Dobbs: Second Class Citizens Once AGAIN

0:00:01.0 Announcer We've been about this work, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, shared through the voices of a White woman and a Black man. We bring lived experiences. We have pursued D&I progress for most of our professional lives. We use Crazy and The King to cover news, tips from colleagues, and host incredible guests. Listeners, count on Julie and I to transparently drive the conversation. We thank you for rocking with us. Check it. Julie, kick off the show.

0:00:33.8 Julie: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Crazy and The King.

[applause]

0:00:37.7 Torin: Big week.

0:00:38.5 Julie: Fucking hell week.

0:00:41.6 Torin: A big week. You've been on a plane, you will be on another plane in the days to come. A very, very big week. And I want... At the top of the show, I just wanna share with people that we are going to drop in the resource area something that is happening today. So, if you want to go down to the resource area, click on the link and register for the conversation that RedThread Research is having today. Do that, register, and then you can come back and listen to our show. I don't want you to miss that opportunity, but we'll also talk about it when we get down to the resources section. I know you're feeling a little emotional today during this recording and those emotions, Jay, if I'm honest and I can kind of speak into you, if you will, those emotions are something you've been kind of wrestling and carrying with over the last week or two, right?

0:01:36.6 Julie: Yeah. Yeah, it just... Knowing it's coming, doesn't make it hurt any less. Put it that way. It is between January 6th, which you and I talked about just as we started recording the show, the testimony that we heard this week was breathtaking. And it's just validating what so many of us have felt like for the past seven years. And knowing that it was truly an organized attempt to overthrow our government, regardless of where you sit on the stage, it is incredible. And then, Roe was gutted last week. It's just... SCOTUS has done a number on my heart and all of our rights this week.

0:02:32.0 Torin: Yeah. Something that surprised me post-decision was, and when I say post-decision, talking about Roe v. Wade, I didn't see any headlines from the pro-life side. Now, look...

0:02:46.8 Julie: Yep. It's all we've been fucking hearing about for like the last 50 years is their voice.

0:02:52.2 Torin: Well, that could be true, and I'm not... When I say that could be true, not in a challenging way. I just thought that... I wanted to be... When we set up the show this week, I wanted to be fair, and I said... I just typed in my Google because I don't think that Google is like YouTube. YouTube is more algorithmic. YouTube says, "Okay, if you look at this type of video, then I'm going to serve you up more of something the same or similar," if you will. I think Google is a bit more honest in the sense of, they try to give you back what you ask for. If you put in a short tail request, they give you X number of listings. If you do a long tail request, they'll probably tailor it a bit more because you've asked more specifically what it is that you're looking for.

0:03:42.9 Torin: I typed in Roe v. Wade, like Roe v. Wade in the workplace. I typed in Roe v. Wade in general. And there was a third search. I can't remember, but I didn't see many headlines coming from the right. But some of the headlines that I did see were, "The end of Roe v. Wade is an economic, diversity, and workplace equity issue" from Fortune. I saw a headline, "The demise of Roe v. Wade will impact world of work" coming from the angle of SHRM, and that article was over in Staffing Industry Analysts. "Why the reversal of Roe v. Wade will have a curtailing effect on workplace equality", that came from Above the Law. "Discussions at work about abortion access: Here are five tips to help" from Business Insider, and a couple of more. It was really interesting just the amount, the huge amount of sentiment and support through those headlines. And then the content of those articles that really leaned towards: A, a displeasure of this decision from the Supreme Court, and B, how many people, just people in general, they don't like it.

0:05:01.1 Julie: Let's be honest too. This is not a majority opinion. The majority of Americans, I believe the last number I saw was like 70 plus percent, support some form of access to safe and legal abortions. And we have been... The agenda of a forced birth, you know, minority of the population has worked for 20 years to make sure that this day happens. And for me, Roe has been in place since before I was born. There was never a day that I woke up and felt like a second-class citizen.

0:05:52.3 Julie: And as a woman, and, you know, I think a unique experience for me as a White woman, just saying it that way and recognizing it, the entire female population and those that can have a pregnancy have now been legally classified as second-class citizens. We don't have the same bodily autonomy or the right to make decisions about our futures that we had. My daughters are substantially less safe than they were a week ago. They're substantially less free than they were a week ago. And that is how the majority of Americans feel, and this move that we're making towards theocracy in just all of the other rulings that we can talk about later that came out outside of Dobbs, which is the case that reversed Roe, it's hard, it's been a hard week. Women in this country are in mourning.

0:07:03.8 Torin: Andrew Ross Sorkin, he is a big name on Wall Street, and does a newsletter every single day with the New York Times, he asked a question earlier in the week, he said, "But here is my question for business leaders, after years of talking about moral courage, where is yours?" So before we get too heavy into our conversation, Jay and I always love to cover just a couple of topics at the top of the show, and one of those topics is a few weeks back. You and I, Julie, we talked, if you recall, we talked about emergency evacuation plans, specifically focused on the disability community. You remember that conversation?

0:07:53.3 Julie: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was a great conversation.

0:07:56.1 Torin: It was. One of our listeners, he actually reached out and shared a contingency development plan. Actually, he shared a contingency planning document, and first and foremost, contingency being defined as a template which provides a step-by-step process for which you can communicate actionable items in case of a disaster or some other disruption, so that we can keep business running, that we can keep continuity in what it is that we are doing. The document that he shared with me, it takes the guess work out of emergency planning, and making it so that you can provide and protect the resources, minimize interruptions, and it identifies, it names, it puts in place key contact members. And two things that really stood out, inside of the document, there were a couple of areas, Julie, that he talked about, recovery phases, alternative transportation, it talked about relocation strategy, records backup, how we protect the data in the organization, and establishing priorities.

0:09:00.3 Torin: That was key for me. Like, what is the priority? So even though his document didn't kinda lay out Step A, Step B, Step C, Step C all the way down, it didn't delineate in that manner, but what it did, it gave us some really high buckets of where our attention should be, and so my hope is, and I appreciate you, Philip Atkins, for sharing this document with us, my hope is that in the downtime of the summer, where things tend to slow down just a bit, for those listeners whose organizations, whose communities, whose buildings, Stubbsy sent us an article of some things that happened over in England, where a couple of apartment buildings or at least one apartment building absolutely didn't have a plan in place. When we are in the slowness of the summer, give some thought to your emergency evacuation plans, and think about the most vulnerable among us, that was my hope for that mention.

0:10:06.6 Julie: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And definite huge thanks to Philip for sending that our way. One thing that is helping me get through this week is knowing that next week, not only do I get to see your face and hug your neck, but also raise a glass together for the first time in just a little over a year, if I'm remembering correctly.

0:10:26.0 Torin: Almost a year, almost a year. We were in Detroit in July.

0:10:29.6 Julie: Yep, yes. And we will be in London at RecFest together, rocking that out, and you put something in the show notes that made me laugh, that you're gonna be very loud in saying that you will not say or... Wait, what am I... Hold on, let me try again. We'll be in London, and one thing that you are gonna be very loud about is telling people to not mention George Floyd as your reason for doing D&I, elaborate.

0:10:58.6 Torin: That's right, that's right. Yeah, it's real simple for me. I just do not find any favor, I don't find it to be gratifying, I don't find it to be endearing, I don't find it to be something that should be celebrated, highlighted, that the reason why an organization is doing D&I is because of the death of a Black man, I do not find any, any favor in that whatsoever, and it's like fingers on a chalk board for me when I hear people say that. Admittedly, Jay, I can appreciate the reference to George Floyd in May of 2020, June of 2020, July, August of 2020, but then it started to wane for me after that, because when it set in for me that people were only doing it because of his death, they weren't doing it because it was the right thing to do, they weren't doing it because of the business case, they weren't doing it because it absolutely made sense, it was better for the organization, better for communities, better for geographies, better for product development, they weren't doing it for all of these reasons, they were doing it because there was this frenetic tone, this chorus in the marketplace, like, "Yo, something ain't right." And from a social justice standpoint, from a racial injustice standpoint, something is not right, and because we hear and we see this demonstration, these demonstrations, we see them, well, we wanna jump on that bandwagon, and so we need to get our shit together.

0:12:43.0 Julie: But I think it's...

0:12:44.3 Torin: And we're getting our shit together on the death of a Black man, I'm just not for it anymore.

0:12:49.3 Julie: Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. I mean, I think... I think I'll... And I think... I'm gonna just put my assumption hat on, you know what they say about those, is that I think when I've heard people say that, and I've heard it substantially, so it definitely makes sense to bring it up, is that that was their trigger moment, I don't know necessarily that I would agree in every case that it's not because of the business case, the right thing, the way to impact our community, is that for so many white people, for the first time in their life, they had that, that moment that flipped the switch for them, and for them it was such a substantial moment in their life that that's what they always go back to, it's like a sort of, before George Floyd, after George Floyd kind of way of thinking. But I think the challenge that you're bringing makes a lot of sense, is that...

0:13:50.5 Julie: It's time to say, "We began this work as a reaction to the death, the murder of George Floyd, but here's why we're continuing to do the work. Here's why it's important. Here's why it matters. And we recognize that that moment is something that Black men have experienced far too often in this country and in others, but we aren't stopping the work because that day is getting further away. We're continuing to do the work for this reason." So I think that's a great point.

0:14:23.7 Torin: Absolutely, and on that point, there is a website that you can go to. Sherrell Dorsey and her good team over at The Plug, they pulled this information together. It's stateofthepledge.com. Again, the website is stateofthepledge.com. So, have a listen to the rest of the show after Jay and I take a brief commercial break.

0:14:54.2 Torin: So in a flash, within the last two weeks, James Patterson apologizes for saying White writers face a form of racism. He went on to say, "Please know that I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard in literature, in Hollywood, and everywhere." Not sure what you might do with that news, but I wanted to share it anyway. So many thoughts, Jay, on James Patterson thinking that White men were facing racism and couldn't get hired. If only we were living in a more traditional time... Wait a minute, we actually are in a traditional time. Speaking of tradition, most would say that being a parent is really special. So much so that 62-year-old Jeff Yablon, a retired NYC businessman and father of three, launched Rent-A-Dad back in 2018. And for $80 an hour, if you live in the Manhattan area or certain parts of Brooklyn and Queens, you can actually hire Mr. Yablon, or Yablon, to do the kind of stuff typically reserved for a dad.

0:16:06.6 Torin: Not sure how familiar you are with the Mennonites, but you can hit Google for more information. The Mennonites, the largest denomination of such in the US, has adapted its policies to be more welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community. Generally speaking, the Amish are a closed group. And just like that, I gave it all away. Sweden's Braathens Regional Airlines said it operated what it understands to be the first flight of a commercial aircraft powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel. A Turboprop made the test flight from Malmo to Bromma near Stockholm using sustainable fuel provided by Neste. I did not say Nestle, I said Neste. And Victoria's Secret pledges to increase the pool of black suppliers. The goal is to increase its supplier network to include 15% Black-owned businesses and brands, a significant increase from its current level of less than 2%. And finally, Sesame Street's iconic, perpetually three-year-old Muppet got his, or properly says, their COVID-19 shot just days after vaccinations became available for children five years and younger. That's this week in the Flash.

0:17:42.9 Julie: Alright, so, back to the conversation at hand my friend. Our friend, Judy Heumann, who is... I'm a complete fan girl over, you've spent more time with her. I'm always jealous.

0:17:55.8 Torin: Absolutely. Fan boy over here. Fan boy over here.

0:18:00.4 Julie: So, you know, one thing I think that is sometimes missing in the story from abortion rights and abortion access conversations are women and people with disabilities. And so Judy, along with AAPD and I would say probably the top six or seven disability advocacy groups in the country came together to condemn Dobbs. Again, that's the case that overturned Roe, writing, "The Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization decision issue today will have devastating consequences. This decision overturns Roe and Casey and eliminates any federal right to abortion. In doing so it puts many disabled people, particularly Black people, indigenous people, and other people of color, LGBTQIA people, immigrants, survivors of sexual assault, poor people, and our allies at risk for forced child birth, death, criminalization and other physical and emotional and material harms."

0:19:04.0 Torin: Hey, let me jump in real quick. You can pick up exactly where you left off, but I'm just gonna say something. I want us to make sure we talk about, as best as we can in the show, I wanna talk about that whole highlighting of black people. I'm not minimizing anyone else in that list that you just mentioned, the immigrants, survivors, poor, but I do want us to have a conversation around the Black people. Go ahead and continue.

0:19:29.2 Julie: Okay. "People with disabilities have the fundamental right to make decisions about our lives and our bodies. For women and for other persons with disabilities who can become pregnant, this includes the right to decide whether or not to continue a pregnancy. People with disabilities are more likely to experience sexual assault, and people with some disabilities face increased and serious health risks from pregnancy. Disabled people need and deserve access to affirming and accessible reproductive healthcare services, including abortion."

0:19:57.6 Torin: Such a big, big statement. They're so much in there, and this is one of these moments where I just get to admit to our listeners, I'm not as smart as I'd like to be. And I mean that genuinely. I wish that I had a reservoir of knowledge, of historical fact, of data point, reference points, examples, case studies. Julie, I wish that I was steep enough to be able to just talk ad nauseam, off the cuff, extemporaneously, about what you just read right there. There is so much in that statement, so many groups and communities, there's so many audiences, so many... There's a lot in that statement. And this is one of those moments where I just wish that I was smarter so that I could help our listener. I think, just as a side note, I think about a conversation that I had with a leader within one of my clients and this leader was struggling with the LGBTQ support. Their LGBTQ+ support didn't want to assume or appear to be condoning the lifestyle of a person that's LGBTQ while not being supportive. I was able to... And they hinged all of it on their religious, their Christian belief. So I was able to kind of navigate that conversation a little bit. This is one of those conversations where I just feel so ill-equipped to have, but we're gonna try to have it anyway. What did all of that say to you?

0:21:54.4 Julie: Yeah, I mean, and take this as I mean it with love is that you have never needed to have all of that information. You've never needed to understand the impact to a woman's body and her ability to do those things that we wanna do. Sorry. And we know that this is particularly impactful to women of color, people of color, poor people, and people with disabilities. We are more likely to be sexually assaulted regardless of disability type. We are more likely to not have access to primary care and insurance and health equity that we need to survive. And when we think about the laws that have been put on the books in so many states or the triggering back to like in Arizona, a law that's over 100 years old, that they are so vague even in their right, in their exception to save a life that doctors are already delaying treatment because they also risk losing their licenses, being convicted of felonies, going to prison for performing what is life-saving care. And what I think is important to understand here is abortion is a medical term. And I'm not a doctor, so I'm not gonna try to get too deep into this. We actually posted a great explainer on our Facebook page this week. Abortion is a termination of a pregnancy for whatever reason, right?

0:23:55.6 Julie: So a miscarriage is an involuntary abortion. An abortion to support someone who has an ectopic pregnancy is a non-elective or an emergency abortion. Elective abortions, the, "Hi, I'm Julie. I'm not ready to go to this place with our family planning yet, or my career," is actually about, I think it's about 13% of all abortions. And so the way that we talk and speak about abortion in general is so general. It's like abortion equals bad. And that's not the case. And the laws that have been written by men, I would call out Utah and Texas specifically, do not take into account the things that doctors are gonna have to consider when they're thinking about saving a woman's life and what stage of emergency does a woman have to be in before they can do that life-saving exception. It's overwhelming and we have to do a better job, I think, of making those distinctions about what abortion is and what we're talking about when we say we're pro-choice or forced birth. I won't use the word pro-life anymore because that is not a stance.

0:25:31.0 Julie: This is a forced birth position. And women will die, women with disabilities, Black women, women of color, and poor women will die because these decisions are gonna be so in the gray that doctors put additional risks on themselves. And I don't think that gives them an excuse for not giving the care, but we've already heard stories where they're going in and making sure with their hospital lawyers for hours that they can perform these life-saving procedures. And that's the problem when men create laws about women's bodies and take away that ability to have a private relationship with our doctor to make the right medical decisions for us.

0:26:17.0 Torin: So you said a lot, and all of which was valuable. And I wanna just pick up on the whole men creating laws piece. I have been in my vehicle for the last week on a number of occasions, just jetting through the city and just saying to myself out loud in some way rhetorical, in some way tongue-in-cheek, in every way human, I have said out loud, "Name one law that a Black man has created that is stupid as fuck?"

[chuckle]

0:26:58.0 Torin: And I just want... And I even answer myself, "Jay," I say, "I'll wait." I'm literally in the whip riding and have said out loud, "Name one law that Black men," and I am very specific, "Black men have created. I will wait." Now, you can infer where I'm going and you will most likely be right. And I don't mean that with any animus towards White men, but I need people to really understand almost all of what we are living under has been through the gaze of White men.

0:27:54.5 Julie: Yeah. And I will say I don't think that Black men are off the hook on this one, but our state houses are white. Our state houses are male.

0:28:06.8 Torin: And what do you mean when you say Black men are not off the hook? Meaning we should still be supportive, we should be vocal, we should be... What do you mean by that?

0:28:15.2 Julie: There are certainly Black Republicans in these legislatures that have signed these bills.

0:28:19.8 Torin: Got it. Okay.

0:28:21.3 Julie: That's what I mean.

0:28:22.6 Torin: So not an absolute... Not an absolute absolvement, but certainly, yeah, some representation there. And you said something at the top of the show, all of your life, that access has been there. While riding in the vehicle and listening to the radio this week, a woman called in who talked about her experience of getting an abortion when it was illegal. I'm not gonna get graphic, because it was graphic. And I gotta tell you, man, I sat there and listened to that and I was just like... We hear the phrase, "back-alley procedures", but to hear her describe what she went through during a time where it was illegal, I just shook my head and said, "God, I hope that that's not what people go through going forward." And so...

0:29:33.8 Julie: It is. You think those hangers are... Those symbols of hangers are for sensationalism? No, that's how women had... That's how they performed abortions. That's... Coat hangers are not something that is symbolic, it is real. And I read, or listened to, I think it was Representative Barbara Lee, a fantastic Congresswoman out of California, she had an abortion before it was legal, and her mother sent her to her auntie in Texas who took her across the border to Mexico. And that was the desperation that she had to undertake that journey. And just listening to some of these... In Texas, some of the abortion support agencies have been putting women on planes who've never been on a plane, who've never been out of the state of Texas, who have never had any experience outside of sort of their very small radius of life, are flying them hundreds of miles to be able to get access to care and services in states where abortion is legal and it is protected, and some for health reasons, some for elective reasons.

0:30:58.1 Julie: And I don't know that the reason matters as much, and so I should stop saying that. But women who are making incredibly difficult life-altering decisions who've never been away from home are being transported to different states. And The New York Times has an amazing graphic this week that shows how far a woman has to travel to get access to safe and legal abortion services pre-Roe or... Pre-Dobbs, and then how much it changed after Dobbs, and how much they expect it to change in the coming weeks. And for those of us who sit in the middle, the flyover states, it's gonna be substantially more difficult. Hundreds of miles will be the minimum that a woman has to travel in the state of Indiana to be able to get access to an abortion when we make it illegal in a special session in July.

0:31:58.4 Torin: Yeah, I interrupted you when you were reading the statement from the group statement up top. And I said I wanted to come to attacking a point around Black people. And there's a statistic that says, unintended pregnancies in the Black population among Black women is two and a half times higher than, let's say other demographies, if you will. And it went on to say that, "But because of wage disparities, it makes it unlikely that they will be able to, one, afford time off to do interstate travel and to get the care they need. This will, two, restrict some of their access to abortion care and it could mean their exit from the labor force permanently." That is a striking statement for me. And here's the reason why I pull that out. It's not that I don't think that immigrants, poor people, people with disabilities, and some of the others delineated in that statement are not at harm. I believe that they are severely at harm. They are at critical risk. But if I may say this, when I think about a person who is poor, categorized as poor, whatever the mechanism is for making that assessment, I can tend to understand, okay, well, they don't have the resources. They don't have the means to afford, to be able to do certain things.

0:33:32.4 Torin: When I hear about a person with disability, being accosted at a higher rate than let's say a person who is able-bodied, can fend for themselves, I tend to understand how we arrive at that conclusion. Can't defend themselves, assaulted, it is what... I kinda get it. There's certain things that I tend to get. Why I struggle with the Black women piece is, if in fact they are the most educated group of people in the workforce at a significant rate, making that number of $0.81 per $1 or something like that, wherever that number is, I struggle Jay, with why in the hell are they not able to take advantage of the access in the same way that white women are able to take advantage of access, whatever access looks like? That's the one that I struggle with. Why... If I'm going to work everyday, why am I not able as a woman to reach and touch that access that a White woman can touch? That is the one statistic piece that it challenges me. And when we thought about this in totality, I'm thinking about the entire conversation, but I keep hearing people almost vote because your life depends on it. It's almost the same mantra, Jay. This is the biggest selection we'll ever face. They say that every two years, every four years. And now with this Roe v. Wade...

0:35:33.8 Julie: Don't say that. No, hold on.

0:35:35.2 Torin: They do.

0:35:36.4 Julie: That they do not. In politics, that is my life, you know that. The last two have been... These three elections, I'll say four, are, and I don't even know if we get past three, are the most defining elections of this country's history.

0:35:55.9 Torin: So when you say three, you're talking 2012, the second election of...

0:36:00.8 Julie: No. 2016, 2020, 2022.

0:36:04.6 Torin: See, they said it in 2012, when it came to Barack Obama getting that second term. They said it when they were hiring or when they were going for Barack in 2008.

0:36:14.7 Julie: And you don't think it's the case? I mean you gotta... If you're gonna put something out there, you gotta say why. [chuckle]

0:36:19.7 Torin: Let me finish. Let me finish. So what I was saying, when I say that, when I was doing the juxtaposition, very similar and akin to them saying that this is the most important election, and I'm not arguing, it is what it is, that's the saying, they do whatever they can to get us to come out and vote. These people, these pundits, to get it on the news and what they're saying right behind R v. Wade is it is going to be the most detrimental to the Black community. And I keep saying to myself, why? Why is it gonna be that... Why? I don't understand that. And I'm not saying it's not true. I wish that I could hear from normal Black women on these shows. But why? Are we not making that much money?

0:37:08.7 Torin: Are we getting pregnant at this two and a half times rate that's unintended? Why? I would really love to hear... And I would love to hear secondarily, in a very close secondarily, from people in the disability community, from immigrants. I would really love to hear someone say this shit right here is really catastrophic. And not only from the people that are the intelligent... Intelligent is not the right word, but the spokespersons, if you will, the people that the news folks normally trot out to have these conversations. That's all I'm saying. I really wanna hear from the people, why the fuck is this happening, and maybe that'll help us to better understand just the gravity of this reckless and terrible decision.

0:38:00.1 Julie: So yeah, I mean I think that... I will say I'm processing what you're saying. I'm not %100... Not %100 sure I get it yet, where you're going, I... I think that we do need to hear from women from more marginalized communities. That's the reality is, Black women also have disabilities, Black women are also poor, Black women are also immigrants, and there's gonna be a compounding effect, we know that. We know that access to healthcare is... That is, it is just a reality. What I think you're saying is we need to see more voices and more faces that are representative of regular folks saying what this means to them, what the impact is and why it's more impactful to... Similarly situated Black woman versus a White woman.

0:39:00.6 Torin: Yeah.

0:39:01.4 Julie: That's a... I... That's an excellent question. It would be, I think, amazing to have a doctor on, or a lawyer, a reproductive advocate to understand it in very clear terms what the difference is. We already know, if we wanna do a comparison, we already know that women... Black women die at substantially higher rates in childbirth than White women. And there has to be a reason, right? And... Go ahead.

0:39:35.7 Torin: No, I was just gonna say, and that... That... That you're hitting it. Again, I'm not arguing it, I just feel like far too often we have these conversations at a very, very high level, and we're not hearing the story of the people, persons that are being impacted. I just would love, Serena Williams comes to mind, how she almost died giving childbirth. Her and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, they talk about that, do the Commercial with Dove, very open and revealing. Well it takes a lot to be open and revealing. It takes a lot for a family of one of the children in Uvalde High School to say... The school shooting to say, "I'm gonna show the pictures of my child having been murdered in that classroom." It takes a lot. And who am I to say, "You should show." Or, "I want you to show." It's not my decision. And so I'm just saying, I would love in these really big conversations that we don't hear from the people who know it all if you will, or have an opinion, I'd love to hear from the people that are impacted. I just really would love to hear from them, because I just think that people are missing, not people, that's so general, I don't wanna do that. I think that people will feel it even more to hear from the people that are actually impacted versus the folks that are hypothesizing around the issue.

0:41:05.4 Julie: Yeah, yeah. And I... I think that is an excellent point and a call out for a future guest would be my guess. And so as... As we sort of wrap this up, I think you and I could probably spend another hour or two just sort of getting in through the fine details and you being a good co-host and friend and letting me get some of this out in the morning that... That I'm doing behind the mic. But I think it's important to just be real when we're talking about why this matters, it is more than, than just for women. This has been a fucking hell of a week for the Constitution. The Fifth and 14th Amendments are fully under attack. And Fifth Amendment is your right to due process. So... And the 14th Amendment is really about substantive due process laws, which basically means that unless it is necessary for the government to interfere with your right to achieve some compelling government objective, the action is prohibited. So this week, Miranda protection, so when we get Mirandized, if we get arrested, those regarded, that's the Fifth Amendment. And then the 14th Amendment really around, I'm gonna say privacy for the most part is that the government doesn't have the right to make decisions about our private lives.

0:42:39.4 Julie: So what that means is a woman no longer has a right to free and fair access to reproductive services. We no longer have a right to have private, intimate, healthcare, decision-making autonomy with our physicians. What's next is really any substantive due process. So anything that has not been enumerated, written down or specifically mentioned in the Constitution, have been protected under the 14th Amendment. And that now puts all kinds of other things in the cross hairs. So it puts overfill, gay marriages is definitely next on the docket. I would say, If we don't add more seats to the Senate, we don't keep control of the House and codify Roe, and codify gay marriage, gay marriage will be gone next summer. Rights under state law to adopt to do anything like that will be gone. Contraception, and I am not being... I am not being overly reactive, contraception is on the list. And we could go down. So when we're thinking about how this impacts people of diverse backgrounds, diverse identities, less protections under Miranda, we can't sue the police if they don't Mirandise us and then use information pre-Miranda to... To help gain a conviction or gain access to other things like a warrant, all those things.

0:44:23.6 Julie: Anything to do with your private decision-making about your life, reproductive rights, use of contraception, marrying the person you love, adopting children, those things are in the cross hairs. And Clarence Thomas was very, very clear about that this week in his concurring opinion. That's why we have to vote this time, that's why it matters, that's why it's the most important fucking election of our lives. This one and the next one, you can't sit it out, you don't have a fucking excuse, it's not okay, it's not okay. Not okay.

0:44:58.6 Torin: Dawn Laguens, the Global Strategy and Innovation Chief for Planned Parenthood, she's actually been with the organization for the last 25 years. She actually suggests that a lot of employ... Employers, leaders, executives are reaching out to Planned Parenthood and asking questions like, "What do we do?" And so she actually shares three questions that all employees, men included, should be asking. Number one, the first is, what is the corporate abortion policy for employees and dependents? Number two, the second speaks more broadly to stakeholders, what are you doing to support communities and consumers who believe in your brand and need abortion? And then the third question that she suggests that employees ask is, we're recommending employees also ask, has our company signed the, Don't Ban Equality pledge? Which was actually established back in 2019, and if so, how are we promoting that? It's a pledge, Don't Ban Equality established back in 2019.

0:46:02.0 Torin: When I mention Andrew Ross Sorkin at the top of the show, asking about that courage, he was talking about January 6th and the hearings that are taking place. He wasn't referring to abortion, but I thought it was apropos to slide it in there because what Julie just mentioned were a list of items that could be under assault. And so Andrew's question is appropriate. Where is your courage?

0:46:34.0 Julie: Alright, great conversation. We will be right back with Her Voice.

0:46:42.3 Torin: Her Voice is a segment where we amplify women that are making moves. And every once in a while, we kind of... We throw in some names that may not necessarily be from the corporate quarter. This week we have Alexis McGill Johnson, she is the CEO of Planned Parenthood. She by all accounts is leading an organization that services more than 2 million people per year through this extremely difficult moment.

0:46:42.4 Julie: Yeah. And Cassidy Hutchinson, the 25 year old former aide to chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who testified under oath multiple times but in front of the world this week at the House January 6th Committee. I'm gonna guess she's gonna need a job.

0:47:23.2 Torin: Yeah, I didn't...

0:47:23.5 Julie: You might wanna look her up.

0:47:24.9 Torin: Yeah. Absolutely. I didn't learn of her age until the day after, because while listening to the testimony, both on Twitter, YouTube and... 'Cause I don't really watch TV that often, but I'm grabbing it on my phone and I'm like, "Wow, this person is so on top of things and poised." Shout out to you, Cassidy, for your bravery. And finally this week, Lisa Lucas, the first Black publisher in Pantheon's 80 year history. She actually tells the story, "I was used to being one of very few people of color in the room, but I had rarely had the experience of being the only one in certain rooms until I worked in publishing." Shout out to you, Ms. Lisa Lucas.

0:48:07.4 Torin: A quick mention of the resource at the top of the show, bottom line is, RedThread Research says that, "No one really has a playbook of how to navigate this conversation of post-Roe v. Wade and how we move forward." So this afternoon at 12:30, they are having a discussion and it's an open discussion. They really feel like community, that crowd conversation is going to be helpful. There may be some data points in there that you can take into your organization. We will put the link in the show notes, but if you wanna get it really fast, go over to @redthreadre on Twitter, @redthreadre on Twitter. Or you can go to redthreadresearch.com and maybe you can still sign up for their round table discussion.

0:48:52.6 Julie: Awesome. And finally #DisabilityTwitter, just a couple quick mentions this week. And we'll share these on our socials. One from @disabldsunshine on Twitter, "Keep your activism intersectional. Do not spread misinformation. Body autonomy for all."

0:49:11.9 Torin: Yeah. And what she was talking about in that one is, don't go and try to tell men to have a vasectomy. And which men are you talking about? It was a really, really beautiful thread. I absolutely encourage you to pull it up. One of the other tweets that we highlighted from #DisabilityTwitter was a battle versus fixed income and inflation. And that one says, "People with disabilities like myself," it comes from @losinghopein. Losing H-O-P-E-I-N. It says, "People with disabilities like myself are being forced to live on supports 50% below poverty while prices are growing." You can read the rest of the tweet yourself, but I loved, loved, loved it.

0:49:52.6 Julie: And finally from @Esther_Debi, D-E-B-I, "Some people in society believe that person's with disabilities need medication to be fixed and yet most of the time, all we need is love and care!"

0:50:07.4 Torin: J, is phenomenal as a pod partner and as an individual, I close, we close reminding each and every one of you to share the pod with your digital tribe and define your voice, be a better human, let's create better culture teams and workplaces. For now, Jay and I are ghost.

0:50:23.8 Julie: See ya.

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