J: This podcast has explicitly adult themes and language. Listener discretion is advised.

[intro music]

J: Honestly, I think there's going to be just like a lot of feelings in this episode. Like, I want facts, too, but I think, I think it'll be a lot of feelings as well.

I: I will try my best to provide an facts. To be quite honest, I'm very biased by like what's going on in Pennsylvania and how we're trying to support those in the region and who will be traveling to Pennsylvania most likely.

J: Oh, does Pennsylvania have protective measures?

I: They don't have protective measures, but they don't have any bills that have been introduced that would get rid of abortion rights. They do, however, have a court case that would change the Constitution of Pennsylvania, but that's something that we don't have to worry about right this second.

J: That’s good.

I: There's a bigger picture things going on that we've got to figure out first. But Pennsylvania— and I can actually send a map to you. Pennsylvania is one of the 11 hubs in the United States that are going to occur for interstate travel.

J: Oh, wow. Okay. That's exciting. That would be a great map.

I: Pennsylvania is going to be a hub. The closest one to us is D.C.. If Pennsylvania loses abortion, New York will be the next closest one.

J: Yeah.

I: Which is currently grayed out in the map because, like, why go all the way to New York when you can just hit up Pittsburgh?

J: Yeah, it's kind of a hike. That makes sense.

I: So what this map is doing is looking at the legislation and policies and on top of it, looking at travel and looking at, like, different bus routes, train routes, flights and what becomes the most accessible locations. And that's why you'll look at this and you're like, That's kind of weird. Why would you choose that? And the answer is because of how travel functions in the United States, which is really interesting. If there's a shit show that happens in New England, the only state that seems like it will be actually protected is Connecticut, because they've been actually very proactive with their policy work.

J: I find it fascinating that Florida's got protected access.

I: Yes. I don't know if that's going to last forever.

J: Neither do I, yeah.

I: But it's an interesting map just to see like, what is the layout of what's going to happen.

J: Yeah, it's a very, very interesting map. And it's really interesting to seeing places like Southern Illinois acting as these protective bands, as well as like Wichita, Kansas. It's interesting. Anyway, hi. For those of you tuning in, this is Kinky Queeries, a podcast where you send in questions and we work out the kinks or more often than not, work in the kinks.

I: Hello, everybody. My name's Iris. I use they and he pronouns and my uterus is angry, not only because of what's going on in the country, but also it's that time of the month.

J: Tragic. My name is James. My pronouns are he/him and I spent all of yesterday watching John Oliver. I did that all day. It was not good for my mental health, but he's got a really good episode that came out on Sunday, May 8th, pretty recently about reproductive legislation and the SCOTUS decision. I thought it was a really good resource, mostly repeating a lot of things that we're going to say on this podcast and also things I’ve been seeing elsewhere, but it was very concise and to the point and informative. Also, he's funny. I like the weird bird man. So some context of what we're just diving right into. It's been, well, we are recording this on May 10th. It's going to come out next week because that's how long it takes me to edit. It's been a hell of a week for those of you in the United States or paying attention to United States policy. I know we have a lot of listeners from outside the U.S. so if you’re listening in from the outside, our country, we're always a little bit of a shit show here in the United States. Recently, it was leaked that the Supreme Court is drafting their statement, repealing a fundamental piece of court precedent that was Roe versus Wade, a court case that was decided in… I forgot what year, 70…

I: 70 something. It's when we had a conservative President Nixon, and we also had a conservative leaning Supreme Court as well. And it was able to pass, which was really impressive to see, like how mass movements and the masses can actually sway politics.

J: Yeah. So it was on January 22nd, 1973.

I: Thank you.

J: And I might be wrong, but let me check the Wikipedia here. I think a lot of the grounds for the argument that passed Roe v Wade through was that this is a privacy issue, that this is part of the right to privacy, that the government cannot tell you what you and your doctor are deciding between each other, which fundamentally makes sense in my humble opinion and understanding of general U.S. legislation. But the incredibly conservative Supreme Court that we currently have has argued that argument doesn't work for them any more, which is aside from foolish, ground sweepingly dangerous, and also a fundamental misunderstanding of how law works. Our conversation today is about how reproductive rights affect kink, which, I'll be honest, we're mostly just talking about reproductive rights and how much we think the Supreme Court decision is nonsense, as well as what individuals can do to find help, receive help, just send out support, because this is an incredibly grim situation. And I think it's important to have a sliver of hope and, you know, actions to be able to take. But because this is a kink podcast, wrapping it around, I guess right off the bat, people who can get pregnant engage in kink. So that's one reason why reproductive rights affect kink [voice takes on a tone of hysterical/tragic laughter] because people who can get pregnant also do do kink sometimes. [quietly] Fuck I’m so mad. I got all mad.

I: [laughter]

J: I thought I got all the mad out! And I’m still… here we are, it’s fine.

I: Well, I'm thinking of this as like the precedent of privacy and how that impacts the LGBTQ community and the rights that have been earned over the past several decades and how it's based off of Roe versus Wade. And there's a lot of other things that are based off of the precedent of privacy and the right to privacy. And with kink and like the legal battles that have occurred around it, especially around like child custody and what the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom has done pertaining to polyamory, in kink, fetish and BDSM, I think it's really important to point out that this right to privacy is going to impact cases in the future and indirectly impact our community.

J: Absolutely. Very directly. I would say the 2003 Supreme Court case, Lawrence versus Texas,

I: Yeah.

J: Is the Supreme Court case that literally decriminalized sodomy. Like very, very literally until 2003, if you had a non missionary style man, woman, sex in Texas and someone tattled on you, you could go to jail. 2003! I'm pretty sure every single person listening to this podcast was alive in 2003. I was like a person. I have thoughts and memories of this time and it took until 2003 for a Supreme Court to strike that down. And now in all 50 states, you can't make sodomy a crime. However, literally second sentence on the Wikipedia page about this court case, the court reaffirmed the concept of a right to privacy that earlier cases such as Roe v Wade had found the U.S. Constitution provides. So, with things like Roe v Wade being redacted, we open the floodgates for a lot of other things to be redacted that are founded on the right to privacy. Now, in Alito's document that was leaked, he does specifically say that this issue is just about abortion. It's not about all these other things. I think he's either a dumbass and doesn't know how legal precedent works, which would be really embarrassing because he's like the top ranking judge in the country. So he's a malicious asshole that knows exactly what he's doing. He's actively, and obviously this is what it is, the right side of our country, not geographically but philosophically, has spent the last 50 years basically working to do this. It's been a long game for them. So he knows what he's doing.

I: They know what precedent means, but they don't— like they don't care. They have specifically lied before getting on to the Supreme Court under oath pertaining to whether or not Roe versus Wade is precedent. And they're now going back on that, which there's some really interesting analysis pertaining to whether or not they can actually be taken off the court because they lied under oath.

J: Oh, that's an I didn't even consider that.

I: Oh, yeah. Which the Biden administration would have to do something. The problem is, is they’re fucking useless.

J: They’re really not good at doing things!

I: Also, listeners, if you can't tell, I might have some socialist ideology that comes through today. I am unashamed of this viewpoint and if that is an issue, you're probably not going to like this. So 70% of citizens of the United States believe that Roe versus Wade should exist, that people should have bodily autonomy pertaining to abortion and should have this right to privacy. There's the majority here pertaining to this issue, and you're letting one very specific religion dominate and take control of people's autonomy. As someone who was raised Roman Catholic, now I'm just a member of the Satanic Temple, but as someone who was raised as Roman Catholic, the Bible literally says at birth, not conception. It doesn't say conception. It says at birth. When you read the actual translated text and multiple translated texts, say that.

J: So aside from the fact that it is egregious an assault on body autonomy, it's also going against some religions that especially because a lot of these bans that are trigger laws basically that as soon as the formalization of Roe v Wade— I keep wanting to say redacted, but that's not what's happening. It's being overturned. As soon as it is formally overturned. These laws are basically trigger activated that the second that happens, they become laws in states. A lot of them explicitly do not allow exceptions for medical emergencies. Situations where, the baby's not going to survive anyway. Basically, there's a lot of reasons that people get abortions. A number of them are because the pregnancy literally cannot be carried to term. It will kill the person carrying the fetus and it will also kill the fetus, like, everyone's going to die that's involved, basically? In situations like that, there's no protections. There's no accommodations by most of these trigger laws, which seems incredibly counterintuitive, if you think about this being as like protecting people or protecting life or any of that. Situations like that don't make sense. Restrictions like that just logically do not make sense because that's not what it's about. It is about controlling what people are allowed to do and punishing people who have sex in certain ways or punishing people who have sex in certain situations, which I think very strongly ties back to what kink is about.

I: I also think of it as like a method for capitalism to continue to grow and maintain itself in the United States. I forget the exact study that I was looking at, but we need like 2.1 babies per household to continue our current economic growth.

J: Yes, that’s the replacement rate basically.

I: We're at 1.5, and that's an issue to any person who owns a company and basically utilizes labor in the United States.

J: Exactly. Because if there's not enough workers, then there's a higher demand for workers than there is a supply which puts power in the worker's hands, which obviously capitalists don't want.

I: Yeah, I think another part of it is like the activism that's currently happening. Like we're seeing rallies and protests across the nation at this moment in time pertaining to bodily autonomy and abortion rights and what's happening with SCOTUS and Roe v. Wade and a lot of— I’m just going say like white cis women because that seems to be the majority, I might be wrong about that, are like freaking out when people who have been working on the reproductive justice movement, specifically BIPOC individuals who are leading that movement and doing a fucking badass job, like we've known this for years that this was going to happen and we've been preparing and we need y'all to like work together. And there is these infighting and battles against like, what is the right way to go about it, when like we've already have people who've been working in this field for fucking decades and you're not listening to them.

J: Not only from a grassroots and activist perspective, but from even a top down approach like this SCOTUS decision very clearly speaks to the fact that the government is not listening to the people. Like you said earlier, 70% of U.S. citizens think that abortion should be maintained as legal and accessible. And the fact that a overwhelming majority of the people believe one thing and the people in power are not listening to the people is contrary to the whole point of our system. So I think, yeah, the idea of not listening both to people in grassroots movements and people who have experience in these realms as well as listening to the people that these laws affect, is, well, I'll be honest I can say it's a trend that is not just about reproductive freedom. It is a trend that corresponds to most legislation that gets made.

I: Yeah and that's not just reproductive freedom, like when we're seeing the connection to the LGBTQ community, it's also trying to get rid of that, because that also does not, for the most part, produce more individuals for the labor. And I think there's going to be some really interesting changes, like for people who have… It's not fertility fetish, what's it called?

J: Pregnancy kink?

I: Yeah, pregnancy kink. Like that's going to get real fucking wild real soon. And like how we people court and date each other is also going to be really interesting.

J: I'll be really honest, pregnancy kink is… It's not like a hard no for me. Like I'm fine to talk about it, but it's definitely a squick. Like it is not my jam. For the longest time I felt really bad that like any conversation about mpreg was like “ew” to me. I'm like, Is this transphobic? And then I realized, No, I just hate talking about pregnancy across the board, like… 

I: [laughing while talking] Oh, this is a rough conversation for you today.

J: I mean, it's, it's fine. Like, again, conceptually, it's fine. It's when someone's like talking about it is like hot or like talking about it is like, this is the best thing ever. I'm like, [shudders audibly] cannot relate. Please don't ask me to put my hand on your belly like, ew, no thank you.

I: I don't personally get it. I know a lot of people who do. I also come from a very wild pregnancy though process, or at least so I've been told. Pertaining to what I would like to do with my body, I think I've told you this James? Maybe?

J: It's not ringing a bell, but…

I: Okay, cool. I don't want to get pregnant for the sake of having a baby. I want to get pregnant for the sake of experiencing pregnancy and I don't want anything to do with the child. I have offered my bodily services to a select number of individuals who I know who want children and may come across fertility issues at some point. To my understanding, I don't have those, and would be happy to carry somebody else's kid and be like, “Good job, you have a child now!” But that's it. I just want to know the experience because it sounds wild and destructive in a way that I'm here for.

J: I find that fascinating and wildly altruistic, but also what you just said about destructive. I am deeply afraid of the concept of pregnancy because it destroys your body.

I: Oh yeah.

J: Also, just in terms of like… I am going to bitch a little bit about some of the things that were said in the leaked document because I'm mad about this still. Amy Coney Barrett, that dumb- that dumbass.

I: Oh, that fucker.

J: Had the audacity to say that. Well, it shouldn't be an issue if people are pregnant because, you know, you can do adoption with like no questions asked, which like, okay, it's great that we have adoptions with no questions asked. Also fascinating, she brings that point up because the adoption agency is billion-dollar industry that is dealing with a shortage right now. You know why? Because people can't afford to get pregnant. People cannot afford to go to the hospital and give birth, which, honestly, all of this ties back into, like socialized medicine.

I: It’s not a shortage of kids. It's a shortage of infants.

J: Oh, God. Yeah. And that's even worse because they don't they don't want, like, the troubled kids that need it more than anyone else. It's- it's infants and a very specific time period that requires them.

I: Which if you pay attention to anybody who's ever been adopted and what like for that particular experience is, it is a traumatic experience no matter what you get adopted. And then it's really important to acknowledge that. And that is just like, oh fuck that, the needs of the child are not prioritized, it's the needs of the people who want to be parents. Parenting isn’t a right. Parenting is a privilege and it is a duty.

J: Yeah, politely. If you're that particular about what kid you are adopting, I don't think you're going to be a very good parent. I know a thing or two about people who aren't very good at parenting. It should not be about what kind of kids you have. That's not why people become parents. And yet, somehow all of these people are allowed to just be parents. It's wild.

I: And we see this in the LGBTQ community where there's literal conversations of people being like, adoption is important for the sake of me being able to build my family. And it's like that is very you centered and you are not thinking about the child who's getting adopted.

J: I don't think it's inherently awful to have those motivating factors, but you have to set all of that aside once you are like taking care of a child, you have to put like their health and safety, their wants and needs. Well, maybe not wants, but their needs ahead of yours and some of their wants, I don't know. And that's why I never want to be a parent. Frankly, I don't I don't think I'm capable of being that altruistic. That's like very unnerving for me. So the idea of parenthood is like, whoa, no, thank you. I'm not - I don't want to do that.

I: I think I would be okay at it. But I don't want to.

J: Yeah.

I: It's either a child or an entire sled dog team and I'm leaning towards sled dog team to be quite honest. Sounds way more fun.

J: That’s a lot of dogs.

I: [laughter]

J: We got very off topic, but, oh, what I was saying about Barrett's statement about adoption’s an option, people can give up their infants for adoption. And that's- that's a great thing, isn't it? Pregnancy is... I'm trying to remember how many more times deadly it is because an abortion is a largely low risk procedure. But there's like what, a one in ten chance of serious bodily harm with a pregnancy. [Transcription note: Correction, it’s an 8% chance. See Johns Hopkins link for reference.] It is an insanely high percentage, it's an insanely dangerous thing. And even if it goes perfectly smoothly, nothing goes wrong. It's the easiest pregnancy in the world. Your body is permanently changed, like the skin between the vaginal canal and the anus can just rip straight open! You could just have just an open gash where your taint should be. Your stomach, you become a balloon, basically a balloon with a watermelon inside you. If you have breast tissue all the time, it's going to do weird shapes, it's going to be weird shapes. The whole thing just completely alters your body. And for some people, that's really magical and I love that for them. And that's great that they love that. I think for some people, pregnancy and childbirth can be a truly profound experience, but it can kill some people. And also in this country, it's insanely expensive. It is so expensive to have a child here. Again, I've noticed on our metrics, we have a lot of international listeners and there's a viral video that I really love that's, you know, someone just walking around like, I don't know, some international city and asking how much they think it costs to have a baby in the United States. And it's numbers like, you know, a couple hundred, a couple thousand. It's on average, I believe, $20,000 to have a child in this country, not even raising the kid, just going to the fucking hospital.

I: That $20,000 is also a really lowball number because that's without complications. And like the United States has really wicked high maternal mortality for like the economic situation that we're in when comparing to other countries like and it specifically is affecting BIPOC individuals who get pregnant.

J: Of all countries of our same economic class, we have the highest maternal mortality rate. It is gruesome here. So while Iris, I applaud this idea of that experience for you, will support you, will like come clean your house, will not touch your stomach.

I: [laughs]

J: It's so horrifying to me.

I: I won't ask you to touch my stomach, I won't ask you to do that, but I might ask you to paint it because there's going to be parts that I can't get to. And I feel like there's a lot of opportunities of, like, an art canvas.

J: Yeah. I’ll help with that.

I: That it can be. I just want it to be a whale. I think it'd be so cute.

J: I think that would be adorable. And circling back to our main topic, putting the argument of body autonomy aside, because clearly they don't want to listen to it. There's a huge economic problem with this legislation in that it clearly disenfranchises the lower economic classes. Because pregnancies are expensive, access to birth control is expensive. Knowledge about pregnancy risks in and of itself is expensive. And travel. If you need an abortion and are in a state where it is banned, travel to another state is expensive. The whole thing is very classist in an incredibly dangerous way.

I: Well, now there's all that legislation that's being introduced in different states pertaining to like not being able to get an IUD and not being able to do IVF, or I forgot which fucking state was like, let's outlaw condoms of all fucking things.

J: Which is horrifying.

I: Yeah. Like this is just a slippery slope to a huge shit show. And like, while it was predicted, we as masses need to be doing something about it because the people that we are electing, the people who are on the courts, they don't have our interests at heart.

J: All the concerns that are being arisen at this moment, talking about the concept of abortion and the concept of pregnancy as financial concerns, which they are, I think also speaks to the fact that we do not have socialized medicine in this country. Medicine in this country is a financial disaster. It's a nightmare for anyone who is not insanely wealthy. One of the things I remember, I was at a socialist rally about a week ago now, and one of the things they were championing was not just abortions being legalized, it also abortions being accessible, abortions being on demand, and abortions being free. Abortions can cost a lot of money. And because abortions cost money, even if you have the legal access to them, you can't afford them. That speaks to the grander problem of this country, that we don't have medical equality just across the board, not just by the, like, bodily parts that we have, but by our race and our class and general access. I'm sure we could have a whole other video about disability access and how this country fucks that up royally all the time.

I: What the SCOTUS decision would entail is that legislators who have no medical background are making decisions on behalf of doctors who have years to decades of training in doing this work. And for anybody who's able to provide an abortion or be able to prescribe mifo/mifepristone, getting in the way of them being able to do the work that they are trained to do. And then on top of it, putting people's lives at risk for the sake of creating a larger labor force. It's just really wild. 

J: You brought up a really good point that all of this needs action because it is a slippery slope to banning condoms, to banning gay sex, gay marriage on the docket. We have, even off of the federal level, on the state level, the Don't Say Gay bill in Florida, the trans ban basically in Texas, a thousand other pieces of legislation like this. There's a good degree of work that needs to be done. And I think, Iris, you said it very well earlier. People have been doing this work for decades and listening to the people that have been on the ground talking about this is critically important as well as providing them the resources that they need. I think if you can't go out and have boots on the ground, if you can't go out and volunteer, donating to Planned Parenthood, to abortion funds, to transportation access is very, very important. We have several states that we've going to share a map link for in our extended resources section on our website about states that have safe sites, states that are probably going to become hubs for travel coming in the near future, as well as just generally knowing what your own state's legislation is, as well as which states have protective measures in place. Illinois is actually a great location with a long history of protective measures. I want to fact check this before I say it. Hold on. Okay. This is fairly recent. I thought it was a longer standing situation. In Illinois, The Reproductive Health Act was signed apparently in 2019, that codifies into law, which is what we've been asking lawmakers on the federal level to do for a very long time and they have not. But basically, this says it protects the fundamental right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including contraception, abortion care, prenatal care and birth that was signed into state law. So in the state of Illinois, abortion is protected by law, including contraception and prenatal care. So it's something that is pretty solid and very, very hard to undo. States like California and Connecticut also have very firm protections in place. I know in California they are currently working on getting it codified into law for you know, longer standing protections. Look up your state and look up your neighboring states too.

I: You mentioned Planned Parenthood. And while Planned Parenthood is good, I'm not dissing them whatsoever. Please, if you were able to donate, donate to independent abortion clinics. That is incredibly important. On top of that, be aware of where the crisis pregnancy centers are

J: I was just about to talk about that.

I: And if you don't know what those are, those are fake pregnancy clinics. They take taxpayer dollars every single fucking year to mislead individuals who are pregnant and they’re religious organizations in disguise. Be careful because a crisis pregnancy center will look very similar to an independent abortion clinic. So just like be aware of who you're donating to.

J: Planned Parenthood has a lot of safety in the sense of donating to them because they are a known group and doing research on them isn't as necessary. But if you have the time to do research for specific abortion funds, I think that can be really beneficial as well as transportation access because like we've been saying, people are going to have to cross state lines for this, which is a whole mess in and of itself. A minor note to, depending on what state you're in, if you are in a state where it is about to become criminalized, like you can go to jail for these things, do not be looking up abortion situations on your phone. Be very, very careful about your web activity. It is sort of a known thing now that governments can just buy data from data brokers and it is not that hard to re-identify de-identified data. So please, please, please be safe above all else and do what you can to get involved. And if you can't get involved, do what you can to donate. And if you can't donate, do what you can to spread awareness.

I: It's really important that we're talking with one another, like talk to people in your workplace about this, to talk to your friends, to your family members, because this is going to impact everybody at every single level. And we need to make sure that we are coming together as a community and listening to those in the reproductive justice realm so that we can get these rights back and expanded.

J: Because this is something that doesn't just affect people who can get pregnant. It affects people who have gotten pregnant and don't want to get pregnant again. It affects people who care about people who can get pregnant. And it is a very slippery slope to affecting all of us in kink and queer communities because our rights have very recently been won. Lawrence versus Texas happened 30 years after Roe v Wade. It is a much more recent piece of legislation, and we are much stronger when we are together than when we are divided. So please take care of your friends and neighbors. Take care of yourself.

I: Also, I haven't seen it yet. If somebody in a pup hood could go to a protest and be like pro-choice pup, that would be really great.

J: That’s good branding.

I: I need somebody to do it. This is an ask for my own entertainment because I don't have a pup and that's not my thing.

J: And if you do tag us on Twitter.

I: Please! [Laughter]

J: Yeah. And if you have any follow up questions for us about this or anything we talk about, obviously feel for you to reach out to us. I really appreciate you listening as we talk about some very important things. If you've got a kinky question or a queer question or a reproductive health question, send us your queries at kinkyqueeries@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @kinkyqueeries. That's K I N K Y Q U E E R I E S. We will have our next episode ready for your eager ears in two weeks. Do what you can to stay safe. Do what you can to make your voices heard.

I: Take care of yourselves!

J: Yeah. Take care of yourself. This has been, like, a really rough time, so. You know, be active, donate, get involved, spread awareness, but definitely take time to just not look at the news for like a few hours at least.

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