Access- A Podcast About Abortion
This week’s guest is Garnet Henderson. Garnet Henderson is a dancer, choreographer, and journalist. As a freelance journalist reporting on health and abortion access, Garnet’s work has been published in Scientific American, VICE, The Guardian US, WIRED, Glamour, Quartz, The Atlantic, and others. She contributes regularly to Dance Magazine. Her guide to abortion care was part of the Tonic Guide to Healthcare, which won a 2018 Deadline Club Award. She is the creator, host, and producer of ACCESS: A podcast about abortion.
Learn more on her website:
https://garnethenderson.com/
Show Notes:
1:43 Garnet’s introduction
1:58 Access- A Podcast About Abortion, answering the questions you hve about abortion
3:26 “A lot of people, including and perhaps especially people who consider themselves pro-choice, don’t actually know much about abortion”
4:20 “At first people would respond kind of awkwardly when I said ‘I write about abortion access’ and then they would end up asking me so many questions, and be surprised and intrigued by a lot of the answers”
6:09 “What actually happens during an abortion” Episode #1
7:12 Similarities between an IUD insertion and a first trimester abortion
8:28 “The pandemic has touched every episode in some way… reporting on things no one expected to happen”
9:26 “The pandemic has led a lot of providers to provide medication abortion 100% via telemedicine”
10:08 “The pandemic is the first ever test case in the United States, of more widespread provision of medication abortion without that ultrasound”
10:28 UK study “first trimester medication abortion fully provided by telemedicine is just as safe and effective as the in person model”
14:36 “That’s a huge problem with the way abortion is often covered in the media because there’s only a story when something really bad happens… it’s too late if you’re waiting to report on things until it’s too bad… it increases stigma and confuses people”
16:06 Abortion reporting laws- intentionally burying providers is unnecessary paperwork, and violating patient privacy
19:46 Crisis pregnancy centers- covering Christian agendas
21:2o “Feeling like I can get these kinds of stories out into the world is a big part of what makes me feel better”
21:52 “I feel so honored that so many people have chosen to share their stories with me”
24:51 “If people were really serious about wanting to prevent abortions, they would be really serious about universal health care, universal childcare,comprhensive sex education, contraceptive research…”
25:30 “I don’t personally see lowering the abortion rate or eliminating abortion as any kind of goal because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with abortion”
27:33 Guttmacher
29:25 accesspodcast@protonmail.com
30:03 “In so many different ways we isolate abortion as this unique thing ulike anything else; it’s a difficult decision decision… difficult experience…”
30:43 “It’s really part of the spectrum”
31:29 “The cultural ideas we have about abortion don’t really line up with people’s experiences”
33:01 “People who do have complicated feelings or who do feel like it was a hard choice deserve to have those stories heard to and not be politicized”
