allowed to have guns in the first place. Under federal law, people convicted of a felony, a domestic violence misdemeanor, or who are subject to family violence protection orders are not allowed to have guns. But...
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How Does Being Denied an Abortion Affect Someone's Life?
The Femtastic Podcast
Recently, Politico a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case on the future of Roe v. Wade. Unsurprisingly for many in the reproductive rights community, Alito calls for the overturning of Roe. We know that overturning Roe will mean that millions of people of reproductive age will be without access to abortion care. But what does it look like when someone who otherwise wanted an abortion is forced to carry a pregnancy to term? We don't have to imagine it, because the landmark Turnaway Study has already studied...
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Part 2: How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Use Clients' Private Data Against Them
The Femtastic Podcast
In Part 2 of our 2-part series on the misleading practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, we delve into another misleading, yet surprisingly underreported, aspect of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (aka CPCs aka "fake clinics). As we covered in Part 1, CPCs masquerade as if they are real health clinics - but because they are not, they're not subject to privacy laws like HIPPA that protect your personal health information. Of course, by design, their clients do not know this. CPCs then use information given to them by clients seeking their services to violate privacy and confidentiality for many...
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Part 1: Crisis Pregnancy Centers 101 - How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers
The Femtastic Podcast
Crisis pregnancy centers, or “CPCs,” are anti-abortion organizations that target pregnant people with predatory, deceptive marketing. They by operating under the guise of offering comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Instead, they are religiously-affiliated, anti-abortion, and often unlicensed “medical” centers that, as stated by the California legislature, dissuade pregnant people from abortion through “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse, misinform and even intimidate” clients from making informed choices. Eighty-three...
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What Do the FDA's Updates Mean for Access to Medication Abortion?
The Femtastic Podcast
Back in early December 2021, you may have heard some rumblings celebrating that the FDA had changed some of its draconian and scientifically unsupported regulations around medication abortion. Medication abortion, a safe and legal method of first-trimester abortion, accounted for 54% of US abortions in 2020 but has been subject to decades of politically-motivated FDA regulations that placed strict and unnecessary controls on it to limit access. In late 2021, amidst the most hostile environment to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, some of these limits were lifted. However, the...
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A Glimpse Into a Post-Roe Future: Funding Abortion in a State That's a "Destination" for Them
The Femtastic Podcast
Today on the podcast is the a grassroots nonprofit that provides financial support for people traveling to and living in Maryland who need abortion care, and as the Supreme Court decides in June on a that threatens legal abortion like never before, they’re working to remove the financial barriers for those seeking abortion care. As of late 2021, 30% of BAF’s callers were already from out of state, and the majority of people that BAF supports are 13 weeks or further into their pregnancy. BAF discusses on the podcast the implications of further...
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Using Information to Overcome the Gender Pay Gap
The Femtastic Podcast
You've probably heard of the - the fact that, according to the most recent from 2018, women of all races earned, on average, just 82 cents for every $1 earned by men of all races. Last week, Equal Pay Day was recognized on March 7 - this is the number of days into 2022 women would need to work to earn the equivalent of men in 2021. Do you know how the gender pay gap may impact your earnings over the course of your career? Do you know that the gap is ? In fact, the wage gap for women in some racial minority groups is not only wider than the overall gender wage gap, but it is also . ...
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The Meaning of a 6-Week Ban on Abortion
The Femtastic Podcast
You may have heard that Texas enacted a six-week ban on abortion in 2021, and that other states have begun attempting to pass copycat laws. You also may have heard many people remarking that 6 weeks is "before many people even know they are pregnant." But do you know why that is? Dr. Lauren Ralph, Associate Professor in the (ANSIRH) program at UCSF, recently that found that 1 in 3 people discover pregnancy past six weeks or later, and almost 2 in 3 young people discover pregnancy past six weeks or later. She is on the podcast today to explain WHY many people don't know they are...
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Reproductive Justice 101 with SisterSong
The Femtastic Podcast
It's Black History Month, and we're also in what may quite possibly the last few months of Roe v. Wade's existence as we know it. So it seems an important time to talk about what exactly Reproductive Justice means, the history of this Black women-led movement, and why it's so very important. Joining the podcast is Monica Simpson, Executive Director of *the* organization for the Repro Justice (RJ) movement, . Monica explains what RJ is; its history and founding by Black women; how we do everyone a disservice if we shy away from talking about sex when we talk about reproductive justice;...
info_outlineSince the beginning of the pandemic, murders linked to domestic violence have risen dramatically, up 58% in the last decade. Guns are the most common weapon abusers use to kill their partners, and victims are usually women. And many of these perpetrators are not even allowed to have guns in the first place.
Under federal law, people convicted of a felony, a domestic violence misdemeanor, or who are subject to family violence protection orders are not allowed to have guns. But these laws usually are not enforced, and intimate partners pay the ultimate price. Federal gun laws and the vast majority of state statutes have a glaring loophole: they don’t address how to keep guns away from people who aren’t supposed to have them, nor do they create the legal infrastructure to keep victims, their families, and their communities safe from violent offenders. Instead, around most of the country, these gun laws are enforced on an honor system that puts the onus on people who are prohibited from possessing firearms to disarm themselves, with virtually no follow-through to ensure that they’ve done so. Often prosecutors don’t even go after these offenders once they know they’re in violation of the law; even more often, law enforcement doesn’t realize the perpetrator illegally possessed a firearm until it’s too late.
Jennifer Gollan, an award-winning reporter for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has spent over a year investigating and reporting on a series called When Abusers Keep Their Guns. From 2017 through 2020, Jennifer identified at least 110 intimate partners who were killed by offenders who were barred from having guns under federal and, in some cases, state law. This is certainly an undercount, as the federal government does not track the number of people prohibited from possessing firearms who go on to kill their intimate partners.
Jennifer is on the podcast to dive into where the gaps are in the enforcement of these gun laws and how we can close them. We discuss both federal and state solutions to enact this common-sense gun reform.
LINKS:
Read the centerpiece of the investigation, Armed and Abusive: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims
Read the story, which Reveal published in partnership with The Guardian: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims
Listen to the Reveal podcast: When Abusers Keep Their Guns
Watch the documentary, produced in collaboration with Al Jazeera English’s “Fault Lines”: Unrelinquished
Reveal is staying on the story, and they need your help. Please tell them if you know of someone who was shot by a domestic violence offender who was prohibited from having a gun or if you are an official with information they should know.