Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hi. My name is Carly Faulkner. I'm the co host of Spark by Révolutionnaire, where we pass the mic to voices who are not always heard and have candid and informative conversations. Today's episode, we'll be talking about reproductive rights.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Carly, co host of Spark by Révolutionnaire, and today I'll be talking about reproductive rights with Lauren Ellis and Jailyn Colbert.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: My name is Jailyn Colbert. I am a junior at Howard University studying legal, communication and international affairs. I am currently the vice president of Howard University's chapter of Planned Parenthood generation action, and I'm very excited to be speaking with you today.
[00:00:42] Speaker D: So, I'm Lauren Ellis. I have a bachelor of Arts from Marcos University in women's, gender and sexuality studies. I completed the department's senior honors thesis, where I focused on women and politics and how political leadership is framed around women. And I got to have a poll in the field about Vice President Kamala Harris during the election. I'm currently getting my master's in public administration from american university and an intern at the national Women's political caucus.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Definitely. There seems to be a lot of passion with reproductive rights. And can you guys speak a little bit about sort of what sparked your involvement in reproductive rights, and what does that mean to you?
[00:01:22] Speaker C: My introduction to reproductive justice started not too long ago. I've always felt, as a woman, a sense of responsibility, but I never really wanted to call myself a feminist.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Why is that?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Because of what I've seen, the mainstream feminist movement kind of portrays itself to be, especially with organizations like the Women's march and how they've been tied to kind of transgender exclusion. I never want to be a part of anything, especially something that's supposed to be inclusionary, that excludes certain types of women, especially women like me, black women. So I never really identified with the mainstream feminist movement. But last year, I was a part of an extraordinary organization called my sister's Keeper, and they had an introduction to reproductive justice, which is kind of the black woman's feminism movement.
And I just thought that it was so perfect to encompass what I feel my feminism represents, because it's so all encompassing. It's not just about really even birth. It's about everything that you need to bring a child into this world in a safe environment. You need food, stability, you need housing in all those things. And it encompasses very nuanced subjects like race and sexuality.
It doesn't really exclude anything. So I thought the reproductive justice movement and my more recent introduction to it really identified with me, and that's what really got me started on this journey.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So you said that reproductive justice movement is more inclusional and has more multifacetedness, or recognizes more multifacetedness with reproductive rights and mothers and what they have to deal with outside of just giving birth to children.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Exactly right. I totally get that. And then what about you? What sparked your reproductive rights movement?
[00:03:39] Speaker D: I don't even know when it started for me. My parents have always been fairly liberal and very open and honest and really said, whatever you want to do, you can go and do it. And I started to get more politically engaged, definitely when I was in high school, in the year running up to Donald Trump's election, I was a senior in high school the year he got elected. So my junior and senior year, it was kind of realizing that, wow, the world is changing in a way that is not okay for women. And then when I was a freshman in college, I actually started off getting my undergraduate degree in marine science, and I realized that was not what I wanted to study as much as I thought it had been. And my best friend was like, you are so passionate when you're talking about women's rights. You're so passionate when you're talking about pro choice issues. Go and study it. And I was like, okay, so I did. I took a class in the spring, and I changed my major. And it's kind of just been.
It's something I'm passionate about. Why do people who I don't know, who cannot correctly label a female anatomical diagram, get to decide what I do with my body?
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Right?
[00:04:52] Speaker D: And that was kind of always the crux of the issue for me is, like, why do you get to decide? You don't know my life. And it's also like, you don't care about the people you're seeking in this situation with the reproductive justice movement. They don't care about poor women. They don't care about black women. They don't probably care a whole lot about me as a privileged, upper class white woman. I mean, Cindy Lauper put it really well in an interview recently. Ted Cruz's daughters will always be able to get an abortion, but the women who clean his houses will not be able to.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Definitely.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: That's a lot to digest. But I think what really stuck out to me was you started off as a marine biologist, and suddenly something going on with politics kind of sparked your shift. Do you have any advice for people how to get involved in things that they're passionate about?
[00:05:44] Speaker C: With an institution like Howard, there's always something going on. There's always people even doing things as simple as going out once a week and volunteering at a soup kitchen at a women's shelter or something like that. Just finding that community and actually searching until you have found that community, that is probably your best bet in getting involved. And then once you have found a community that aligns with you and what you want to do for whatever community that you're in tuned with, then it's a matter of building up on that. It's sort of kind of how I got into generation action. I found them at the organization fair and I was like, oh, I know what Planned Parenthood does. I'm kind of just getting into women's rights and reproductive justice. So let me see what they're all about. And it was luckily an organization that was coming up. It wasn't established. It wasn't anything that I had to move through politics to get involved in. I wanted to get involved and they let me. Sometimes it's just that simple. Sometimes you want to get involved and there's organizations that just won't let you because of the politics. And that's why I used to be one of those politics is for everybody people. But I don't think politics is for everybody, and I don't think it's for me. I just want to go out and do the work. And for people who just want to go out and do the work, there's not going to be anything that can stop them from doing that.
[00:07:21] Speaker D: Very well said. Especially politics isn't for everyone. I've done some internships. I'm like, no thank, but like, there are so many organizations out there, and literally I found the internship I'm in now by googling women's organizations internships, and I found one of the oldest women's groups in politically. So sometimes it's just Google, Google Women's orgs that you can Internet Google.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Is your frame going back to where you guys talked about when you felt that you wanted to get heavily involved in reproductive justice, reproductive rights? It seemed like it was at sort of a stage in your life where you were noticing the politics around you and me, too. And I don't think that we knew growing up as little girls and then young women that our bodies were politicized. And do you guys think that that has to do with how sex education is being taught in schools?
[00:08:25] Speaker D: 100%.
I'm literally doing a project, one of my classes about menstrual education, and we have such a lack of menstrual education just as a woman, not even just a women's issue, because there are trans and nonbinary people who that affects as well. But we were talking, and it's a group of me, three other women and a guy, and we were like, wait, how long do you leave a tampon in for? And all of us came up with different answers, and we're all like, but if you leave it in too long, you could die.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:58] Speaker D: And the fact we don't have the consensus on what that number is, is concerning.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:09:02] Speaker D: The lack of education we have about what our bodies do is really bad in this country, versus.
We all had to label a male anatomy, but we don't have to do the same thing with female anatomy.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: Yeah, there's more.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Because when you said, when you can ask an older male politician, label parts of female anatomy in a diagram, and they might have a hard time doing that, most likely they'll have a hard time doing that. And I think tying it back into sex education and just basic gynecology, I think when you were talking about reproductive justice, not just reproductive rights, reproductive justice, that's inclusive to women of color and women of different economic statuses, and then just people with vaginas. Right. And I think it's interesting when we talk about the roots of gynecology and when it started from the experimentation of black women's bodies, it's not really talked about often, but we have speculum, the speculum that was created by a man who would buy black women and experiment on them with no anesthetics. And it's through the torture of black women or just disenfranchised women that we are able to have these basic form of gynecology. And it doesn't seem like we've expanded on that or made it better for women at all, or just people with vaginas at all.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: I had my first gynecologist appointment a couple of years ago, and I was like, this sucks.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: And that a lot. Yeah.
That's coming from someone who, we all have little privileges, but that's coming from somebody who I'm very privileged to have grown up in liberal Los Angeles, California. That comes with its ups and downs. There's still racism everywhere, no matter how liberal the place where you are is. But I'm in California. I have a female know. She's great, but it's not necessarily her. It's not necessarily the laws and stuff in place that are the problem. It's the foundation, like you said, of gynecology and these things that America really has trouble with changing. America does not, like, change at all.
And we have these barbaric, frankly, practices in place, and it's a 21st century.
Why are you using a metal, metal clamp to open my vagina? And it's like, I don't know you. Yeah, I just met you today. I'm butt naked in your office. Can we calm down for a second? Can we stop? But, yeah, I definitely get you. And I think a lot of the history behind things like that is a part of the reason black people, black women birthing people, don't trust doctors.
But we need doctors.
We need them to deal with the issues that affect black women so prevalently, like PCOs and fibroids and stuff like that. But we don't have a trust with that community, and they haven't given us a reason to trust them since the founding of those practices.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Right. And the founding of those practices were built on our pain.
[00:12:47] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: So I just definitely think that that's something that there needs to be reform a lot, not just sex education.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: But I want to move on to another question where I just want to.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Talk about sort of, what do we think that the future of reproductive rights looks like? And we talked about how we want this to be reform, want to speak standard upon. But what ways do you think, what can the outcome of that be?
[00:13:11] Speaker D: In all honesty, I'm hopeful, based on the election results, that even in red states, ballot measures in Michigan and Vermont both had specific clauses about forced sterilization, which dates back to how poorly women of color have been treated by medical establishments, even down to like, Henrietta Lax, who is in the past century and all of the medical advancements we now have because of her. Because of her and her ovarian cancer that was probably not treated correctly because she was a black woman. Yeah, actually, no, it wasn't treated correctly because she was a black woman, let's be honest. But I'm slightly hopeful. Democrats kept one or kept two key governorships in states where they're trying to have abortion laws. In Arizona, they're trying to have a pre statehood abortion law be the law of the state.
In Wisconsin, they're trying to have a similar, like, from 1840s abortion law be the law on the books. But now that Tony Evers has been reelected, he's going to try and fight that off. I think it's holding Democrats feet to the fire and saying women, especially women of color, are the reason you're in office.
You have said you're going to do things, actually do them right, because our rights are not your bargaining chip. You get to use every two to four years and say, we're going to protect you.
Okay, you can say that there wasn't a need for it until the Dobbs decision, but really we saw that coming. We saw the laws changing in states slowly. And you could have done something.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: I think that really speaks to sort of what can others do, people who don't have vaginas or people who are in relationships with other people where abortion is not something that's always on their mind or reproductive rights is not on their mind, how can we speak to their allyship and how important that is in order to make sure that more is done for reproductive justice?
[00:15:18] Speaker C: I believe wholeheartedly that Democrats and liberals in the reproductive justice, in rights and fight need better PR.
I think they take having the mainstream's ear and having Hollywood's ear extremely for.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:39] Speaker C: And I think politicians do this every year, but I think they really drop the ball with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I really, really do. And it's left a very sour taste in my mouth for moderate Democrats to not only have seen this coming for not. I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt. 20 years.
Conservatives have not been shy about their disgust with Roe v. Wade since it was implemented. And they've been working, grassroots working.
That's been their thing. If it's not taxes, they're talking about abortion.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Yeah, they've definitely politicized it. And that's how they get a lot of their voters out, is they weaponize it.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:16:29] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker C: And there are people, now you have people who are voting for a candidate, they're voting for a governor, they're voting for a president based on one issue, and that one issue is abortion, and that's extremely dangerous. You could be the most immoral person, but you will have evangelical Christians voting for you because you say, I am pro life and that's extremely dangerous. And I don't think that the democratic party is taking that seriously enough.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: At all.
[00:17:02] Speaker D: Yeah, they're not. I don't think they are. I remember you were the person who told me Dobbs had happened. It had ruled Roe had been overturned.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:12] Speaker D: And I remember feeling numb, but I was like, what is going to happen? And it is like, yeah, voting needs to happen. But the Republicans are trying to run some really crazy candidates. There was a guy who unseated a run of the mill, fairly standard Republican in the Michigan first. His name was John Gibbs. He thought the 19th amendment was a mistake and that women being in the workplace is a bad thing because we caused the sexual harassment lawsuit. Thankfully, he lost to a woman. A female Democrat flipped the district, which is great, but why are Republicans running those candidates? Why are evangelicals in Georgia overwhelmingly voted for Herschel Walker, who has paid for women to have abortions over a reverend.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:03] Speaker D: How?
[00:18:04] Speaker C: I didn't want to say his name, but that's exactly who I was referring to. Because you're voting for these people who directly in practice, are against what you claim to be for, but because they say out of their mouth, I am pro life, I will block any Democrat attempt to protect women's reproductive rights regardless.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Of what they do behind the camera.
[00:18:29] Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah, I'm voting for you because I'm pro life. You said it out loud.
I thought we were past believing politicians at their word. Yeah, but these people, like you said, reproductive justice is not in their everyday life. Reproductive rights are in their everyday life. They have their wide picket fence, they have their two kids, and they have their secrets. And that's why they don't crucify men like Herschel Walker when they find out about his past. As long as he presents and says what they want to hear, they're voting for him. And then these Democrats, they come out the woodwork when these tragic things happen and they say, we need to mobilize. Give me more money. And that leaves a nasty taste. You're not getting anything done. But you keep asking me for my money.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:24] Speaker C: And I'm still on the ground fighting for my rights.
And you're sitting in a chambers giggling with these people once the session ends.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah. It seems to be definitely a disconnect between grassroots movements and just the Democrat.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: The top of the top of the.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Democratic party, because they're not organizing how the Rehogan party was in the 60s. No, not at all. When they were getting their grassroots movement out, connecting to local evangelicals from around the country and mobilizing on pro life. And it just seems.
Definitely, it just seems like we need more grassroots coalitions, basically, people uniting and getting these, talking about more things like this, like education, sex education reform, reproductive justice, and to end it off on sort of a high note.
[00:20:23] Speaker C: I wanted.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: To ask, what are some of the.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Initiatives that generation action are doing to sort of further this movement or further this conversation along?
[00:20:35] Speaker C: So, luckily, generation action is building from the ground up. So we have the privilege of being able to kind of build our initiative with these innovative ideas that we hope will work and we hope we can get people to rally around. But mostly we're focused on educating the Howard community because you can't use your resources if you don't know what they are. And you would be surprised how many women Howard is like, 60% female. Might be a little more than.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: We call it the new Spellman.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: We're basically an all girls school.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: But you would be hard pressed to find people who know all of the services that Planned Parenthood offers. And even the men on campus should know.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:30] Speaker C: Because they don't just offer the. Planned Parenthood is where you go get abortions. It's not. You can go get health care there.
There's so many resources that Planned Parenthood has to offer that people just don't know about and that the community has to offer that people just don't know about, and that kind of ties into the reproductive justice lens. We want to help you flourish in all capacities with knowledge, exactly what rights.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: You have, exactly what access or what's available to you.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Yeah. So that's our number one priority, is educating the Howard community, and then hopefully, we can spread it out to the Shaw wider area.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Go down U Street.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Do you know you're.
Yeah.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: And then, so to remind the people again of your internship. And for those who don't know what is sort of going on with your internship. And you said it was the.
[00:22:30] Speaker D: One of the national Women's political caucus is one of the oldest female political groups in America. It was founded by Gloria Steinem and Congresswoman Bell Abzig and Shirley Chisholm and a bunch of feminists at their time. It was a nonpartisan, and it still is, multi partisan political group that was going for support the era and eventually became also a pro choice group if you want to look at mobilization. As much as I dislike her take village LA athletes tactics, she got a bipartisan issue to become partisan faster than you can say. Nice.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
She did not play around.
[00:23:10] Speaker D: She did not play around. No. The NWPC endorses candidates. So we were, I think, pretty successful this election cycle. You can go on our social medias, which are NWPC national, if you search that on most of them, and you can see which candidates we endorse and which candidates won. We're really happy that Laura Kelly got elected. We're really happy about Katie Hobbs'election for Arizona and keeping women's reproductive rights safe in Arizona. So it was fun. And we also got to talk to some of our endorsed candidates. Those clips are on our social medias. Some amazing women, including Odessa Kelly in Tennessee, who, unfortunately, did not win. But that was one of the most amazing conversations I've ever had about southern voters and making sure we can talk to southern voters, because there's very much like, I live in New Jersey. People in New Jersey do not understand how people in the south work, and vice versa. So I think also just like, bridging that, bridging that gap. And if you want to get involved with NWPC, live on their website, it has a really rich history of supporting women in politics because we need women in politics to get women's issues talked about.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Anything you guys are specifically excited coming up, whether it's in your internships or organizations that you hope or look forward.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: To in the future that will help.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: I'm just excited to get people's ear to be able to actually make a difference. We make individual differences. Almost every time we have an event, somebody is like, oh, I didn't know about you guys. And we're like, yeah, follow us at gen action h u g E n action h u on everything and keep up with us because we just want to help.
[00:25:12] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm excited to see what keeps happening with abortion rights on a state level, especially because all five ballot measures pass. And I think Kentucky, they're already trying to contest it. Like, the AG is like, wait, basically that didn't go the way we hoped, so we want to nullify that vote.
So I'm excited to see what states are doing to protect reproductive rights in their states. There's obviously some states that, like Arkansas, where it was born, that I'm like.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Don'T know if I have much hope.
[00:25:45] Speaker D: There, but I definitely think states like Arizona and Wisconsin and Michigan are going to be really important states to look at over the next two years before we head into the presidential.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Lauren Jalen, thank you so much for coming on and talking to me. It was really educational, very inspiring. And stay tuned for more of sparked by revolutionaire.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Hey, y'all, make sure that y'all stay tuned for more episodes for Sparked by Revolutionnaire.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: And follow us on TikTok and Instagram.
[00:26:11] Speaker D: At Revolutionnaire Co. See you later. Don't.
