Background Reading:

• “Telemedicine Abortion Provider Rebecca Gomperts Gets Abortion Pills Into the Hands of Those Who Need Them: ‘It’s a Privilege’” — Ms. magazine
• LISTEN: “Torn Apart: Terror”

Transcript:

00:00:05 Michele Goodwin: 

Welcome to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. As you know, we’re a show that reports, rebels, and we tell it just like it is. On our show, history matters. We examine the past as we think about the future, and in this episode, I’m on the road. 

I’m in Amsterdam at the office of Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician and activist for women’s rights, human rights for reproductive health, rights, and justice. She is the fearless founder of Women on Waves and Women on Web. She’s provided reproductive healthcare services for women who are most vulnerable, who’ve been criminalized and criminally punished for seeking access to abortion, contraception, and just taking care of their healthcare needs.

It’s a real pleasure to sit down with her on a chilly morning, as we talk about Women on Waves, the state of reproductive healthcare around the world, and also, the what’s next project, which is Women on Web. 

Rebecca, it’s a pleasure to be with you and to be with you in your office in Amsterdam, a real honor given what you’ve done all around the world to help women. Can you tell us a bit about Women on Waves and why it is that you started this important venture, organization, movement?

00:01:36 Rebecca Gomperts:

So, Women on Waves was founded in 1999 with the aim to provide abortions to women living in places where there’s no safe abortion, so where it’s illegal, and the idea behind it is that if you have a ship and you go to international waters, then it’s the law of the boat, where the boat is registered, that applies, so that the local abortion laws don’t apply anymore.

And at that time, I had been, I was trained as an abortion provider. I had worked in Africa, and I’d seen women almost dying from hemorrhages and complications from unsafe abortions, and I had worked with Greenpeace. So, these two things came together and that was the start of Women on Waves.

00:02:22 Michele Goodwin:

Around what time? What year?

00:02:23 Rebecca Gomperts:

This was in 1999. And so, of course, it was just an idea at the beginning and then, you know, you start collecting people around you that can help fulfill the idea, and most of course, important of course, money. And so, there was a group of ten funders, women funders, that came together, and they were mobilized by another big feminist here in the Netherlands.

So, I’m standing on shoulders of the Dutch feminist movement that, you know, that has been working here since the 60s, for legalized abortion for same-sex marriage, for you know, all kinds of women’s rights. And they funded the first campaign of Women on Waves, which was in 2001 when we sailed with a boat to Ireland and…

00:03:15 Michele Goodwin:

Were you afraid?

00:03:17 Rebecca Gomperts:

No, I don’t…I wasn’t afraid, but it was a strange time because what was interesting is that just before we sailed there, first of all, we had support from a US organization, the Feminist Majority, and they sent two security people, a former FBI woman, who had investigated the bombings of the clinics in the US in the 80s and the 90s, and another very nice woman, I don’t exactly know what her specialty was. And they were there to train the local women’s groups, to train us how to handle any possible, you know, aggression from anti-abortion groups.

But just before we went there, we found out that one of the killers, the killer of Dr. Slepian, he had found refuge in Ireland for years, and they had just located him and he had fled to France where he was arrested, but it made us aware of, you know, actually how nasty the anti-abortion groups are if you give refuge to somebody who’s a killer. So, we became a little bit more concerned, but we had a security firm that was going to secure us. The Feminist Majority Foundation, they spoke with the police. So, we did everything to make sure that we were safe.

00:04:44 Michele Goodwin:

And so, you begin this and you start in Ireland. Why choose Ireland versus any other part of the globe?

00:04:51 Rebecca Gomperts:

Well, we had, actually, the initial idea was to go to Mexico, to go to Chile, to a Latin American country, but the logistics, you know, I mean, then we would have to have buyership, it was much more expensive, we’ve never done that, so you know, nobody was going to fund us to do that.

We had a small grant. We had, you know, just a small amount of money. We had 100 thousand gilders at the time. And so, Ireland was close by, it was logistically possible. We were able to rent the ship for that kind of amount of money that could sail to Ireland. We were able to build a mobile treatment room in collaboration with an artist, and so it made it feasible to do a campaign in Ireland. Also, it’s English language, so it was easier. We had also considered going to Poland, but Poland is a different language, that makes things, you need translators, it makes things more complicated.

So, and most importantly, the women’s rights groups in Ireland. They were very excited to work with us, and there has been a history of, you know, work around this issue. So, that was, of course, the first precondition, is there any women’s groups that was willing to work with us on this.

00:06:04 Michele Goodwin:

Well, and it made so much sense when you think about Ireland, although what’s also interesting is that that’s nearly 25 years ago, right? The first to start, and then it was, you know, over 20 years ago, Ireland. And so, there are people who may be listening who listen through our Ms. in the classroom or people who are just in college now who might not understand just how hard women were fighting in Ireland for reproductive freedom 25 years ago.

00:06:35 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yes. It was extremely difficult. It was really totally illegal in Ireland, and even helping somebody to travel was illegal. Like now in Texas, there were, you know, women that had died because of unsafe abortions. But you know, what they said in Ireland is, oh, women can easily travel to England, so that was always the government. They said, well, abortions, yes, but not here.

But what was also interesting, the word abortion was such a taboo you could almost not mention it, and at that time, people were talking about reproductive health instead of, you know, well, they actually meant abortions.

00:07:18 Michele Goodwin:

Of course. Right.

00:07:19 Rebecca Gomperts:

And so, it was a huge taboo. And I think what the ship did, it did some really important things by working together with the groups on the ground. First of all, there was a group that was formed with the boat campaign, Doctors for Choice, and another group, Lawyers for Choice, and they were…so, there were these groups that came together and they were essential in continuing the fight for legal abortion after we, the boat left.

And of course, also after that, we started Women on Web, which was a telemedical abortion service because after the ship’s campaign, we got so many emails from all over the world asking, where is the boat, we need an abortion now, come here.

00:08:05 Michele Goodwin:

Sail to us, yes.

00:08:06 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yes, come and sail to us. So, people were thinking that there was a fleet of ships, you know, sailing all across the world. And then, we realized, you know, the evolution of abortion pills hadn’t started yet, it was only just on the market in the Netherlands, and in the rest of Europe it was already available in Sweden and in France, but it was not very well known. So, we were actually at the birth of this abortion pill revolution, and I think we were very much part of it, and we have helped to create a lot of awareness around it, and to train women’s rights organizations, and a lot of the underground movement because we really were for democratization of this movement very early on. 

During the campaign in Portugal, which was in 2004, we actually published on our website how women can do an abortion themselves. It was the first time…

00:08:58 Michele Goodwin:

Well, tell us about that because that’s also quite revolutionary, and we also see now pushback that’s taking place 20 years after that in the United States where women are being criminalized, so what was that like 20 years ago in Portugal leading that movement?

00:09:15 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, so I think that in Portugal…so, in Portugal it was the same situation as in Ireland. There had just been a mass legal case against, I think, 16 women and a nurse that the nurse had helped the women to do an abortion. The women there were not convicted, but the nurse was convicted, and actually I visited her in prison and we submitted a bill for her with the European Court of Human Rights at that time.

But there had been already a little bit more history about kind of pushing the envelope. There had already been some legal proposals to try to…there was a very strong Communist movement there as well, actually in Ireland as well, which is very interesting.

00:09:56 Michele Goodwin:

Right.

00:09:58 Rebecca Gomperts:

Both the countries had a very strong Trotskyist or Communist or movement, Marxist movement, and these were most of the women’s group, of course, that were a part of that. 

00:10:24 Michele Goodwin:

If you’re just joining me, this is your host, Michele Goodwin, and I’m joined in this interview by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts. She’s a Dutch physician and founder of Women on Waves and Women on Web. In 1997, she sailed with Greenpeace on a ship called Rainbow Warrior II as a resident physician and also as an activist devoted to environmental justice.

In part, it was her travels with Greenpeace that sparked her interest in bringing reproductive healthcare services to women who so desperately needed them in areas where those services just simply were not available or in fact, where they were criminalized.

00:11:12 Rebecca Gomperts:

But and what happened in Portugal is that the ship was stopped in international waters by warships, so it was a very right-wing government. They sent warships to stop the ship from getting in.

00:11:23 Michele Goodwin:

Wait. Wait. So, just a moment. So, here you are attempting to reach these women to provide them reproductive healthcare, abortions. You’re stopped by warships.

00:11:37 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yes. We were stopped by warships. It was kind of…

00:11:41 Michele Goodwin:

You can’t make that up, right?

00:11:42 Rebecca Gomperts:

No, you can’t. But even, I mean, I think every of these campaigns have been…we have, you know, encountered different challenges. In Poland, we were there the year before, there were very aggressive anti-abortion protestors and they tried to chain the ship, and we had to pay a fee, and then they were searching all the women for abortion pills. I mean, it’s been crazy, the kind of the mobilization that it caused.

But it also, we also mobilized the public, and every time after we did a campaign, opinion polls showed that the majority of people supported legalization of abortion.

00:12:22 Michele Goodwin:

Yes. Yes. It affects so many people’s lives. Okay, so I interrupted that because you were telling the story about Portugal, but I got cut off in warships.

00:12:31 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:12:31 Michele Goodwin:

Right? What it…you bring a battleship to take down a woman, right, and to take down women’s healthcare. Okay, so tell us about that campaign then in Portugal because it meant a shift also, an advancement in terms of what you were doing.

00:12:46 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, so we were already working on finding a way to do telemedical service. I already started that research. And then, but you know, it was…when we were stopped by the warships, we had a court case against the government, we lost it, and then the next day we said, okay, now we’re going to tell women how to do their own abortion because misoprostol was available over the counter in Portugal at that moment, nobody knew it.

So, we published on our website the instructions how to do it, and it was still very careful, like, oh, you know. And it was interesting because there were questions in the Dutch Parliament about that we did that, that whether we were not violating the law and they were investigating us for doing that. But we were, because we were—

00:13:31 Michele Goodwin:

Warships in Portugal, investigations in the Netherlands.

00:13:36 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah. But because we were using the generic name of misoprostol and not the brand name, you know, we were not, you know, publicizing for our medicine. But I mean, these are all the things. So, and that was really interesting because that meant that we got a lot of more emails asking us about, you know, if people didn’t understand things or asking, I can’t find the pills, can you please send it to me.

So, and then a year later Women on Web was launched in 2006. April, 2006, it was launched. And so, Portugal was one of the first countries that was kind of a lot of requests. And then, because of the campaign, the government fell, there were elections, there was a referendum in Portugal. I know Portugal was legalized in 2007.

So, the campaign and…but it was also a huge effort of the online, you know, of the local communities, and again, a group called Doctors for Choice. The professionals’ voices are incredibly important in this, but also youth groups. I mean, they went door to door, you know, to talk to people, to convince people, like what happened in Ireland in, when was it again, 2019, I think.

00:14:52 Michele Goodwin:

Okay, right, exactly.

00:14:55 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:14:55 Michele Goodwin:

And so, there’s Ireland, there’s Portugal.

00:14:58 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:14:59 Michele Goodwin:

Right. And then, you travel from there where, because we’ve already mentioned the chaining of the ship and the searching of women in Poland.

00:15:09 Rebecca Gomperts:

In Poland. That was in 2003, so that was before the Portugal campaign. The problem with Poland was that there was a momentum to legalize abortion at that moment as well. There was a socialist government. They were supportive of abortion rights, but because of the European, the access to the European Union they were afraid too, and in upcoming elections they were afraid to put it on the ballot. And so…

00:15:38 Michele Goodwin:

Do you think that was a mistake?

00:15:40 Rebecca Gomperts:

It was because after that it was a super conservative government and fundamentally Christian, fundamentalist this government for a long, long, long time, and the rights have just been chopped away. And so, I think that is mistake always when progressive parties shy away of abortion rights because they think they can gain votes, and that is something what has been happening time after time after time after time.

00:16:03 Michele Goodwin:

Yeah. And they misunderstand the power of democracy that is connected with abortion. I mean, we see that even in the United States post Dobbs and the ballot initiatives. So, far out of almost ten, even seven, and each time it’s been abortion rights prevailing.

00:16:27 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:16:27 Michele Goodwin:

Whether it has been to affirmatively ensconce in states and constitutions the right to abortion or to keep bans on abortion out of states’ constitutions. Each time we’ve seen people showing up to vote. The one consideration will be matters of voter suppression in the United States, which have always existed, were protected through the Voting Rights Act, but since it’s dismantling under a conservative court it means that that kind of strategy might suffer in those states where there’s tremendous voter suppression.

But the story that you’re telling is one about democracy, democratization too that has come through the work that you’ve been doing, Women on Waves and then it’s outgrowth is sort of tenacle spread to websites and telemedicine.

00:17:23 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:17:24 Michele Goodwin:

Yeah.

00:17:25 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:17:26 Michele Goodwin:

So, Ireland, Portugal…

00:17:29 Rebecca Gomperts:

I think it’s very fundamental to a process of democracy, and also because it really…the vote, but the other campaigns that we did. And even Women on Web through its publications, research, what it has done, it has been able to really amplify the choices, the voices of women’s rights, local women’s rights groups, but also women themselves. And we don’t…we need to have the strategies to amplify our voices because otherwise, they’re lost. And yeah.

00:18:08 Michele Goodwin:

So, then with this momentum that began and the success right away, were you then able to further amplify by being able to duplicate efforts and go to further places? What did this mean for the other places that you wanted to go because as you mentioned, Central and South America, those sort of parts of Africa? What was the story and engagement around some of those places that were non-European?

00:18:37 Rebecca Gomperts:

So, we had a different strategy there, a little bit similar, but what we started doing is training women’s right organizations in how do you give information about use of misoprostol through hotlines, and the first one was in Ecuador in 2008. We already had a help line as part of the ship, and also after the ship in Portugal left, we had kept the help line going. So, there was somebody, you know, giving all that information about using misoprostol to all the women there and sometimes we were sending it, but we realized that in its self is a really valid strategy.

And so, we started training women’s rights organizations to democratize that knowledge. It has been around already for a long time. The first medical abortion ever done was in Sweden in 1969, and that was with misoprostol-like medicine, and it was published in The Lancet in 1970. So, every gynecologist around the world knew about it, but at the time, and it’s still a problem, but I think less so, the medical community was very, you know, protective of the knowledge that it had.

And so, we played, I think, a very important role in democratizing that knowledge and putting it where it belongs…

00:19:59 Michele Goodwin:

Do you think that that…

00:20:00 Rebecca Gomperts:

…in the hands—

00:20:00 Michele Goodwin:

…had a lot to do with the fact that there was very clear, a feminist approach, a women’s-led approach, that then made it different from what came at prior times, that women being involved in these matters meant a different type of articulation and a boldness?

00:20:21 Rebecca Gomperts:

No. I think actually it might have to do with the fact that the medical community was so male before.

00:20:27 Michele Goodwin:

Yes, this is my point, right? Exactly. But that’s exactly my point, that it was so male before, and then here you come…

00:20:34 Rebecca Gomperts:

So, in this…yeah.

00:20:34 Michele Goodwin:

…and these are their women, and you’re saying, no, we’re not going to why away from using the term abortion, and we’re going to say put it on ballots, and we’re going to say let’s work the political process, and let’s not be shy about it and keep it only to ourselves.

00:20:49 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yes. I think it’s very…and I think that, yes, definitely. Yeah. But I do believe that the fact that the medical professional has female-ized a lot as well. It has also been useful. I mean, my partner in crime was a Dutch gynecologist, who was very radical in these things and very supportive. And so, I think that was definitely very important.

00:21:22 Michele Goodwin:

What comes ahead now? So, one thing that’s interesting is you think about Roe v. Wade, 1973, and in the United States it’s kind of turned, this beacon that decriminalizes abortion, and in that decision itself, which most people haven’t read, they know snippets of it, you know, part of it invests so much power in doctors, but it’s also a decision that interestingly enough really recognizes the curse that law had placed against women and society.

Justice Blackmun, in this case, talks about how not…when women don’t have access to abortion it affects educational possibilities. It affects careers. It affects their health. It affects their mental health. In so many different ways, it really sort of humanized, contextualized, just how much women as full citizens suffered when they didn’t have access to abortion. Most people don’t know that part of the case.

And so, now, fast forward, in the United States there’s been Dobbs, which strips all of that away in a Supreme Court decision that pays no attention to maternal mortality, maternal morbidity, nothing about women and careers…

00:22:42 Rebecca Gomperts:

…nothing.

00:22:44 Michele Goodwin:

…like nothing.

00:22:43 Rebecca Gomperts:

No.

00:22:45 Michele Goodwin:

Now, this is citing back to people who died four or five hundred years ago, men who supported coverture and wrote about women not having independent identities from their husbands. That’s a Dobbs decision. So, it’s interesting to now see the flip. We’ve talked about countries like Ireland, right, decriminalization, and there’s Portugal, these places in Central and South America.

00:23:09 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. But I also have to say I hear you, and especially today when I read that actually, there is an increased birthrate in the country in the states where the abortion was banned, and that breaks my heart because we know these are not wanted children. And it’s extremely sad that we know these are, you know, people that are living in the most vulnerable situations.

00:23:48 Michele Goodwin:

If you’re just joining me, this is your host, Michele Goodwin, and I’m joined by Rebecca Gomperts in her office in Amsterdam. She’s a Dutch physician and the founder of Women on Waves and Women on Web. Rebecca is a pioneering physician. At the age of 25 while working in Guyana as a doctor in training, she came to see the reality of the botched bodies, the sepsis after illegal abortions, really, for the first time in her life.

She later decided to base her career around providing help to women who so desperately need reproductive healthcare services, particularly abortions, and in countries where they otherwise would be illegal, and the women and doctors prosecuted for obtaining them. Let’s turn back to this interview.

00:24:51 Rebecca Gomperts:

But the flipside of it is that there was already a problem with abortion access in the US long before Dobbs.

00:24:58 Michele Goodwin:

That’s true.

00:24:58 Rebecca Gomperts:

Long before.

00:24:59 Michele Goodwin:

That’s true.

00:25:00 Rebecca Gomperts:

And the cost of an abortion was way too high. There were affected people had to travel distances, and I think it was…there was knowledge about it. But what happened with telemedical abortions in the US, it dropped the price incredibly and making it so much more available for a huge group of poor people.

I mean, before there was no abortion services under $600, and even if you had a grant that would cover it and you know, you were lucky you could get $300, so you still had to pay $300. If you don’t have $100 you certainly are not going to have $300.

00:25:38 Michele Goodwin:

That’s right. Well, and if you have to pay rent, if you have to pay your cell phone bill, if you have to give your children money for lunch for school, you know, all these basic kinds of things…

00:25:47 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, that’s the process.

00:25:49 Michele Goodwin:

…these are the choices, and some real risks for women. Because just thinking about the economics of this, you’ve just said that birthrates increasing in states that have banned or severely constrained abortion rights in the United States, and that for so many unwanted and unintended pregnancies, and then what that pragmatically means for people who already have kids, that they struggle to…

00:26:19 Rebecca Gomperts:

Maintain.

00:26:20 Michele Goodwin:

…maintain and support. Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body, from years ago and most recently, and that’s a famed award-winning book, and most recently published a book called Torn Apart, and we have just a terrific podcast series that she is doing as a four-part series on this book. 

And Torn Apart shows how so much of family policing that leads to children being taken away from their parents. It’s not a matter of parents beating up their children, but it’s questions of poverty, like too poor, and the state, when you’re really poor, coming in and policing your family and then taking your kids away from you.

00:27:03 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But actually, it’s the same here. I think it’s awful.

00:27:11 Michele Goodwin:

It’s awful, right? I mean, this is part of the story, isn’t it?

00:27:16 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, it’s part of the story. Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s a saying that says where the priest is saying to the capitalist, if you keep them poor, I’ll keep them dumb.

00:27:30 Michele Goodwin:

Just let that sink in.

00:27:34 Rebecca Gomperts:

It’s [unintelligible], isn’t it?

00:27:35 Michele Goodwin:

Right. Right. It absolutely is. So, then, what’s the strategy or strategies going forward? What are the things that you’re thinking about now in terms of how you continue in this fight?

00:27:54 Rebecca Gomperts:

Well, again, as I said, what I think is really important is that at this moment there are free abortion services in US. That was never the case before, ever. People can get abortion pills for free. They can get support for free. They can get guidance for free. That is an amazing situation in itself.

And I think we really, as a country, I mean, I’m not from the US, but with Aid Access for example, I work now with Aid doctors that are working day and night to send out the abortion pills to women in all the states, in all the states, right?

00:28:31 Michele Goodwin:

Well, in fact, on that point, during the last administration, during the Trump Administration you were being sued.

00:28:38 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yes, I was…well, I was…yeah, I wasn’t being sued.

00:28:41 Michele Goodwin:

What was that? There was the legal entanglement where they wanted to stop your work of helping to provide these services, or there was abortion pills. Can you…

00:28:55 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, so I had started Aid Access in 2018, actually because we started getting a lot of requests from the US, and together with the…and the research here in Texas we said we can only understand really what’s going on better if we can actually provide the services. 

So, I started Aid Access and we started analyzing the data, which showed that 70 percent of the women that used Aid Access could not afford an in-clinic abortion. Fifty percent of came to Aid Access because of privacy reasons because they wanted to keep it a secret for the family or their partners or…and another 50 percent, they preferred to use telemedical services because it was empowering for them to be able to take care of their own abortion.

And we should really also address this. It’s not only a default because there’s no other reasons. It’s also that many people prefer to be able to handle their abortion by themselves with a friend or somebody with them, and it’s supported by health organization that you can do an abortion by yourself without a doctor, with a nurse, without a pharmacist, with just the right information, and that is what is the reality.

And so, I think that that in itself is such a powerful, such a powerful message that all the abortion rights groups have to embrace that and start working towards providing these telemedical services. There are now many states that have adopted so-called shield law states, which means its providers that are working in there are protected against legal prosecution from the other states.

And there’s now two services available. It’s Aid Access. We started doing this in June, and then there’s another service base in Massachusetts that’s also doing it, but there could be more. I mean, there’s space for many more, you know. 

So, I think that the on-the-ground work has to be to make sure that all the doctors, all the nurses, all the midwives, all the doulas, all the friends that have somebody that gets our contact by somebody that needs an abortion that they refer to telemedical abortions if they’re less than 13 weeks pregnant, and if they’re longer than 13 weeks pregnant we can, you know, there is funds that can help them travel, but don’t spend the funds out there to give, to help people travel before 13 weeks of pregnancy because I think there’s enough resources, but we really need to use it well.

00:31:29 Michele Goodwin:

Well, and what you’re also expressing is the importance of information such that people even know and…

00:31:37 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah.

00:31:40 Michele Goodwin:

…cutting through so much of the misinformation because…

00:31:42 Rebecca Gomperts:

And the fear.

00:31:43 Michele Goodwin:

And the fear. Right.

00:31:44 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, because there’s a lot of fear mongering, and women cannot be criminalized officially. None of the laws at this point still is criminalizing women, at least up till viability. Some of the states have prosecuted. I mean, I think it was 60 prosecutors, but that was over a period of 20 years before Roe was overturned, and so that is…and these were really late abortion cases. They were using other laws in the books to criminalize women.

But the fear mongering has to stop as well because we get so many emails from women that are scared that they will break the law, and it will make it so much harder for them and so much more anxious to go through this process, and they will be scared to go to, you know, a first aid if they need to, if they have a complication, which is very rare. We hardly see it, but if they have to go, we want them to be able to go and not to be afraid and scared to be prosecuted, as long as if the correct information and say that they had a miscarriage and not that they took abortion pills.

00:32:53 Michele Goodwin:

Right. Well, on that point and before I let you go, just in terms of again, piercing through the misinformation and to give even a comparison, so dialysis, diabetes. People around the world have diabetes. Dialysis is one of the ways in which there is an intervention for people who have end-stage renal failure associated with diabetes. There are people who have dialysis machines at home.

00:33:25 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yes.

00:33:26 Michele Goodwin:

These big machines, they’re putting thick needles in their arm, cleansing their blood, having to sit there with this machine several hours at a time in their home. No one questions…

00:33:41 Rebecca Gomperts:

No.

00:33:42 Michele Goodwin:

…the ability for people to take care of dialysis at home and not go into a clinic three days a week for four hours at a time, and yet, as you say, there’s this fear mongering whether women have the capacity to swallow pills.

00:34:00 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah. And I would even make another comparison. I mean, in every drugstore you can buy bleach or really dangerous things that when you swallow it, you die, but we rely on people using products the right way because otherwise, you know, you just have to do everything for everybody. So, part of being a human is that you take responsibility and make decisions about, you know, about what you do, did you educate yourself? That’s part of who we are, and we never question that on any other thing that is being sold in a store.

So, it’s really the fact that this is being questioned is misogynist in a very, very fundamental and disturbing way.

00:34:50 Michele Goodwin:

Before I let you go, a question that we ask every person on our show is the silver lining. What do you see as a ray of hope, this sort of rainbow that is possible to see, even at times that seem so challenging in some spaces?

00:35:11 Rebecca Gomperts:

Yeah, so for me, really, it has been the resilience of women to be able to find support that they need to. And also, working with women’s rights groups and colleagues around the world that are nonstop committed to making sure that women have access to abortions and for free if they need to or for low cost if they can afford it. 

And so, what I…I think that no matter what is the legal situation in the US, no matter what the law is going to say, there will be people that are going to do that, and the abortion pills are really revolutionary in that it really gives women the opportunity to access and do their own abortions, and it will be available everywhere. It’s going to be…whether it’s going to be through the black market, whatever, you can’t ban abortion pills. That’s it.

00:36:20 Michele Goodwin:

Rebecca Gomperts, Dr. Gomperts, thank you so much…

00:36:21 Rebecca Gomperts:

You’re welcome.

00:36:22 Michele Goodwin:

…for being with me.

00:36:23 Rebecca Gomperts:

Thank you so much. I’m so honored that you interviewed me.

00:36:26 Michele Goodwin:

I’m so honored that I’m here.

I’m so happy we’re here in your office in Amsterdam, that we’ve been able to do this.

00:36:34 Rebecca Gomperts:

You are so amazing. Thank you.

00:36:35 Michele Goodwin:

You are.

Guests and listeners, that’s it for today’s episode of On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. I want to thank each of you for tuning in for the full story and engaging with us. We hope you’ll join us again for our next episode where you know we’ll be reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is.

For more information about what we discussed today, head to MsMagazine.com, and be sure to subscribe, and if you believe, as we do, that women’s voices matter, that equality for all persons cannot be delayed, and that rebuilding America and being unbought and unbossed and reclaiming our time are important, then be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, IHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, wherever it is that you receive your podcasts.

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This has been your host Michele Goodwin reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a Ms. Magazine joint production. Michele Goodwin and Kathy Spillar are our executive producers. Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal, Oliver Haug, and also Allison Whelan. Our social media content producer is Sophia Panigrahi. The creative vision behind our work includes art and design by Brandi Phipps, editing by Will Alvarez and Natalie Hadland, and music by Chris J. Lee.