(ambient music) - When the news broke that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, most women can tell you exactly where they were.

Regardless of age, color, or creed, the ruling was personal.

It resonated in their bones, and it instantly reignited the most contentious issue of our time.

Today, our distinguished bipartisan panel looks at how the ruling created a political and sociological revolution.

Joining us are Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the Women's Law Center, Katie Paris, the activist founder of Red Wine and Blue, a political advocacy group, Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of "Relinquished", and Alice Stewart, a CNN political commentator.

Grateful to have you all with us.

Today's show isn't about the morality of abortion, it's about a seismic shift in life in post-Roe America.

And Alice, I'm going to start with you because you're very open about how you feel.

You're a staunch conservative.

You held your nose and voted for Donald Trump because he promised justices on the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe.

You took a lot of flack.

People said you were selling out as a conservative, suffered slings and arrows, and you waited and hunkered down, and you got your reward.

And I think you actually called it a reward in some context that I saw.

Roe was overturned.

As you've told people, you were electing a president, not a pastor.

Talk about that.

- Look, I think it's not unusual or not uncommon for people to recognize that Donald Trump is a unique elected official, was a unique elected official.

As a conservative, I've worked on four presidential campaigns from Mike Huckabee, to Rick Santorum, to Ted Cruz, all of whom are very pro-life.

Every campaign I've ever been on, it was to fight for life, protecting the sanctity of life.

And there have been decades, 50 years in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.

And the reason for that is to take this important decision of life and protecting life out of the hands of unelected justices and put it in the hands of elected officials, put it in the hands of the people.

Let the people have more of a choice and a say in this issue.

And former President Trump, when he ran for office, he vowed to nominate Scalia-like justices to the Supreme Court, that the idea and the notion would be that they would lead to overturning Roe v. Wade.

And that was a big factor why a lot of social evangelicals supported Trump.

And in my view, and those who support the sanctity of life, the overturning of Roe v. Wade or the Dobbs decision was a victory, was a success for the pro-life movement.

- Fatima, on the flip side, the Dobbs decision unleashed a tsunami of intergenerational activism.

You had women who had fought for Roe the first time around 50 years ago, marching shoulder to shoulder with young women who weren't born when Roe was passed.

Talk about the flip side of the reaction.

- I still remember where I was the moment that decision came down.

In the weeks leading up to it, many people thought that there was no way that the Supreme Court would overturn 50 years of precedent.

We knew it would be destabilizing to our legal system, but it would create a public health crisis that none of us were prepared for.

What we also saw, however, was that across generations and across genders, people worried deeply about what this would mean for their own lives, for their futures.

They worried about their families, they worried about their ability to decide when to form them.

And folks who were grandparents were worrying about their grandchildren.

And so you did see people joining arms across this country and getting to work, getting work to fight back electorally, getting to work to fight back to actually protect people who we knew would be in immediate jeopardy.

- Katie, you're a veteran activist and you've talked to thousands of women about this issue.

When Dobbs came down, the assumption was that this would divide into bright color states.

The red states would be banning abortion, and the blue states would be fighting to protect it.

It's not the way it's really played out because you've had Kentucky and Kansas, women in those states have opted to retain abortion rights.

Talk about how this isn't political for a lot of women.

- It's actually been an inspiring year plus now since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Red Wine and Blue has become a community of almost half a million women.

We doubled in size just last year.

About a third of our members are Republican and independent women.

And so many of these women, regardless of political background, have come together because they share the personal connection at a deep, visceral level to this issue.

And they know when... Well, actually, when the decision was leaked, we had thousands of women sharing their personal abortion stories or stories of those women who are very close to them in their lives, sharing those stories.

And the personal connections formed went so far beyond partisan lines.

People saw this as a personal issue, not a partisan issue.

And there was a recognition of my story is mine, your story is yours, and so these decisions have to be ours.

They cannot be the government's.

And so we have seen a great deal of common ground that goes far beyond blue, red, or purple in shared, in recognizing, having that shared view of those differing experiences.

- Gretchen, you come at this from a different angle.

You are considered a leading authority in the connection between abortion and adoption.

You're a sociologist.

In fact, you and your work were actually mentioned in the dissent of the Dobbs decision.

- Yes.

- At the time, Justice Alito talked about how this was a positive in many ways because women who might be denied abortions would then put the children up for adoption, and millions of couples who were waiting to give an infant a good home would be...

The happy ending would be there.

What's your research shown?

- Right, so adoption has long been the common ground to the abortion debate, and it's sort of this bipartisan consensus that adoption politics has something to do with abortion, can speak to this moment.

And a lot of what my research looks at is why women are actually relinquishing their infants for adoption and what that looks like for their lives over time, and whether the question of abortion decision-making is even relevant to their adoption decisions.

And largely what I found is that it isn't.

So women who are seeking abortions are to the tune of 99% completely uninterested in adoption relinquishment.

They're aware of it, they have knowledge of it, but they do not want to relinquish their children.

They want to not be pregnant.

That's why they're not having an abortion.

Instead, what we found are most women who relinquish infants want to parent and they come to the adoption decision when their path to parenthood is blocked because they don't have the support or resources to make that possible.

So rather than considering how adoption speaks to the question of whether or not people need access to abortion, we should be looking at whether or not adoption is a reflection of our overall social safety net.

- And we're going to be talking about that a little bit later.

But, Alice, I do want to turn to you because some of the biggest changes have been in the legal, as Fatima was saying, and political areas.

And basically what Roe did was take the decision-making... What Dobbs did, I'm sorry, took the decision making away from women doctors and providers and handed it over, as we talked about, states and state legislatures.

Now a lot of people find that just anathema.

They don't understand how somebody could be not regulating guns, for example, but regulating somebody's uterus, and they're just appalled by this.

What do you say to those folks?

- Look, I work with many pro-life organizations and the number one commitment and priority is protection of the sanctity of life.

And again, the most important idea and the most important way we can move forward with that is to put this in the hands of, again, people who are elected by the people, and again, out of the hands of justices.

And look, it's no secret since this has been overturned, when abortion is on the ballot, it has been more in support of abortion rights.

There's no question about that.

But part of what those in the pro-life community have always wanted to do is to put this in the hands of the people, let them decide.

And now what we want to do is have a more nuanced conversation.

I think Ambassador Haley made an excellent argument in the presidential debate where she said let's have a respectful conversation.

Let's stop demonizing women.

Let's stop demonizing people who want to make this decision.

And let's have a conversation about what kind of limits should we have.

We can't go back to having a federal ban.

We can't try to impose a federal ban, but let's talk about reasonable limits on abortion.

And that's where the conversation needs to go.

- All right, because I do want to point out that you do have caveats.

You think some of the states have gone too far and that's the whole point.

I mean, there seems to have been an extremism.

- [Alice] Right.

- So talk about that, yeah.

- We absolutely need to have exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, full stop.

No question about that.

But some states, I personally believe that a six-week ban is too stringent.

I think something more like a 15-week is more sensical.

And when we're talking about when the unborn child can feel pain, that's when we need to talk about this.

But we also need to make sure that we're having honest conversations about there is support, there are some people out there that are fine with late term abortions, and that's something that those- - But not the... With all due respect, not the majority, I don't think the majority of people.

- I'm not saying that.

I'm saying that there are some people that do support that, and we just want to make sure that, that is off the table.

- All right.

I do want to get to the point though, 'cause, Fatima, you basically talk about the politics of exclusion where this is an issue, as everyone knows, that disproportionately affects women of color, Indigenous women, poor women, and they're not part of this conversation most of the time.

- I just want to be clear before I get to that.

I actually just want to be clear about one thing 'cause the majority of people in this country, and that's true across states, were against the Dobbs decision.

And they don't believe that these states that have been passing laws that ban abortion, whether it is at six weeks or at 10 weeks or at 12 weeks, they aren't supporting these measures.

The reason they are able to go forward, despite the deep unhappiness from the population at the state, is because there's a small and sort of more extreme group of electeds in states.

That's why you have seen these ballot initiatives come up with very different results than state electeds have been coming up with.

So you have this unusual situation right now where people are being told they are forced to stay pregnant and that they are not allowed to control their own bodies, which also means you're not controlling your life, your own health, putting yourself at risk, even though the majority of the people in this country disagree.

And what that looks like for those who has the least amount of resources, who already were struggling to access healthcare, who already were facing wider and larger maternal mortality rates, is we're not only talking about an indignity of not being able to control your own body.

We are also talking about your deep health and your economic security being at risk as well.

And that's more true for black women who have much higher maternal mortality rates in this country.

- And yet, Katie, in your work, what you try to do is relationship build.

You find that's sort of the guts of what you do And also it's interesting to read that one of the things that binds the women you work with is their abhorrence of extremism.

- Absolutely.

And Fatima is right that there is a great deal of distance between the extremism that we're seeing exhibited by many state legislatures and the people themselves.

Reproductive freedom is six for six in America.

When it has been on the ballot, the people have voted, like you said, in red states and in blue states in favor of reproductive freedom.

And so we know that the closer we can put this issue directly to the people, that's where they're going to come down to again and again.

In my state of Ohio, our state legislature has voted for a six-week abortion ban, no exceptions for rape or incest.

And as a result, women like me, many thousands of us came together and collected 710,000 signatures so that it will be on the ballot in the upcoming election.

And that is what happens when the people are given a voice.

And unfortunately, again and again, we see legislators who are far out of step with that.

They're bringing extremism and that is not where the people are.

- Before I get...

I want to get to Gretchen, but you're sort of...

I'm going to come back to you because you're hearing how do you address people who say that it's forced.

You don't have bodily autonomy, it's forced pregnancy.

How do you talk to somebody who's maybe not able to afford a child?

I'm just curious.

- Look, I think it's really important that people understand those in the pro-life community are there not just to protect the unborn child, but also to protect and be there for the mother.

And there are many resources in place to help the mother and the unborn child, and that's important to keep in mind.

And to her point, there are extremists on both sides.

There are very few extreme on the pro-life side and very few extreme... Or many on the pro-life side.

Very few on...

I'm honest about this.

Very few on the other side of the spectrum.

But I think anyone should recognize there does need to be those exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.

And the conversation needs to be more, as I mentioned, more nuanced conversation.

We need to be talking about what kind of limits we should be putting on this, when is a ban appropriate, what can we do to help encourage adoption?

And we don't need to criminalize the mothers.

If there are going to be any penalties, it should be on the abortion provider, not the mother, and that's important component of this.

- Well, that has been suggested again.

- I get that it's been suggested.

I don't agree with that.

- You don't agree with it, okay.

Gretchen, talking about... Let's get back to the safety net for a minute because I know that some of the supporters of abortion rights have been trying to mobilize more help, prenatal and maternal care.

That's an enormous job.

And you mentioned the fact that the safety net just doesn't exist for women.

- Right.

I mean, what we know is that most women who are denied access to abortion are going to choose to parent.

Over 90% of them are going to choose to parent.

And those are going to be children that they did not choose the timing of.

And what we have seen is that conservatives and the anti-abortion movement has never fully galvanized political support for a meaningful social safety net.

All of these sorts of public programs that we see that actually make parenting more tenable for American families have come from the left.

And I think that that is a meaningful gap, right?

Roe v. Wade was in place for 50 years, right?

That safety net was never built.

Very few women report having abortions only for financial reasons, right?

Some of them do.

I need to have an abortion because I can't afford this kid right now.

But usually there are other reasons at play, right?

And so we know that supporting and building a meaningful social safety net, which we have really never had in this country, might have some impact on the abortion rate, but not a robust one.

People are still going to need access to the abortions they want, but for those who are being denied care now, a year ago, a year from now in certain states, they are really going to need to have the support that these states have chosen not to prioritize even after the Dobbs decision.

- But, Fatima, isn't it also true that people who are fighting for reproductive rights need to also take a look?

I think Jenice Fountain from the Yellowhammer Fund has talked about the fact that those groups should be prepared to try and beef up support for women who choose to keep their children.

- I don't think there is confusion on that front.

From the inception of the National Women's Law Center, we have worked across the lives of women and girls.

So we are both the leaders on things like access to contraception and abortion care, and also the leaders on things like access to childcare and leave and support for the lowest income families, because we understand that in order to truly have reproductive freedom in this country, you have to be able to make decisions, as the leaders in the reproductive justice movement would say, about when and how to parent and on which terms.

And we have found that in the same states that have raced ahead to ban abortion, they are actually the same states that aren't providing paid leave, that aren't building out robust support for childcare.

The last thing that I just want to say is you may have seen that we have recently gotten data that shows that poverty got worse in 2022.

And one of the major reasons that happened was that we pulled back on the earned income tax credit, which was a support that the lowest income families were really relying upon in this country.

And so we can make a decision around how to decide to support families and to prioritize that.

But I actually think even if we had full support for families in this country, it would not be okay for some politicians somewhere to decide when and whether and how people have their families, and certainly not to force people to stay pregnant.

- You're nodding very energetically, Katie.

Why?

- I think something I have learned in the last year plus is that I can never know every circumstance that every woman could find herself in.

There are medical conditions I didn't know about.

There are life circumstances that I will never be in.

There are so many different pairs of shoes that I could never walk in.

So the idea of me dictating what exactly the decision needs to be for any other woman feels completely out of bounds for me.

And that is something that we have found a lot of connection, again, for women living all across this country, coming from all kinds of political backgrounds.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned, the bottom fell out.

And there is something very foundational that women thought they could trust that was going to be there, and it's gone.

And that has left women really being much more introspective, but also listening to each other in terms of our different experiences.

And to me, it's actually led to a really transformational moment for women, listening to each other, understanding each other, and honestly trusting each other more than any politician to make these decisions.

- I want to talk for a minute, Gretchen, because it's very interesting in terms of what women who think about adoption go through emotionally.

Could you talk about that a little bit?

- Yes.

Well, adoption is no one's first choice.

Adoption is sort of where we see women heading after other options have been constrained.

So they wanted to have an abortion that is no longer accessible in the state where they live or they're past the gestational age limit.

They're not able to get an abortion or they're intending to parent.

They'll go later in their second, third trimester intending to parent, making a plan, hoping to get support from a partner, their own parents, to get a better job that doesn't materialize.

And they end up in a real crisis at the end of their pregnancy and they turn to adoption as a last minute crisis solution.

But you can imagine most crisis decisions don't serve people well, right?

And so if they're put in this constrained position, a lot of the women that I have interviewed and spoken with are very traumatized by this separation from their child.

Women are not interested in adoption, right?

If you cut off enough other choices, they will do what they can to take care of their child, even if that means separating from them.

But that doesn't mean that that's an outcome that serves them well longer term and it's not necessarily an outcome that serves the child well longer term either.

I think a lot of adoptees have come out really strongly since the Dobbs decision to be really critical about the way that adoption and their own stories have been co-opted.

- Why did you choose to study this area, this connection of these two, of abortion and adoption?

- I started my adoption research when I was in graduate school.

I was working with a fantastic organization that unfortunately has closed since then called the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy in Boston.

And this was an incredible group of young mothers that were lobbying the Boston City Council at the time to change the Boston public school pregnant and parenting student policy.

So these young women were at the front lines of trying to fight for themselves, for their children, for their families, so that they could get the support that they needed.

And so I started to look more critically and it's been now 12 years since then, so it's taken me down a lot of different paths, but it was really working closely with those young mothers that was really the original inspiration.

- Sort of a turning point for you.

- [Gretchen] Yeah.

- Alice, there's a professor at Liberty University who talks about the fact that after 50 years of fighting to have Roe overturned, the pro-life movement basically is like the dog that caught the car.

And it has thrown things into...

I mean, everybody has been sort of thrown into some upheaval.

But he makes the point that has been already said, I think at 61%, according to the Pew poll, lots of polls, basically you know the majority of Americans support abortion at some point.

And the point further is that how do you start to change hearts and minds to have people come closer to your point of view?

- I think that the analogy that it's like the dog that caught the car and what do we do now?

What I've said over and over is that the overturning of Roe v. Wade and this Dobbs decision, for many, it is almost as though it was an overnight sensation that's 50 years in the making.

We've been working on this for 50 years.

All of a sudden it happens.

And I feel like some aspects of the pro-life community weren't prepared for it.

Therefore, we have seen these instances when abortion is on the ballot in some of these states, the pro-abortion side comes out in mass.

So the key now is for the pro-life community to push or to remind people and educate people on the options.

Adoption is a good option.

And you talk about people that have put their child up for adoption and the trauma that that creates.

We talk with countless women over the years that have chosen to have an abortion, and the pain and devastation and heartbreak they feel over that is real.

And so the key to the pro-life community is to talk with people, understand there are options out there.

A big movement that is underway, Concerned Women for America, is working on a pro-life online portal because there's so many resources out there and options out there for women, they don't know where to go.

And now you can pull up a book and find out about adoption or care or healthcare or legal care or any of these services.

Women that are in this situation go, where can I get some medical help?

Where can I get some prenatal care?

Where can I get the care that I need?

And all of the information will be right there at their fingertips.

- But I think as Gretchen's talked about from her research, I mean, adoption is not a panacea.

In fact, if anything, it's a very low percentage I think, of those infants who are ever adopted.

It sounds like there are millions of couples waiting.

All I'm saying is that that's not necessarily the answer.

And the social safety net is a bigger, probably, part of the answer that we're talking about.

- It's not the answer for everyone.

As we've said, every situation, every story is unique, and that's where people going to seek out whether it's counseling or someone to talk with or a doctor or a social worker, what works best for you, maybe it's not adoption.

Maybe you can get together with your church and your community and have people in your community that will be able to help you, whether it is financially or emotionally give you the support and care that you need.

There are services out there to help women to make the right choice for them.

And those in the pro-life community feel that whatever we can do to protect the life and support the mother is the most important thing.

- I want to turn right now, Fatima, to next steps.

And actually Alice alluded to one of the things I want to ask you about because as unprepared as a lot of pro-life women were, people who support abortion rights never thought they were going away, didn't see the signs, didn't read the tea leaves, and it was pretty clear that that's where this was headed.

Now I think everybody also knows that Justices Thomas and Alito have alluded to the fact that they would be agreeable to looking at other privacy rights, including same-sex marriage and birth control.

In fact, birth control is being talked about openly as the next frontier.

I don't want to say what have you learned, but to get ahead of the curve, I presume you do want to do that, what's being done?

- So I think the reason that people didn't believe that the Supreme Court would overturn five decades of consistent precedent and upholding of Roe is because they understood that we lived in democracy where things like the rule of law were part of our stabilizing forces and we're in a new period.

And when members of Congress say they have a plan to do things like a nationwide abortion ban or when extremists in states drive ahead and say we're going to ban contraception, we should take that seriously just as we should take Justice Thomas's opinion where he said he didn't believe that there was any privacy rights that he would recognize in the Constitution at all.

And we always understood that access to abortion care in this country and its recognition in the Constitution was deeply bound up with the ability for people to have personal freedoms, freedoms to decide all sorts of personal things about your family, how you raise your children, whether you use contraception, who you love and marry.

All of that was sort of unraveled in the Dobbs decision according to Justice Thomas.

So it's all fair game, so we should take it at their word and we should actually make sure people know what's coming and hopefully they will believe us this time.

People are enraged by this attack on personal freedom.

It is not enough to say, well, maybe you can just be pregnant for nine months and have no control over whether that is the case.

That is not reproductive freedom that we thought we had.

And so I actually think it's going to be a continuingly motivating thing for people in this country.

They are more aware, they are turning to each other.

I think Katie's point that people are telling their own stories as a way of power building together, and they will continue to show up again and again for reproductive freedom in this country.

It is bound up in who we are.

It is bound up in who we hope to be.

- Turning to the ballot box, which is one way to make change, clearly, even though Democrats, Katie, held off the red wave in 2022, the reality is that Republicans had greater turnout, which was energized by women, Hispanics, and rural voters.

And going into 2024, Pew has identified the fact that one of the lightning rod issues is going to be reproductive freedom.

How is your group dealing with...

I mean, dealing with this sort of phenomenon that you've been building?

- We're calling on politicians from across the spectrum, from all sides, to notice what the people are calling for.

We do want freedom.

We want reproductive freedom, we want protection of our rights.

And if Democratic politicians want to ride that wave of what we're seeing in terms of support for reproductive rights, they need to be vocal in their own support for that reproductive right.

I think we saw Governor Gretchen Whitmer do this very well in Michigan.

She made her cause be one and the same with protecting Michiganders from losing their reproductive freedom.

And in states where we saw politicians align themselves, Democrats who did that did very well in 2022.

But it's not going to happen naturally.

If they want to experience the support of that wave, then they need to be vocal and get on it.

- How do you support what they call...

They call them persuadables now, I think, folks who theoretically can be flipped, so to speak, in terms of the way they will vote.

- I think that the extremism, and I'm really glad you brought up contraception because I think it's important when we're talking about reproductive rights, to not just talk about abortion.

Contraception is how we've reduced unwanted pregnancies and therefore we have less abortions.

And the fact of the matter is, is that not only did Justice Thomas talk about how our right to birth control could be next, but when Congress held a vote to protect the right to contraception in this country, 195 Republicans voted against it.

When there was bipartisan support for protection for contraception recently in Nevada, the Republican Governor vetoed it.

In my state of Ohio and in other state legislatures across this country, there is a majority Republican co-sponsorship for bills right now that would take away my access to an IUD, and all women in my state.

That's happening all across the country.

So when we think...

I think it's important to broaden the conversation here so that voters can see everything that is on the line in terms of not just abortion, but reproductive freedom overall.

- Can I ask you, Alice, I'm not going to have you speak for all 195 Republicans who voted against it, but I will ask you, there's sort of an oxymoron here where you're talking about if you were starting to look at the issue of taking away birth control, how can that vote be that massive if they're trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies?

- Well, again, this is another issue where I disagree with that position.

And again, this is where we need to have a serious conversation about all of these aspects.

This is not a black or white issue.

There are many nuances of this.

And again, we need to have the conversations.

I happen to think contraception should be on the table.

And I do have a problem with the medical abortions.

That's a real problem because what happens with that is many women, they order this by mail.

They're not seeing the care of a doctor, they're not getting the medical treatment that they need and there are many complications due to that.

So that is another issue that is also going to be part of the conversation.

But I think it's important that we have these conversations and talk about all the issues that are part of this.

Again, it's not black or white, but have these conversations, whether we're talking about contraceptions, the medical abortion pills, all of these, and put it out there and have that talk.

- Gretchen, I see that you're having a reaction.

I have no idea.

I can't read your mind, but what are you thinking here?

- No, I mean, the medical evidence on medication abortion is in and very clear that medication abortion has a lower complication rate than Tylenol.

And that we have seen that there is a large amount of evidence to indicate that it is safe for women to take with telehealth providers that are providing across state lines, or to take it home on their own.

A lot of the difficulty with medication abortion is making sure that people are procuring it from safe sources and that they know what to expect and that they have the support when they are having an abortion on their own.

But it's very clear that mifepristone and misoprostol are safe drugs for women to take.

- Fatima, you've been shaking your head.

I see you over there shaking your head.

- I actually think the most important thing as I've been listening closely here is that if the real goal was the health of women who were pregnant, then you would actually start there.

You would start by ensuring that they have the care they need and when they need it, that there weren't barriers in place, that they weren't in the situation that they are now where they are forced to travel, where they're sometimes denied care, like some of our clients, which have put their health in deep jeopardy, that have situations that have made them less fertile in the future.

That is not what any of these laws are doing.

They are not about preserving the health of people who are pregnant and putting their lives, their futures, and certainly not their freedoms first.

- Katie, you agree with that clearly?

- Well, I mean, I'm thinking of those women in Texas that I know National Women's Law Center was involved in defending.

Amanda Zarowski was one of them.

When I saw her on the news, I was just like, she could be my friend.

We invited her at Red Wine and Blue to come and do a Zoom call with our community.

I think we had about a 1,000 women come and join.

This was a woman who at 18 weeks pregnant, she became septic.

There was no way she was going to be able to safely carry the pregnancy.

Due to state Texas laws, she had to wait until she was so sick, she was nearly going to die in order to get the abortion she needed.

These stories are happening in my state, in Texas, and states all across the country, and it's dangerous.

And when we see these stories that Fatima's describing when women like me connect with other women like Amanda, this is unleashing a force among women in this country who are saying we cannot live like this.

Not in America.

And so that's why I'm nodding my head so strongly.

(audience applause) - I just want to say that I'm really glad you're here today.

I want to say it out loud because I think very often the respectable conversations that we've all been alluding to and talking about is not really complete unless you have Alice Stewart or somebody channeling you as part of it.

And so I want to thank you 'cause I don't think it can be easy sometimes to be you.

I've watched a lot of tape of you and I've seen folks lash out at you and you're so calm.

Do you do yoga or something?

- I run a lot.

I run a lot and get all of my frustrations out as I pound the pavement.

And look, I think I taught a course on this at Harvard on civility and American politics, and I talk about how you engage in civil conversations and politics or on this issue.

You find common ground, you use compassion, you engage in conversation without confrontation, and you are civil with the other person.

And I think that's how we need to have these conversations is find where we have common ground.

Well, we can all agree we want women to have health and be healthy and have...

Whether when they're pregnant and get the healthcare that they need.

We can all agree on that.

And how do we have this conversation from that?

And I do think it's important.

I'm sitting here, obviously the lone voice on my side of this issue, but every January, hundreds of thousands of women and men and children go to Washington D.C. or places across the country and engage in a March for Life.

It is cold.

I mean, very cold.

They're out there marching for life because this is an issue that has been very important to them.

A week later or simultaneously, there's a Women's March and it's obviously a different ideology and it's a different mindset on this issue.

You do see a lot of media coverage on that.

Unfortunately, the pro-life community, the March for Life, and these organizations might not get quite the media attention that the other side of this conversation does, but I can assure you I'm not alone in where I stand.

There are people across this country that feel the same way I do.

There's obviously some a little more extreme than others, but there's a large portion of this country that will do anything and continue the fight for the sanctity of life.

- Gretchen, in terms of political force that we've been talking about, how do you see that playing out?

- Well, I disagree a little bit with some of the premise that folks in the pro-choice movement, in the reproductive justice movements, were surprised by the Dobbs decision.

I think a lot of us kind of knew where this was going, and I think that it really gives us an opportunity to rebuild to something better.

Roe was never the goal.

Roe should have always been the floor.

And it was about protecting rights at a very basic level, not about creating a world that really embraces reproductive justice and supports women in their choices, supports them in healthy pregnancies, supports them in parenting, and gives them the power to create the communities that they want to raise their families in, right?

And so I think that now we're kind of back to the drawing board in a lot of our states.

And a lot of blue states, a lot of governors, a lot of state legislatures, on the other side of the aisle, as their state governance is kind of limiting abortion rights and failing to care for families, it gives us an opportunity to pass the ballot measures that we've been working so hard on to reconceive of how we want to be taking care of people.

- So you're of the school that Roe was the floor, not the ceiling, I think is the expression that I've heard, that basically you're looking to expand on what was there and make something even... - Well, it's hard to say Roe was the floor, right?

Because that's gone.

So we found another floor, I guess.

But I think that it is about if Roe was the floor and that's gone, we just need to build a completely different house, right?

We just need to think very differently about how we're taking care of people.

- I got the phrase.

There was a piece in “The Nation” basically that talked about that.

(audience applause) Second round of applause.

I want to go back to the politics, Alice, because as you know, former President Trump is taking credit for having Roe overturned, but of late, he's talking about the fact that abortion is a loser in...

I mean, basically in politics.

He's openly talked about the fact that he's rethinking softer messaging because clearly he wants to win, should he be running again for president.

And you clearly have a core and a belief system that's unshakeable and a lot of people share that.

I know they do.

How are they going to... How do they feel about that, when they hear him talk about the fact that it's negotiable?

That basically it's politics.

It's not about policy.

- To follow up on the the last question you asked me or how do I make this case and have these conversations, I just want to say thank you for having me on here and engaging in this conversation with these very smart women.

And thank you for the audience for being so kind and respectful because it's important that we have this conversation.

As for that, look, the pro-life community will give Donald Trump great deal of kudos and credit for what he did do for the pro-life issue.

He campaigned and got the support of social evangelicals because he promised he would put three or as many justices as he could on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

He did do that, but now what he's trying to do is have it both ways.

He is pulling back saying that abortion was a big loser for us on the ballot in the last election.

I'm sorry, former President Trump was a big loser on the ballot last time.

He had us lose two Senate seats in Georgia.

The candidates that he endorsed and put forth in the primary, they lost because of Donald Trump, not because of abortion, but I digress.

What he's doing now is... What he's doing is he's trying to make a general election play.

He's saying that we need to have a more nuanced conversation on abortion and we need to not look at a six-week ban, which is what Ron DeSantis put in place in the state of Florida.

He's wanting to look at maybe a... Not a national ban, but let's look at having exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, which is common sense.

I think most people will agree to that.

He's trying to have it both ways.

But what I can tell you is those in the pro-life community, you can't play let's make a deal with abortion with them.

They are not happy.

They do not like the fact that Donald Trump is now trying to walk this back.

And they're speaking out in Iowa, in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

They're holding his feet to the fire saying, look, you got our support because you were 100% pro-life.

Now you're having it both ways.

That's going to come back to haunt him somewhat in the primary election.

But Donald Trump is running a general election campaign now, and he knows what he's saying now is going to be beneficial in a general election.

And I can't say I disagree with him on that because a more nuanced conversation on this, as again, Nikki Haley has mentioned, not demonizing the women and all of these other components, that's the correct way to go about in a general election, but he's trying to have it both ways.

- Fatima, we're back.

We're down to last questions.

I'm going to ask each of you a last question, and I'm going to go back to the start of the show when you talked about how the day that Dobbs came down, you felt like you've been punched in the gut.

- There's no question.

Oh, is there more of a question?

I'm sorry about that.

- Yeah, there actually is more.

That was my dramatic pause.

You have to wait a second.

Basically what I'm asking you is, I know that you're an advocate for women and girls.

You've always been an advocate.

You do everything from education to healthcare to workplace issues, you do it all.

But how do you... 'Cause it has to be...

It is personal for every woman, whether they agree with the decision or disagree with the decision.

How did you get past it?

- I am lucky enough to have as my career an ability to wake up every day and fight for women in this country and fight for justice and freedom.

And I know that in times like these, I have not only the privilege, but actually the responsibility to show up even when I'm in pain, even when it's hard and maybe because it's hard.

And so for the team at the National Women's Law Center, I will tell you, that was not easy to do for our movement.

It has not been easy this last year to push through.

And I think it's because we know we are fighting for ourselves, but we are fighting for everyone else too.

- Gretchen, you also posted an emotional letter on Substack.

You talked about the fact that abortion is moral is something that's so critical in our culture.

- Again, I'm here as a social scientist, right?

I work at a medical school, I'm surrounded by doctors all day.

My job is to collect the data and analyze it.

But to me, from all of the findings that my colleagues and I have found, published, put out in the world, it's clear that access to abortion is good for women, right?

They are healthier, they're more economically secure, they're better able to care for their families when they have access to the abortions that they want and need.

That means that abortion is good for our communities.

To me that means that abortion is a moral good in this world.

This is healthcare that people need to access.

And I don't have an equivalency about this.

I feel very clear that access to abortion is something that we need to be a society that cares for the people in it.

(audience applause) - Alice, I'm going to quote one of our favorite guests who's been on this show, Jerushah Duford, who, as you know, is Billy Graham's granddaughter.

And she came on the show and talked about the fact that for her, pro-life has to be from cradle to grave.

Part of what you did when you were speaking out before the election was in a sense tried to redefine what pro-life actually means.

I almost shriek a little bit when you say that I'm pro-life because what that means to so many people versus what it means to me, what it means to me is from birth to the grave in all different facets.

I think what has happened so often is that we fight so much for the unborn, and then when they cease to be unborn, we turn our backs.

I think we turn our backs on the mothers who choose life.

I think that all of the policies that you just listed, I think statistics show us that if you can improve healthcare, if you can improve poverty, if you can improve all of those things, that the abortion rates actually go down.

And so for me, when I was a young teenager, I remember thinking if I'm going to be pro-life, I also need to be pro-foster care and I need to be pro-adoption and I need to be pro all of the things that are leading these young mothers to feel like this is a decision that they have to make.

And so I hope that the term pro-life is starting to take a little bit of a turn to mean the whole person.

- You wrote an op-ed on CNN.com, I believe, basically saying the same thing.

That's part of your belief system too.

- Oh, it is, and I think it's important that we also respect life, in my view, this is my personal opinion, from inception until natural death.

And what Republicans are doing and what many are trying to include in this conversation is if we are going to support life and we're going to support and encourage women to choose life, we have to be able to provide for them.

And again, I've mentioned there are pregnancy care centers across the country that provide a lot of the services that they need, whether it's medical care or what the children need.

And as these conversations continue, we saw in Mississippi providing incentives for, whether it's individuals or corporations that want to support these care centers, they receive some benefits or tax incentives if they contribute and help these care centers.

So the pro-life community is trying to work public and private sector to make sure that we can care for children from the moment they're born until their natural death.

- Katie, I'm going to give you the last word because I happen to know that you actually do yoga.

You were spotted in the hall before the show, just saying.

There is so much vitriol and it's really ugly and it's painful.

And people say they want to get along and that's what everybody claims to want.

How do you... You're so calm.

How do you take the heat out of this issue?

And you have to be confronted with it, I'm sure on many occasions.

- It's being grounded in an incredible community of women.

It's being able to get up every day, like Fatima was saying, and get to fight for my values.

I think that we as human beings rely so deeply on community, a sense of belonging, and connection.

And every day I get to wake up and be consistent in terms of who I am as a person.

I'm a mom, I'm a daughter.

I'm an aunt, I'm a sister.

And also in my work, I bring my whole self in terms of who I am in all those things.

I'm also a Christian and so I bring all of my values to this work.

And I think that all of those things, if we come to this authentically, we are going to continue to increase that sense of connection among one another, and I believe in the power of that more than any political message.

If I can just... One last thing here.

Between Fatima, and Katie, and Gretchen, the thing that I am going to take away from this and I encourage all the viewers to take away, they believe so passionately about this and they're all doing something about it.

And for you watching, if there's an issue, whether it's this or whatever it is, if you're passionate about it, do something about it.

Don't just sit on the sidelines, really get involved.

And again, we view this differently, but I fully support anyone, if you're passionate, get into the game.

- I'm giving you applause.

(audience applause) Thank you.

Thank you for saying that.

And that's really important.

That's absolutely important.

I really do want to thank all of you.

Fatima, I'm sorry that you weren't with us, but next time.

We really appreciated you and your voice as being part of it.

So thank you for joining us.

Thank our fabulous guests.

And now it is time.

We always wrap up with a positive silver lining moment.

And today we're going to feature two extraordinary role models for girls and young women.

First, an update on Alena Analeigh Wicker, who at age 13 was the youngest black person ever to be accepted to medical school.

Now at the ripe old age of 14, Alina is about to graduate from Arizona State University with a double degree in biomedical sciences and global health.

Then she's off to med school.

She's still inspired by her mother's mantra: Never give up and never let someone tell you that you can't do something.

And when it comes to setting the standard for good citizenship, Taylor Swift is a rockstar.

After she posted an appeal asking her fans to register to vote, traffic on Vote.org spiked 1,200% with 13,000 new voters signing up every half hour.

As the mastermind herself would say, your vote is your voice.

Anyway, we're grateful to our extraordinary guests for their insights and inspiration and to you for joining us today.

Until we see you back here next time from the Frederick Gunn School in the other Washington, Washington, Connecticut, for Common Ground I'm Jane Whitney.

Take care.

(ambient music) (happy string music) (upbeat music)