Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Hero Origin Stories: Round 7

It’s that time of year again! Ready for a reprisal of our most popular series, SRHR Hero Origin Stories? If you haven’t already, check out our previous episodes, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 6, SRHR Origin Stories: Round 5, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 4, and more, where we talk to a number of amazing heroes in the field of reproductive health, rights, and justice and about how they began working in this space. On this episode, hear from Christina Krysinski, Associate Director for Global Advocacy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Asha Dahya, filmmaker, reproductive rights and freedom advocate, and mother of two, and Rachel Marchand, Senior Policy Analyst and Podcast Producer at rePROs Fight Back.

For more information, check out Amicus with Dhalia Lithwick: https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus

Transcript

Jennie: 1:06

Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Hi, rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So, I hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm recording before Thanksgiving, so I am very much looking forward to having a long, long, long weekend. I am off Wednesday to Monday, so I am just really looking forward to having a really chill, quiet time. I'm not traveling, which is also very exciting. As much as I love being home for Thanksgiving and enjoying my mom's cooking, it's just, it's never as relaxing as I want it to be. Like, it's always so stressful flying for such a short holiday. So that I go home for longer over Christmas. So I am very much looking forward to that. And then my mom also spoils me and makes Thanksgiving while I'm home. So, I will get to enjoy all of her amazing Thanksgiving cooking when I am home at Christmas time. The only other thing I really miss, and I'm sure I've talked about this mo on the podcast before, but the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my mom's family all gets together. Basically, most of the aunts and a lot of the a number of the cousins. I think I've mentioned this before. My mom is one of 11, so there are a lot of us. We all get together and make Christmas cookies. And so it's just like a full-on day of baking. Multiple people bring their like stand mixers and there's cookies flying all day. And then, we do like exchanges at the end of the day, and everybody gets a little bit of everything, and it is so much fun, and there's so many cookies to be had. It's just a really fun time of spending time with my mom's side of the family. And so, that is the one thing I really do miss going home for that. But my mom always sends me like a little care package of uh some of the cookies from the cookie bake. So, I do miss that. But I am also just very much looking forward to having a very chill weekend, long weekend, do some reading. I am working on a cross stitch project that I am, I mean, I was hoping to fix finish in time for Christmas. I don't think that is gonna happen, but I'm gonna still try. And this weekend will give me a long time to work on it. So, that is that is my Thanksgiving plan. It's just very chill. I'm looking forward to some really yummy food. And yeah, just having a chill long weekend. And this episode should also be just right along that theme of chill, warm hug. We are doing a fan and my personal favorite episode, our annual SRHR Hero Origin Story episode. And we had so many submissions this year that we're actually gonna be doing two episodes of this. So, today you're gonna get the first couple, and then we'll have another one in a couple weeks where you will hear the rest. So, enjoy hearing how some great sexual and reproductive health and rights advocates got started in this field. Enjoy.

Asha: 4:26

Hi, I'm Asha Dahya. I am a filmmaker. I am a reproductive rights, health, and freedom advocate. I'm a mother of two. And I also have to start this introduction by saying I wasn't always an advocate for reproductive health, freedom, rights, and justice because of my religious background. So, I was born in the UK, raised in Australia, and I was always very involved in church life. My family would be considered Christian, like nominal Christian or evangelical. I wouldn't assign a specific political label because in Australia and the UK, although things are changing, I never grew up being Christian, knowing that it was attached to any sort of specific political identity. It was just we go to church, this is our community, these are our values, we read the Bible, we sing songs, and that's who we are. And that when I moved to the US in 2008, which was an election year, the election of the first Black president, that was a big deal because I started going to a very large and conservative white evangelical church in Los Angeles. Now, I say white evangelical because the church itself, the people in the church, it was very multicultural. However, the I guess I would say brand of evangelicalism and the books and the types of teachings and values that they hold would fall under the category of what we know today as white conservative evangelical church in America. So, I very quickly learned a couple of a handful of things when I joined that church in 2008. One, race was a very big issue, and it just kind of hit me full in the face. Gender, another very big issue. There was a proposition at the time in California called Prop 8, and it was to legalize equal marriage, and the church were very against it. They were trying to rally congregation members to make sure they know how to vote, quote unquote, right. And abortion was the other issue. It was something that I had never really thought about or even considered. I probably knew what it was, but I never had a very specific opinion about it. I just wanted to live my life. I was a 20-something person, you know, you don't think about political things when you think life is great and you're invincible. So, I very quickly learned that to be evangelical or Christian in America under that church's banner was to be against equal marriage, to be against abortion rights, and to know your place according to your gender. And to also, which they wouldn't say this out loud, but to have very specific ideas about race and racism and the history of racism in America. There are some classes that I took in that church, which looking back on it now were horrifically racist and very revisionist history, especially about indigenous populations, and I could go on about that. But the the thing that I learned most was you have to be against abortion and you have to be against equal marriage. Cut to about five years later, I was very involved in the church while also working in TV production in Los Angeles. So, there was this juxtaposition of, you know, I was in the quote unquote "secular world" working in reality TV. But then also I was very involved in this church where I had these certain conservative messages told to me. I ended up getting married for the first time when I was 25. That marriage became very, very toxic. And I made the decision to leave, which in itself was also very, very hard in that environment. But I'm glad that I stuck to my conviction and did that. And it wasn't until I left that marriage and that church, they were almost intertwined in a way. And leaving that environment and that mindset, I was able to take a step back and actually try to, for the first time, form my own opinions about gender, about abortion, about bodily autonomy, about equal rights, all those things. And I very quickly it didn't take long for me to realize that the values that were meaningful to me were not what I was taught in church. I would say the start of my journey to become very passionate about reproductive rights was the first major term that I learned, you know, reproductive rights was to be supportive of birth control and having control over your body and believing in the right to have an abortion. The start of my education to become interested in reproductive rights happened a few years after I left the church. And I started making friends with different women in film groups, women in feminism groups in Los Angeles, and women in film and feminism. There was a lot of crossover and women making films about, you know, values and stories that were important to them in a very feminist lens. And that really inspired me. And for the first time I felt like, oh, I'm not just meant to be somebody else's servant and just an invisible face in this sea of church faces where the men kind of rule everything. And I started to hear more about why abortion was such a big issue. And I would think back to all the things that I was told in church, you know, a lot of the very incendiary and awful things that we're used to hearing and trigger warning here, you know, when that when people say things like, "abortion is murder," for instance, or, you know, those kind of things, which are really awful, what I learned was that people were standing on at the pulpit or on the stage in the church saying these things, predominantly men, but behind closed doors it was a very different reality. And because I started to put my changing views out there on Facebook and social media, as you do when you're young and naive and love a good social media argument, I would get pushback from these former church members who I was still connected with. And outwardly they would, of course, condemn me, throw the Bible verses at me in a way to kind of make me feel ashamed for my views. But what was happening, again, behind closed doors and in my DMs was a very different story. There were women reaching out to me saying, thank you so much for sharing that article. I actually have been through this, or I've had an abortion, or I've had multiple abortions and I can never tell anyone, and all of those kind of things that made me go, whoa, hang on a second. There's more to this here than just me changing my mind, and there's actually a lot more nuance going on that is not being talked about, and it's not, it's very dishonest, which I believe is a it's a very dishonest discussion that happens in a lot of these churches where they condemn abortion because the statistics show that, and this happens in churches as well, one in four women or people who can get pregnant, that happens in church. They are having abortions, and that includes religious women. And I know that firsthand from hearing these stories. And so, that really kind of set me on the path. I would say my original intent was I'm gonna become so knowledgeable, I'm gonna follow all these awesome journalists. And you know, I was reading Rewire News and Prism and The Atlantic and all the things that would educate me and listening to podcasts, and I'm gonna show them that they're wrong. And that was my original goal. But along the way, I think I was changed to realize who is my audience as a filmmaker, as a storyteller. My audience is really, first of all, myself, but also it's not enough for me to try and prove someone wrong. I want to be in an environment and a community where people feel supported and loved and affirmed in their decision making. And so, that's when I kind of you know shifted my focus, especially in my media work, to supporting people who need abortions and people who consider themselves pro-abortion, pro-choice, and want that right for themselves and use my tools and skills to share nuanced stories. And so I think I've learned a lot from being in that church environment, but it really was the push and seeing that juxtaposition, I almost want to call it an oxymoron of people, you know, outwardly saying, we're against abortion, and then behind closed doors saying, well, actually, I needed an abortion and I knew exactly which clinic to go to to get a safe one and feel supported. And so yeah, that I often think about that and how today there are so many people going through the exact same thing. And it just makes me realize why storytelling is important and filmmaking. This is it's why I do what I do.

Jennie: 13:58

I mean, I relate to like so much of that. I think we've talked about this before that I grew up at the Catholic Church, went to a Catholic school K through eight.

Asha: 14:06

Yeah.

Jennie: 14:07

And, you know, I always talk about like your story never is like a straight line, right? Like this, not like this one thing happened and all of a sudden this was my future and my passion. But if I trace back working on these things, it really goes back to somebody who is very much "pro-life" and still out there doing all the things, inviting me to go with her to go to Madison. And I was in like fifth or sixth grade to go save babies with her. And so young. I know. And I remember just going home and talking to my mom of like, oh my God, so-and-so wants me to go to Madison to go save babies with her. That sounds so great. And she's like, okay, let's, like, sit down and have a conversation. And in that conversation, my mom was very clear about just thinking through it, like, thinking through what the people are going through. And then to me, did the very, I think, smart thing that I think she doesn't necessarily didn't recognize it, know it at the time, but was very like, if you still want to go, you can go. Like, gave me the autonomy to like make that choice with the new information she gave me to decide if I still wanted to go do it. And clearly I didn't. And you know, but that didn't mean all of a sudden I was doing all of this work and was like involved in this issue. But like when I think back, like this is where it all started.

Asha: 15:37

I love that your mother modeled that autonomous decision making in front of you, whether you realize it at the time or not. Like, that's really powerful.

Jennie: 15:46

And I love like so. When I started doing this work and started doing this series, we do like annually of, like, people telling their origin stories and talking to her about like what an important moment this was. And she's like, I don't remember this. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Typical. I feel like that what moms do, like, "I don't remember that at all." It was just like another day, but it was like this big aha moment of, like, I can picture sitting at the counter; I can picture us like having that conversation and her giving me the ability to make my own decisions. Well, that's her living her values. That's how nonchalant it was. That's just who she was. I think it's really important to have these conversations about religion today. And I know you've talked about this a lot on rePROs Fight Back because there's this idea that the dominant narrative or way of thinking, if you're a person of faith, is that you have to be against abortion. And if you want to be pro-abortion and support the right to choose, you cannot be religious. And that is so not true. And any chance that I get, I want to push back on that. And I'm so thankful that I have the privilege of being in collaboration and community with people at nonprofits, in the filmmaking space, people like you who have a similar origin story in that regard, to share that actually being religious is it's not a one size fits all. I mean, every faith is not different. And every person of that same faith also has different views and perspectives, and that should be affirmed and valued. And so when I see, you know, very extremist statements being said by political leaders and internet figures about abortion, about gender, especially, it sounds really shocking to a lot of people who didn't grow up in that environment. But for someone like me, it's like, oh yeah, that's what they talked about in church. That's exactly what they said. Wives should submit to their husbands. And, you know, this whole that whole trad wife movement, it's like people see that as like a social media influencer trend, but that's what white evangelical Christianity was like in the church that I came from. Like trad wives were around before social media existed, you know, the stay-at-home mom, and it wasn't your choice. You were expected to be there, and you expected to have as many babies as the Lord blesses you with. Typically, don't do things like birth control or, you know, having any sort of reproductive choice. It's you have to submit to the powers that be, which is God, your minister, and your husband or your dad if you're not married. And so it's easy to see how quickly we slid back to having no federal protections for abortion, having state legislatures trying to propose these horrific death penalties and criminalization penalties for choosing to have an abortion. It's like that has been festering in many of these churches, like the ones that I went to for so long. And they go out to these clinics and they weaponize the Bible and their faith in God and to harass people, to harass women. And it's really awful, but there are people of faith who stand on the front lines and say, you know, not in my name and not in my God's name. And we're seeing that now with faith leaders standing up to ice and protecting immigrants and saying that, you know, we believe that women and people of all genders have the right to choose what is right for their body, whether it's abortion, gender-affirming care, who you want to marry and live with, and all of those things. So, I have to also acknowledge the faith leaders who are doing modeling what God's love really should look like. And it's it's not just if you conform and tick all the boxes and do all the right things. It's affirming you where you are, whoever you are, and in that choice that you make. So yeah, it's, like, a it's complicated for me because on one hand, I feel like I left that old conservative church and really shunned religion. I wouldn't say God, I'd say I shunned religion for a long time. But I feel like religion has been finding me again, like I'm the board chair of a of the religious community for reproductive choice, a nonprofit. And I get to learn about and be in community with faith leaders who are affirming abortion. And I get to hear these stories and film people and interview them and talk about stories of faith where they are championing the right to bodily autonomy as a person of faith. And so, I don't think I want to dismiss religion because there is a very vital role that it can play in so many ways. But like anything, it can be weaponized. Well, Asha, thank you so much for sharing your story.

Asha: 20:39

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for the work that you are doing and this amazing platform.

Christina: 20:45

Hi, my name is Christina Krysinski, and I am the Associate Director for Global Advocacy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Thank you, Jennie, for having me on the podcast to talk about my repro origin story. It's really welcome timing that we are recording this episode the week of Thanksgiving when I have physically traveled back to the site of my personal origin story. And I'm in my hometown in the Detroit suburbs. And since I'm here, I thought I would dig through the physical archives and see if I could uncover some evidence of my repro origin story, and I did. So, I have to offer you, and we'll just very briefly read you a school report from my sophomore year of high school. The year was 2006-2007, and the class was titled Women's Issues. So here we go. Women's Issues was created as a result of student initiative. The teachers realized through conversations with future class members that there was both a desire and a genuine need for a class that focused specifically on health issues from a woman's perspective. In order to create a safe and productive space, we began the class by spending a good deal of time getting to know each other and sharing our personal histories. Over the course of the semester, we covered issues of body image, sexuality, substance abuse, healthy living, decision making, and the status of women both domestically and internationally. However, most of our class sessions were focused on the students as individuals, sharing challenges, examining those situations from a variety of angles, and offering solutions. Tina, that's what they called me then. I was a Tina then. "You were one of the most dependable members of class in terms of attendance, energy, and contributions. Your strong sense of self made you a natural fit for this class. You seemed to be equally comfortable sharing your own ideas and experiences and listening to your classmates, particularly toward the end of the semester. Your sense of want to let others speak first, let some important growth happen for some of the other class members. Thank you for your enthusiasm and efforts. They helped set a welcoming and safe tone for the class." So, I share that because when I think of what it means to sort of have an origin story here and also the kind of advocate that I hope to be and the kind of world I hope to help build through this work, that is really who I think of. I think of that teenage girl, I think of that group of teenagers with all of our hopes and dreams and imperfections who were able to express a desire for information, for support, for space, to share their challenges and to talk about solutions and what the world could look like. And also just what a gift it was to have teachers who heard that and supported us through it. So shout out to Linda and Susanna, who were our teachers at the time. And that has sort of been like the guiding light for me in all of this through each of the varied phases of my career, whether it was working on healthcare law and policy domestically or now advocating for the reproductive freedom of people around the world and the role that US foreign policy plays in that. So it worked out well to have such a good example of what that origin story looked like. And that's really the core of what I still take with me in the work. So thank you so much for having me. This was such a treat to be able to share. And thank you.

Rachel: 24:44

Hello, my name is Rachel Marchand. I am the senior policy analyst with rePROs Fight Back. I have been lucky enough to work with Jennie at rePROs for about eight years now. And when I first joined at Population Institute, rePROs was really, it was just a new idea. And I walked right into it, and I feel so grateful that I did because I've been exposed to so many incredible and kind-hearted and smart people and colleagues and partners and professionals over the course of rePROs life and my time here. In terms of my background, I knew that I'd that I'd always end up doing health access or health equity work deep down. I just didn't know exactly what it would look like or how I would get there, which are key to that process. But I had a very medically complex childhood. I am a two-time childhood cancer survivor, and I was in and out of the hospital for the vast majority of my childhood. And from a very young age, as you can imagine, I saw health inequity all around me at all times. I saw kids that had to take the bus alone two to three hours, two times a week, you know, into the state capitol from rural areas to receive their chemotherapy. I saw kids whose parents had to sleep in their cars in the parking lot, in the hospital parking lot in the dead of winter. I saw kids' parents get fired from their jobs for taking over the allotted amount of time that they could for leave to be with their children who were receiving treatment or their families. And so, naturally from a very young age, I was asking my family and myself and the institutions around, I was asking a lot of questions. I had a lot of questions. Why, most importantly, are there people who already in this devastating course of events, why are they struggling to receive health care? And second of all, why is anybody's story, you know, look any differently from anybody else's? Why does my story look different from someone else's? Why does their story look different from, you know, the story of my friend getting treatment down the hall? I just couldn't understand how there could be a situation in which a vulnerable person who requires treatment, in this case, a sick child or a sick child's family member, why the world wasn't grinding to an absolute halt to provide that care or help in whatever way, shape, or form was necessary immediately. I- it just- I couldn't comprehend. It couldn't settle on my young mind. So, there's kind of a saying, at least when I was growing up in the pediatric cancer world, that if you have childhood cancer, you either run straight into practicing it or you run straight away from practicing medicine. So, I pursued international relations in college. I have since gone on to do more studies in public health, but that's how I ended up in DC. I don't even know that that was conscious necessarily, that I ended up on the academic and professional track that I did. I, of course, always knew that social progress, specifically related to health access and being involved in that social progress, was incredibly important to me. And I think deep down, I'm sure I was trying to change the world, which is why I got into international relations. But I'm really glad I did because it brought me to the U.S. Senate. I was working for a truly amazing senator. I was so lucky. He he was undoubtedly the nicest person on the Hill at the time, and I just got so lucky that that was the case. I really didn't last as long as I wanted to on the Hill, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I learned so much and I treasure everything that I learned, and it brought me to DC and it brought me to the Population Institute and to rePROs Fight Back. And I have, like I like I said, I've been one of the people behind rePROs Fight Back for its entirety, for you know, eight years of my career. And it feels like such a full circle moment to come back to health access and health equity and being a part of that progressing that social progress. It means so much to me. Access to any type of reproductive health care, abortion, maternal health and pregnancy care, gender-based violence, counseling, cancer screenings, birth control, that should all be easy to access. It should all be affordable. It should, of course, all be compassionate. It should it just like chemotherapy, you shouldn't have to book a flight or a hotel room to go out of state to receive basic health care. You should have a state that loves you enough that it is gonna take care of you. You should have a country that loves you enough to take care of you. You should have medical providers that go to school to have a job to love you enough to take care of you. No matter who you are, no matter your race, your economic security, your sexual orientation, your your gender identity, your zip code, you should have access. And your body and your health is yours. So to be able to fight for that every day, that's just a- it's such a privilege. And to be influenced by and exposed to and and learn from the most incredible colleagues and partners in this field that are doing just incredible, massively trailblazing work, it's such an honor to be a part of the platform that gives a microphone to those voices and says, you know, what do we need to know? It's an incredible opportunity. I guess for the young people out there who are currently working in this field or who want to get more involved in this field, I would say to them, there's no roadmap. You you don't have to do everything quote unquote "by the book." You know, your experiences and your knowledge and the skills that you develop and your very person, it will propel you to where you need to be. And there will be things that you can do to influence that trajectory for sure. You just also need to know that some of it is a process of unfolding. It's okay to have goals and to work towards something big, absolutely, but be open to things. Don't necessarily put yourself in a box, and you'll end up where you need to be. And this movement will be here waiting for you. I really appreciate anybody who's listened to this. I really appreciate Jennie for giving me an opportunity to tell my story. Thank you so much. It means the world.

Jennie: 31:37

Okay, everybody. I hope you enjoyed our SRHR Hero Origin stories. Thank you to everybody who shared their story. And like I said, you'll hear part two in a couple weeks. So, I will see everybody next week. If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at rePROs Fight Back on Facebook and Twitter, or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and want to make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you want to make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all!