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.
Hi, and welcome to the Centered podcast. I'm your host, Missy Martinez Stone. And today we have a truly special episode. We have our very own vice president of investigations, Christine Smith, joining us to give us a rare look into how we investigate, report, and shut down dangerous abortion businesses. Christine's background is in health care administration, specifically physician credentialing, and joined the center for Client Safety team as a volunteer almost three years ago.
She was so incredible at her work that she quickly rose up through the ranks and now works full time overseeing our entire investigations department.
You might see my face more often on things, but Christine is the real lifeblood of the organization and really should take all of the credit. So, Christine, welcome to the Centered podcast.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Thanks so much. I am so excited to have this conversation with you and just to answer some questions about our process. It's obviously exciting to me. I love what I do.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: So later, we're going to get into what it really looks like to open a case and see it all the way through. But before we do that, I want to go back to how you first got involved. It was fall of 21. Yeah, summer of 21.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: It might have been like almost. Yeah, spring, actually. I think it was spring.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Spring of 2021.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I was very slowly getting a new organization off the ground that we had, so luckily launched the year the world shut down with COVID I did not have a background in healthcare administration, so I was learning as I went and figuring out how to invest and report abortion facilities. And then I got an email from you that truly changed the course of the organization. So tell everyone what you were doing at that time and what made you want to reach out.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So at that time, I was working credentialing physicians. I literally vetted, looked up physicians and their credentials for a living. You know, I knew.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Explain what that means when you say you're credentialing physicians. What does that mean?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: So that technically means that I am making doctors able to accept insurance. I'm making them par with the insurance companies. And to do that, the insurance companies need a lot of information on these doctors. Now, at my job, you know, the physicians themselves or the practice that hired them would give me, you know, identifying information about them. But I still had to know how to navigate all of the, you know, state and federal websites to look up, you know, potential medical malpractice history, any kind of fraud they've ever committed, get their board certifications, their licenses, you know, hospital privileges, various credentials like that. So I was getting those documents, figuring out how to find them in all different states. I worked for a national organization before this, so I had experience, you know, finding those documents in every state. So I was kind of building that knowledge in that job. And I heard you talk and I was like, oh, I can help you. I can help you research these physicians and facilities.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
I didn't know that this was even a field. Right. It's fascinating to me because basically what you were doing was they would give you this name and then you would go and find all the historical information on them. Right. So you could go to the insurance company and say it's okay to hire them.
They won't be. Basically, they're looking for risk. Right. They're not going to bring risk to this practice because they have all of this dangerous stuff in their background. Right.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And I would also. I was part of my responsibility was keeping their certifications up to date. So every time I would have a client and they would have ten doctors in their practice that had expiring licenses, it would be my job to make sure that, you know, they were keeping up with all their certifications. So I was very used to systematically checking things, you know, seeing if there was any changes, if they reported any, you know, incidents or arrest records or whatever, you know, that could change the trajectory of, you know, them getting their license renewed. And that's what I do now for these abortion providers is I routinely check, you know, their stuff when we're involved in an organization, in an investigation to make sure you, you know, nothing new, that we can do anything with. This come up.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah. From my end, I truly could not believe how perfect your experience was with what we needed. It was like a gem just dropped into my lap because here I was just teaching myself how to do that. Like I said, I didn't have a background in healthcare administration or physician credentialing. I just knew, oh, I can find these records somewhere. I'm just going to start looking.
But then to have somebody reach out and say, this is literally what I do for a living, again, I didn't even know that that was an option. I didn't know that there were people that had that experience. And then add on top of that your pro life experience and your passion to want to serve the pro life movement in that way. It was just absolutely perfect. I remember calling my team at the time and being like, you will not believe who just emailed me and what her background is. Because it's such a niche area, and.
But now we can see how, you know, it could serve the greater purpose. And so I obviously jumped at the opportunity, got you plugged in right away, just doing basic research on cases. And then we were able to bring you on part time and then full time in April of 2022.
And not only did you bring your expertise in research and administration, but you took a step back and started looking at how we can best manage our caseload and streamline our processes, especially since we were getting more cases than we could even take on. So tell me about how you really honed our approach.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I really recognize that right away because no one else does what we do. So everyone wanted to bring us information. So I'm like, okay, how do we. It's almost like a triage approach.
And so we focused on what we call low hanging fruit. And there has to be certain things in place with the information that I receive in order to actually launch what we call a full investigation. So one of those things is there has to be people there on the ground that I can continually communicate with as updates on the case happen. You know, if we submit a complaint and we can get into what that even means, but if we submit a complaint to a state agency, I need to be able to talk to who brought me this information, you know, and make sure that relationship can be maintained. So if it's someone who, you know, never plans on going back to sidewalk counsel at that facility again or something like that, that's not really something that, you know, I would take the time to open up an investigation with, necessarily. I need to have good sources. We also need to make sure the intel we get is verifiable and legal. We have to be careful with the information that we take and make sure that everything is above board to preserve our integrity.
And so if that piece of the puzzle is in place, and I have a good relationship with the people bringing me this information, and there's a clear violation of a law or a regulation. That's really the main thing here is, okay, we can look at this. This law was clearly violated. This regulation was clearly violated. There's a place to hold the provider or the abortion facility accountable. So once that all kind of comes together, there's a lot of research and stuff that goes into it, which I'm sure we'll get to. But as long as those three things are in place, we, you can go ahead and launch what we would say.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Is a full investigation because, you know, initially, because, like you said, nobody was doing what you're doing, and it's so needed that we're meeting such a huge need. We were just overrun, right? And so we had to take a step back and say, we can't open a case just for pure time and resource constraints. You know, there's all these. These cases are very time intensive. We can't open a case. I wish we could, on every single email that we get. And so it turned into us having these conversations about, like, what does it really take to open a case and what things have to be in place. And like you said, triaging of really going, where are we going to get the biggest bang for our buck here? Where can we put our effort in and ensure that this is going to move forward? And that's where we really had to focus our time and our effort. And I would say one of your greatest strengths that I really appreciate is considering every step in the process. Like, you're always looking at cases and asking, like, how can we make this better? How can we make this more efficient?
What new tools do we need to put in place? Because I think one of the things that really distinguishes us from, especially, like, the more exposure method or other enforcement efforts is we say we are strategic and we want to go with the most strategic and effective way forward.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Right. And that's not always the quickest way forward either, you know, and so that's something else we have to analyze is, you know, okay, do we need to play a little bit of a long game here for better results? There's a lot of analysis, you know, that goes into it.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: So, yeah, what I tell people is, like, it's not just researching and submitting complaints. We're constantly engaging the process to make sure we're doing it in the best way.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: And that takes a lot of problem solving, and we hit a lot of roadblocks, and we were building this plane while we were flying it and figuring out how to move these cases forward. And, you know, it's been a learning experience, but there's been a lot of times where we have hit dead ends or the agency doesn't give us the answer we want. Like, what do we do in those cases?
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, in that situation, there's usually always someone above another person in a position of authority. And so my approach is always go with the easiest person to contact that might be lowest on the totem pole, you know, authority wise. And then if they don't seem to care, they don't want to, you know, answer my questions or deal with a complaint I've submitted, you go above them, and that looks like sometimes ending up talking to the attorney general's office or the governor's office using the contacts, you know, that we have in place in the community, too. Community members sometimes have a good relationship with their local legislators. Sometimes, you know, that's an involvement we need to do. In one of our cases, we ended up going straight to the police department because the police department had authority in the case. And so we said, all right, if the medical board doesn't want to pay attention, let's go to the police department and let them know what their authority is here and, you know, use that to move the case along. So I have found that in most cases, there's multiple angles that you can take. There's a piece that you might research. You know, like I said, a local law enforcement situation, a medical board situation, and a health department situation. These facilities that we deal with, if they're hiring really low quality providers that are doing bad things and hurting women, they're also going to be dirty. They're also going to have violations that the health department needs to be aware of. They also might not have proper staff hired to do ultrasound or something like that. So there's usually multiple angles that you can take, and sometimes you have to work all those angles and just help them all come together in the end.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We're really kind of trying to come at it from every possible way.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Right? Like, it's not just one path, it's. It's. Okay, let's go this way, and then you gotta shift, and then we're gonna kind of go this way. And, yeah, you know, really restrategize and, you know, knock on the different doors. It's very comprehensive in that way. Like, very holistic, almost. Like, yeah, let's look at it from multiple angles. From multiple ways and figure out how to hit this one weak point from various angles. Right? Yeah. And I remember way back in the beginning with the, you know, the original group that we started with, they would laugh because anytime we would hit a roadblock, they would, you know, want to come up with this huge, like, elaborate response. And I was like, well, why don't we just call the office and ask? Like, I just started getting on the phone and, like, calling different departments of, you know, child safety, or I would just go straight to the source and be like, so tell me this thing. And they would laugh because they would be like, why don't we? You know? But I feel like the pro life movement has been so ingrained that they have. Like, things are just so hard all the time. I'm like, why don't we just, like, call them in?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes it is easy, right?
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Right. It's about realizing that we actually have access to these state agencies. They're not untouchable.
We can call them, we can email them. We can talk to them. We can set up a meeting. We can, you know, and there's also checks and balances for these agencies. So if the medical board isn't doing their job well, who's in charge of the medical board? Right. Who appoints the people on the medical board? And, you know, in a lot of cases, it's the governor. Right? And so then we go to the governor's office. And so part of our job and why it's nice that we have, you know, full time jobs here to dedicate to this is we figure out who is holding these agencies accountable. So then they can hold the providers or the facilities accountable. Right?
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's. Let's talk through the whole process, because I know, like, we talk about this in theory, and. And people have a hard time kind of wrapping their head because it's still a fairly new concept, what we do, because it's not exposure, it's enforcement. And once we explain it, they go, oh, my gosh, that makes so much sense. Why haven't we been doing this the whole time? Right? So let's walk through an actual case.
Okay? So hypothetically, you're contacted by a pregnancy center or a sidewalk advocate or even a woman herself that has been harmed by an abortion facility. What happens?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Right? So first of all, you know, every state has different laws, so each piece of intel does get a unique touch to it. Right? Like, I can have, you know, ten things that we always want to request, but in some states, the health department doesn't, you know, inspect facilities, so I'm not going to request, you know, health department inspection. So there's certain things where there's a unique approach to each case, but what is the same is, like I said at the beginning, we make sure we can verify the intel coming to us, that it's reliable. You know, we have a good relationship. So when we get this piece of information, the first thing I'm looking at is, all right, what immediately sticks out to me that is a violation. Is it to do with informed consent? Is it to do with a direct violation of how late an abortion was performed? You know, does it have to do with something non abortion related? It could be, you know, building code, zoning situations, things like that. So I just look for the obvious, what's right in front of me here. And then from there, there's always a time period of requesting records. And just something that's been so interesting is even though I had experience on, you know, the medical credentialing side, so much about the facility itself and business documents, there's so much that's open record, you just have to take the time to request them and find them. That, in and of itself, can take hours and hours. That's why our process, it takes a long time, and there's not a lot of immediate result, because I might need to request records on a facility, and the state has 30 days to get things back to me. So let's say, for example, I get a tip that women are, there's 20 women who have gone inside, and the doctor was only in there for 15 minutes. There's no way that that doctor could have actually counseled and given the women the pill in the proper way. And again, it's different per state. Some states, a doctor has to counsel each and every patient, you know, and they're not supposed to be in a room altogether. And so if those kinds of statutes are violated, so that would be informed consent.
Violating the statutes that talk about counseling before you get the abortion pill, violating the regulations on how the pill is administered.
I need to look up the exact code, the exact regulation where, you know, it is in the state code, if there's anything federal going on. And then from there, that's when we would draft what we call, you know, complaints. Sometimes there's inquiries that we say, you know, us, but for the most part, we would call it a complaint, and we draft that with all the information we have, and we keep it very simple. And I think another thing, too, about us is we don't approach these state agencies from a pro life perspective. We just approach them from a factual perspective so we can kind of remove the tension and emotion and any bias out of the situation, which is really important when we want these agencies to work with us. And so we simply say this was, you know, for example, this example of seeing a doctor leave too quickly with too many patients. We talk about what was witnessed, and we say, you know, we have witnesses available to talk to you. These are the laws that the situation appears to violate, you know, and then I like to always end my complaints with, you know, per such and such law code, this would be the violation, the punishment, the consequence. So please look into this, you know, and contact me for further questions. And then from there, what's supposed to happen is the proper state agency. A medical board, health department are usually the two main agencies that we work with. They're supposed to open up an investigation. Sometimes they don't right away. And so I call and I email and I follow up and I make sure that an investigation is actually opened when it needs to be. That's a big part of my job, is follow up. And the average sidewalk counselor, pregnancy center worker, a woman herself who's had an experience, they don't have time to stay on these cases and do all this follow up. And so that's what me and my team do. We make sure that things are not forgotten about, overlooked.
And so once it's kind of in the hands that it needs to be and an investigation is opened, we stay through it the entire way and make sure that the consequences are actually dealt out appropriately.
There's also an aspect of letting agencies know what other agencies did, for example.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Because they don't talk to each other.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: They don't talk to each other. And a lot of times, especially, we're seeing this post Roe, doctors are practicing in multiple different states, so they might have something horrific happen. They do something absolutely awful to a woman in one state, and then they fly across the country and practice in another state. And that medical board has no idea.
So when we submit any kind of complaint, we see it through, not only with that particular agency, but any repercussions it could have for anywhere else the doctor might be practicing.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's important to note that, like, when we are submitting these complaints, you know, like you said, we leave a lot of the pro life language out of it.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: And we are, we are addressing, you know, basic medical care, like appealing to a person's just basic humanity. Because most of the cases that we take are not abortion code specific.
Because I know we hear a lot from state, you know, people who work in states like Illinois and California and New York, they say, well, our state doesn't regulate abortion. And I say, but we're not talking about just abortion codes, right? We're talking about patient abandonment, medical negligence, patient privacy, things that any medical provider would have to adhere to regardless of what kind of practice that is. And those physicians or those nurses or however they're licensed are still beholden to their licensing board for basic medical care. And, you know, when we're writing these complaints, it's, hey, this happened.
You know, this was blatantly patient negligence, whatever. Here's the code, here's the penalty. You know, like you said, and just making it as what I say, like, as accessible as possible to these agents to actually open a case, because I think that's been a hard, a hard kind of nut to crack for the pro life movement, is they were coming to these agencies and saying, this terrible thing is happening, but the information that was being brought was either not well documented or, you know, they didn't have the right code or like, there was just so many, so many issues. And that's no one's fault. I mean, these pregnancy centers are so busy being pregnancy centers, and these sidewalk advocates are need to be sidewalk advocates. Like, they don't have the time to do what you do. And that's what I love about what we do, is being able to come alongside these organizations and say, you go be a great pregnancy center. We'll take care of all of that. And I've had, I've talked to two, our team has talked to two separate former pregnancy center directors in the last week or two, and they both have said, you know, when I was a pregnancy center director a couple years ago, like, I tried to do this thing. Like, I tried to file a complaint, and they're like, it was so long and complicated, I did not have time to do it. Like, I wish you guys existed, you know, when I was trying to do this, I'm like, yes, it is long. It is complicated, it's time consuming, and we want to take that burden off those pregnancy centers and do that for them. But, yeah, we're doing it in a way, I would say what my unofficial standard is, like, would this hold up in a court? We're not taking anybody to court, but our level of documentation has to be so true and trustworthy that it would hold up in court, because that's the only thing these agencies are interested in seeing.
Exactly.
Not secondhand information, not suspicions, not assumptions. They want hard evidence.
And I think that's what we were able to do. Well, but like I said, what we are bringing to their attention, every type of violation like these, I mean, you can tell so many stories about the insane things that you see. And it's so egregious that, you know, in the conversations I've had with so many people, even if they don't agree with me on abortion, they understand what we do. Yeah, because the people that we talk about shutting down, they go, oh, yeah, absolutely.
That person should not be practicing. Like, you know, our first closure was an 87 year old with showing signs of, allegedly showing signs of mental and physical impairment, shaking hands, you know, and he's doing surgical procedures, and everybody goes, absolutely not. Right?
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Obvious.
Yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Talk about the types of cases that we see and why it is so reasonable to what these facilities shut down.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'll give an example, you know, of a case that we're working on. I won't say the details exactly where it is, but we sidewalk counselors there on multiple occasions saw patients being transported to the hospital, obviously suffering a medical emergency, you know, crying. They. It was just very obvious that they were in medical distress in the middle of a surgical abortion day, and they were being transported to the hospital in a staff member's personal car.
No 911 records were available. 911 was never called. An ambulance was never called. It doesn't matter how close the hospital is or whatever, you call 911, you do that properly. You give these women the best chance possible for a positive medical outcome after an emergency happens. And they didn't do that. You know, they literally stuffed these women in a car and covered their face, had them look down, and drove them to the hospital themselves. It's just the kind of stuff that people are like, okay, does that really happen? I'm like, yeah, it happens all the time.
I often see that the abortion industry specifically seems to think that they are kind of just above the law, that they don't have to really treat, you know, women with respect and dignity because they think that everyone is on their side because they're providing abortion care. And it's like, no, you actually have to treat women with dignity and abide by the law.
And basic, you know, in this particular situation, that state had a very clear medical practice act with statutes so well written about how a physician is supposed to handle, you know, a medical emergency, patient transport, things like that.
And so much of that was just completely violated by the physician in charge. And so that was a complaint to the medical board.
And originally, actually, with that complaint, the medical board was like, well, this might be a facility problem. And I'm like, no, no, no. You have authority to do something about this because at the end of the day, the physician authorized this behavior to happen, and they need to be held accountable.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: You know, imagine that just happening at any other outpatient surgery center.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Exactly. It makes no sense.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: It's wild.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. You know, and so, I mean, we see doctors that abortion providers that have been, you know, hired with extensive criminal backgrounds, and so we dig in and say, wait a second, there's, you know, state laws that say you're not supposed to grant medical licenses to people, you know, who have, you know, these convictions or, you know, it's just completely unethical, bad practice for the facility to hire people, you know, with, with this kind of background. And a lot of times it's just as simple as us alerting the state agencies, hey, this happened.
Did you miss this? Did they lie on their medical license application?
So when we request.
Back to talking about records, when we request medical license applications, stuff like that, we study those records and so often find discrepancies that the state agencies just either purposely ignored for corruption, which is possible and does happen, or they were just too lazy to pick it out, you know, and so we bring it to their attention and get our case moving that way, really. These abortion facilities hire the worst of the worst. They hire doctors who can't get jobs anywhere else, and women suffer because of that.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just thinking back in, you know, when I was doing the more investigations piece, like the number of investigations into physicians that already had a criminal record, and that was either drugs, you know, sexual assault, abuse, battery. I'm just thinking of all the cases that I've pulled up, you know, what does it say about this industry that majority of the cases that we've gotten involve a medical practitioner with a criminal background in drugs, abuse, fraud?
We're not dealing with the most upstanding physicians, I think Jerrel said. Jerrel Godsey, the president of Heartbeat International, did an interview with us recently and said, you know, one of his, one of the doctors and their affiliation said it was the people who graduated bottom of the class that went into the abortion industry. It wasn't. It's not attracting, like, you know, your top surgeons and practitioners. And I had someone challenge me on that recently of, like, is that the pro life movement's fault, basically? Like, have we stigmatized this industry so much that nobody wants to go into it? And I said, I don't think that's the case because this is how it's always been, even upwards into when abortion became legal in the seventies. I said, and even in states where it's fully accessible and has no limits, it's even, those physicians are bottom of the barrel. And I said, I think it has something to do more with the nature of what you're doing. Like, it does something to your conscience, to your humanity almost, to do something so violent. And a lot of these physicians that find themselves there are different medical practitioners. It's because they kind of hide because of the lack of enforcement, the lack of oversight. They can get jobs here when they can't work anywhere else.
The first physician we shut down Ali Azima. I guarantee you no hospital would have ever hired him, no practice would have ever brought him on because of the impairment that he was showing and the way he handled patients. So what did he do? He opened his own abortion facility and had no oversight.
These physicians can kind of hide there until now.
We're going to smoke them out. But it attracts a really dark person.
And I think there's a misconception that the cases that we're working on are like outliers. And that when you imagine an abortion facility, you imagine, you know, just like your regular doctor's office or your regular outpatient surgery center, but that's not really the case. Like, these are not outliers. These are not deviations from the norm.
This is the standard. And if we had all the money in the world and could open an investigation into all 807, 800 facilities, how many do you think would you find with significant health and safety violations?
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Literally all of them.
I feel like, I don't know, maybe I should say 95% of them to be safe. But no, I really think almost every single one would have at least some kind of health and safety violation for sure. I mean, just down to the entire facility being very dirty and blood on in the exam rooms that's not cleaned.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Up, you know, unsterilized instruments, equipment.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Exactly.
And that's why, you know, as I said, we take a very holistic approach when information is given to us. Because if a facility is hiring a doctor who is literally convicted, you know, of sex crimes or, you know, really, really extensive fraud, something like that, they're probably not going to really care about, you know, running their sterilization machines. Exactly. You know, properly, you know, and. Yeah, and, you know, cleaning the rooms and whatnot. And they just don't really operate within any kind of standard. They just disregard, you know, the basic.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: I mean, I think it's twofold, is one, I say it costs money to be in compliance.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Costs money they don't want to pay. And typically, they're hiring people who don't care, you know, hiring people that don't have the proper training and background to do this type of work. There's just a general lack of respect for human beings, and that makes perfect sense for the line of work that they're in.
But in summary, this is everywhere. Everywhere. So if someone is a sidewalk advocate or works for a pregnancy center and they hear of something illegal or unethical happening at their abortion facility, how do they get that information to you?
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So basic answer is go to our website and there is a reporting form and you fill it out. You fill out your name, you know, your, what you do, do you. Sidewalk council, pregnancy center, and then the facility, the abortion doctor, whatever's pertinent to your information, you fill that out and you submit it right through the website and it comes directly to me and my investigations team. So reporting on the website is the easiest, most concise way to get information to us. And then from there, you know, we have meetings, conversations, whatever we need to do. And then we also have a training. We have a training specifically made for sidewalk advocates out on the sidewalk, and then also for pregnancy center workers or volunteers.
So that training, you can also inquire about that training on our website, and you fill out some questions and we give you all of our resources and you watch that training. It comes with the workbook that you can fill out, really just gives you tools and prompts to think about what you're seeing out there, either on the sidewalk or in your pregnancy center. So that's a great resource that we have.
And then just submitting that reporting form and we take it from there.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: What if someone is in a state that doesn't have a physical abortion facility anymore? You know, after Roe versus Wade was reversed, a lot of states were able to shut down their freestanding abortion facilities. And I think there was confusion that, does that mean, like, I don't have an abortion facility in my community? Because we talked a lot about helping people shut down the abortion facilities in their communities if they don't have a physical, freestanding one, does that mean they have nothing to report?
[00:36:41] Speaker B: No, it's quite the opposite. Because what we have seen is now women are traveling and there's a lot of money being funded to these logistics center they're called sometimes, and these funds and different places where people can go to get their travel paid for, sometimes even their abortion itself paid for. And women are traveling out of state, sometimes 10 hours away.
What's happening is when the women travel to go get an abortion because their home state, you know, doesn't do an abortion or has a, you know, ban like a six week or something in place, she's going, getting her abortion. It's a very isolating experience. What I've heard from the women who go through something like this is they don't want to pay for someone to come with you. So the woman is going herself, in most circumstances, traveling, getting this abortion done. And then the abortion facility says, okay, we're all done. We gave you the abortion. We don't care about you anymore. Once we have given you an abortion, you don't mean anything to us. You can't, you know, pay us for anything else. We're done. And so now this woman goes home, literally hours later, maybe the next day later, they are still bleeding and scared and confused, and they go home. And then where do they end up? The pregnancy center. Because like I said, the abortion facility doesn't want to see them again. They don't care, and they're not going to travel 510 hours back, you know, so they end up at a pregnancy center saying, I need help. I don't even know what kind of medical care I need right now. I just need help. Something's not right. I had this problem, you know, some, you know, some kind of bad experience happen, some unethical treatment, whatever it is. And so if you are a pregnancy center, you know, in that area where you don't have an actual abortion facility, I'm sure that at some point you are going to encounter information that, you know, we can help with if these women want to be connected with us because they don't have anywhere else to turn when they come back from traveling, you know, and some abortion facilities have stayed open as referral centers. You know, it's not like every single Planned Parenthood or whatever has closed in states that ban abortion. They're open and women are going there to get referrals. So your sidewalk presence still matters, too.
And there's so much that you might hear on the sidewalk, you know, that can be valuable to report to us.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah. The two things that I'm hearing the most from in states where they don't have physical abortion facilities, like my home state of Kentucky.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: I was talking to a pregnancy center director here in the area that runs this phenomenal, phenomenal pregnancy center. And the two things she said was what they are predominantly seeing is mail order abortions coming into Kentucky. So the girls are still getting abortions. They're just getting them through the mail. And, you know, the states are trying to figure out how to combat that. But right now that is so pervasive. Like, you know, they are seeing these girls after they've been mailed an abortion pill with no instructions, with no physical exam. And then when they have concerns, they're calling the pregnancy center, like you said. And so they're seeing them. And then they're seeing the girls who traveled out of state and then came back in, like you said, because there wasn't a follow up appointment. That's one of the, I think the number one complaints I'm hearing from pregnancy centers and sidewalk advocates when I go anywhere or talk to anybody is they abandon their patients. They have these girls in, they do the abortions, and then they send them home with no follow up. If any other general surgeon or physician did a surgical procedure on somebody and then didn't do a follow up exam, they would be disciplined immediately. That is so unheard of. Yeah. That you would not do a post op exam given.
You'd have to look for complications, infections. There's so many things to ensure it was done correctly. They're turning these girls away even when they call going, I think something's wrong. And then they're showing up at the pregnancy center going, can you make sure my abortion was complete?
I don't know if it was. And so these pregnancy centers are trying to navigate. I've talked to multiple, and they're all having to handle it differently, but they're having to navigate this whole new situation where the girls are calling. I think even our friends at support after abortion said the same thing they're calling them because it's literally called support after abortion. And they're like, I think there's something wrong. You know, they wouldn't see me. They wouldn't talk to me about these complications.
And a lot of these situations are in these states where there are no abortion. There are no abortion facilities like physical abortion facilities. They're getting them in the mail and they're traveling and then coming home, and there's no follow up.
My mind automatically goes like, the bar is so low. All you have to do is create some kind of referral system where you just say, here's an OB to follow up with in your home state to do a follow up exam. They don't even have to do the follow up exam. Just help them find somebody who can.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: And they don't want to because that wouldn't cover the horrible jobs that they're doing. That would all of the UNESCO things that they did to this woman or.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: You know, be traced back to them that they did such a bad job.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Who was benefiting? That's why I keep going back to, in this new system, in this industry, who benefits? Because sure as heck, it's not these girls that are being stranded, that are being given a bad procedure, you know, having bad procedures done on them, being given medicine with no oversight, like they are the ones that are paying the price for total access to abortion with no oversight. I mean, it's truly, it's just devastating.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:58] Speaker A: Anything else you want to add about your cases or. I know we've talked already a long time, but anything you want to add about what you do, I mean, I.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Think just encourage anyone listening or anyone that you might have a conversation with to report things to us. I think a lot of people thought that post Roe abortion would kind of slow down, and, you know, because it would be banned in some states, there'd be so much less abortions, and that's just not the case.
And really, post Roe actually gave us exponentially more things that we can hold these providers to and more things to look at as we take, again, that holistic approach to a case. So just really be on the lookout for things and report to us. If it's information we can't open an investigation with, that's fine, but I'd rather have you send it on in through the website so me and my team can look at it and see what we can do.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's really important to note that the total number of abortions in our country has gone up. It's gone up, and it's predominantly in these areas. And that's not even counting the illegal medical abortions that are being sent in the mail, because we can't count those. So my assumption is that it's a lot higher than what's even being reported.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: And not every state has proper reporting laws either. So it's just. It's a big, big, ugly number.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And so the Roe versus Wade, the end of Roe versus Wade was absolutely not the end of abortion. And we have to keep fighting. And what we do is a tangible, measurable, results driven strategy. Where you go, if we shut down the source, then there can't be abortions.
And you've just done an absolutely fantastic job building an investigations department, creating, perfecting the system, and building on the original idea. And, you know, I just can't sing your praises enough.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Well, thanks.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: We are big fans of Christine Smith in this house, but thank you so much for giving the listeners an inside look into our investigations. I really hope this gives everybody a better understanding of the amount of work that goes into each individual case and why they take so long.
So before we close out, we are asking all of our guests what they do off the clock. So when you're not chasing down bureaucrats, what are you spending your time doing?
[00:45:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I love being outside.
We're always planning next hikes that we're gonna do. You know, things like that, I guess, you know, in terms of, like, hobbies, I absolutely love arranging flowers. If I didn't have to have a pro life job. I think I'd be a florist. I absolutely love going. Getting flowers, picking them out, arranging them.
So I don't know. Yeah. And some really floral designer, I guess.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: I absolutely love that. I don't know if I. I don't know if I knew that. Maybe we have talked about it before, but one of my new favorite things is to go to Trader Joe's and, like, pick out a couple bunches. And I'm not as good as. I'm not very good at it, but, you know, make fun little flower arrangements. I learned from Allison, one of my dearest friends. She's really into snowboarding.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: Didn't know that, right?
[00:46:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: So cool.
So I said, my husband's really into snowboarding. I have never done it. I grew up on the beach.
I don't snowboard.
But I love this because I've just learned really fun things about our team. Because sometimes we just get sucked into the, you know, bubble of the pro life movement, and we forget that we have real lives.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah. You gotta have some fun hobbies when we deal with so much darkness, you know? Yeah. You gotta have some smell. It's.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Yes. All right, so I'll have some flowers when you're in the office next, and you can make a pretty bouquet. Sounds great for the conference table.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Gardening was mine, was my answer, you know? So I'm more of the. I'm gonna put roses outside my house, and I throw packets of wildflower seeds just on the ground to see what grows.
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Aw.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's where I find my peace right now.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: So. Well, thank you so much. That's it for today. Thank you for listening to the centered podcast. Don't forget to use the link in the show notes to get your next bag of coffee from our amazing partners at seven weeks coffee. For more information on the amazing work that the center for Client Safety is doing, visit centerforclientsafety.org dot. That's where you also find the reporting form that Christine mentioned. It says a big red report button at the top corner. You can visit our socials center for Client Safety. You can also find me on socials at Missy Martinez Stone. See you next time.
