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.
Our guest today is Sue Ellen Browder. She was a freelance writer for Cosmopolitan magazine for 24 years. Sue authored articles promoting ideas like casual sex, contraception, and abortion as the ideal path to personal fulfillment for single women. But eventually she realized how propagandists had influenced her thinking and personal choices and ultimately had reshaped the women's movement. Now she is exposing the truth behind that agenda, including her book, How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement. She has even spoken at the United Nation on a panel addressing the status of women.
You guys missed our very beginning of this conversation before I started recording. But I told sue she is a treasure trove of information and has done so much research on the history of the feminist movement and including that. With that. Including the history of the abortion movement. Sue, it is such an honor to have you here today.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: It's a delight to be here. Thank you.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: So back in June, I had the opportunity of interviewing Michael Kenney, the president of the Pro Life Partners Foundation. And during that conversation, he just praised both you and Dr. Cary Gress for your incredible work uncovering the true and often nefarious history behind the feminist movement. And so I recently had a chance to speak with Dr. Gres, and that was just a fantastic conversation. But I'm excited to continue this dialogue and hear more about your experiences and research because you have an inside look. But before we dive deeper and get into all that, can you at least tell us a little bit about your journey? Like, how did you end up writing for Cosmopolitan and then shift to all of a sudden being this amazing voice that is exposing that lie from the feminist movement?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Okay, well, I started out as a small town girl in Iowa, and I thought I saw the magazines on the news racks and in the drugstore and I thought, oh, all the people who write for those magazines are rich and famous and wonderful, and I want to be one of them. Okay. So I went to the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, which is a really.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: It's a really well renowned school of journalism. Yeah, top notch.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: And I majored in magazine writing. And one of the classes you had to do was choose a magazine and study it and then report to the class what that magazine was like. I chose Cosmopolitan and I said, these stories in this magazine are so packed. They look like they're completely made up. I said that in Missouri. So then I go to New York City with my beloved husband. We wanted to be rich and famous and writers and everything. We went to New York City. I applied for his job in the New York Times. It was just. It was a. It was a magazine job. I didn't know what it was. It turned out to be Cosmopolitan.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: So what year is this?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: This was in 1971.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, so you're in New York, it's 1971, and you apply for a job.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: The women's movement is in full blown bloom. They're marching in the streets, you know, and I'm. I'm at Cosmo. I beat out 16 people who were applied for the job. I got the job. And how did I get the job? I said to the articles editor, I said, she says, why do you want this job? And I said, I want to be like you.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Imitation. Well.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: I got the job. So anyway. Anyway, when I got there, I found out that they actually had. And I was working in the articles department, so I had access to all of the. These everything. And I found out they actually had a. Written a list of how to lie to the readers about, you know, when you're writing these articles.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Okay, so this was when you first started. You see this, like, immediately.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Well, I'm working in the articles department, so I'm going to find these things all the time. As the articles come in, the editors write about what they want it to be, different and everything. And Helen Gurley Brown, who was the. Who had changed Cosmo from a family magazine into a sex rag, had these. Are these rules, editing rules for Cosmopolitan? Okay, and here's one of them. Okay.
Unless you are a recognized authority on a subject, profound statements must be attributed to somebody appropriate, even if the writer has to invent the authority.
And so here's an example. Bad. All psychiatrists are basically Freudians. Better. According to one practitioner who specializes in group therapy, all psychiatrists are basically Freudians. So you made up a. You made up a authority there.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Here's another one. Try to locate some of the buildings, restaurants, nightclubs, parks, streets, as well as entire case histories. And these case histories were made up in cities other than New York, even if you deliberately have to plant them, quote, plant, unquote them elsewhere. Most writers live in New York. 90% of our readers do not. So you wanted the actual revolution to look like it was all over the country, so you planted these fake stories in Columbus, Ohio and Iowa and all over the place.
Here's the final one. There's a lot of these, but here's another one. Avoid attacking advertisers.
Cosmetics, liquor, bra girdles, et cetera, and wear convenience. Mention advertised brands rather than unadvertized competition. So Cosmo was basically a.
It was.
It was something for the advertisers. Yeah, it was advertising copy. And Helen Gurley Brown had been an advertising copywriter before she became editor.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Makes sense that she would have that bend. Yeah. And advertisers mean money.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: That's right. So it was all advertising. Even the editorial was advertising. You know what? That's even so true today. Be careful. Even you look at the New York Times and who's advertising in them and who they're promoting. It's. Yeah, right.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: So. So when did you have this, like, aha moment? So you're there for 24 years. You have this huge shift. So what happened?
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Well, it was. It was a slow, gradual thing, but my beloved husband, we. I.
I actually quit Cosmo before I became Catholic. I became. I quit Cosmo because I found out they weren't paying me enough.
I went to a. I went to a.
They were cheating me. They were cheating me on paying.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Which is really ironic. Come. Feminist movement.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Right, Right. I went to a conference, and some woman came up to me after the conference, and she says, I've got this assignment from Cosmopolitan, and I don't know what to do. You know, what should I do? And I started talking to her, and she, you know, and I said, well, how much? She said. I said, how much are they paying you? Because she was saying. She was writing 20,000 words. I'm like, you can't be writing 20,000 word article. How much are they paying you? She said, $5,000. And at that time, they were paying me, like, oh, 3,000, 2,500, something like that. I'm like, you're being paid. So that. So I had a fight. I went to my agent, and I had a fight with Cosmo, and I won the battle in terms. They were. They paid me 5,000 for my next article, but they didn't use me anymore.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: So we had a fight. Okay. So then after I became Catholic, and that's a whole different story, a friend of mine. I was telling a friend of mine when I was at Cosmo, there's. There's always one little thing that you know that other people don't know. And what I knew at Cosmo was that Cosmopolitan and the women's movement were two radically different movements. And so this friend of mine said, well, how did they get joined together? She said. And I said, I don't know. She says, was it abortion?
I said, I think it was. And so I started researching to see how, because Cosmo would have loved to have been part of the women's movement. But Betty Friedan, who had launched the women's movement with her book the Feminine Mystique, called Cosmo quite obscene and quite horrible.
So how did it get joined together? Well, it was. It was the abortion movement that was inserted into the women's movement that joined the sexual revolution and the women's movement together. Wow. And it took me a number of years, actually. I researched for a long time to find out how that happened.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's what my next question is going to get into, is like, setting the stage. Here is, you know, your work from what I've read so far. Like, you describe this moment, this vote, where the abortion issue was, like, formally incorporated into the feminist platform. And, you know, a third of these women that were present were so outraged, they resign because a lot of people don't realize that the early feminists and the suffragists were actually opposed to abortion. So can you walk through, like, how that vote came about and, like, what happened next? Because after that, I would imagine then it's incorporated into the feminist movement, and then, you know, Cosmo comes in. But it really started with that vote, right?
[00:11:05] Speaker B: That's right. Well, yes, exactly. Well, what happened? It actually started before that vote. Betty Friedan knew another magazine writer. Both of them were magazine writers. Magazine writers have basically have wrecked the world, by the way, because magazine writers can boil all this stuff down into something that people can understand, even if it's fake. So anyway, Betty Friedan knew this magazine writer. His name was Larry Lader. He was the founder of NARAL Pro Choice America. He and Bernard Nathanson, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, were founders of NARAL Pro Choice America was originally called the National Abortion Rights Action League.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: And he convinced Betty Friedan that women had to be to have abortion to be free. Betty Friedan did not believe it. She had been fired for being pregnant in the 1940s, and I was fired for being pregnant in 1970. So you were fired for being pregnant in those days. So if you wanted to take charge of your life, you're like, I got.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: I better not get pregnant.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: I better not get pregnant. And if I do, what'll I do? They're gonna fire me. And they did fire me. So anyway, Betty Friedan knew Larry Lader, and Larry Lader convinced her that the young women in the women's movement needed abortion to be free.
He had written a book called Abortion. He had also written a book called Breeding Ourselves to Death.
These ads were run in New York Times and all sorts of magazines and newspapers everywhere. The population bomb threatens the peace of the world. That's how he sold this to the American public. He sold it to Betty Friedan by telling her that women needed abortion to be free and that women had always wanted abortion. It's something they'd always had before, and it was safe now, and women needed it to be free. So he convinced Betty, and we have the night that, okay, so the National Organization for Women is meeting for the second. For the second annual conference in New York or in Washington, D.C. in the Chinese Room of the Mayflower Hotel on November 18, 1967.
And they have them. They're talking about what they're going to put into their platform for women's rights.
And they have all these other rights, you know, equal pay for equal work, all the things that women all agree on. They passed all these with no problem. The abortion right comes up. They fought about that until almost midnight. They fought over that. And There were only 105 to 10, about 105 people there, and only 57 people voted to insert abortion into the women's movement.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: What was the. What was the other side like, the people that were arguing against it? I mean, do you know what their.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: View was that people have been saying now, oh, it's murder, you know, so there were. There were a number of Christians there, women who knew that a baby is human.
And there were a number of people there when, as I say, when the vote was finally taken, there were only 57 people in that room that voted to insert the abortion right in the women's movement. And that's what we're dealing here with today. You know, propaganda is about the intelligent few running the world. Well, these intelligent few were only 57 people who had voted to insert that, abort that right into the abortion movement. And then, of course, once that happened, then the media went crazy over it because you've got all these articles and, you know, all these advertisements and everything. And so. And then when Roe v. Wade comes along in 1973.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: It'S ready.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: It's ready.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: It's convinced everybody that it must be a woman's right, right?
[00:15:14] Speaker A: So I imagine, like, so abortion officially becomes part of the feminist platform, and you start writing for Cosmopolitan. And even at that point, given how controversial abortion was, you even had this room split.
It seems like the movement, the feminist movement, had to start by normalizing sexual liberation. Right? Essentially creating the perception that abortion would be necessary to be, you know, sexually free. And so, you know, talk about how the feminist movement gradually shaped that public opinion to make abortion synonymous with feminism, because they have this vote, but then they've got this uphill battle of shaping public opinion too. Because I want to talk about the Roe vs. Wade decision, you know, specifically, but up until this point, like it's voted in, and then you're, I'm assuming, like Cosmo and all these other media organizations are going, well, let's start with sexual liberation first. Well, if we have sexual liberation, well, then we need abortion. Right, right, right.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Well, you know what I mean. Just look at, look, just look at all the ads around you today. Look at the sex education in our schools. It was everywhere. This was not a small group of people who were doing this. This wasn't Betty Friedan all by herself or even 57 people all by themselves. These people listen to this, in this Bringing ourselves to death, for example, the people that signed on to this stuff, the head of Standard Oil, Harvard Divinity, somebody at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the World bank, at the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of, Michigan State University, the Bank of Virginia, Rockefeller University, Stanford University. This was big time stuff by this point. And this was all behind the scenes. And if you look at all the ads and everything and the sex education, it was, you know, the sexual revolution was in full swing at that time. All the artists and stuff, the Beatnex in it was everywhere. And the baby boomers, I was a baby boomer. We were young, we were innocent. We didn't know what was going on. And all this stuff is coming and everybody's saying it's free. It all looked really good, but there wasn't. It wasn't just the feminist movement that sold the sexual revolution to the world. It was everybody.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then to have, to have, you know, the sexual revolution was pushing sexual liberation, which meant freedom from family obligations. You know, that's, that's the core of the, especially the feminist movement part was like sexual freedom is freedom. You know, the ability to engage in whatever sexual acts you want to with no consequences, with no strength. Right. So then you have to have abortion and birth control in order to achieve that. But, so I could see it, I could see how it fit into their narrative. But were there other driving forces? Because, you know, I've, I've, I've seen Bernard Nathanson's stuff that's come out and his, his admittance. And, you know, I know that Lawrence Slater is known for being a Pretty nefarious character himself. Like in the. In the financial motivations. Like, what? You read those businesses out from the back of that book. Like, were there other motivations for promoting. Promoting abortion at this time?
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Money, money, money. Well, you know, if you can get every woman in America on birth control pills, having abortions, buying these fancy things to look great on t. Look great for everybody, you know, it was money. We're talking billions and trillions of dollars.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Right?
[00:19:09] Speaker B: So don't just limit it to just abortion. It was a whole milieu, the sexual revolution.
Abortion was part of it, but it wasn't the whole picture.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but there were people that looked at that and said, this is a business opportunity. Right?
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Advertisers. Yes, of course. Yes. And of course, Cosmo was the most popular women's magazine in the country in the early 70s. And so then all the other women's magazines began copying her because they wanted those advertising dollars, too. So it grew. You know, as long as you could make a profit on women's bodies and sell them the sexual revolution, fine, let's do it. They didn't think it through that way. They were just like, oh, okay, here's a way to make money.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Right. I'm specifically focusing in on the feminist movement because to me, that's the most interesting piece is that it seems so contradictory to what they were supposedly promoting. You know, was like, freedom and choice, but yet they're also holding up these industries and these organizations that are manipulating and using women for profit. I mean, it just. It shows that hypocrisy of what they were really creating was, you know, a business industry that was on the backs of further enslaving women to these ideals of certain ways to look and act. And, you know, so it's. So when you. When you look at it that way, it's so contradictory to what they were saying they were actually wanting to achieve. And you're a perfect example of that. Like, you worked at this magazine that claimed freedom, and, hello, you got underpaid. Right, right.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Even worse, okay? Even worse, I had an abortion, okay? Because after Roe v. Wade, remember, I've been. I've been fired for being pregnant. I was married at the time. I had two children. I was helping my husband. We were both supporting these kids. And I got pregnant by surprise. I went back to the doctor and got to get on the birth control pills, but I forgot that you had to be on those things for a month before they were effective. And the doctor and I had a little fight because I said, these. These pills make me sick, and I don't like them and they depress me and all this stuff. Was there something wrong in your life? Anyway, you know, it's probably that. And so I was mad at the doctor, so I didn't get all the.
All the advice that I should have. And I went on the birth control pill and immediately got pregnant. So both my husband and I, we were young. We were in a panic. Robie Wade had just been decided. I thought, well, if Roby WADE, if they. U.S. supreme Court thinks it's okay, I guess it must be okay. And of course, there wasn't. There weren't. There wasn't all this, the controversy at that time, it had just come out. And so. So I had. So not only did I get underpaid at Cosmo, the worst thing was I had an abortion.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: And that when I was. That was 50 years ago.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: And it still stays with you, of.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Course, it sticks with you forever. And these young ladies don't realize that when they're gonna. They just want to. They want to get out. Get out of a different desperate situation. But they got themselves in the desperate situation because of. Because of the sexual revolution.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Right?
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Sexual revolution sold them this stuff, and then they got themselves in that. In that. So, yeah.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: So that's why. That's why when I. When I became Catholic, I could let this go, this pain, this, you know, then. And stop blaming myself for everything, even though it was my fault. But, you know, so when I. When I sold this art, this book subverted to Ignatius Press.
I wanted to write about. Why did I want to write about how Roe v. Wade got written? Because it was Roe v. Wade that was causing my divorce, my abortion. I was going to get this. I wanted to see what happened. Okay? So.
But I. So I wrote this book and sent it to Ignatius. And they said, well, we don't want all this. We want this too, but we want your personal story.
Right? I told my best friend, I said, if I tell my personal story, I'm going to have to talk about that abortion. She said, I wouldn't do it.
So that night, I was living at this point on the church property next to my priest. How that happened, this is a whole other story. But anyway, I had gone out to a lake and cried because they wanted my personal store. So I'm sitting at the lake, crying. And then the priest invited me over for dinner because he knew I was upset. And I told him, you know, I don't know if I can tell this story, the whole world, you know, and he said, well, he didn't say do it. He said, if you're going to do it, do it as an ascetic exercise.
Just the facts, man. Just don't get all emotional in it. Just do it. And so I wrote that one section just once and that I wrote it through, and that was. It didn't go back over. It didn't try to rewrite it. Didn't do anything. Just got it in. But. So this subverted how I helped the sexual revolutions hijack the women's movement, shows how I was deceived and then how I went on to deceive others, or vice versa. How we were all deceived in those days. We really were, though. The women's movement was. We were all deceived in those days.
Here's another thing. And I helped write a book called how to make the World Better for Women.
It had a lot of things in it that women are concerned about. You know, it had things about rape. It had things, you know, how to prevent rape, how to do all of the things that women. But within those ways to make the world better, abortion was included. It was included with all these other things women agree with. We shouldn't be raped. We should have equal paper, equal work. We should have. We should be able to vote. We should. I mean, all these things that women agree in. But. But then abortion was inserted in that. In that little. It was that little snake in the grass.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Right. But I think that's what makes your story so powerful, is that you can have historic, you know, scholars talk about these times in history, and you can have people studying it and recounting it. But to have that lived experience, I mean, I just think that there. There are few things as powerful as saying, no, I experienced this. Like, I was a victim of this. I was. I was, you know, bought and sold and, you know, went through this whole process and I did not feel empowered. It left me feeling broken and hurt on the other end. And so I think that's why I appreciate your bravery and finally, you know, stepping forward, because I know that's a really hard story to tell, but I understand, understand, you know, why they wanted to include it. Because it.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: I think a lot of women probably identified with you. Right. Of.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: They didn't know I'd had an abortion when they told me they wanted my first story. No, they didn't know that. They didn't know the whole story. Yeah, well, I was both a victim and a perpetrator.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: You know, we're all sinners, and I Was both. Yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Wow. So I want to talk more because I know that you specifically have done work on the Roe vs. Wade decision, which I really want to hear more about, because your research showed that the ruling was heavily influenced by propaganda as well. And Bernard Nathanson later even admitted that he and others involved in the abortion movement had lied, exaggerated numbers to shape public opinion and support the case for legal abortion. Can you tell us more about that? False. The false narratives that were embedded specifically in that decision.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: There were a lot of false narratives. Larry Lader, I told you, the founder of naral, who wrote this Breeding Ourselves to Death. And he also wrote a book on abortion, just called Abortion.
He was cited in the Roe v. Wade opinion seven times. He made up all this stuff. It was all half truth. Okay. Propaganda is not total lies. Propaganda is half truth, limited truth, and truth out of context. And it's just. It can be. It can be 90% true.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: It's the 10% that get you that little twist, right?
[00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Just like I said about that. How to make the world better for women. All the other things were true, but then a portion was inserted in that. Well, the same way with. That's the way Larry Lader wrote. He would tell all these stories, but then he twist them just a little. Just a little. And one. One of the things that he did that what made it into Roe v. Wade in a kind of truth sort of way, but it made it in. Was he divided the baby's soul from his body.
And he said that the Catholic Church. He went back, he. The Catholic Church was his enemy. I wrote this when I went to a conference. I met Dr. Bernard Nathanson and he had written something about how abortion was hard sold to America. And here's.
I wrote a little thing called the Whole Truth. And here he tells how they sold it to America. Well, one way that he sold. That Larry later sold abortion to America was with America still had a lot of anti Catholicism, and it still does. Okay. And so they played the Catholic card. So he went in and said, the Catholic Church has been always so confused about this. He'd take these little things and take them out of context and say that the Catholic Church has never known whether the baby in the womb has a soul. Well, there was a debate in the middle. In the Middle Ages over this.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Yeah, in the Middle Ages.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Right, right. But from the very beginning, the church has always said, Christianity has always said that abortion is murder from the very first centuries. And so this insolent debate that he brought in was a false understanding.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Interesting and he's playing on the anti Catholic sentiment of the day.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Yes. And here's another thing. Here's another thing. And here's another thing that Bernard Nathanson said. The second key tactic was to play the Catholic card. We systematically vilified the Catholic Church and its, quote, socially backward ideas and picked on the Catholic hierarchy as the villain. The villain. He said, you couldn't blame all Catholics. You had to pick the priests. So they blamed the hierarchy so that the ordinary people could say, oh, well, okay, I agree with this priest that's doing these crazy things, doesn't agree with it. But they weren't talking about Jesus Christ. They were talking about institutional Catholic Church, not about what Jesus Christ taught.
Jesus Christ, when he came into Mary's womb, had a human soul.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: But that was their way of making abortion, I guess, more palatable to people, was to say, well, if it doesn't have a soul yet, then it's not as, I don't know, more palatable because.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Most of most people still consider themselves Christians, but they had to sell the Christians art. And one of Larry Lader's most powerful articles was written in the Reader's Digest, which is a very conservative magazine. And in that article, he even said to the Protestants, well, you know, you're more up to date and more aware than the Catholics are.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Right. But you know, the other things that I've heard, you know, at least Nathan's, I'm just now learning about Lawrence Slater.
Dr. Gress had referred to him as, well, I didn't know that name as well as I do, Bernard Nathanson.
For people who don't know, because there's going to be people who listen to this that are not entrenched in the pro life movement like we are. Bernard Nathanson was a very prolific abortionist. He was a physician in New York.
And like you had said, he had abortion.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: One of his own children.
Wow.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: But he later had a conversion experience, and that's why he wrote this article and he came out. He wrote a book, he produced a movie that's actually, actually a video of an abortion and became a really outspoken person that criticized Roe versus Wade in this decision. And he had admitted to, I guess, inflating the numbers of abortions that were being done to show urgency or the need. Right. Was that something else that was done? Am I understanding that correctly?
[00:33:06] Speaker B: Let me just read you what Bernard Nathanson said.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: He said, I am personally responsible for 75,000 abortions.
This legitimizes my credentials. To speak to you with some authority on the Issue. I was one of the founders of the national association for the Repeal of the Abortion laws, now called Naral Pro Choice America. Okay.
In 1968 was when he did that a truthful poll of opinion then would have found that most people were against permissive abortion. Yet within five years, we had convinced the Supreme Court to issue the decision that legalized abortion throughout America and produced virtual abortion on demand. How did we do this? And he says the first key tactic was to capture the media.
That was number one. We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one. Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. Here you go again, making things up. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favor of permission abortion, permissive abortion of the self fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority. And you'll still see it today. You'll still see all of these polls. Everybody's for abortion, really. Maybe not. We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program a permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions being done in the US the actual figure was approaching 100,000. But the figure we gave to the media was repeatedly 1 million. Wow.
Repeating the big lie often enough convinced the public the number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200 to 250 a year. The figure constantly fed to the media was 10,000.
These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans, convincing many that we had to crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that abortions taking place illegally would now be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the US and the annual number of abortions has increased. He said that this in 2003 by 1,500%. Probably even more now.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I had heard, you know, over my years in the movement and stuff like I had heard references to that, of this insane inflation of these numbers to create a false urgency, a false need. And that is really, you know, when people started going, oh, well, if so many women need this then, or if this is happening so often, it normalized it. Right. But it is so frustrating because I, I'm hearing that and I'm going, we are still dealing with this today.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Harry Blackmun at the UNS Supreme Court bought into it too.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Women are marching in the streets demanding these rights. He doesn't know, he's. He's an old guy. He's. He's got his wife. He's got two. I think he had three daughters. Daughters. One night, he's sitting around the table saying, what do you think of abortion? Then he gets four different answers. He says, I'm gonna. I'm. I'm. I'm getting a headache. I'm going to bed.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Yeah, he didn't know about it. Yeah, Well, I. I had. I had a conversation recently with my friend Monica Snyder from Secular Pro Life, and we were just both so frustrated by the blatant misinformation that's being spread specifically now. It's about abortion regulations, right? It's. It's the. Now that Roe vs. Wade has been reversed and it's gone back to the states, the narrative in the mainstream media is that because of these bans, women are gonna die. I mean, we just hear it constantly. And, you know, even in our. The presidential debate, Kamala Harris herself repeated false information that if you're having a miscarriage, that you will not get care in a state that has banned abortion. And Monica and I, and so many people in the pro life movement are literally like, I'm pulling up the state code and I'm reading it word for word to people to go, that's just so blatantly false. Like, these exceptions are written so clearly into these rules. Like, the evidence has been debunked so clearly. And sometimes it's just, you know, I try to combat it as much as I can from my very limited platform here with my tiny microphone, but sometimes it feels like I'm, you know, screaming into a void. So, like, how do we combat this misinformation on such a large scale when it is so blatant?
[00:38:29] Speaker B: It's very, very difficult. We just have to keep doing it. You know, I wrote this little book maybe 10 years ago or something. People are still reading it and thinking, you just. We did. We have to do it one heart at a time. We've got to change hearts, because we can't. We cannot change the media at this point. The research, the journalists are not. They don't have the time. They're not. They're not investigative reporting.
I mean, I did all of this on my own, this investigative reporting. I didn't know I wasn't paid for it.
I did. I finally got a book sold, but I didn't get paid much. The truth matters, and we have to get the truth out, and we cannot be disappointed and we cannot be discouraged, because as a number of people have said, this is the time God has given us. This is the place God has given us. And God will. If we do our little part, God will do his big part. Right. We'll. We'll look, you know, Ro was overturned 50 years.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Okay. Let's just keep working at it.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Keep working. Right.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Keep. And tell them the truth.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Never get discouraged.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Because. Because the devil wants you to be discouraged. Never.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah. Sometimes it's hard. You know, it's really hard not to be. But I did. I did a podcast episode where I went line by line from the presidential debate, and I said, okay, here's what was said. I'm going to go straight to the rules. And a lot of people reached out to me and said, thank you so much. They're like, thank you. And these are not people that I would say are like, in the pro life movement or super pro life. But they were just like, they just were so thankful to have somebody that was just reading the facts.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: The truth.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Yeah, the truth. And I think there's such a hunger for it. But, you know, we're up against these multimillion dollar, like, Planned Parenthood has millions of dollars in our expert marketing at marketing. And so there's just so much misinformation out there. And what's, what is so heartbreaking to me is that in this language of empowerment and you know, they claim to be the ones that are, like, for women.
The women that they claim to empower are actually the ones that end up suffering. Like you, like you have said, you know, they're selling this idealized image and abortion being like, that key to her freedom. To the point where they're saying, now if women don't have access to abortion, they're going to die. You're going to die if you don't have access to abortion. But, you know, majority of these women that are entering the abortion facilities, they don't feel empowered. You know, they're scared, they're pressured. They're treated inhumanely. These facilities are unsafe. These women are ending up in the hospitals due to complications from sloppy and negligent abortionists. Like, if abortion is truly essential to women's empowerment, like they say, like, why is there not more of an effort to ensure basic health and safety standards? Right.
[00:41:37] Speaker B: Like, why are the abortion very dangerous?
And women, what are they going to find out with this crazy abortion pill? There will be, there will be effects, but it will be 20, 30, 40. And then just like me, they'll say.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Oh, I'm so sorry I did that right Right, right.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Because marriage hard. Yes, marriage is hard. Is having children hard? Yes, having children is hard. Is doing what you're doing. Yes, it's hard.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful. At the same time, like My daughter is 4.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: And she is so smart, let me tell you.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: I'm sure she is.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: She is very smart, she's very communicative. She's always been ahead. So listen, I'm a working mom. I'm tired, I'm tired. I have a four year old that keeps me on my toes. But yes, it's hard, but it's also so beautiful and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I mean, she's just such a treasure. But you know, unfortunately those stories aren't being told. It's that, yes, this is hard, but it's also really, really beautiful, you know? And how do we, how do we make that the narrative that embracing our ability to reproduce another human, I feel like super. I say that's like a superpower, like we can literally make another life.
That feels empowering. Right. And so it's like, how do we shift this narrative away from. Instead of feminist femininity is become like, man, stop your reproductive, you know, your reproduction. No, let's embrace it. Let's figure out how to celebrate. Let's build a culture where it's not hard to be a parent. Right?
Yeah. My husband likes to say, like, everything of value is going to cost a little bit, Right. And that's what makes it valuable, is that it costs you a little bit or a lot to get it or to have it. And we have to be okay with that discomfort, knowing that in the long term we're gonna have something that's so beautiful.
[00:44:01] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: You, you just. Wow.
I am just amazed by how much, you know, and all this work that you have done over the years, all this research.
I love research. I love reading, I love.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Well, you're a journalist.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: You're a journalist.
Our work is very similar to investigative reporting, I will say. The only difference is that we don't publish the stories we write complaints instead to these medical boards. But it is very similar. And I love the research and putting these pieces together and helping people understand.
How did we get here? Like, why did we end up here? Because I think especially this next generation, as this issue has kind of come again into the forefront, it's not enough to just tout pro life talking points. Right? Like, that's not enough. They need to understand the heart, the motivation, the what's really going on behind. And that's why I think work like yours is so important. Because, you know, Gen Z, you could say what you want about Gen Z, but one of the things that they really look at is like, authenticity. You know, they are really concerned with, with protecting people and the motivation and pushing against corrupt businesses. I'm like, okay, you guys ready to find out who, you know, where some of this stuff that you're supporting, like how it started? It was a corrupt business with nefarious motivations. I think that's going to be a really powerful message going forward to help people understand that this was not done out of.
In good faith. Right? No. Right. Because a lot when I would be. I was at student Strip of America for about six years before I started the center for Client Safety. But I would go on campus and I would talk to students and a lot of them, you know, genuinely were trying to grapple with this really difficult position and being uncomfortable with abortion, but had been so ingrained that in their minds that, like, oh, no, if I'm supporting women, then I have to be before abortion. And I just started asking, well, but who decided? Like, who said, who decided?
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Mostly men.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: And it was men who had nefarious motivations. It was men like Lawrence later, who Dr. Gresh was saying was a playboy, was a misogynist, was sleazy, you know, had his own stuff. And then Bernard Nathanson, who had a clear financial, you know, motivation, like the media. Who had a media, yeah, that was getting advertising dollars from this. But once you start saying like, who? Who decided? And I would watch. And this is before I knew all of this, I just went, I just asked the question. I said, who says why is that the thing? And they just go, huh? They were like, oh, oh, you know.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: I don't know. And I just went, maybe it's not. Maybe it's not. You know, maybe there is a better thing to be presented, to be valued, to be, to empower women. And that's all I did. I didn't offer them. I just think about that. And I watched their brains turn. And so that was the question I brought up to Michael Kinney. And he was like, you need to talk to Dr. Gress and sue Ellen Browder because they're the ones. They're the ones who answered this question, who decided?
And I think that's going to be such a powerful narrative, specifically going forward in a post Roe America, when people are trying to figure out where the heck they stand on this complicated issue when we can show this was not this Was not, you know, started in good faith by people who really had women's interests in mind. And when you consider the source, then maybe we start sowing that distrust in the industry and that marketing and that messaging. So.
Wow.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Even Betty Friedan said she became very vocal and said that she was for the choice to have children, not the choice to abort them.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: So even she kind of stepped back from it a little bit.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: She did. She did. But she had already been kicked to the curb by that point by people who are pro abortion.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Wow.
Wow. Was there anything else that you. That we didn't get to. That you want to add that you think is just important for this part, you know, and for this conversation?
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to send you a bunch of stuff.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: I'm so excited. I love it.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: So you'll be empowered with a bunch of stuff here. I've got an article in the National Catholic Register on Roe v. Wade.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: The people that wrote it.
Have you seen that?
[00:49:20] Speaker A: No, but I will 100 read it.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: Okay. Awesome.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: I'm so excited about it. Yeah. Just give me all the information. I love this stuff. I love it.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: Yeah, you're gonna. We're gonna empower you, lady.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Oh, I love it.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: We're empowered with information. That's where the power goes. Yes. The truth.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: Yes. And that's what I was telling people about this election. I said, we need to do our due diligence to be informed voters.
Get the information. I said, don't stop going to these, like, biased. I said, just go to the source. I'm like, that's why I'm like, pulling up the abortion regulations in question myself. I'm like, I don't want to believe anybody else. I want to see these words on page.
Be an informed voter. Don't just take things at face value. Because I stood there and when I was watching the presidential debate and even the vice president, I said, I'm watching them be so wrong. I know, in the abortion industry. Then I went, do other experts feel this way when they get to their subject?
It just made me go, do they not know anything about these other subjects, too? So I was like, they talked about the steel industry. So I'm texting my friend who works in the steel industry, and I'm like, is this true? Is this true? What do you think? Because I just went, if they're so wrong on abortion, as an expert in this.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Right, Right. What are they right about?
[00:50:44] Speaker A: It just made me pause a lot. Get the information yourself. Find trusted people that can give you unbiased information and be informed voters. Information really is power.
So I love this. I. I absolutely love this because I think that you are contributing to that availability of information that people need to see.
So I'm excited. Well, before we wrap up, what we like to ask each guest, what do you enjoy doing off the clock? So when you're not being a amazing, brilliant investigative journalist writing all this incredible content, what is your favorite hobby or pastime?
[00:51:28] Speaker B: I always have a hobby, but my favorite pastime is prayer.
If I had another life to live, I'd probably be a nun.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Oh, I love it. There is something so beautiful and grounding and calming about meditation, especially when you're dealing. We talk about all the time.
It is emotionally exhausting to do this work because we're dealing with something that is so dark, we're uncovering.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: So dark. Yes.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: So dark that you need that time and that space to heal and recharge and, you know, just give your. Give strength back to yourself. So that makes perfect sense to me.
[00:52:12] Speaker B: That you would enjoy praying. I like to light candles at night and have a glass of wine.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: And pray.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Oh, I love it. That sounds amazing.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: It is. It's very sweet.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. Is there, like, a specific. I'm just curious, like, a specific book of prayer or a saint that you feel the most drawn to?
[00:52:36] Speaker B: Have you ever seen the book Abandonment to Divine Providence by Von Pierre de Cassad?
I was reading that book when my husband was. When we were in. I've written a book and a book which has not been published, it may never be published, called Christmas in the ICU. And my husband, we were there for 17 days in the ICU before he died from cancer. And I was reading Abandonment to Divine Providence at that time.
And it's a very, very empowering book because you just, in the end, you just let it all go and realize God is in charge and beautiful thing.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. This is amazing. Thank you so much, Sue. I have just enjoyed this. So if listeners are interested to find out more about you and your work, where can I send them? Do you have a website? Do you have social? Anything that they can find?
[00:53:34] Speaker B: I'm really not a social. Send them to my book, Ignatius or Amazon. Either one.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: Perfect. Okay. Yeah, I want to get my hands on a copy. I will say I looked to see if there was an audio version because audiobooks are, like, so messy right now.
So maybe ask Ignatius to consider making an audiobook.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Because that. I think a lot of people would really enjoy that too.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Okay. All right. All right.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: All right. Great.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: Fantastic. It's been great talking to you. Yeah. All right.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening today. Remember to subscribe and tune in every other Friday for new episode episodes. And don't forget to spread the word by rating, reviewing, and sharing with your friends. Also, consider supporting the work of center for Client Safety so we can continue having valuable conversations just like this. And the next time you buy coffee, use the link in our show notes to support our cause. To learn more about what we're doing, visit CenterForClientSafety.org and follow us on social media at CenterForClient Safety. You can also find me Missy Martinez Stone, SA.
