Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: This is Missy Martinez Stone, and you're listening to the centered podcast, where we have unifying conversations on the divisive subject of abortion.
Just a quick note before we get started that this episode was recorded live at the National Celebrate Life Conference. So if you hear a little noise in the background or the audio sounds different, that's why. But the content is still just as amazing, so I hope you enjoy it.
Hello, and welcome to the centered podcast. I'm your host, Missy Martina Stone, and I am so excited about the episode. Today we are talking to Leah Jacobson, the founder of the guiding Star Project and the author of the book Holistic Feminism.
Leah has a master's degree in health and wellness and with a special certification in lactation care. She is an international board certified lactation consultant, and she is passionate about sharing the radical idea that women's bodies are not the problem, which is something I think we can all get behind. Welcome, Leah.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: I am so happy to be here.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: I know you're tired. It's been a long. It's been a long, long weekend, but it's been. Been fun, and we're gonna do our best to get through this conversation.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: I'm always happy to talk about women's bodies. It's always a good conversation to have.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: I did bring it up. So earlier today, I interviewed Michael Kinney, and we were talking about, you know, just the Cultural, what we. All the work they have to do to undo everything that people have learned. And we were talking about feminism, and I brought up that quote. Cause I said, yeah, I just love that Leah says her work is to tell women that their bodies are not the problem. And I just think that is such a good.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Well, we've deeply internalized it, right? So many women have really deeply internalized a lot of shame about our fertility, our pregnancies, our breastfeeding needs. We apologize a lot for being Women in this culture. Unnecessarily.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Unnecessarily. So, the theme of the CentEred podcast is building bridges, is Finding ways to connect with people over the divisive subject of abortion. And I think both of our organizations, which we said earlier, serve as kind of, like, natural bridges to introduce concepts that people can support, kind of regardless of where they stand on abortion. So, for instance, like, the average person might consider themselves pro choice, can look at the center for Client Safety and the Guiding Star project and the idea of holistic feminism and find elements that they agree with. So tell me, like, how you came up with this idea for the Guiding Star project, and, like, what did it take to start an organization like that?
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I never intended, actually to start a nonprofit organization. That wasn't what I was.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Did any of us intend?
[00:02:59] Speaker B: No, I never set out to start a nonprofit. That wasn't what I really wanted to do.
I was a campus minister. I worked at the University of Minnesota Duluth. I lived in the Newman House for the first three years of my marriage. It's a kind of a famous Newman house now. Catholics, at least, know it pretty well. It's the home now of bulldog Catholic and Father Mike Schmitz.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So my old living room is where all of those podcasts are filmed at.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: I can see exactly what you're talking about.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah. That fireplace with that mantle. My husband made that mantle. It's a young, 22 year old newlywed husband in nursing school.
So we've really got started with college age students, and we were young. I mean, we were young ourselves. We got married at 22 years old and got pregnant with our first baby within about four months. And so we welcomed our first baby LivinG on a college campus. And so I was, you know, very obviously pregnant. I'm breastfeeding. I got pregnant with my second baby while we were living at the Newman house as well. And so I had a lot of conversations with college age women about fertility, about pregnancy, about breastfeeding and NorMALIZInG FEmALe body experiences. And it was just a really eye opening and alarming realization for me of almost the women's movement effects, the pro choice movement. Like, just a lot of the overall effect is this subconscious dissonance, this subconscious apology, like we were saying, for our bodies. And so that's how it kind of began. I felt a strong pull towards it, and I thought I was going to become a nurse midwife because I'd had two babies, and I had had childbirth experiences, and I said, we really need to fix childbirth. Childbirth is a mess. It's kind of traumatic and terrifying and scary.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: So I thought I was gonna be a midwife, and I went to prayer one night, and the Lord just sort of dropped a vision for something. Not at all what I was planning to do, not what I thought I was set out to do, but it was for this comprehensive women's health center that combined fertility, childbirth, breastfeeding, with the services of pregnancy resource centers in a really natural, holistic sort of environment.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: And so when you say, you know, how did you get this idea? Like, I didn't get this idea. I was like, I have no idea how to start. And so you just start, and you figure it out. You figure it out. Literally. I didn't intend to start a nonprofit, but one of the first people I was connected to said, we should start a nonprofit. And I said, okay, do you know how to do that?
[00:05:20] Speaker A: How to start a nonprofit?
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Google how to start a nonprofit. Yep. Okay. Let's figure out how to fill out a 1023.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Really? How it began. Yeah.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: So where did the name guiding star come from?
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Great question, actually. So the chapel I was in when the vision for it came was our lady star of the Sea in Duluth, Minnesota. And I actually didn't put it together when we chose the name guiding star, that our lady star of the Sea is considered the guiding star of Christian's ways. She's Stella Morris, the guiding star of Christian's ways. And I didn't. We're not a catholic organization. We're doing women's healthcare. We're not doing catholic women's healthcare. And so we actually chose the name guiding star. I don't know what she did, but you. Based on sort of this nautical, like, it was a little bit more hipster. It was a little bit more like, yeah, duluth is on the lake superior. It's a boat thing. We chose it, actually, because it was a little bit more hipster, a little bit more, like, celestial, a little bit more like sailors. We. Right on.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: What year is it?
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Well, the original vision for it came, actually. I think it was 2006. Okay.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: So that is totally fitting for, like, what, you know what?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: What was trendy at the time?
[00:06:28] Speaker B: So it was. Yeah, now it's not as cool.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: I still think it's cool. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: But it was like, more like, the anchor, the star. Like, our original kind of stuff was all about, like, how do you be a light and a beacon in a really dark culture? But you're not obnoxious, and you're not, like, blinking in people's faces. You're just a steady sort of northern star of guidance. You're a guiding star. And people, it's invitational. They can follow it if they want, or they can ignore it.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Right?
[00:06:56] Speaker B: And that's really what our name has always been about. And then we connected it back to our lady star of the sea. At some point, we were like, oh, makes sense. Of course.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Oh, that's really beautiful. So this is all happening in Duluth, Minnesota. Minnesota. So was your first, like, brick and mortar mortar in Minnesota?
[00:07:13] Speaker B: And that's the funniest thing about it. I thought this was a vision for one city. I thought it was going to be Duluth, Minnesota. I thought that's, you know, where I was a campuse minister. I left campus ministry, and we actually never got a center up and running in Duluth.
The Lord is really funny. I mean, he used the work that we did to, you know, build a women's care center to build a maternity home. Like, he used that work that we began to do beautiful things. But to this day, we still didn't start a center in Duluth, Minnesota. It just. It was the start of articulating a worldview and a vision around natural women's healthcare. It was the right community. It was the right conversations. It was the right people for us to say, what do women really need? And so those initial conversations were very diverse. It was not the pro life community that I was sitting with. It was the women circling women's groups. It was the Mama yoga classes. It was the La Leche League, ladies. And it was us talking about, if we were to build a women's center here, what would we want? And these voices that were contributing were like, we want trauma informed care. We want birth choice. We want midwifery. We want doulas. We want lactation consultants. And that really was very impactful on the formation of this nonprofit.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And what I'm hearing is, like, this is stuff that is all really accessible to someone who would consider themselves pro choice.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Absolutely right.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: And so, I mean, who doesn't want women to feel empowered and love their bodies?
[00:08:35] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Right. And so, like, have you had pro choice people, like, support your work?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah, actually, right at the very beginning in Duluth, my midwife who did my home birth is very pro choice. And she was incredibly inspirational for me as we began to talk through this vision, because she was actually doing incredibly pro life work. She was volunteering to do the deliveries of high school girls. So if a girl. And she went in and, you know, obviously, she gave the whole talk, and I don't agree with the majority of what her talk was. It was all about, you know, contraception and all the different things, and. But she said, if you do decide that you want to be a mom, I'll do your delivery for free. Like, I'll be your mama bear. I'll guide you through this. And so she was actually catching babies, and then I was looking at, you know, some of the pro life organizations. They were doing less to actually reach these girls. Yeah.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Because she was physically there and offering some. Right. And even before that, like, offering them a resource that was really practical. Like, I will help you deliver this child.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Like, yep. Wow. It was a really eye opening moment for me to recognize that sometimes the things we think as pro lifers like women need are too far down the line. Like, we're coming in at a point where they've already gotten into a really hard situation and we're trying to form a relationship when they're in crisis and they're just like, they're not showing up at their best moment, and yet we're trying to, like, help them to their best option. Right. But they're not in their best moment. And so I just, I took a lot from that of, we need to be really open to how to form relationships early. Early with these women. Like, yeah, even if they're very different politically. Even if they're very different, you know, religiously. Like, we need to be in their life in an authentic religious way. Like, our tense has to get much bigger.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Right? And so with the model of guiding star, because I know the whole, the whole business strategy of planned parenthood is like, you get in the high schools, you do the sex education, you build those relationships early so that when they need an abortion, where are they going to go?
[00:10:34] Speaker B: They know you.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: It's basically the opposite. You're only thinking, we make those relationships early. Cause you're offering, you're talking about holistic care.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: I mean, our spectrum of care.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: I mean, it starts as early as body awareness. Young children learning about their bodies. We want them in our centers, in our child watch. We want them as little children when their mothers are coming for their appointments and they're in our child watch. And we're already getting the opportunity to affirm them and tell them, you know, like, you're good. Like, there's nothing wrong with your body. Your body's really beautiful. But really, as a patient, we want them in our system by age nine. We want them coming into the cycle show. We want them learning about, you know, the cycle show is a, it's a five hour workshop about preparing girls for adolescence and all the body changing.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Just wishing I had all of this.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: I know, and it's, I didn't get any of this.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: I'm like, man, I would have loved to have this as a, as a nine year old or ten year old.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: My daughters have had it. And I'm thrilled because my 16 year old daughter, she did the cycle show when she was eleven, I believe. And her, like, literacy on body, like female body, is just so impressive. So the motto of the cycle show is, actually, I can only protect what I value and respect. And so as nine year old little girls, if we can teach them to protect their bodies by valuing and respecting their bodies. That's a game changer.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: That is a game changer. That's empowering. That's all empowering language. It's all boundary setting. It's 100%. Because you could take that sentence and apply it across the board, like, emotionally protect, physically protect, mentally protect. But if you don't value it, then you're not gonna protect it 100%. That is, you are forming how these young girls and women are.
I mean, you're forming their worldview. You're forming how they see themselves and their identity.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: If they are good, there's nothing wrong with them. They have nothing to apologize for. Like, the world needs to make room for them. They don't need to change themselves to fit into the world.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Right. And what I was saying with Michael earlier was even just the concept of abortion, because, you know, the early feminists were not for abortion.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: No, they weren't.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: And the concept itself inherently says that the pregnancy is a problem.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Right. And that something is wrong that you have to fix. And just, if you take that idea, it's like. No, like, feminism is embracing what the body does, what the female body does, and what it should be. It should be. Right.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: That's what holistic feminism is.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Right, right. Which we'll get into in a second. But it's, like, just the nature of the abortion argument itself.
There's that hidden implication that your body.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: That problem, to be fixed, your body did something wrong. Yeah. And it's the exact opposite. It takes hundreds of things to go.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly right.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: It is such an achievement. It takes a healthy body to get pregnant. And we don't say that enough.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: I've heard things recently where they're saying. They're doing studies on pregnant women and saying, when you are growing a human, you are at the limit of physical exertion.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: It's a thing.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: You are literally at the absolute highest exertion that your body can put out. I was like that. Yeah, that is impressive.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: And yet we just do it without, like, any special.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: We work through the entire thing and, you know.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but I don't think it was always that way. I think there used to be. I mean, I like to imagine, at least, that there was a greater awareness of something sacred is happening here and needs more protection. I mean, I think that's the idea of chivalry. I think that's the idea of, like, protected status for women. And sometimes it went too far, and it became very restrictive.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: And women, you know, victorian era, like, we're gonna.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
And you're like, you've gone the other way. But there is something. Yeah. Like valuing and protecting something so precious.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Beautiful, and recognizing and honoring that her body is doing something very hard. She's doing something very hard in this moment. And you don't need to add more hard to something hard. You don't need to go to work all day when you're already doing something really beautiful and very valuable.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And she shouldn't need to apologize for, because I remember, as my friends have, I'm right on the tail end of that age where all my friends had their babies, and now they're all growing up, but they would kind of say, oh, I didn't really do anything today. And I was like, no, you grew a human.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: That was all you had to do today. You grew an eyeball.
You helped hands grow.
Yes.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Fingernails grew. Right.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And that was energy that you expended.
Yeah. It's like, there's this disconnect that we are being so productive.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we base our worth on productivity, like, an external measure of productivity. I write a lot about this in my book, like, just, you know, the industrial revolution and this idea of worth coming from, you know, widgets that we create. Like, we can count our worth and we can count in our identity. You know, really into the second wave of feminism became very much based upon our external value.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: To society, to corporate America.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: And it's.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: It's. It's sad because it stripped away what. The inherent value that you can't replicate. Yeah. You know, falling fertility rates speak to this. Like, it is incredibly valuable.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: To create the next generation of human beings.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: It's worthy.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Or only we can do it.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Only we can do it.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Right. So that perfect segue, because, you know, you said you didn't start. You didn't mean to start a non profit. Right? Like, and then did you imagine you would write a book?
Like, take me on the journey, like, you start this nonprofit, and then all of a sudden, you find yourself writing a book?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Well, I just was getting so passionate about it. Like, the nonprofit just kind of accidentally happened because of the work that I had done with the college students. I was like, someone's got to work with these women. Like, someone's got to tell them the truth. Like, we have to help these young women. And then kind of the call and adoration, I realized I wasn't supposed to be a midwife. I always felt a call, though, back to my education. I knew I wanted to go back in a master's. I thought it was going to be nurse midwifery. I ended up shifting and went for a master's in women's health and wellness. And this is, I think I started my master's when I had three children, and I defended my master's thesis in labor with baby number five. Of course you did.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Of course you did.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Because women. Yes, it's very all encompassing when we're growing a human being, but it doesn't mean our mind shuts down. We're still very capable.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: We are very strong.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: We're very strong, and we're very capable of multitasking it for most people. But I was able to do it online, and those sort of innovations were really new in, like, 2010, like, when I was doing this. But I just think it keeps getting better and better, the opportunities for women. Like, we are actually looking at how can women exist in these different spaces? So, yeah, as I was doing my master's thesis and doing a lot of research about feminism, I was really interested in how did we set this new standard of healthcare? How did this happen?
Or women's health in general? How did it become a field of study that was synonymous with reproductive choice? Like, why did women's health become reproductive choice? And so I just did a deep dive, you know, over a couple hundred years of women's healthcare and feminism, and got pretty passionate about it. The nonprofit was already kind of forming as a healthcare organization, and I got my certification. I passed my boards as a board certified lactation consultant, and I started seeing women practically in practice every day. And this book just kind of kept, like, bubbling to the surface. I was like, I keep talking to women. I've experienced these things. I've had seven children. I just really want to share it. I really want to share what I've learned, what I've experienced, and that's holistic feminism. It's just kind of my walk and my journey as I've learned more.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So the word like feminism, right, especially in the pro life movement and even in the kind of conservative side, can elicit really strong reactions.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: It's loaded. It's loaded.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Pro life people might push back against it due to its association with the. With abortion advocates and reproductive health or whatever they call it. And then pro choice people can be skeptical of its use by someone who's not supporting abortion. So, like, do you get pushback for your use of the word feminism?
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we do. Yes, definitely, we do.
From both sides.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I imagined. Yeah.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: You know, feminists, when they realize that we're talking about preserving women's bodies and not altering, suppressing, or destroying female fertility. They push back and say, you can't be a feminist if you're gonna restrict reproductive choices.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: And then, of course, pro lifers and those that equate feminism with abortion rightfully, say there's nothing good at the root of feminism. But my sort of response to this is always, we have to use the words and the rhetoric that most closely align with what we're trying to achieve. Right.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Almost like taking the word back.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: We have to use the words that are popularly in culture. We have to work very hard to properly define things.
There's a lot of examples of rhetoric being sort of used to change definitions of words very recently. And if we don't step in and properly define it, it means nothing to anyone. And feminism at its very core, it's femininity. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful word.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Technically, just means like.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: It actually means a love of women. Right. Is like.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Like an affinity for female.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: How can that. How is that controversial? Yeah.
Everything that's been loaded to it, that's the issue. So it's like the unlearning.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: The undoing and the reframing.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Well, the very first time that the word feminism appears, I think, in the dictionary, it's, like, in the late 18 hundreds. And the only. All it is defined as is the qualities of woman.
And I love that definition of feminism. The qualities of woman. And at that point, woman was synonymous with female. Yeah, but they used woman.
And really, when we look at women is what do we uniquely do? We ovulate, we gestate, we lactate. Feminism should be the protection and optimization of women's ability to ovulate, gestate, and lactate. It should fight for laws, it should fight for medical advancement, it should fight for research and all the ways to optimize a woman's ability to do those things in our culture and not apologize for that.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Well, because what I see is abortion is a symptom of a bigger problem.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Because when they say, like, you can't be a feminist and restrict contraception or restrictive choice, reproductive choice, but that's because they're trying to fit feminism into a broken system that doesn't support, yeah, moms and have maternity leave. And so it's like, if the culture changed.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: You know, like, and we had the correct support systems and good maternity leaves and family, you know, like. Like, would they. Would it feel restrictive? You know what I mean?
[00:21:31] Speaker B: They. It's really sad because I think there was a moment. There was this brief moment at the beginning of the second wave of the feminist movement, and Betty Friedan's book, the Feminine Mystique, came out, and they were calling out how hard it was to be a mother. And they were saying, this is, like, horrible. Women hate this. This is so hard to be a mother. It's very restricted to be a mother. There was, like, this little, like, period of time where it could have gone completely the other way before abortion became, like, the rallying cry. There was a moment where they were actually talking about women's rights to be a mother and to exist outside the home. Like, she has a right to creative thought expression, like it should fit alongside her motherhood. And then this sort of reproductive rights, this abortion push, you know, the sexual revolution, all of it kind of just like, whoosh. Came in, and it just created this massive dissociation of the female body. And so abortion became the easy solution to all the cultural problems that should have been addressed at that moment. They could have pushed for, you know, equal pay in 1960, when these conversations were happening. They could have pushed for, you know, maternal policies at work. They could have been pushing for child care, affordable childcare. They could have been pushing for all of those things. And right at that moment, the conversation did start. Yeah, it just barely had started. People were pausing. And so you see what actually did come out of that. There's this really brief moment where we see the natural childbirth movement actually comes out of it. We see women that all of a sudden say, yeah, I don't like twilight birth. I don't like our birth practices. I don't like how we're being treated here. I should. I should have a right to choose motherhood.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: And so there was like a brief moment, a brief moment where it could have been very different before it kind of got.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Well, because the way that I. The way that even wrote was argued and written, it was instead of making space for the woman, it said, no, become like a man.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Well, and what it really just said, we have an easy way, contraception and abortion together. Put those two things together and you can be equal.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: You can have the equal pay. You can, you know, because you can now work all the time. You can. What it really did is it just removed any of the natural sexual difference.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: And ignored it. And just. And it wasn't so explicit as you can be like a man, but it was more so. There's nothing unique about you.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: We're protected. Yeah.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: There's nothing unique about you is really what they were saying.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Heartbreaking.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: And so we have an entire generation of women, you know, our mothers, our grandmothers, that heard there's nothing special about you, you're not worth protecting, and that.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: They'Re internalizing that message.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: And we have. We see it echoed repeatedly. Like, you see, this is where we really see the boom of the cosmetics industry. This is where we see the boom of weight loss drugs. This is where we start to see cosmetic surgeries. Like, because there's nothing special about you. Like, you have to do something, or.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: The thing that is special about you is your appearance.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Exactly. That's what's gonna be judged.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: That is a thing that is feminine.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: That, you know, and we created a feminism stereotype. Like, the female stereotype overcame the archetype of what a woman is. Is somebody who ovulates, gestates, and lactates. And now what a woman is. Is somebody who looks like a woman. Yeah. And we lost the entire essence of what it means to be a female, you know, through that second wave of the feminist movement. And so it's such an opportunity for us right now because we've had so much advancement, you know, scientifically, medically, research wise, we now know how women's bodies should work, and we can correct it. I'm hopeful.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And so the way. The place that we see this is when. Cause we help, you know, we work with women who go into the abortion facilities, and they have these horrific experiences. Right. Because, you know, especially after Roe was overturned in a lot of these states, basically deregulated the abortion facilities. They're not being inspected, and there's people that are taking advantage of the lack of oversight. And so you've got these, you know, horrific facilities being run, and. But a lot of these girls that are going in that don't have that internal message of, you know, I am valuable, therefore I should be protected.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: They let them let themselves, but they. They are subjected to treatment that they think they deserve and the substandard care because we have to give them the language later that what happened to them was wrong.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Was wrong. Because this is a trauma. Yes.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Or that in that moment of vulnerability and the abortionist didn't listen to you or you changed your mind and they wouldn't let you stop, or however, all the ways that they are violated, like.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: There's so much of that internalized shame.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: That we have to then go back.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: And then we defend it, and we create all of these sort of mechanisms of, like, why it was right and we justify it because we just can't face the fact that, yeah, I allowed someone to hurt me.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: And I don't know why. Yeah. But it's like we've inherited an entire generation of, there's nothing worth protecting about you, there's nothing special about.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: And especially if you're going into having a abortion, like, because they're going out and they're going, I am so terrible because I did this thing, therefore I deserved this treatment. And so we're having to give them that language and empower them back and say, no, what happened to you was wrong, and you are worth protecting. And what they did to you was not okay. And that's been a really interesting part of a lot of, like, healing journeys.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: And I'll point out, like, it's not just the abortion industry that's traumatizing women. The birth industry is also traumatizing women. So if we want to talk about common ground, we should be able to talk about just as much how there's obstetrical violence, and women are experiencing PTSD type symptoms of things. You know, they term it birthrape, the rise of the term birthrape. And, you know, I was just reading a research study done recently, and it was 6% of women, like, worldwide are estimated to have had birth trauma to such an extreme that it would diagnosably be PTSD. Birth trauma.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: That's me.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: PTSD. And so we're talking about postpartum depression, and we're talking about women's. You know, why are we not connecting the dots? A postpartum depression, lactation failure, all these problems, it's related to a very difficult, scary, traumatizing birth experience. So we want to talk about pro lifers, want to focus on, like, the abortion experience can be traumatic. Someone been doing experience. It was traumatic in the moment.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: In the moment, because maybe it all.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Went fine and she was sedated and she didn't even know what happened, and it was done. But we also have to talk about the trauma in giving birth.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Well, so, literally, the next part in my outline, I says, I want to be clear. This issue isn't isolated to the abortion industry. And so, like, my own story, like, I've experienced horrific care by an ob gyn during a miscarriage that put my health at risk. I mean, it was. She. We did two ultrasounds, and she diagnosed, like, a blighted ovum, like, traditional. It was a molar pregnancy.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: And she did not catch it. And I was. I kept. I knew something was wrong.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you did.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Because I had had a miscarriage before. And I said this, I feel. And I kept calling their office. They would not see me. I couldn't get an appointment. I couldn't get any weak, because how.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Would you be smart enough to know something's wrong with your body?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Well, I was also on Medicaid at the time.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Okay. And that's a big reason, because you're not going to get the payment you want.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: No. And they. They would not pay attention. And so I end up at the emergency room and because I'm like, something is wrong. That intuition. Something is wrong. And these poor ER doctors have no idea what they're doing.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: And the OB won't even come down to consult on the case. They tell me, oh, you're probably just pregnant.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Because your htg levels are fine, right? And so I'm going, alarm bells, alarm bells. Alarm bells, yeah. And so finally, I just move out of the whole system and I go to a different hospital system. And even the receptionist, I start telling her what's wrong. And she was like, oh, honey, I'm gonna get you. I don't. I'm gonna look at every doctor's file and get you to the first person.
I'm at a women's and children's hospital within 24 hours. The ER physician diagnoses a male pregnancy. I see the Ob GYN and I have a d and C within three.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Days, which, to be clear, is not an issue.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Right. No signs of anything.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: But that's the thing. We need to say these things because pro lifers are actually so ignorant about women's healthcare issues and women's healthcare procedures that we get trapped into ridiculous debates because we don't know the terminology. We actually don't understand women's healthcare. So the fact that people have been able to even confuse, like, miscarriage with elective abortion.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Ectopic pregnancy, the same issue.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: So that's been something that we have really been trying to, from the policy enforcement standpoint, because that is a whole situation that we've had to deal with post Roe, is the enforcement of these abortion bans and the fact that doctors are so, even the physicians themselves are so uninformed about the. The legal definition of elective abortion and the medical definition of abortion and spontaneous abortion and treating an ectopic pregnancy or a baby that's already passed away. Like, these are not the same situation.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: This is really inexcusable when you stop and just think about this for just half a second. Like the fact that our specialists in women's healthcare don't know the terms and don't know at what point point something is. This is ridiculous.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Yeah. No, it is.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. The spirit of these laws is never to put women in danger. It's to protect life.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: But the problem is, is, like, people have these experiences because these are bad doctors. But then the abortion industry holds them up and says, look, they didn't get a medical professional.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: They had a miscarriage, couldn't get the help that they needed, and everybody goes, nobody wanted that. And whoever that doctor was needs to have their license review. Right, right. But it's like, there's such a.
Because it's gotten so politicized.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: And people are so bent on just staying in their corners. It's like the women. The women are getting lost in the crossfire or getting hurt in the crossfire.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: And.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: And this is how traumatizing. None of us want women to be traumatized. We don't want traumatic births. We don't want traumatic abortions. We don't want traumatic postpartum. We want women to feel strong and empowered in their pregnancy.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: And that's something that we all agree on.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yes, 100%.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: And so, like, how can we get past these, like, our. Get out of our echo chambers and just say, like, hey, I'm reasonable, you're reasonable.
Like, let's believe the best of each other here. We don't want women to be put in dangerous positions. Like, we want them to get the care that they need. But you have to pause and, like, put your political agenda aside for a second.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: And. And take care of women. Take care of these women.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Take care of women. And listen to women and say, what do you actually need right now? Like. And oftentimes, you know, like, in my book, holistic feminism, I talk a lot about the mind, the body, and the spirit that, like, if we're gonna be healthy as a whole person, like, we have to acknowledge that we have these female bodies that are very real. They're very different than men's bodies. We have to take care of them. But then we also have to recognize, like, our mind and our spirit, like, our mental health, our spiritual health. Like, we belong in community. We belong in relationship.
And building that and not creating so many echo chambers and silos. Like, I love the fact that my organization kind of got its roots in Duluth, Minnesota. Duluth, Minnesota is not politically in line with my political beliefs. However, I had experiences of women that threw me a blessing way, and they don't do baby showers. They do blessing ways. And, you know, it's just such a beautiful, like, this is a sacred thing, and we're going to pray you through this experience, like, in whatever way you want. And that's so respectful. And I had women that, you know, I mean, I remember sitting at the park across from a lesbian woman with her partner, and she's breastfeeding her baby, and I'm breastfeeding my baby on the opposite bench. In that moment of, like, connection of eye contact.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: I see you.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: I see you. Like, I know what you're experiencing. It's beautiful, and it's good. We're not gonna comment. We're not gonna go there, but, like, what is happening with you and this baby is good.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Like, yeah, it is so good. And we can connect on those things.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Our bodies, as women, initiate relationship with one another. Our bodies are built for relationship. Every part of our body speaks to the fact that we're made for other. You know, our breasts are made for another. Our uterus, it's made for another. Like, if we allow our bodies to initiate relationships, we're gonna have a much more peaceful world. Right? And so I think that's the invitation to women on the other side of the abortion issue, is to just say, love your body. Like, let your body do what it's doing. Like, it accomplished something tremendous in getting pregnant. Let it try.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Right?
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Don't cut yourself off. Don't sell yourself short. Your body did this. It initiated a relationship. Like, make room. Let love grow. Make some room and see what happens, because your life is about to be a grand adventure. You know, if we could just be open to other people in that way, not just babies in the womb, but, like, just other people all around us. I mean, that's truly what it is to be diverse. Be, like, all these kind of buzz catch words right now that we're talking about. Yes, that's what it means.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think, because I know from my own experience, like, I grew up as a youngest child, so I didn't have any younger siblings. I was the youngest of my. Of the grandchildren. I didn't grow up around kids.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: So I was never really a kids person growing up.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, me either.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Like, at 16, I think I was 16 when I held my first, like, infant. The whole time, I was like, you know, I don't.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: Please.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: You know, I was 14 when my.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Mom had my younger sister, and I was the baby, and I was not a fan.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: I was like. And I would tell my mom. I would literally tell my mother, I'm either gonna be a nun or I'm gonna adopt ten year olds. So I can just skip the baby phase. Like, that's what I was telling my mother as, like, a ten year old, but going through my own pregnancy and birth, I have a daughter who will be four in August. And now I just see children completely differently because I've had. We learn that whole experience with her. Now I'm not gonna go work at a daycare. Like, you don't want me to either.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Or. Me neither.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: Me neither. I'm not a teacher.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: I like my kids.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: I like my kids, and I like my friend's kids. But it has completely changed, like, how I interact with other moms and other kids, and there's just so much grace there and empathy and just, like, do what you can, whatever you need, you know? And I only know that because I experienced it.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: And I honestly, I would have never ended up in the field of women's healthcare if I hadn't had kids like your children, and, like, kind of the ways they open your eyes to the world, you begin to see things differently. You see holes. And that's what really just got me passionate about women's healthcare in this work, because it was my pregnancies, it was my deliveries not going great. It was me not knowing how to breastfeed. It was me not understanding and looking around and saying, why are we having these conversations? Why are we withholding this information from one another? Why are we not telling each other that we had a miscarriage? This is what it felt like. This is what it was.
That's not building a culture of life when we keep these things hidden. That's not life giving.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Well, and you bring up another good point with miscarriage, too. When I had my first loss, it was a. It was a very, very traumatic experience, not just because of loss, but there was a lot of external situations that were going on that were just compounding it. And I told my husband, I said, I want to be very open about my experience and my grief and my. There's something about being in the pro life field, and all I do every day is talk about the life of the human being from the moment of conception, like, honoring that life. And so I wrote a blog, and I. This was back, I don't know, seven, eight years ago now. And I posted it, and it was about grief. It was like, it's okay to feel pain like you're allowed to hurt. And so many women just came out of the woodworks and were like, me too. I've never told anybody, me too.
[00:38:03] Speaker B: It's a me too moment. Yes, it's one of those hidden things, like, there are certain things that we need to shine light on, and this is one of them.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: And that was one of the things where I said, we aren't talking about this enough. We're not talking about this enough. And so many women came forward, and they're like, I've never told anybody about my loss. And these are women that were, like, in the church. And.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: And this is definitely an issue across the aisle because there's a famous quote from Michelle Obama, actually, and she said, I think it's the worst thing women do to one another when we don't tell each other how our bodies work and don't work. And she was referring to her struggle with infertility. And I was like, Michelle Obama? Like, not somebody that I would typically be like, yeah, we're on the same page on a lot on all these issues, but, like, I was like, she's absolutely right. That is the worst thing we do when we stop those relationships that our bodies should naturally be initiating. Yeah.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
And then all of a sudden, you find yourself feeling so alone and isolated and that you're the only one having this issue.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Yep. Right? Yep. Absolutely.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: So it was. So it just became one of those things where anytime I. And I don't mean to be like, I had miscarried all the time, but it's like, anytime I can say, yeah, I've had two losses. This is part of my journey, and I have a beautiful daughter now, and I will not have any more natural children. But that's my story, and it's okay. And, like, it has just opened up so many amazing conversations about, you know, where we are and our struggles.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: And most of us do have miscarriages. Most of us have. That's the reality.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: People don't realize how common it is.
[00:39:33] Speaker B: Very common. Is it one in four or one in five? One in 1413? Something like that. Right around there. Yeah. So one in four.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Wow, man. So if someone's listening and they feel really motivated by your work and your focus, like, what are practical steps that we can take to really exhibit, you know, holistic feminism, embody it in our lives and, you know, do the work to get it more ingrained in our culture.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: I mean, if you're a parent with young children, I think that's one of the easiest ways to start, is just, you know, telling your children from a very young age, like, you know, whatever your languages you want to use. But, like, God doesn't make mistakes. Like, your body's really good. Like, this is the body that you were meant to be in. This is how it works. And we need to lean in and be a little less afraid, precious, of using the words that we need to use. Like, we need to talk about this stuff. Like, we need to not be afraid to, you know?
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Part of the work I end up doing is, you know, I teach women to actually use the words, like, well, there's so much shame on your breast, ma'am. Yeah.
There's nothing shameful about these words.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah, there's so much shame and embarrassment around them that people don't want to say.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Exactly. So just destigmatizing. I mean, there's that whole push, destigmatize abortion. I've seen that, like, destigmatize abortion. No, let's destigmatize, like, periods. Let's destigmatize, like, pregnancy. Let's destigmatize. Very normal, natural things that happen all the time to women. Let's normalize it. I mean, things like menstrual leave. Why is that an issue? Why can't we have menstrual leave? If we can have sick days, why can't you? I mean, this is something we should be able to do.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Do you understand how painful this can be?
We are ill.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: You can't. Even if you were to, like, most women, the idea of telling your boss, like, I'm taking a menstrual leave day, they would be mortified.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Mortified.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: They would die. They would never say it. And it's like, why? Yeah, why not? I'm taking a menstrual leave date. That should just be a normal thing we can say without apologizing. So, yeah. Yeah. I think the very practical steps are being very comfortable with how the natural body works and not being embarrassed about it. Talk with your kids about it. Talk with your friends about it. You know, share your miscarriage story. Talk about these things. I think that's a very practical first step.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in my own life, my.
We did not use that language. And it was very, like, growing up, there was a lot of embarrassment, lot of giggling or just me. Like, for me, I was just, like. I was known. Like, people would tease me because I would just get so embarrassed. I'd get so flustered because I just had no exposure. And, you know, I can see in myself the ways that. That impacted my ability to talk about these things openly. And it was always hidden. Hidden, hidden, hidden.
And so, yeah, with my daughter, we try to be, you know, very open and very, like, direct and teach her the correct words.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: And here's what's gonna happen. Your daughter's gonna grow up, and somebody's gonna come to her at some point and try to be like, oh, do you know about this? And she's gonna be like, yeah, let me tell you. Like, I will tell you because I know more.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: And, like, what's the big deal?
[00:42:44] Speaker B: She's gonna be like, that's not even the right word.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: Yeah, right, right. It's like. And also, like, doesn't everybody know this? Like, what's the big deal? We all have this. Like, it's not like when you give.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Your children the information and the knowledge, first they become the expert. Yeah. A really huge gift to give them.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: If Goldie is anything, she's an expert.
This girl is going to be a strong leader one day. You know, she is smart and give.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Her the info she needs, she takes it.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: She's a sponge. So this has been so amazing. I love what you're doing. I think it's so necessary. And again, I love that we both are reaching out, are building bridges, finding ways to make these conversations accessible to people that are outside of our.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Bubble.
That's the best word.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: Bringing them in. Like, hey, there's some of us that are really thoughtful and intentional and reasonable.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: And we're going to hold your hand, you know, we're gonna cry when you lose your baby. That's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah. I mean, yeah.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Wow. So I know we're both exhausted. We need to finish up, but there's one thing we like to do with our guests at the very end.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Because it is really easy to get into, like, pro life tunnel vision. Oh, yeah.
Is, what is your. What do you do off the clock? And it can't be anything with motherhood or single wife. I know.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: I have seven children.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Do you have a non family related hobby? What's your favorite thing to do?
[00:44:18] Speaker B: Well, the thing they don't want to do with me is gardening.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was my answer the first year. I was like, the first episode, I was like, it's gardening. Gardening is saving my life right now.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: I like being in the dirt. I grew up on a dairy farm. I like being around animals, like being in the dirt. I love just, you know, kind of that. Reconnecting with mother nature.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Yeah. There's something about getting your hands in and watching something grow and then eating your food that you grew the flower.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Satisfying every day.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: At the end of my workday, I'm a flower gardener. So I come home and I get my hose, and I walk around. I water everything. It's just my moment to, you know, pause and.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah, me, too. Me too.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: And I have a lot of rose bushes and, you know, hydrangeas and tons of perennials.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: I love perennials.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: Always. I'm like, don't bother with any.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: If it has to come back.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Yeah. It has to survive a minute. Minnesota winter. Oh, that's true.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm in Kentucky, so they're not, we still get, we still get a little cold, but it's definitely nothing like a Minnesota.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: Ours are tough plants.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's, yeah. I love gardening, too. So that's a good answer. That's acceptable.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: All right. So where can people find out more about your work?
[00:45:33] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So guidingstarproject.com is the work that I do with guiding star, and actually the work that I do on more women's issues and feminism can be found at the master's program that I direct at the University of St. Thomas, which is www.catholicgenderstudies.com. so I do a lot of work on feminism and the role of women's bodies in the women's movement. And so that's where I'm gonna take.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: I want to take that class.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Come take a master's. Come get a master's in catholic women and gender studies.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: I would love to do that. I'd love to have you. That's amazing. Yeah. I love what you're doing. I think it's so important. Thank you so much for taking time out today with how crazy things are now. Are you able to go to actually rest now?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: No, we're going to dinner.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Thank you so much. That's all the time we have today. We have an amazing lineup of guests coming up, including Jesse Sutherland, the federal policy director of Americans United for Life, and Laura Muzyka, president and CEO of Psywic advocates for life. And many, many more episodes drop every other Friday and are available for everyone to hear. So help us spread the word by rating, reviewing and sharing with your friends. And don't forget, when you buy your next bag of coffee, use our link in the show notes to support our work through seven weeks coffee. For more information on the amazing work of center for Client Safety, visit centerforclientsafety.org. or you can find us on socials at center for Client Safety.
