[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. Today our guest is Doctor Carrie Gress, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy center in Washington, DC and a scholar at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. Doctor Gress holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University and serves as an editor at Theology of Home, an online magazine for women. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications and she is a frequent guest on both radio and podcast. She lives and works in Washington, DC, she's lived in Rome, and her books have been translated into nine languages. That's amazing. Doctor Gress, it really is an honor to have you with us today.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: So this is the first interview that I've done for the podcast with someone that I've ever, never actually met before. So I am really excited for our conversation today. Your work first came to my attention during a previous episode with Michael Kinney, the president of the Pro Life Partners foundation, where he really praised you and other thought leaders and the work that you've done on the relationship, uncovering the relationship between the feminist movement and the abortion movement. And that's the topic we really want to dive into today. But before we get started, before we get into that, could you tell us just a little bit more about yourself and how you found yourself in this field?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I'm a mother of five. I have a doctorate in philosophy. And actually, when I was working on my philosophy degree, I think I said out loud to God one day, I will never work on women's issues. And it wasn't because I didn't see a need, but it was largely because I just thought it was really language that was inaccessible. I didn't find much of it something that I could give to friends and family.
I just didn't find it compelling and something that I wanted to really dig into, it just felt very inaccessible because of the language. So anyway, that's really where was the starting place. But I started writing more about women. And of course, being a mother myself, I started seeing places where we could make better arguments for motherhood. And so that's really kind of what, what opened the door to that. But I've always been pro life. In fact, that's really been a big goal of mine, is to just obviously see the end of abortion in the United States. I tell people that I was pro choice for about 3 hours, because I learned what abortion was in the 6th grade. And then my dad got home from work and explained to me what it really was. And he had this incredible conviction and the importance of the life of unborn children and whatnot. But it's something that's been really a strong issue in my important issue, driving my own career and interests. And it's great that I finally gotten to the point where I feel like I've been able to integrate the two pieces, both my philosophy degree and this really intense driver of being pro life. So that's kind of how it started.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I am not a philosopher. Philosophy is not my area of expertise.
I'm more of the. I love the tangible. I want things to be, just tell me what to do and I'm gonna do it.
But I love, you know, some of my friends. My husband has a master's in philosophy and religion, you know, so somehow I find myself surrounded by people who are in this world. What drew you to philosophy? I'm just curious, like, what was it about that field of study that really made you want to go into it?
[00:04:18] Speaker B: You know, I think it was just philosophy has this capacity to be able to explain things really well, and it's this underlying piece of what's really going on here. You know, I feel like there's so much in the world today we're sort of reacting to and trying to figure out what's going on. But that's what philosophy does, is it shows you just what's happening underneath, and where are these trends and patterns and so. But I think that's really where my love for it came from, because we can see throughout all these eras and throughout the tumult of the culture, there's usually something off philosophically that's happening that's been the bigger driver to me.
If you can solve the problem on that level, on that philosophical level, then the practical side follows. And that's really what I've been doing. I think, too, with my work on women, is trying to connect the dots. You know, that abortion didn't come out of nowhere. You know, the fact that abortion has been able to convince women that husbands and children are an obstacle to their happiness, I think that's the big lie that we have been sold. And so it's a matter of figuring out, well, where did that come from, and how do we start piecing this back together in a way that really makes sense and is really compelling?
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that's something that's come up a lot in the conversations I've had on this podcast is that I think there's this instinct from people in the pro life movement to really villainize anybody who is. Who supports abortion now. And with the caveat that there are bad actors, like the people that we are shutting down.
They are.
There are nefarious people, but the average person who is struggling on their view of abortion or would consider themselves pro choice is that there's a reason that they've come to that conclusion. You know, they are scared. They have some kind of trauma that's informing this. There's something.
There's a quote, I can't remember who specifically it's attributed to, but it was something like, the hardest thing about the world is that everyone has their reasons, right? And so it's like, unless we actually addressed, that's really what is motivating people to support abortion, we're not really gonna address the issue. Right. And so that's kind of how I see is that kind of what you're saying is like, you want to see what's going on underneath, exactly what is.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Behind all of those reasons, and how are we rationalizing it and how are we selling it? I think, most importantly, I've spent a lot of time looking at how women have really been led to believe that abortion is a solution to their problems. And, you know, it's not because women were reading marks. You know, they weren't home pouring over the communist manifesto. It was because they were reading Cosmo and watching Oprah and watching the view and now TikTok. So.
And why is it that this has had such a strong hold on us? So, yeah, it's absolutely. You're exactly right. It's that one of those reasons behind, you know, what's happening on an individual level in a low. Yeah.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: And that was a question that I had asked when I was talking to Michael that made him bring you up in the conversation, is I said, you know, I worked at students for Life of America for about six years, and I would go on these college campuses, and the whole point was to have discussions with people about abortion. And, you know, we were taught all of the apologetic stuff, but it really just ended up me just having, like, empathetic, thoughtful conversations with people, really trying to understand where they were coming from. And I just naturally started asking, especially around. Around the subject of, like, abortion and sexual assault and those really heartbreaking cases where people are genuinely trying to just make sure this woman doesn't experience any more harm. And they just go, well, if she has access to abortion, then.
And I just went, but who decided who decided that was the thing that's right now is the assumption that women who have been through this horrific experience that they would want an abortion. But I said, who decided that? And they all are like, so that's what brought this up. Which brings me to my first question, really, to dive into your work, is that you've done significant research uncovering that relationship with the feminist movement and the abortion movement. And a lot of people may not realize that the early feminists and suffragists were actually anti abortion. Right. And then all of a sudden, you see this shift. So can you give us. I know I'm asking a lot to, like, reduce all of your amazing research into a short clip, but can you give us, like, a brief overview of how the feminist movement changed on this issue over time?
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I think. Yeah, it's a very big question. I'll try and shorten it a little bit. You know, I think the first thing we have to do is really define what we mean by feminism, because I know I use the word feminism in one for years, and I know everybody uses it a little bit differently. And this is kind of why feminism gets away with what it gets away with, because no one really knows what it means. And so we all think it means, you know, women want a healthy, happy life. We want them to reach their potential. We want them to have opportunities. That's actually just being human, I think, being a good person, but that's not really what feminism has been about. So feminism started off with this really laudable goal to certain of trying to help women not suffer so much. And they really saw the suffering was coming from their fertility. And so the idea was, well, how do we shift things so that fertility isn't such a burden? But the problem is, is that the way that they wanted to shift it actually has led us to where we're at now. So the idea was, we just need women to be independent. We need them to not be married. We need them to not have children. They just can have these independent lives. And that was actually articulated by a man, Percy Shelley, back in the 1810s.
And that's all explained in my book. But for just a snapshot of the idea that I think what Percy, as Shelley articulated, we can still see in the feminist movement today. And this is why I think this is a much better definition of feminism. So feminism is this goal to make women independent, and in the way in which follows men and bad men at that, the promiscuity and not being responsible for children, all of those kinds of aspects. And that's really. Percy Shelley had some very vested interests in this. I mean, he was really just an incredible playboy and had this horrible reputation in England and actually spent most of his adult life out of England because he was so notorious for seducing women, and his first wife committed suicide anyway. So the point being that Shelley was not really the person to be formulating how it is that women ought to live their best life.
But this is what.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Consider the source.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Right, exactly. So this is what really caught on. And actually, you end up with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony really taking on his ideas.
But of course, they were anti abortion at that point, because no one was pro abortion in terms of being publicly. It was just kind of unconscionable. Abortion certainly happened, in fact, in New York City at that time, late 1880s, nineties, you were in this post civil war era, and certainly right after the war itself, prostitution was just through the roof. It was the huge population of women in New York were prostitutes, because that's just how people had to survive. So there were places that we would consider abortion clinics. People could get abortions. We know they happen.
But it was very hush hush, and it wasn't something that in any way was celebrated the way that we would think of it today, being seen as a good thing. So that's really what you have, is the culture kind of hemming in the situation. But all of that really changes with someone like Margaret Sanger, who comes along, and she was very much for abortion. She was very obviously very much for birth control. But what's interesting is to see that she was advised by an englishman who was kind of like an early Alfred Kinsey. He was kind of what we would call, like, a sexologist in England, but he was also a radical socialist. And he said, the thing you have to do, Margaret, is you need to go back to the United States and you need to look as normal as possible. So don't talk about abortion anymore. Look like a mother. She'd already divorced her husband at this point, and, you know, just be as normal as you can. And that was really the advice that she followed and actually ended up becoming the advice for, really, the whole. All of the 19 hundreds followed this advice, because what was happening was this connection of feminism with Marxism, starting first with socialism, but then moving on with Marxism. And both people, both the feminists and the Marxists, had the same goal, which is really to get women away from the family and away from living their faith and to become better workers. So it's really interesting when you start kind of mapping on these ideologies and see how it rolls through the whole era, well, then fast forward to the 1960s and Betty Friedan's book, the Feminine Mystique. And in that, she makes the claim that women are miserable at home. She calls the home a comfortable concentration camp, which she ended up changing the language in her later books. I think she called it a trap. The home is a trap. But in that book, she talks very explicitly about how she's got to get women out of the home and into productive work. And we know from Betty's background that she was very much a Marxist. She was very much trying to promote this idea of productive work, because the Marxists had already decided that being a mother and being home wasn't productive work. So her goal was really to use her book and her voice and her and platform to promote this idea of women leaving the home.
Anyway. So at this point, this is when the radical shift comes from, because you've got someone like Bernard Nathanson, you've got Lawrence Lader, these men who see just a huge amount of money to be made in abortion, and they also see the real success that Betty Fredan has had with the feminine mystique. I mean, the book sold 3 million copies in the first few years of production or publication, hugely successful. She's got this huge audience, and they realized, you know, she's getting women to work. We want abortion. Well, aren't we gonna have more workers if we promote abortion? And that really ends up becoming what has. What led to where we're at now is in the minds of women, we have connected. If you're gonna have a career, and career is gonna be your main thing, then we have to have abortion, because otherwise you can't do both. You can't have this career that you dream of and also have children.
So it's.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Which I think was an idea that was actually in the Roe versus Wade arguments. Yeah.
Yeah. They basically say women can't contribute to the workforce, to the workplace, unless abortion is accepted. That was a big aspect of their argument.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: And all of it is amazing because it all goes back to Karl Marx and Engels.
There's a quote Betty Friedan has in one of her journals that's a direct quote from Engels, who's writing on this issue. And he says, women must do productive work. And so it's really amazing to see just the connection between what happened in the Soviet Union under communism. Children are raised by someone else, abortions become just absolutely rampant. You can't own a stitch of property. But you can have an abortion at any point. Divorce became possible through a postcard. You could just send a postcard, and you were divorced. And it got so bad that they actually had to stop promoting or allowing women to have abortions. I know Vicky Thorne, whom I'm sure you are aware of, the founders of Project Rachel, she told me once that she met a woman in Russia that had sep, told her that she had had 80 abortions.
So it was just rampant. But you can see in the Soviet Union, what happened was this was sort of a military coup that took over in the Soviet Union, but everybody knew you couldn't have that. You couldn't do the same thing in the United States. You had to come make women and men communists through different means. And so you can see, it's really fascinating when you start digging into all the documents. I'd love to dig into the unsealed classified documents that we now have from the Soviet Union. I haven't been able to do that yet, but I've just done it on the side of people like Betty Friedan and Bella Dodd, who was a communist, who left the Communist Party. And just see how these stories line up. And you really see this was the goal, was to make women workers, and at the cost of the family and of any kind of faith. I mean, that was the main goal.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: That is so, you know, I've been in the pro life movement for 20 years, and I've heard inklings of things like this. But that makes so much sense. I've never heard it articulated so well and so clearly, because I've always asked the question of, you know, to me, to be a feminist and to be for abortion just always seems so contradictory to me, because true feminism to me, is about really empowering, embracing womanhood, femininity. Right, right. Including our fertility and our ability to have children. Instead of, you know, instead of saying to be for women, you become like men, right, and rejecting that fundamental part of ourselves. And so I always had this question of, like, why did the move, why did the feminist movement take the route of to be for women, you become like man instead of fully supporting women as women. But when you add this piece of, like, to be equal or to be valued is to be a productive worker, then I go, oh, that makes sense, right? Cause being as a working mom, having children is hard, right?
And so that just, like, makes it so much clearer as to why it wasn't about truly embracing women, about exalting women, about femininity.
You know, it was about become a productive worker for a society, right?
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And not just for society, but for the revolution that they believed was gonna happen, the communist revolution that they wanted to take place all over the world. So women were considered sort of the secondary line of, you know, behind the men who were the front line of the revolution. But it's very clear in the data, too, that the way in which they were so effective is they really went after women's emotions. And we see this in this idea of consciousness raising groups, which started actually in the 1890s by the socialists, who were trying to get women really stirred up and angry. And this, you know, just continued throughout because a consciousness raising group doesn't talk about how to heal people. It just talks about people's grievances. And it's pretty. You know, it's pretty amazing how effective it is, because not only if you go to a group like this, not only do you have your own grievances that you get upset about, but you also get upset about the other peoples in the room grievances. So you can see it just multiplies. And it really has this incredible capacity to make people bitter and angry. And, you know, all the things that we see in women today, instead of giving them an avenue for healing and for, you know, moving on and processing and, you know, forgiveness, all of those kinds of things that we know are really vital to a flourishing culture. And, you know, as a result, it's also increased dramatically, the acrimony between the sexes. And, you know, we've gotten to the point where women are pretty much believed to believe all women, or we can't say anything wrong, and men are just silenced, absolutely silenced by feminism.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Right, the over correction.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. So, yeah, it's pretty incredible when you start seeing the details, but that's, you know, it really is the case that the ideal woman that the feminist movement was looking for was a woman outside of family. She didn't have children. She was independent, and she could sort of live her life in any way that she wanted, which, you know, sounds really familiar to us today. I mean, this is what is being promoted around us left and right. And yet the tragedy is that we know it's not making women happier. We know, actually, women are more depressed, more suicidal, more dependent on drugs and depression, medication, more stD's, you know, all the things that point to some pretty incredibly unhappy women. And why is that? It's because we are taking away the rich relationships that women naturally have with people. This is the way that we function and operate in the world. We want thick relationships with people, and what we are doing is the exact opposite of that. We're decimating these relationships. And so that desire for motherhood and mothering others really spills out. In other areas particularly. We see it in the pet population. There's now more pets in people's homes than there are children in the United States. And Halloween, Americans spend $700 million on pet costumes. So it's really fascinating to look at the, you know, we haven't. Feminism didn't change human nature. It has just thwarted it and, you know, suppressed it, particularly in women, and tried to make things into something.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah, we're redirected now to our animals, to our. Yeah, there was a joke in college, you know, I didn't become a mom until I was about 30, but the joke in college for me specifically was with all my friends, like, don't say if you're sick or something's going on. Don't say it in front of missy, because she will mother you to death. I just would go into, like, what do you need? Like, let's lay down. You know, I just. I just inherently have. I just mother everybody. I mother animals everybody. I'm like, I'm now your mother. And that I feel that so deeply. I do want to say just for clarification, because I gotta assume that not everybody listening has the knowledge that I do of, you know, the history of the abortion movement. So Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood, and I know that there. And you referred to her earlier. So she's the founder of Planned Parenthood.
And there have been a lot of, like, the pro life movement likes to talk all the time about her sordid kind of history. And I guess probably her relationship to the communist agenda and eugenics is brought up pretty frequently. I think some of her quotes are a little bit misconstrued or misattributed.
But would you say that her view on eugenics and the stuff that's come out about that, was that all kind of incorporated in this marxist communist agenda, or was that something that was completely separate?
[00:24:00] Speaker B: No, it's definitely incorporated. And this is actually where it gets really interesting, because on the one hand, you have someone like Margaret Sanger, who's focused on eugenics, and eugenics were used by the Nazis.
Let's contrast that with someone like Betty Friedan, who was absolutely a communist, and she actually hated the Nazis and thought everything that she was doing was against the Nazis. But the crazy thing is that the Nazis, fundamentally, the Nazis and the Soviets have the same underlying philosophy, which is this idea of the worker. I mean, you look at Auschwitz or Dachau, that's what's the sign say, work will make you free. So this idea of work is fundamental to both of them, that that's really where freedom is meant to be, and women being independent is part of that.
So, absolutely. Margaret Sanger was really a precursor to all of these radical. Well, and even in the 1910s, there's this huge amount of socialism radical movement happening among women. There's a new book out that came out recently called Hotbed, and it talks about all these women that were part of this group called heterodoxy. And it was sort of a social group that the only, you know, the only thing that you had to have in order to be involved in it was unorthodox beliefs. And the women that were involved in it were hugely influential in the feminist movement because they were the ones that sort of after the gap of what had happened, after the kind of the implosion of the feminist or the suffrage movement, really after Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her reputation was so besmearched that nobody wanted to talk to her after or talk about her after her death. So these women really took it up, and they were all radicals, they were all socialists. In fact, one of the women's, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, actually wrote this book called her Land, which ended up becoming Wonder Woman. The whole Wonder Woman series is based on it, but the idea being that if we could just get rid of men, we would have, you know, women would be able to advance in such a way that we can't even begin to imagine. I. How sophisticated and culturally astute and technologically advanced all these amazing things would happen because we wouldn't have men fighting wars around us all the time.
So it's really fascinating to just see how deeply the feminist movement was involved in all of this and how effective, how Sanger's idea of birth control really was ahead of its time and ended up, obviously, leading to the development of the pill. But what most people don't realize is that development actually is what led to the LGTB agenda as well. Because the fact that suddenly you've dramatically changed the meaning of sex. Sex is no longer about procreation. It's about pleasure. And so suddenly, for heterosexuals, what they're doing in the bedroom doesn't really look much different than what same sex couples are doing. And so that really opened the door to all of that as well. So it's really interesting to just see how all of these pieces fit together, and, of course, it's all covered in my book. But it absolutely would not have happened without Sanger's work and the socialist movement and the communist movement really pushing these ideas of worker over and against any kind of morals or ethical considerations.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: And what was there. I mean, as someone from the philosophy perspective to the layman person, what was the argument for the Marxist of, like, why was it work that was considered the most valuable thing just for those of us who.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: No, I think it's a great question.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: For education.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. Partially because of Marx's whole theory that the workers were oppressed by the oppressors who were the, like, managerial class, or, you know, people that were the landowners. So if you look back at the Soviet Union, who. What happens under the. Under the communist revolution, certainly all of the royal family is murdered. But then you also have these uprisings in villages where the workers go and slaughter and kill all the managerial class. So this is what ended up leading to all of these famines and, you know, complete breakdown in agriculture, because the workers didn't know how to do any of the planting. They didn't know they weren't the ones that were in control of the know how for feeding people. So that's really the first piece. But that's really. How was the belief communists had was that the worker would see how they were being oppressed, and they would rise up. So. But what's fascinating, and this is a whole other development, is that there's two philosophers from the Frankfurt school writing around the time of the 1930s. They're both Germans that came to Columbia University.
One of them is named Wilhelm Reich, and he wrote a book in 1936 called the Sexual Revolution. And the other one is Herbert Marcuse. But the two of them actually, Wilhelm Reich, with his book the Sexual Revolution, is actually trying to. He put out the blueprint of what the sexual revolution was in the 1960s. So the 1960s wasn't about some sort of, like, you know, bra burning, throw off your, you know, just abandon any kind of morals and just be a libertine sexually. It didn't happen organically. It actually was the ideas of Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s that actually led to that, because they saw that if you can. If you can change a culture sexually, you're also gonna have a lot of control over it. And this was. Was one of the fundamental ideas of feminist movement, Washington, free love, getting rid of monogamy entirely. That was one of their methods. The other one was involving the occult. And then the third one, of course, was this idea of getting rid of patriarchy, any kind of hierarchy, military, et cetera, et cetera. So, in any event, the point being that these marxist ideas didn't just stay with Marx. They didn't just stay in communism. They ended up being used against the west in the sexual revolution. But they also got twisted, because no longer was it about the words worker and the oppressor of the managerial class.
The Frankfurt school shifted it so that women became the victims and men became the oppressors automatically. So we have kind of this sense in our culture that women are oppressed. We have this victimhood status. We have all kinds of privileges because we're women owned businesses, all of those kinds of things. All of this happened because of the fact that we were able to create.
The Frankfurt school created this idea that women are victims and men are the oppressors.
So all of this has to be changed and rectified. So anyway, I know it gets really, really complicated, but I think that these ideas are hugely important because this is what is driving, really this engine. Because if a woman has a victimhood kind of status, then something like an abortion, you know, doesn't seem like such a big deal if we're trying to rectify what they're considered trying to free.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Her, if you're trying to rescue.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Huh.
This is so interesting to me. I love this so much.
I want to circle back around because you touched on it a little bit, but I want to dive more into when. So these ideas come about.
It becomes a part of the narrative. Like you were saying with the feminist leaders.
Then all of a sudden, you had people like Bernard Nathanson and some other nefarious actors, right? See a business opportunity. They see an opportunity, right?
Because when I went back to, like, who decided, like, who. Who were the people that were really driving and pushing for legal abortion? You know, I look at people like Bernard Nathanson where I go. If he was one of the drivers, he had business interests like this was.
He saw dollar signs, right? And that's nothing. That's not female empowerment. He wasn't coming alongside the feminist movement and saying, yes, I want women to.
Whether or not he realizes or not, he thinks that he's. They think that they are advocating for this freedom, this empowerment. But then, really, there was a whole group of people that were behind it that were known for exploitation of women, for selling of abortion. You know, so tell us a little bit about that piece of, when it went from this idea, these people pushing it, to now we have this industry this business that people have supported.
[00:33:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's a lot of pieces at play here. I absolutely will say that the Nathanson, Lawrence Lader, that crowd who potentially sees a lot of money, is a huge driver. But the reality is there was already, like, the tables already set. Like, they didn't have to do very much work because of the fact. Again, back to this idea of the Frankfurt school.
You have all of these radical, radically militant communist thinkers like Angela Davis, as well as Kate Millet. And these are women who are, you know, they're very different from even a Betty Friedan because they're so ideological, they're so radical. Kate Millet actually said, we have to have abortion because we want to be able to compete with men. Men are able to kill innocents in Vietnam. We have to be able to kill our own children in our own womb. Yeah. I mean, this is 1970. She's the one that wrote the book sexual politics. And she also founded all of the women's studies programs or, like, lit the fuse for all the women's studies programs that we have in America today. So she's not some obscure woman that no one's ever heard of. She was actually on the front cover of Time magazine and was hugely influential until it came out that she was bisexual, and it ended up destroying her marriage.
She was in and out of mental hospitals. Her sister, Mallory Millett, has started talking a lot about Kate's story since Kate died, I think, a few years ago. And she's been telling kind of the behind the story details that she knew she couldn't make public until Kate's death. But these are just really radical ideas, and these are the people that are trying to bring feminism into, like, college campuses. They're trying to make it very popular, and they're working closely with women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, Miss Magazine. So it was really, even though they had these huge ideological differences on certain things, it ended up morphing into, really, the more radical part. And there's a book called the sisterhood is powerful, which brings together a lot of these authors that was published in the 1970s that really gives you a glimpse into feminism, second wave feminism. And it's just remarkable. I mean, there's a whole chapter about how really, lesbianism is the ideal because women are superior in their being, and as a result, you don't have to deal with men ever, and you also don't have to deal with fertility. And that was what, what they wanted was this kind of sterility that came from those kinds of relationships.
And really, again, this shredding of the family. We know the family is the fundamental cell of the culture, and that's really what protects us from tyranny. And monogamy is hugely important. And those are all the things that they're really trying to break up. So this is why someone like Bernard Nathanson has become so important, because he's now working with what's already happening on the ideological side with women, but he's also bringing a lot of money to it.
All of these things that these women did were very well funded, which is always wild for us on the pro life side to hear because none of us are very proud. It just doesn't happen. But this is a huge amount of government money is thrown at these things. And then, of course, just the.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: You.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Know, the money that's coming through abortion promotion and all of that. So it's really this very tangled mess. But, you know, the bad actors are working very closely with the women who had so many just screwed up ideas about what womanhood was and that together they were really kind of this type of dynamite because they were so effective in communicating their messaging, whether it was through, you know, Gloria Steinem's Miss magazine or the use of the mediaev. If you even think about, I'm much older than you are, but I remember watching the Phil Donahue show and all these sort of conversations that happen on that show all the time that were very much leading women into the abortion mentality. There's also very well documented stories about magazine editors getting together and trying to make abortion more palatable to women and featuring different stories in their magazines. So it was very much a concerted effort to, to sell it to american women as a good and compassionate option for their life.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I just wonder when you, because I believe the name that goes along with it's Bernard Nathanson and what's the other gentleman later?
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So from what I understand, he was known also for being a, for exploiting women and being a bad actor. I just wonder how they justified partnerships with men who, it's kind of like that first guy that you referred to. Like when I said, consider your source.
Do you think that there was a discomfort there? I mean, how do you think.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's about power. They don't care about people's morals at this point because they've already given that up. It's really about power and control, and that's what was going on. I mean, this is what Kate Millett understand. This is what the communists understood. And it was a matter of, you know, you would align forces with people that you might not agree with, but you did it because you would. Together, you would both get more power.
And furthermore, I mean, the other reality is that there were no, there weren't really moral standards anymore that was really thrown out the window. And it's amazing how just to read. I know Phyllis Chesler has written a book that I've quoted a lot in my work, and she was another one of these very active feminists. And the way she describes her life, it was a mess because they had thrown out all sexual mores and all kinds of moral limits. Everything was on the table. Something like men who were taking advantage of women didn't really matter because they were women taking advantage of men. I mean, it was just this kind of cesspool of people that were, again, focused on power, and how could they control more of the message and the narrative and get their vision put forward?
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is putting so much into context for me because a conversation we have regularly about the work, what the average person doesn't understand is that most abortion facilities are run by nefarious actors. These are not on the up and up. They're not clean. A lot of them have a history of criminal activity.
You know, like, the willingness of the abortion industry to not only support, but fight for abortion facilities that are so dangerous, just cannot even follow basic health and safety standards, is really confusing to the average person because they go, well, if you want abortion to be legal, don't you want it to be safe? Like, how can you support these physicians who are so, you know, either, you know, the one guy we shut down in Florida was doing, you know, 20 week abortions, and he had no surgical training. He had no Ob gyn training, and he was doing complicated abortion procedures and sending women to the hospital almost dead. How nobody died with him is still a miracle, like, to this day. But he's lost his medical license. He's suspended from ever doing abortions again. But the abortion industry was fighting for him to be able to stay open and keep practicing. And we all go, that doesn't make sense, you know, and the average person that I talk to, I see what we do as, again, very accessible. Cause I go, regardless of where you stand on abortion, you do support basic health and safety standards. Like, I was talking to a woman lives across the street from me. She's the classic hippie from the 60, you know, she's just this precious, kind soul, but, you know, she's very, very liberal. She supports abortion and I was explaining to her what I do, and I said, you know, cause, like, in states in Illinois after Roe versus Wade was overturned, they went the opposite direction, and they completely deregulated abortion in Illinois. So now the abortion facilities are not even inspected by the health department. And she goes, that's crazy. Like, they need. Of course they need to be inspected by the health department. Right? And so there's always been this confusion as, like, if you want abortion to be legal, don't you want it to be safe? But when you put it in the context of kind of what you were saying, I mean, if it's really based on this movement where all morals go out the door and it's just about power, well, then it makes sense. They don't really care who their partners are as long as they're getting the thing that they want. And so we see that to this day being worked out in the types of people that are working in this business and who they are willing to. To partner with and align with and support. Because the average person goes, yeah, no, like, that's not. So we're trying to help people understand that this is the reality. Right. So I'm just interested to hear more of your thoughts on the then and now and how that through line has continued.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's a really great question. And it shouldn't be surprising at all that we have kind of these bad actors, particularly when they've been so protected, because abortion has become such an important thing. You know, I talk a lot about, actually, how we spent a lot of time as pro lifers talking about law and politics, you know, rightfully so, trying to get rid of roe. But what we didn't do was we didn't follow up with a culture. We didn't start trying to help people understand on a cultural level that abortion was really. Is this awful thing. I mean, fundamentally, like, no other culture has so decisively severed the most fundamental relationship in all of humanity, that mother and child relationship, and made it appear attractive. And I think that, you know, for me, has always been the big question.
And again, it goes back to power and control and controlling the narrative. And, you know, this is one of the reasons why people are always amazed at my research, like, almost skeptical. Like, where did you get this? And, you know, I can tell you all of it came from, actually, resources that were very either primary sources or for feminists. I didn't really use any anti feminist because there's not a lot of people out there that are against it. So it was really fascinating and it.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Makes you more credible. Right. And we would do the same thing like we all, I use goot mocker, you know, planned parents research arm to do because it's like, trust me, my sources are not biased exactly.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: There's nothing biased about their own research. So, and that's what I did was all of that kind of research.
So I think it really is a question of power and that they've had it. They know what it tastes like. They know what it's like to be able to really control the minds of women. And this is one of the reasons why we see so many or so few pro life women anywhere in the culture. I think you and I could probably list a few, but the average person could not list very many. And if they could, they wouldn't know them by their first name. Think about how many liberal women we know just by their first name. I just have to say their first name. And you know exactly who I mean. And it's that kind of, you know, celebrity popularization that that has been going on. So that's part of the issue is sort of sealing off any way in which they can look bad. And so rather than, you know, your work, what you're doing, obviously, is exposing people who are doing horrific things. It's just easier for them to circle the wagons around those who are on their side instead of fight the others and just ignore the others. So it's either an ignoring or a cancel culture that happens with those who are not sort of on the inside of this pro abortion narrative. And so that's why it happens, because they're just trying to control the leaks, they're trying to control the messaging, and fundamentally, they're trying to control women. They really, and it's pretty remarkable to see when you look downstream from what happens from an abortion, I mean, obviously, you know these details better than I do in terms of depression and, you know, all the aftereffects. But what happens is there's also a lot more money for people who are trying to sell magazines, who are trying to sell products, who are trying to sell pharmaceuticals. You know, so it ends up being, when you have broken women, they're going to need, they're going to have this desire to end that brokenness, and that brokenness is going to be, you know, people are going to offer them all kinds of avenues, was for healing, and it ends up being a huge industry to try to help them. So it's really incredible when you start looking at just where their vested interests are and why it is that they're holding onto them so radically, even at the expense of healthy medical facilities.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: Right. And we say the same thing, because now it's like with the abortion pill coming in from foreign countries. I mean, you can go online, order, you know, never have an exam. And what's happened is, you know, a lot of women are ending up in the hospital with severe complications because they're not getting the pre screened for risks, or they, you know, they're taking them too late. They're not taking them correctly because they're just getting them off the black market. And I go, the women that you are claiming to serve and empower are the ones that are actually paying the price for this. And so how do you make sense of that?
[00:47:40] Speaker B: That's the feminist movement in a nutshell. It's trying to make women as something that they're not, and they're claiming that they're helping women by doing it. And so the reality is it's actually making women much worse off. And, you know, you can see this in abortion. You can also see this in the marriage industry looking up poor women who now no longer even think about marriage because it's just not something that would ever happen. They have a lot of children, and they have the state take care of them. But the idea that you would actually have a monogamous relationship moving forward for 30, 40, 50 years is just something that is not even part of the lower class vision anymore. Because, again, we've held up this idea of the independent woman, but she's not really independent because you can't actually do all the things that a mother does and not have an income. So the government is what steps in. And, you know, there's this great title, this great word, bureaugamy, where a woman ends up just become being married to the state. And so that justifies growing the state. You know, all of these things have huge ramifications because there, and there's not a husband in the family so that the children aren't being fathered properly. I mean, it's just, it's a mess, right. When you really start seeing it through the lens of power and control, you know, everything starts falling into place.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Kind of what we talked about in the beginning with you having a philosophy background and really genuinely trying to understand the underlying causes. And from our end, you know, I said, like the average person who supports abortion, they are not nefarious actors, right? They genuinely think that they are helping women. Right. And so I would say I want to kind of interrogate that same concept of somebody who would say, yes, I'm feminist. I, you know, I'm for abortion, like, because we know that most likely are not reading Marx. Like, they're not at all. They don't know that whole history. But for the average person, like, what would you say is really going on when they think, like, I want. I'm just trying to help women, therefore, abortion should be accessible.
What do you think, the psychology kind of where they're landing, because, like I said, they're not the. There are nefarious people that are at the top. You know, we've seen that over and over again at Planned Parenthood, at these abortion facilities. But for the average person, where do you think they're, like, what would you say to them? And where do you think those motivations are coming from?
[00:50:27] Speaker B: Well, that's kind of a complicated question. It depends a lot on the person and how much time I have to respond to them.
I can think of three different scenarios that would sort of be easy to address. I mean, the first one, actually, I think, is the pro lifer, who's also pro feminist. And I think that that that gets. It's really challenging because it's almost like you're putting your foot on the gas and at the break at the same time, like, which do you want? Do you want an abortive culture or do you want a pro life culture? And I think that's really where we have to educate ourselves as pro lifers and to what is happening in the engine behind the abortion mentality. So I think that that's really the first thing that we have to address is getting people to understand where the engine, the engine is feminism. And again, I would distinguish that from being pro woman, obviously.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Sure. Sure.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: I would say to the person that I had very little time to talk to, I'm always a big fan of just asking questions because I think questions make people, even if they respond quickly, people usually think about them a little bit longer, and afterwards. I've done so many interviews, and I can't tell you how many of my ideas have come from questions that I didn't feel like answered well and I've thought about later.
In any event, I think one of the things we can ask is, if abortion is really so good for women, why is it that women are less happy? Why is that we're seeing all of these problems with women? Why is it the depression's on the rise?
Just something as simple as that can really, I think, break up the narrative and kind of unfoot them a little bit and help them think about things a little bit more. I mean, obviously they can dismiss the, the evidence that is showing very clearly that women are less happy than before abortion.
But I think that's one. I think that's where you start. I mean, the other, if I have time with somebody much longer, then I would go through some of these other points that I have raised. I think even, too, just the number of worldwide abortions, I'm sure, you know, this number 2023 showed was 44 million abortions worldwide. And, you know, larger population than, like, Poland or Canada. You know, like, imagine if any one of those countries was decimated by a bomb.
We would have a reaction. There would be t shirts, there would be campaigns, there would be, you know, all kinds of things to help survivors and, you know, whatnot. And yet abortion just gets completely silenced, and we don't hear those numbers. We don't even realize that those numbers are larger than people dying from heart disease, Covid, or cancer. So I think it's trying to bigger scale pictures. Picture. Opening up the lens a little bit and looking at it on a bigger scale can also help. And then, of course, I'm sure, as you mentioned, there's also that personal issue of what's going on. There's usually something that's going on with somebody on a moral level or an emotional level that needs to be addressed, too. And I think that's really where we can kind of dig into that, because a lot of times, reason doesn't work. I mean, this is my hardest lesson as I've got a PhD in philosophy. And then to realize that you can't reason people out of things because we're in a very emotional world. Yeah. So I think that's really where our capacity to be compassionate and listen and not expect to change people on a dime, but to plant seeds and help start just asking questions is really seems like a great way to move forward when you don't have some, you don't have my book in your hand.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: I want to get it. As soon as we're done, I will go order it. Cause this is all so interesting to me.
I love this.
Yeah. As somebody, I'm a very logical person. Like, I'm very. Everything to me is, if you can reason it with me, I'm like, oh, that's the thing to do. Great, then you just do that thing.
I am your star pupil over here. I'm like, oh, just give me the good answer. Oh, that's the thing you do. And I have to remember, not everybody else is like that.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I think I will say too you mentioned earlier your capacity for mothering. I think this has been the real thing that feminism has done. Is it separated womanhood from motherhood? That's it. That's the big piece. This is why we cannot define what womanhood is in our culture today, because we don't see it intrinsically as mothering. And I love the example of you mothering everybody in college because. And it doesn't mean that all of us are going to express motherhood in the same way, but we're all meant to be mothering others. Whether. And I don't mean just biologically. I mean, you know, looking out for the needs of others, sheltering others, nourishing others, helping them become the best person that they're meant to be. All of that can happen in a workplace. It can happen in a college. It can happen. And those are things that are built into us as little girls that I think, in a lot of ways, have been pushed out of us because of the belief that we're meant to compete with the boys. I know that was the background of my education. I think that's another aspect of really restoring the pro life culture is helping women understand these desires that we have are not something to thwart or push out or somehow think they are a mental illness or codependency, which is what feminists have made it out to be, but in fact, are actually really beautiful and really healing and restorative and just incredible gifts to start connecting those pieces, I think, is really crucial to moving forward.
[00:56:02] Speaker A: Yeah. That leads to, immediately to my next. My, like, my last question about this is, so what now? You know, now that abortion is so deeply ingrained with the feminist narrative. And, you know, we are, like I said, I am a working mom. You are a working mom. My daughter is four.
We started our organization in January of 2020. She was born in August of 2020. So she has been with me, you know, and it is hard. Like, we're in the throes of, you know, childhood toddler years. I am. I am tired. Childcare is expensive. Like, being a working mom is really hard. I am tired. And so it's like, how.
How do we address this of, like, okay, it's not abortion. It's not that. It's not feminism in the sense that we are denying our womanhood, denying our mothering, but at the same time, our culture is not conducive to working moms and working families. And so what is the way forward?
[00:57:21] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And this is. I think the real irony is that, you know, for all of the amount of. Of hatred that's dished out against the patriarchy. Feminists are very happy to fall in line when it comes to any kind of hierarchy in a corporate setting. And this is the real issue, is that we've caved. Feminists have caved on that level. And it's not just corporate. It's also federal government.
There's definite hierarchies. But we've also felt like we are the ones that have to bend. We are the ones that have to change our lives instead of really understanding that motherhood is vital. Vital, vital. And it needs to be prioritized in different ways. And we need to help women find alternatives where they can still support their families and also do, you know, important work that God has them to do. But we also need to allow women to feel like it's okay to be home with their kids at different stages, too. I think that's another huge piece. So that's a vital piece. But I've got three things that I think we just need to do general as pro lifers, that can help all of this. I think the first one, I just wrote an article about this, so it's really fresh in my mind. But the first one is we have to stop focusing so much on our emotions and allowing ourselves to feel like victims. This is, I think, just how so much happens on the abortion level. All of the national media is really focused on trying to hit us on an emotional level. And the more that we can become focused on the rational and less on the emotional with regard to this debate, it's going to help hope that that's going to have a ripple effect. The second thing is, again, this idea of motherhood, really trying to put these two pieces back together, womanhood and motherhood, and doing it in a way that's healthy and compelling and beautiful. We don't talk about, we haven't talked about motherhood as a good thing in 50 years. So there's a lot of room for discussion about that. And I think that's really important. And then the third thing I would say that's super vital is we've got to get back into the culture. We have not fought there well at all because we think it's fluff. In fact, I think that's really why the left has been so successful there, because we just think, well, we need to make our arguments or focus on the political, but women are being influenced by the media in a way that we just need to start catching up. And it's, you know, think about, like, why don't we have a pro life rom.com. why don't we have magazines? There's not one magazine at the checkout stand that is overtly pro life. Why have we never spent money in that area as pro lifers? So it's that kind of thing. I think about how I spend my time, what I would love to, how I would love to find things that were pro life. And I felt like it was good to spend my money in these places. On a cultural level, I think that's really important. So anyway, and this is part of my work that I do at theology of home is really just try to start helping women and be able to visualize what healthy motherhood looks like because we've only seen bad motherhood, really.
But I think once we can start helping women reimagine and remember what good mothering looks like, I think that goes a long way in fighting so many of these battles.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: Being a working mom is so hard. I am so tired. But at the same time, my daughter is amazing. And people tell me that all the time. Like, I saw some friends I hadn't seen in years. They hadn't met my daughter yet. And, like, she's cute, she's fun. She's four. She's got perfect blonde ringlets. But, and these are all friends that have kids of their own. And they were like, missy, your daughter is amazing. And I was like, I mean, I know I'm her mom, and so I'm a little biased. Like, no, like, she's really special. I mean, she's so smart and she's so inquisitive. She's always been kind of ahead in her, in her thinking at school and stuff. She's very articulate. And there are times where I look at that and I'm like, man, I am doing a good job mothering her and watching her understand. So a little boy on the street said something mean to her the other day, and she came home and she was, she was very upset about, we worked through it. And she's like, why did I say? I'm like, well, some people, they, you know, he's got something going on in himself that made him feel, you know, it's not you. And he came down and apologized, and I said, do you forgive him? And she's like, yes, you know. And so they worked it out. And the next day, he came down again to the house because he wanted to play. And she said, well, you can play with me as long as you don't say any more stupid things to me. And I was like, good for you. Like she said, she's like, you can play with me, but you cannot say, you cannot say, you cannot keep saying stupid things to me like that. And I said, good for you. So you set that boundary. And so there are these really beautiful, joyful moments that I get just watching her learn and grow.
But I do feel like, because I talked to a lot of policy groups, like Canada, they get a year for paid family leave after they have a child. We don't have that. Or moms feel like they have to go straight back to work after having a baby because financially, we just don't have these support systems in place and making childcare more affordable, you know, and just some of these, like, social structures that we need to just make and even making our workplaces more conducive. So, like, you know, I employ mostly working moms, and I'm like, listen, you do whatever you need to do, right, to be a. To be a mom and then also get your work done, you know, but it's like the freedom to. They can nurse at the office. They can. We see babies. That's one of the most beautiful things about being in the pro life movement is there's always a baby in, like, every meeting, right? And it's just like, not everyone's like, it's almost like they're upset if there's not a baby. Like, where's the kid? Where are the kids?
Where are the kids? And they could be as disruptive, and it doesn't matter. Everybody just goes, it's beautiful. We love it. And it's like, can every workplace be that way? That's like, right.
[01:03:47] Speaker B: And I think that's really just such a great model. We. I work, most of the women that I work with are, have children as well. And so it's kind of that same model. Like, this is what youre. You need to do, and you can do it whenever you can get it done. And everybody's happy with that. And I think that being able to rethink things instead of the nine to five. And thankfully, Covid has helped with this slightly. But women have incredible resources when they can manage them themselves and figure out when the best time is for them to use their time and to focus on things or carve out time. So I think the more that we can be creative like that, the better it's going to be for all women so that we don't see raising children as some sort of burden or total damper on our time and career, our freedom.
Exactly. And instead, it just feels like kind of a beautiful, natural part of it, which is how it used to be back in the day when people lived on farms and the children were just sort of involved and they were around, but they weren't considered a pox on the culture.
[01:04:54] Speaker A: Right.
[01:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that there's plenty of room for people being creative about different ways and balancing all of these details, too.
[01:05:03] Speaker A: All right, so last thing before we wrap up, what we like to do is because most of our conversations are very serious. And so I like to just take a step back and ask our guests, what do you like to do off the clock? Like, when you're not doing incredible research on motherhood and womanhood? But the caveat is it can't be about being a mom and it can't be about being a wife, because that's the given. We know, everybody that I'm interviewing, we know you love being a mom. We know you love your family. So what is, like, your go to hobby or pastime when you just want to chill?
[01:05:41] Speaker B: You know, I wish it was something really fun like roller derby or, you know, I have, you know, I'm botany or something.
No. Bonsai plants or something. But no, I. It's reading. I mean, it's largely, I don't have a lot of downtime. I have five kids.
[01:05:58] Speaker A: I do business.
[01:06:00] Speaker B: I write books. I do media. You know, I just, there's not a lot of downtime.
But, I mean, that's the, actually, I'm a big fan of audible.
[01:06:09] Speaker A: I live, I live on Audible because if I wasn't, if I wasn't a working mom, I would just, my nose would be in books. Twenty four seven. I love to read.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: So audible is like a game changer, isn't it? So, yeah. So I am actually currently listening to a book about neuroscience and the brain. I just bought a bunch of french cookbooks, and I have a gardening book out, and I'm the world's worst gardener. So I have this dream of one day being a real gardener, but I don't think it'll ever happen. But I'm reading books about it in any event. So, yeah, just reading. I think that, that, you know, there's so much to learn out there. And it's also kind of amazing, too, just to see how all of these things flow into each other. I have a lifestyle blog and a lifestyle brand, and so french cooking fits into it, but it's also great because my family eats better. So, anyway, I think that's the amazing thing about having a lot of dynamism in your life, is that it just feels like it kind of all weaves together. But, yeah, the audible is kind of become my go to. I've finished books that I would never have finished because, you know, didn't have the light because I was trying to read while children were falling asleep.
[01:07:22] Speaker A: Right, right. Have it in my ears what I'm doing. Whatever. Yeah, I've really learned. I've really come to appreciate even just reading fiction, because for a long time, especially when I was in college, I was.
[01:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I was a little pretentious, right?
[01:07:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I was a little pretentious about my books, and I was like, I'm only gonna read, you know, biographies and research. And I had an english professor who was just brilliant. She was from Berkeley. I went to school in southern Mississippi, so I was not, like, a prestigious university, but I had this one english professor from Berkeley, and she just opened my world to the world of fiction and how it can be such a commentary on society and force us to have conversations about different kinds of things. And now I'm just like, give me a fluff. Good story. I just want to, like, turn my brain off.
I just want. I want a fun read.
And so I've really changed my cause. You know, I used to read, you know, Bonhoeffer story, you know, just all that stuff, and now I'm like, I just.
[01:08:35] Speaker B: Well, I can imagine with the work you're doing and all your juggling, you just need that valve of something that doesn't feel so heavy. And, yes, is really can be life giving and, like, a totally different. And that's one of the reasons why I think magazines are, you know, they've always been great for women and why I lament so much that we don't have great magazines for women that are really, you know, authentically honoring womanhood, because there's nothing like all, you know, we like to multitask. We like the different topic jumps, you know, all those kinds of things. And the visuals are really important, so.
[01:09:05] Speaker A: Yes, and it's a by vogue. And I would just look at.
[01:09:08] Speaker B: Just for the pictures.
[01:09:09] Speaker A: I love to buy a Vogue magazine, and I would just look at the beautiful art.
[01:09:13] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:09:15] Speaker A: Amazing. That's so. This conversation has been so fun. It might be one of my favorites that we've done since we started this. I just find your work so fascinating. I find your perspective so enlightening.
So tell us, where can we find your work? Tell us about your latest book and what people can do to find out more about what you do.
[01:09:37] Speaker B: So my latest book is called the end of woman, and it came out in August of 2023, but it just came out in paperback, so that is now available. And I blog every day at theology of home. This is sort of my makeshift poor woman's magazine, where my colleague Noelle Mehring and I both find articles around the Internet that we both love and think women would really appreciate and enjoy. We also have books with the same title that really go into this idea of of how is it, you know, why is it that we want our homes to feel like a sanctuary, not just how to make our homes beautiful, but why is that so important to us? And really, what underlines family and faith, but in a beautiful way, too. We have this amazing photographer that just did an incredible job with all of the photography for these books. And then on my personal site, all of my articles are posted
[email protected]. or you can find me on the scholars page at my thinktank epbc.org, which is the ethics and public Policy center. So a lot of places.
[01:10:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. For our listeners, remember to subscribe and tune in every other Friday for new episodes. And don't forget to spread the word about the centered podcast by rating, reviewing, and sharing with your friends. Also, consider supporting the work for center for Client Safety so we can continue having a valuable conversations just like this. And next time you buy your coffee, use our link in the show notes to support our work. To learn more about what we're doing, visit centerforclientsafety.org. follow us on socials at center for Clientsafety and you can find mercymartinastone. See you next time.
