An Interview with Imani Gandy
AUTHOR: Kibwe Chase-Marshall
Legislation aimed at denying Americans the right to abortion on their own terms is increasingly being adopted, threatening to undo Roe v. Wade’s landmark accomplishment of ensuring that those who can bear children ultimately make their own child-birthing decisions.
PHOTO CREDIT: @ANGRYBLACKLADY
It is evident that access to healthy reproductive options will be among the most contentious of battles waged throughout the next US presidential election cycle in 2020. Less evident may be how those of us not tasked with making reproductive decisions for ourselves might own informed, active, and appropriate voices within this dialogue. Secured individual agency regarding the decision to have or not to have a child is widely considered a keystone of gender equity within contemporary culture. But for many of us, the more granular details regarding the evolution of abortion rights ideology, the complex strategies to ban abortion mounted by conservative legislators and the frequency with which low-income and of-color women’s rights are first-compromised may remain less than clear.
This lack of clarity can be almost paralyzing to many (like myself) for whom the abortion legislation debate inherently demands a deep commitment to empathy as opposed to personal advocacy. Pulling it all into laser-sharp focus in a manner aimed at galvanizing the spectrum of Americans committed to ensuring that safe abortions remain accessible to all, is attorney and advocate Imani Gandy. I spoke with the outspoken co-host of Boom! Lawyered about key abortion legislation cases you should know, effective ways to take action and dynamic voices to whom you should be listening in this most pivotal of Reproductive Rights/Reproductive Justice moments.
Q: On your podcast, you’ve discussed Sister Song vs. Kemp. Can you give readers a quick primer on that case and why you see it factoring centrally in the reproductive justice conversation going forward?
A: Brian Kemp is the Governor of Georgia right now — he shouldn’t be — because he was essentially overseeing an election in which he ran. There really was an obscene amount of voter suppression, particularly among reliably democratic voters [and] Black voters. Sister Song is a reproductive justice collective that was founded by the forebearers of the reproductive justice movement: people like Loretta Ross, Monica Simpson, Toni Bond Leonard. These are all really powerful people, Black women who coined this term “reproductive justice” in order to push back on the “reproductive rights” framework that primarily focused on middle-class white women and their right to access abortion. The point of reproductive justice is to go beyond that frame, widening the umbrella to cover the right to have children, the right to not have children, and the right to raise the children you have in a safe and healthy environment. Sister Song has sued Brian Kemp and Georgia over a near-total abortion ban. The lawsuit challenges a six-week “fetal heartbeat ban”; it’s important for the readers to understand that at six weeks there is no fetus: it’s an embryo. [And at that point] there is no heartbeat; there is what is known as fetal pole cardiac activity. What’s really fascinating about this case is that it’s the first lawsuit that specifically discusses reproductive justice and centers Black women, women of color as the plaintiffs, as the people who are most harmed. I have not seen another case [combatting anti-abortion legislation] that centers Black women and low-income women that way. It is way past time for the reproductive justice framework to percolate its way up to the supreme court so that we may have a decision sometime in the future that actually talks about reproductive justice and what that is.
Q: Why is that so important?
A: This can stimulate people like [US Supreme Court] Justice Sonia Sotomayor to write really really passionate defenses that delve into what reproductive justice is, what this framework means, how it operates: write what could be the reproductive justice manifesto. She’s known for that: making connections and looking at the contrasts between the staid versions of laws that white conservatives want to operate under and the ways that those laws affect marginalized vulnerable people. She’s done it with some of the voting rights cases, connecting how these voting rights laws impact people of color. She did it with a case called Utah vs. Strieff which was a 4th amendment decision and she connected the ways in which police interact with people of color and communities of color to the Black Lives Matter movement and to some of the things Michelle Alexander wrote in The New Jim Crow and some of the stuff that Ta-Nehesi Coates has written about reparations. She’s able to bring in these Black thought-leaders in providing the framework for future courts to undo all this crap that the Roberts court is doing and is going to be doing for the next thirty years, forty years or so.
Q: How do these state-level battles over access to abortions affect federal legislation?
A: To the extent that a case like Sister Song v. Kemp goes up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court makes a ruling that is grounded in the United States constitution, then yes, that provides the impetus for other states to follow Georgia’s lead. That’s why you see so many cases right now. There’s just a lot of bullshit legislation that has been passed, legislation that is so wildly unconstitutional that I am frankly embarrassed. The goal of this legislation is to get cases in front of the majority-conservative Supreme Court and find ways to give them an opening to gut Roe v. Wade or to certainly undercut abortion access to such an extent that no one but rich people will be able to afford it.
Q: And that can create a domino effect of other states pursuing similar abortion-access denying legislation?
A: Absolutely. You get one federal court saying, “sure, a dilation and evacuation ban is constitutional”; dilation and evacuation is the most common form of abortion, so banning that abortion option is essentially banning all abortions. Or legislation might attempt to ban abortions after six weeks.
Q: Wow, six weeks… That’s basically missing one menstrual cycle!
A: Yeah it literally is. It’s your period being late by two weeks. Most women are not completely regular. Even if you are super regular, with a period app, and you’re tracking it, you still have only two weeks to go through all of the hoops they make you jump through. And what’s even more bizarre is “cascading legislation” where multiple anti-abortion groups are attempting to simultaneously pass multiple legislative bans on abortion at different gestation durations; the idea being that if the most severe doesn’t pass, then the next severe will.
Q: Planned Parenthood immediately comes to mind when we think of organizations that are on the frontlines of the battle to ensure access to safe abortions but are their other organizations that we should be conscious of supporting?
A: Oh yes. Right now, I think the best thing people can do if they want to get involved, or donate money or time, is to find their local abortion fund. Especially if you live in the South, there are a lot of regressive laws being passed causing pregnant people to not have the money or the time to obtain abortions. They are being required to go out of state to get abortions which requires money. The best thing people can do is to find an abortion fund and call them up and ask them what they need; it might be that all you need to do is donate a couple of dollars, that you can volunteer, or it might be that you can find a local clinic and be a clinic escort. Planned Parenthood is a great organization, obviously, but there are other independent clinics that need assistance. It’s super important to shine a light on support the work of people like activist Laurie Bertram Roberts in Mississippi who is fighting for access to abortion in some of the most conservative states.
Q: On a recent episode of your podcast you shared about how you came to reframing your language related to abortion access to be more inclusive of the gender identity spectrum of pregnant people. Any tips on how readers can embark upon that work themselves?
A: It’s just a matter of changing one’s language and changing the way one sees this movement. Like I said on the podcast, I didn’t really change my language permanently until maybe two and a half years ago. I read old articles and tweets where I say, “pregnant women, pregnant women, pregnant women” and it’s jarring to me now. At the time, I didn’t know many trans people. Getting to know trans people, both in real life and online, has allowed me to put a face to the talking point. Before it was kind of a talking point: “yeah, we gotta be trans-inclusive”. But then you actually meet a person, and you talk to them, and you hear their struggle about being misgendered and being left out of conversations and feeling like this talk about reproductive rights is just for women. If you are compassionate or have any empathy, you can’t help but want to change your language. It wasn’t about wanting to be “super woke”; it was about saying, “I know these people that are struggling with this”. It’s just unnecessarily exclusive to always say “pregnant women” and never say “pregnant people”. Sometimes I may write articles where I use both because I’m referring to what lawmakers have said, but I always try to make it clear that it’s not just women that are affected by these policies.
Q: What should we all be reading and listening to in order to learn about and stay informed of new developments in the fight for Reproductive Justice?
A: You should definitely listen to my podcast Boom! Lawyered! You should definitely be reading everything by my work-spouse Jessica Mason-Pieklo. In terms of books, you should be reading Radical Reproductive Justice, Killing the Black Body, and you should be following the voices of color in the Reproductive Justice space on Twitter.
Select quotes have been condensed for clarity and space and approved by the interview subject.