A raw, unedited, unproduced reaction episode to the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Includes advice for how you can support abortion access and fight back, in both the short and the long term. The episode ends with a moment for reflection, featuring a song called "Animal" by Jean Rohe. In Jean's words, "'Animal' is a song about my own abortion experience, but ultimately much more: the things we can choose (or should be able to choose) in the garden of our lives, and all that lies beyond our control as mortal humans." May this song serve as a moment of un-silence, as together we mourn Roe and grieve for the millions of people who will now suffer as a result of being denied legal access to abortion.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, murders linked to domestic violence have risen dramatically, up 58% in the last decade. Guns are the most common weapon abusers use to kill their partners, and victims are usually women. And many of these perpetrators are not even allowed to have guns in the first place.

Under federal law, people convicted of a felony, a domestic violence misdemeanor, or who are subject to family violence protection orders are not allowed to have guns. But these laws usually are not enforced, and intimate partners pay the ultimate price. Federal gun laws and the vast majority of state statutes have a glaring loophole: they don’t address how to keep guns away from people who aren’t supposed to have them, nor do they create the legal infrastructure to keep victims, their families, and their communities safe from violent offenders. Instead, around most of the country, these gun laws are enforced on an honor system that puts the onus on people who are prohibited from possessing firearms to disarm themselves, with virtually no follow-through to ensure that they’ve done so. Often prosecutors don’t even go after these offenders once they know they’re in violation of the law; even more often, law enforcement doesn’t realize the perpetrator illegally possessed a firearm until it’s too late. 

Jennifer Gollan, an award-winning reporter for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, has spent over a year investigating and reporting on a series called When Abusers Keep Their Guns. From 2017 through 2020, Jennifer identified at least 110 intimate partners who were killed by offenders who were barred from having guns under federal and, in some cases, state law. This is certainly an undercount, as the federal government does not track the number of people prohibited from possessing firearms who go on to kill their intimate partners. 

Jennifer is on the podcast to dive into where the gaps are in the enforcement of these gun laws and how we can close them. We discuss both federal and state solutions to enact this common-sense gun reform.

LINKS:

Transcript of the podcast

Read the centerpiece of the investigation, Armed and Abusive: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims

Read the story, which Reveal published in partnership with The Guardian: How America’s Gun Laws Are Failing Domestic Violence Victims 

Listen to the Reveal podcast: When Abusers Keep Their Guns

Watch the documentary, produced in collaboration with Al Jazeera English’s “Fault Lines”: Unrelinquished

Reveal is staying on the story, and they need your help. Please tell them if you know of someone who was shot by a domestic violence offender who was prohibited from having a gun or if you are an official with information they should know.

Recently, Politico published a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case on the future of Roe v. Wade. Unsurprisingly for many in the reproductive rights community, Alito calls for the overturning of Roe. 

We know that overturning Roe will mean that millions of people of reproductive age will be without access to abortion care. But what does it look like when someone who otherwise wanted an abortion is forced to carry a pregnancy to term?

We don't have to imagine it, because the landmark Turnaway Study has already studied what happens when, due to gestational age limits, people who sought abortions were denied them and forced to carry their pregnancies to term. On today's episode is Dr. Diana Greene Foster, director of research at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health and author of the Turnaway Study,  which examines the effects of unwanted pregnancy on pregnant people's lives.

Dr. Greene Foster describes how the study was conducted and explains its main findings: that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of pregnant people, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health, and family outcomes. She describes the study's evidence that when people are unable to get wanted abortions, there are profound risks to their health and economic security, as well as a shift in the trajectory of their lives with negative effects on their relationships, aspirational plans, and the wellbeing of their children (because two-thirds of people seeking abortions are already parents).

As Dr. Greene Foster explains, "People across the country will still need abortion care but this Supreme Court leaked decision means that those who cannot circumvent a ban on abortion by travel or other means will experience long-term harm." 

LINKS:

- Read a written transcript of the episode here (remember that it's AI-generated, so it's not perfect)

- Read more about the Turnaway Study here

- Read Dr. Greene Foster's book, The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion