CHOICE/LESS

Retired engineer and Lyft driver Rachel Brown came out as transgender at age 68. She's been using her time as a driver to educate her passengers in Massachusetts about an alarming referendum on the ballot this fall that could repeal transgender legal protections in the state. This is her story.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In the season finale, host Jenn Stanley talks to youth activists, artists, and their allies about putting abortion on center stage to fight stigma and change policy.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. So far this series has posed the question, if adults and children have a hard time talking about even the most basic sex stuff, then why do 38 states force minors to tell their parents if they're seeking an abortion? This episode explores what role schools should play in educating young people about sex.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In this episode, host Jenn Stanley explores what it takes to have open and healthy family communication, especially around polarizing topics like abortion. Sometimes those conversations go better than others. 

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In this episode, host Jenn Stanley talks to legal experts, including a former Cook County judge, about how teenagers in Illinois (and 37 other states) end up in court trying to prove they're mature enough to have an abortion.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In episode 1, Jenn Stanley takes you back to her own adolescence and talks with a former classmate about their experiences attending a small, all-girls Catholic high school.

From the archives: Before Season 4 premieres next week, we’re taking you back to a related episode from 2016 that explores what happens to teens who can’t involve a parent in their abortion decision but are forced to by the state.

Jenn shares some thoughts on the news and where we're headed.

Niky was called “the slut” in high school for her reproductive rights activism. Jane had to cross state lines to get an abortion at 15 without involving her parents. Veronica thought her grandparents would make her continue an unwanted pregnancy as punishment for having unprotected sex. Thirty-eight states require minors to involve a parent in their abortion decision. In some cases, parental consent is required with no exceptions, essentially banning abortion for many teens. Yet most of these states are doing little to nothing to teach teens about sex and how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS unpacks a simple question awash in complexity: if adults won't talk to young people about sex, how can the law mandate that teens involve parents in their abortion decision? Soon, host Jenn Stanley will help teens, parents, lawmakers, activists and anyone who cares about young people find some answers – and raise their own questions about what's right.

Part 2 of 2: If you haven't listened to Part 1, please check your podcast feed or visit https://rewire.news/gilead. Roy Moore lost, but barely. And his theocratic vision for the country lives on through Operation Save America (OSA), an organization committed to a United States in which abortion, homosexuality, Islam, and anything else its leadership considers "ungodly" is a criminal offense. In this two-part audio documentary, CHOICE/LESS host Jenn Stanley and Rewire investigative reporter Sofia Resnick team up to reveal the alarming ways OSA’s far-right ideology is worming its way into state and federal government. While often dismissed as a group of fringe extremists, OSA has a path to power–and even after Roy Moore's loss, it's farther along that path than you think.

Part 1 of 2: Roy Moore lost, but barely. And his theocratic vision for the country lives on through Operation Save America (OSA), an organization committed to a United States in which abortion, homosexuality, Islam, and anything else its leadership considers "ungodly" is a criminal offense. In this two-part audio documentary, CHOICE/LESS host Jenn Stanley and Rewire investigative reporter Sofia Resnick team up to reveal the alarming ways OSA’s far-right ideology is worming its way into state and federal government. While often dismissed as a group of fringe extremists, OSA has a path to power–and even after Roy Moore's loss, it's farther along that path than you think.

Last winter, Kentucky state lawmakers fast-tracked a bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization. Heather Hyden, 30, of Lexington, Kentucky, talks about how that bill directly affected her pregnancy and her life. Learn more at Rewire.news today.

Calla Hales is the 27-year-old lead administrator of a regional chain of abortion clinics called A Preferred Women's Health Center, which she took over from her parents. She discusses her experience running a chain of clinics at such a young age, and what it's like growing up when the family business is abortion care.

Patrisse Cullors joins CHOICE/LESS again this week, and this time she’s talking to Alex Alvarez, a Latinx transgender man, about his decision to get pregnant and how he plans to parent.

Jenn and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors are joined by Black midwives Racha Tahani Lawler and Debbie Allen to discuss racism in health care and midwifery, and what it means to provide maternity care and support to communities who need it the most.

Stephanie Toti tells her story of arguing on behalf of Whole Woman's Health in the landmark Supreme Court case Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. Go inside the mind of a reproductive rights attorney as she prepares for the biggest case of her career on the biggest stage in the country.

CHOICE/LESS returns with a blockbuster episode as Jenn interviews former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis about the great lengths she took to kill the sweeping anti-abortion bill that later because the infamous Texas HB 2.

When people hear about racism in medical testing and research, they often bring up the infamous "Tuskegee Study," a decades-long program in which the government pretended to treat 400 Black men with syphilis. In fact, the government withheld adequate treatment to observe the effects of the disease. "There was a whole history of racism in medicine and research, but this was the definitive study that was well-documented," said Bill Jenkins, a statistician with the the agency funding the program at the time of the study, who helped to blow the whistle on it. In the final episode of CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, Bill Jenkins talks about the study, its legacy, and what we can learn from it.

Sterilization abuse so far has played a role in every episode of CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, but in our third installment, this abuse is front and center. Charon Asetoyer is a Comanche activist and women’s rights advocate. In this episode, she discusses the Indian Health Service’s extensive and deliberate campaign to sterilize thousands of Native American women in the 1960s and 1970s without their informed consent.

Long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) like intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants are becoming increasingly popular as birth control methods. Between 2011 and 2013, the number of women using an IUD increased 83 percent from the previous four years, according to a 2015 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. Though today LARCs are recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as very safe and effective methods of birth control, they have a troubled history that have made many people slow to accept them. In the second episode of our miniseries CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, Loretta Ross, one of the founding mothers of the reproductive justice movement, talks about how her experience with the infamous Dalkon Shield IUD inspired her career as a human rights activist. Note: This updated episode features a correction of a minor audio issue from the previous version.

CHOICE/LESS is back with The Backstory, a four-part miniseries on historical injustices in reproductive and sexual health care advancement. Today, many people might be appalled to hear of a medical study being conducted on unwitting participants, but the concept of informed consent as we understand it today wasn’t always a standard practice in health care. The first episode of CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory explores what went wrong during the early contraceptive pill trial in Puerto Rico.

On Wednesday, May 31, CHOICE/LESS is back with a four part miniseries. CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory unravels historical instances of health care injustices, and the medical advancements they helped make possible.

Adoption is often painted as the the more ethical alternative to abortion. But both adoption and abortion are reproductive choices that are deeply personal and aren't made lightly. Placing moral superiority on one choice over another is bad for all people involved, as it erases their lived experiences and unique narratives. And society can't make adoption better if it can be taboo to speak about it honestly. Today's storyteller, Angelique Saavedra, knows this all to well. She's a birth mother herself, and she tells her story so that other birth mothers know they don't have to be invisible. Their experience matters.

Dominick Evans is a filmmaker and activist currently living in Ohio. He has a progressive, neuromuscular disability called spinal muscular atrophy, and needs the help of a wheelchair and other people to complete most physical tasks. He's also transgender. These intersecting identities have made it difficult for him to access the most basic and necessary reproductive health care — even in the emergency room.

Dr. Nicola Moore travels across the country to provide abortions at clinics where laws have made it nearly impossible to find providers in those areas. She has faced harassment and intimidation, but anti-choice threats haven't stopped her from helping to make abortion accessible.

Fourteen years ago, Cherisse Scott was a singer finishing a national tour. The career she'd worked so hard for all her life was about to blossom. Then an unplanned pregnancy and a trip to what she thought was an abortion clinic changed all of that. Today, she's a nationally recognized reproductive justice activist. She's taken on anti-choice billboards and works with faith groups to bring comprehensive sex education to Tennessee schools in place of the currently mandated abstinence-focused programs. Listen to her story on this episode of CHOICE/LESS.

Tasha Fierce is a feminist writer and student of sociology. She's always been pro-choice, and when she chose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy she says she felt no shame — until she came face-to-face with anti-choice protesters outside the clinic.

The previous two episodes of CHOICE/LESS featured stories of people denied care at Catholic hospitals because the hospitals claimed their treatment would violate the church's ethical and religious directives. Evan and Mindy's stories are not particularly uncommon. One in six hospital beds in the United States are controlled by the Catholic Church, and that number is growing. For many Americans, Catholic hospitals are their only reasonable options for care, and because many Catholic hospitals don't have religious-sounding names, patients may not even know they're at a religiously affiliated institution. So when do the church's rights trump the patient's rights? In this episode of CHOICE/LESS, Rewire's Vice President of Law and the Courts, Jessica Mason Pieklo, helps answer that by discussing religious imposition laws and how they apply to health care. Learn more: https://rewire.news/legislative-tracker/law-topic/religious-imposition-laws/

Mindy Swank grew up staunchly pro-life in a conservative Baptist family in Illinois. Then at age 24, already a wife and mother, Mindy developed life-threatening complications during a pregnancy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just her church and family that felt she should risk death rather than terminate her pregnancy – the Catholic hospital she was being treated at seemed to share that same sentiment.

Evan Minton is a transgender man, and the day before his hysterectomy was scheduled, his doctor called him with bad news: the surgery was cancelled. Dignity Health was a Catholic hospital, and claimed that Evan’s hysterectomy would conflict with the church's ethical and religious directives. But Evan chose his name for a reason; one of its meanings is fierce warrior, and he was ready to fight.

Jack RR Evans tells the stories of their abortion and of coming out. Jack, who is a nonbinary transgender person, experienced dysphoria during their pregnancy. Jack understood why years later, when they realized they were transgender.

CHOICE/LESS is back, and for the first episode of season 2, host and producer Jenn Stanley speaks to Shout Your Abortion's Amelia Bonow about abortion storytelling and "taking back the moral high ground" from members of the religious right who've laid claim to powerful buzzwords like life, love, and patriotism.

In this preview episode, Rewire turns the mic on the CHOICE/LESS producer and host, Jenn Stanley. We'll hear why she created CHOICE/LESS, what she learned from season 1, and what to expect for season 2, which premieres January 4th.

Rewire has a new podcast series exploring the intersection of pop culture and justice called Get It Right. Here's a look at that (please subscribe and rate/review if you can), plus a sneak peek of what's ahead for CHOICE/LESS later this year.

Catholic hospitals and health-care networks are thriving while other non-profit and community hospitals are struggling. As many hospitals try to stay afloat amidst continued turmoil in the health care industry, some merge with Catholic health-care networks, which follow the ethical and religious directives of the Church.  As a result, about 20 percent of the hospital beds in the United States are owned by the Catholic Church, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America. Patients at Catholic hospitals might not be aware of how the Church's ethical guidelines might affect the quality of care they receive. When the hospital that employed Dr. Debra Stulberg as a resident merged with a Catholic health-care system, she worried it would affect the abortion training she sought and expected to receive. Then she learned that the Catholic directives affected much more than that, potentially putting patients lives in danger. Conscience and refusal clauses >allow people and institutions such as hospitals, pharmacists, employers, and insurers to refuse to provide, pay for, or refer for medical treatment. These laws went into effect in 1973, after Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in the United States, and there has been a resurgence of similar legislation in the last decade. After Dr. Stulberg learned more about these laws, she was surprised by the lack of data regarding the difference in care and patient outcomes at a Catholic hospital compared with a nonsectarian hospital. The Catholic hospital takeover became the defining moment of her residency, and one that continues to inform her research and practice. Listen to her whole story here, and please take a moment to rate and review us. CHOICE/LESS will be back with new episodes in the winter. In the meantime, our podcast feed in iTunes and elsewhere will soon transform from CHOICE/LESS to Rewire Radio. While we prepare new episodes of this show, Rewire will bring you new podcasts and audio stories right here. So stay subscribed and look for a lot more reproductive justice coverage and analysis coming this fall from Rewire Radio.

In this bonus episode of CHOICE/LESS, Rewire's Jessica Mason Pieklo discusses this week's landmark Supreme Court decision, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. While the legal impact is already being felt around the country, a variety of other laws and provisions still impede abortion access in Texas and elsewhere. Read more of Jessica's analysis at https://rewire.news.

A 2014 amendment to Tennessee's fetal homicide bill allowed the state to charge pregnant women with aggravated assault, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, if they have pregnancy complications after illegal narcotic use. The first law of its kind, it opened the door for the state to charge women for drug use, and at least in one case, for not wearing a seatbelt while pregnant. In theory, the law gave addicted pregnant women two options: get treatment or go to jail. But in reality, the state did little to ensure that treatment was available for women who needed it. Brittany Hudson, of Knoxville, Tennessee, tells us her story of addiction, loss, and a long road to recovery.

Jessica Valenti is a feminist author, co-founder of Feministing.com, and columnist at The Guardian US. Her new book, Sex Object, explores what it's like to come of age as a female in a misogynist, patriarchal society. Her experiences with abortion and motherhood have reinforced her feminist, pro-choice beliefs. Valenti has had two abortions. The first was the result of an unwanted pregnancy, and the second ended a very wanted pregnancy that could have been fatal. The first wasn't a difficult decision at all: she just didn't want to be pregnant. The second was profoundly painful. Still, she says, one experience was not more valid than the other. Listen to her full story here.

Kelsey discusses South Dakota's distressing obstacles to seeking and providing abortion services, including regular protestors, agonizing waits and the looming disapproval of family and community.

Texas is one of 38 states that require some form of parental involvement when a minor seeks an abortion. In the 5th episode of CHOICE/LESS, we hear from Tina Hester, the executive director of Jane's Due Process. She helps Texas minors who, for whatever reason, can't involve a parent in their abortion decisions.

Kelly describes going public with her abortion story--and the shock she felt after it was poached and misrepresented by anti-choice websites without her consent.

In the third episode of CHOICE/LESS, Valerie discusses her family’s joy for her third pregnancy, the news that changed everything, and the cruel legal obstacles that left her stranded in her own state.

In the second episode of CHOICE/LESS, Regina shares the story of the heartbreaking pregnancy complications that tested her physical, emotional and spiritual limits, and the hospital board vote that would determine her future.

In this first episode of CHOICE/LESS, Candice talks about the ways her childhood informed her decisions about her own reproduction, and how her choices were hindered by HB 2, the sprawling anti-abortion law at the heart of the Supreme Court case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.