100 episodes

Katie Breen interviews feminist activists, researchers, and advocates working to make women's issues...well, non-issues. Katie explores issues of reproductive rights, pay equity, abortion, birth control, sex ed, paid family leave, breastfeeding, periods, reproductive healthcare, domestic violence, sexual assault, and LGBTQ issues - examining topics through the lens of intersectional feminism and reproductive justice.

The Femtastic Podcast Katie Breen

    • News
    • 5.0 • 40 Ratings

Katie Breen interviews feminist activists, researchers, and advocates working to make women's issues...well, non-issues. Katie explores issues of reproductive rights, pay equity, abortion, birth control, sex ed, paid family leave, breastfeeding, periods, reproductive healthcare, domestic violence, sexual assault, and LGBTQ issues - examining topics through the lens of intersectional feminism and reproductive justice.

    Katie's Reaction to the Overturning of Roe

    Katie's Reaction to the Overturning of Roe

    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.

    • 39 min
    The Loophole That Lets Abusers Keep Their Guns

    The Loophole That Lets Abusers Keep Their Guns

    It’s no secret that our country’s gun laws are riddled with loopholes, but one is killing women specifically. 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.

    • 38 min
    How Does Being Denied an Abortion Affect Someone's Life?

    How Does Being Denied an Abortion Affect Someone's Life?

    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 

    • 40 min
    Part 2: How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Use Clients' Private Data Against Them

    Part 2: How Crisis Pregnancy Centers Use Clients' Private Data Against Them

    In Part 2 of our 2-part series on the misleading practices of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, we delve into another misleading, yet surprisingly underreported, aspect of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (aka CPCs aka "fake clinics).
    As we covered in Part 1, CPCs masquerade as if they are real health clinics - but because they are not, they're not subject to privacy laws like HIPPA that protect your personal health information. Of course, by design, their clients do not know this. CPCs then use information given to them by clients seeking their services to violate privacy and confidentiality for many reasons, including to use that info to harrass and surveil the client or abortion providers, to create "profiles" of those most likely to see their services in order to fuel their anti-abortion movement efforts, and - most terrifyingly - to potentially use private information clients have given them against them in lawsuits. This latter scenario is something that's becoming more and more possible as states pass super-restrictive and criminalizing abortion laws. 
    Here to discuss this on the podcast is Kim Clark, senior attorney at Legal Voice and seasoned legal advocate for reproductive rights, health, and justice.
    No time to listen? Check out Katie's op-ed on this topic or read the transcript of this episode.
    LINKS:
    - Transcript (AI-generated!)
    - Op-ed written by Katie about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (includes more on how the Trump admin and its Supreme Court propped up CPCs): How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers
    - Must-watch video: Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
    - Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in 9 states
    - In February 2022, Gender Justice along with their The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights & Gender Equality partners released an urgent warning about the role the crisis pregnancy center (CPC) industry is poised to play in a post-Roe United States – as a surveillance tool for the anti-abortion movement: The CPC Industry as a Surveillance Tool of the Post-Roe State
    - Experts Say Crisis Pregnancy Centers Could Spy On And Report Women Seeking An Abortion (Buzzfeed News, January 2022)
    - More on NIFLA v. Becerra: Supreme Court Sides With California Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers (NPR, June 2018)
    - Supreme Court Backs Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers in Free Speech Case (New York Times, June 2018)
    - Thirty-One Attorneys General Challenge New Title X Restrictions on Women’s Reproductive Health Care (Press Release from office of Maryland's Attorney General Brian Frosh, 2019)
    - States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here’s What Pro-Choice States Can Do. (New York Times, March 2022)
    - A World Without Roe: The loss of the fundamental right to reproductive freedom will only lead to more state surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people (Inquest, March 2022)
    - Additional podcast that may be of interest from Reveal: "A Strike At the Heart of Roe." Across the country, conservative foes of abortion rights have pushed “heartbeat bills” that would ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Journalist Amy Littlefield and a team of law and journalism students from UC Berkeley investigate how this law went from being dismissed as a fringe idea, even by traditional right-to-life groups, to getting enforced in Texas. 

    • 52 min
    Part 1: Crisis Pregnancy Centers 101 - How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers

    Part 1: Crisis Pregnancy Centers 101 - How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers

    Crisis pregnancy centers, or “CPCs,” are anti-abortion organizations that target pregnant people with predatory, deceptive marketing. They hide in plain sight by operating under the guise of offering comprehensive reproductive healthcare. Instead, they are religiously-affiliated, anti-abortion, and often unlicensed “medical” centers that, as stated by the California legislature, dissuade pregnant people from abortion through “intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse, misinform and even intimidate” mostly low-income clients from making informed choices.
    Eighty-three percent are affiliated with evangelical Christianity, and nearly all are tax-exempt. Their deceptive practices are well documented, and range from including words like “choices” in their names and locating themselves next to abortion clinics to trick pregnant people into walking through their doors, to wearing medical scrubs and having untrained personnel give and interpret ultrasounds even when they are not licensed medical facilities (and operate outside of privacy laws like HIPPA), with potentially dangerous consequences. It is also well-known that in addition to providing dubious and sometimes dangerous "medical" advice that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has publicly declared is unsupported by science, they lie to patients about how far along their pregnancies are in an effort to prevent clients from seeking abortions. The American Medical Association has declared that they "violate principles of medical ethics."
    Oh, and your tax dollars fund them!
     
    In Part 1 of a 2-part Femtastic series on Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), we are joined by Megan Peterson and Erin Maye Quade of Gender Justice,  a legal and policy advocacy org working to advance gender equity through the law. Gender Justice recently contributed to a national report on CPCs titled "Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in 9 states." The report shows that, rather than offer legitimate healthcare and resources, CPCs target pregnant people of color and pregnant people with lower incomes with deceptive marketing; provide few or no real medical services; and systematically mislead clients about services they do provide, potentially resulting in delayed care and unnecessary risks to their clients' health.
     
    Megan and Erin will talk about the intentionally misleading practices CPCs use to market themselves  as real health clinics, and the deceptive "care" they provide in order to dissuade or stop clients from having abortions. We also talk about how your tax dollars fund them and what you can do to stop this.
     
    Look out for Part 2 of this series, where we discuss how CPCs use client data to violate their privacy in very creepy and dangerous ways - and the role that CPCs are poised to play in a post-Roe United States as a surveillance tool for the anti-abortion movement.

    No time to listen to this episode? Check out Katie's op-ed on this topic or read the transcript of the episode.
    LINKS:
    - Transcript (AI-generated!)
    - Op-ed written by Katie about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (includes more info on their funding): How Your Tax Dollars Fund Fake Women's Health Centers
    - Must-watch video: Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
    - Mentioned in the episode: In Virginia, University of Mary Washington fellows conducted an undercover investigation into the local fake clinic that targets students on campus, exposing their disinformation and shaming tactics to help protect and educate vulnerable students.
    - Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in 9 states
    - Further info on the dubious practice of "abortion pill reversal" and how the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is "not supported by science"
    - In the interview, we talk about an investigation in California that revealed some of the lies CPCs tel

    • 51 min
    What Do the FDA's Updates Mean for Access to Medication Abortion?

    What Do the FDA's Updates Mean for Access to Medication Abortion?

    Back in early December 2021, you may have heard some rumblings celebrating that the FDA had changed some of its draconian and scientifically unsupported regulations around medication abortion. Medication abortion, a safe and legal method of first-trimester abortion, accounted for 54% of US abortions in 2020 but has been subject to decades of politically-motivated FDA regulations that placed strict and unnecessary controls on it to limit access. In late 2021, amidst the most hostile environment to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, some of these limits were lifted. However, the news stories reporting on the updates didn't exactly make it clear which problems the changes would solve and which they wouldn't.
    As the Supreme Court is poised in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, and states are leveling increasingly hostile attacks towards abortion rights in the meantime, any expansion of access is a good thing, and this FDA update is definitely a good thing - but is not a panacea. 
    To explain the implications of the update, we are rejoined on the podcast by Elisa Wells, Co-Director of Plan C Pills, a website and organization that provides information about how to access abortion pills in all 50 US states.
    Elisa explains why this is a win and for whom it's a win for abortion access - but also for whom these changes make no difference at all. As the potential end of Roe nears, it's more important now than ever that we understand - and work to lift - the obstacles to abortion access that millions of Americans of reproductive age face.
    [Please note that this episode was recorded on January 14, 2022. Additional states have passed incredibly strict abortion bans since then, including Idaho, Florida, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.]
    LINKS:
    - Transcript of episode (AI-generated)
    - Check out all the fun (and often easy!) ways that you can Get Involved with Plan C Pills to take action to support self-managed abortion
    -  In 2020, medication abortion accounted for 54% of US abortions (Guttmacher Institute, 2022)
    - States Want to Ban Abortions Beyond Their Borders. Here’s What Pro-Choice States Can Do. (New York Times, March 2022)
    - A World Without Roe: The loss of the fundamental right to reproductive freedom will only lead to more state surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people (Inquest, March 2022)
    - A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine supports the safety of prescribing the abortion pill without requiring a pelvic exam or ultrasound. 
    - Additional podcast that may be of interest from Reveal: "A Strike At the Heart of Roe." Across the country, conservative foes of abortion rights have pushed “heartbeat bills” that would ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. Journalist Amy Littlefield and a team of law and journalism students from UC Berkeley investigate how this law went from being dismissed as a fringe idea, even by traditional right-to-life groups, to getting enforced in Texas. 
     
    Relevant Femtastic Podcast Episodes:
    - Lifting Restrictions on Medication Abortion (July 2021)
    - Podcast featuring Plan C Pills and Elisa Wells (Sept 2021): What's Up with the TX Abortion Ban and How Can People All Over the US Access Abortion Pills Online? 
    - A Clinic Making Mail-Order Abortion a Reality (Nov 2021)

    • 27 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
40 Ratings

40 Ratings

KPegg916 ,

Informative & Engaging

I love this podcast. I look forward to every new episode. Katie gets great guests on & gives great interviews. This podcast dives in to so many important topics that I care deeply about.

Wisco sarah jo ,

Critically-important topics discussed in an approachable way

Critically-important topics discussed in an approachable way

Becky Smith. ,

Could not recommend more

These episodes lay out complex issues with valuable speakers, while still feeling like you’re having a conversation with a trusted friend.
A must for women 18+.

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