0:15

Pushkin. Imagine

0:19

there's a place in our world where the known things

0:22

go. A

0:24

quarter of the mind, lined with

0:26

shelves, cluttered with proof, A

0:30

purple cowboy hat. Oh,

0:33

someone's put up here on the wall poster, it

0:35

says, the personal is political. I

0:38

love those day glow flowers. This

0:41

place, this warehouse, stores the facts

0:43

that matter, and matters of fact, the

0:46

evidence of the past. It's

0:49

all that stands between a reasonable doubt

0:51

and the chaos of uncertainty.

0:54

It lies in a time between now and

0:57

then. The sign on

0:59

the door reads the last

1:02

Archive. Step

1:04

out that door to

1:08

Greenwich Village, across the passage

1:10

of time to a Friday night, March

1:13

twenty first, nineteen sixty nine.

1:15

Walk down West fourth Street and up

1:18

the steps to the Washington Square Methodist

1:20

Church, a cathedral. It'll

1:23

cost you two dollars to get in a

1:25

donation to the Red Stockings radical

1:28

feminists, best known for staging a protest

1:31

at the Miss America pageant. There

1:33

are three hundred people seated in the church, mostly

1:36

women. It's a handful of men here too.

1:39

Oh and lucky for us,

1:42

there's a tape recorder up there on the

1:44

altar. All of us

1:46

are members of the Women's Liberation

1:48

Group of New York City,

1:51

and we discovered

1:54

that by just talking about

1:56

our own experience, about our own lives,

1:58

that by talking about this altogether

2:01

in our group, that we were able

2:03

to find out a lot more

2:05

about reality than by talking

2:08

about all those objects. The thing we would

2:10

talk about our own abortion, and

2:12

that was like our plans

2:14

for the satire. So

2:17

much of how people think about truth today comes

2:20

from this one meeting. Like water

2:22

down a waterfall, twelve

2:25

women got up to speak, one by one. They

2:27

passed a microphone. They testified

2:30

for more than three hours. They

2:32

were mad as hell. A

2:35

month earlier, a committee of the New York Legislature

2:37

had considered whether or not to make abortion legal

2:40

in the state. The committee brought

2:42

in experts to testify. Fourteen

2:44

men and one woman. Anne

2:48

the Red Stockings and other activists had stormed

2:51

the committee meeting. They were camouflaged

2:53

in dresses and stockings, they said, and

2:55

they'd shouted, let's hear from the real experts.

2:58

Women. They tried

3:00

to tell their stories without much success.

3:03

So now they were here in this church

3:05

in Greenwich Village to actually

3:07

have their say. The tape

3:10

it's kind of crazy to listen to the

3:12

man is the one that scrowls you and

3:14

then when you turn to him and say, hey,

3:17

look, sweetheart, I'm pregnant. How

3:19

do you know it was me? You

3:21

neverics love with anyone else. One

3:25

of the things I love about this tape is that it's

3:27

not like women crying in front of Oprah or

3:29

something. It's more like stand up comedy, but

3:32

confrontational, courageous.

3:34

George Carlin, Lenny Bruce Awry

3:37

second all the sand. It's just what am

3:39

I gonna do? What I is he going

3:41

to do? What am I going

3:44

to do? These are

3:46

the experts, the people that are sitting

3:48

here, the people that are in the audience

3:50

who have had the abortion. But no

3:53

one wants to listen to us. I

3:55

mean, you know, we

4:04

are the only expert. They

4:07

spoke out that night and nighteen sixty

4:09

nine because they wanted to change the law.

4:13

They'd also decided to talk publicly about

4:15

their abortions because some of them had

4:17

been reading the writings of the communist revolutionary

4:19

Mao Zedong. Maoists

4:21

believed in the practice of speaking

4:24

bitterness, describing your oppression,

4:26

and blaming your oppressor. That's

4:29

what those women were doing in that church. They

4:31

were speaking bitterness. They

4:33

called it consciousness raising. They

4:36

also called it rapping or a speak out.

4:38

I'm sure that there are many many women in

4:40

this audience that have had the same experience.

4:42

So I know, you know, freak or

4:45

that it just happened to me, it's happened. Who

4:47

can eat everybody? You know? So

4:51

if I get up and I say it, you know, maybe everybody

4:53

can get up and say it, and we all get up and

4:55

say it, you know, maybe they'll do something about

4:58

changing the situously. Welcome

5:02

to the last archive, the show about how

5:04

we know what we know, how we used to know things,

5:07

and why it seems sometimes lately as

5:09

if we don't know anything at all. I'm Jill

5:12

Lapour. This season we're trying

5:14

to solve a Who've done it? Who killed truth?

5:16

In this episode, I want to try to find

5:18

a way to reckon with the consequences of a whole

5:20

theory of knowledge. Speak your

5:23

truth, radical feminist said

5:25

in the Village in nineteen sixty nine, Speak

5:29

your truth. Sure,

5:31

it sounds good, it sounds great,

5:34

until you start to ask, what

5:37

if someone else's truth is different

5:39

than yours. No

5:42

legislature would recognize my

5:44

right to speak as an expert, because

5:46

it happened right in my body. Where

5:48

a child grows, it happens in my body

5:51

later on, that I don't want that child,

5:53

and that I have to go through a

5:56

period of time in which I have no

5:58

function in this society. I've

6:04

been talking all season about the end of the age of

6:06

mystery and the rise and fall of the age of the fact.

6:09

For a very long time, conception was

6:11

a mystery, the mystery, the

6:14

mystery of life. In ancient Greece,

6:16

Aristotle dissected chicken eggs, which

6:18

came first, the chicken or the egg was an actual

6:21

experiment. Not until

6:23

the middle of the seventeenth century did anyone figure

6:25

out that people come from eggs too. When

6:28

the United States was founded, there were no laws

6:30

against abortion before quickening about

6:33

when a mother can feel the baby kicking. Somewhere

6:35

around four months or so later,

6:38

conception was no longer a mystery and became

6:40

known as the facts of life. Physicians

6:43

began replacing midwives, and legislatures

6:45

began making laws that made the intentional end

6:47

of a pregnancy a crime. By

6:50

nineteen sixty nine, in New York, the

6:52

only way a woman could end a pregnancy legally

6:55

was to have something called a therapeutic abortion.

6:58

Mainly she had to convince a doctor that

7:01

she was crazy. If

7:03

you don't give me, if you don't tell me, I'm g having

7:05

abortion right now. But it's go out and jump

7:07

off the Ronald Bridge.

7:09

Well whatever. When I hope that therapeutic

7:12

abortion, it

7:15

quots me more. But the

7:18

therapy answered the therapeutic abortion

7:21

than before. Since

7:27

this speak out took place, Americans

7:29

have talked about abortion a lot for or

7:31

against, but usually in the language

7:34

of rights, the right to choose, or

7:36

the right to life. But

7:38

I've always found that this debate is also about

7:40

knowledge. I

7:43

still care about the questions the Red Stockings

7:45

asked. Who can know things? Who's

7:47

an expert whose knowledge matters?

7:50

I decided to go talk to some of the women who'd been part

7:53

of that meeting in nineteen sixty nine to

7:55

hear them have their say in the spirit of

7:57

speaking out way, do you a lot

8:00

of water? So my producer Ben and

8:02

I and one of our researchers, Olivia Oldham,

8:04

went to New York to the apartment of

8:07

Susan Brown Miller, a feminist

8:09

best known for a book about rape called Against

8:12

Our Will. What was the question?

8:16

Brown Miller had first spoken out about abortion

8:18

at an earlier meeting. Her friend told

8:20

her to go. At first, it was awkward.

8:24

Then one woman got up. She

8:26

said, we've

8:28

been over this before, and you know,

8:30

god damn well that

8:33

I couldn't find an abortionist

8:36

and I had to carry the baby to term

8:40

and it was a beautiful

8:43

boy, but I had to give it away.

8:46

So when she said that, the

8:50

floodgates opened and people

8:53

started to go around the room and

8:58

they were talking

9:00

about being led blindfolded

9:05

to a place in New Jersey for a mafia

9:07

protected abortion. They were

9:09

talking about things like that, and

9:12

they were slowly inching up on me. So

9:17

I said, well, I've

9:20

had three abortions, all outside

9:22

the continental United States, and

9:26

my last one was about six months

9:28

ago. And when I said

9:30

that, I really started to

9:32

cry because

9:34

to me, this was the you know, the

9:36

first time that

9:40

abortion was

9:42

spoken about as

9:45

a real, as a real woman's issue, and the

9:48

problem was not getting pregnant or not having

9:50

the protection. Why did you get pregnant?

9:52

You know, it was

9:54

about what we had to do to

9:58

secure a safe abortion. As

10:01

I knew they were out there somehow, you

10:03

know, I knew they were out there.

10:06

They were out there, safe places to

10:08

have abortions, but they were hard

10:10

to find. They were underground.

10:13

But what if they came out above ground? When

10:16

brown Miller went to the Red Stockings wrap in the village

10:18

in nineteen sixty nine, it was as

10:20

a reporter and you said you were asked

10:23

to speak to testify. Yeah,

10:26

and I felt

10:31

that Well, first of all, I didn't

10:33

like it, you know, it was too confessional

10:35

for me, you know. But second of all, I

10:37

felt I could do us all a bigger

10:40

favor by writing

10:43

about it for the Village Voice, which I did.

10:46

All the stocking and writing led to a landmark legal

10:48

case, which is where Nancy Stearns came

10:50

in. She met us Susan Brown Miller's

10:52

apartment. She's a lawyer. She'd

10:54

come out of the civil rights movement. I mean,

10:57

challenging the law was the

10:59

basis of it and was fundamental, but

11:02

I didn't know whether we'd win. At that point, I

11:04

thought we should win. Just months after

11:06

the Red Stockings held that first abortion speak out

11:08

in Greenwich Village, Nancy Stearns

11:10

got involved in trying to file a lawsuit

11:12

called Abrahmowitz versus Lefkowitz. The

11:15

leading plaintiff was doctor Helen Abrahmowitz,

11:18

and in the case, Stearns wanted to

11:20

sue the state of New York, arguing that it's

11:22

ban on abortion depride women

11:24

of their right to possess their own persons.

11:27

She was also making an argument though, about

11:29

knowledge that women know. The

11:32

crucial idea from the litigation

11:35

perspective was not necessarily having

11:37

women as experts, but having women as plaintiffs,

11:40

the people who were challenging

11:42

the law, not just being sort

11:44

of passive or we happened to be there. Stearns

11:46

wrote the briefs in the case, but she was

11:48

young and a little inexperienced, and

11:51

she wanted someone on her team who was older and

11:53

who could kick ass, So

11:55

she brought in Florence Kennedy.

12:00

Flow. People

12:02

magazine once called Kennedy the biggest,

12:04

loudest and indisputably the rudest

12:06

mouth on the battleground where feminist activists

12:08

and radical politics join. Okay,

12:11

everybody, while my chorus

12:14

gets together. Hurry up, chorus,

12:16

get over here, y'all, hurry up. Flow.

12:18

Kennedy died twenty years ago, so we

12:20

couldn't talk to her, but for a long time

12:22

in the nineteen eighties, She had her own television

12:25

show on Manhattan Community Access

12:27

Picture between two ferns. I

12:30

swear there are ferns more

12:32

than two though the Flow Kennedy

12:35

Show. Hi,

12:39

y'all Flow Kennedy here, and

12:41

my guest has written she wore a

12:43

cowboy hat, a big ten gallon

12:45

one, groovy jewelry, traumatic

12:48

eyewear, eccentric, unmistakable.

12:52

She was unforgettable. I remember

12:54

her hats. Yeah, the hats, coy

12:57

Yeah, wonderful, cowboy original, no

13:01

doubt about it. Yes, I was lucky in

13:03

a lot of ways. My parents thought we

13:05

were absolutely perfect. I'm the opposite

13:08

of Marilyn Monroe, who was this golden

13:10

goddess who thought that she

13:12

was a piece of ship, whereas I

13:14

was a piece of shit, and I thought I was

13:16

this bronze mahogany statue.

13:20

Florence Kennedy born in Kansas City, graduated

13:23

from Columbia Law School in nineteen fifty

13:25

one. She opened a law firm in New York.

13:27

For a long time, she specialized in defending

13:29

black artists like Billy Holliday. She

13:32

also got involved in the Black Power movement. She

13:34

defended black panthers, including Hrapp

13:36

Brown. She loved to speak in metaphors.

13:39

In terms of politics, I am what I

13:41

would call a generalist,

13:44

general practitioner. See when

13:46

people say, oh, I can work on race

13:49

stuff, but I don't want to have anything to do with the homosexuality.

13:52

I don't want to deal with prostitution. I don't want to deal

13:54

with abortion. My theory is the

13:57

way I looked at the pathology of our

13:59

society and the pathology of oppression, is

14:02

that you don't

14:04

regard yourself as keeping a clean house if

14:06

you just make up the bad don't do anything

14:08

in the sink anyway.

14:11

In nineteen sixty nine, Flow Kennedy, Nancy

14:13

Stearns and their legal team, we're preparing

14:15

that lawsuit against the state of New York over its

14:17

ban on abortion. They had to

14:20

look for plaintiffs before they could file,

14:22

so they thought of some of the women who'd spoken up that

14:24

night in the village in nineteen sixty nine, the

14:26

red stockings wrapped. I know from

14:29

my own experience that I

14:31

had luckily sent enough to see

14:34

that a seventeen year old girl who

14:36

gets herself pregnant by mistakes

14:38

because she has not been avail

14:41

of birth control information. It's not

14:44

in a responsible position to take care

14:46

of the children. When

14:51

I listened to that, I have to work a little bit

14:53

because it can be a little hard these days to

14:55

remember how new this was, how new

14:57

this kind of talk was. Then it's beyond

15:00

novel. People did not talk about

15:02

abortion publicly. That's Nancy

15:04

Stearns Again. We all knew generally

15:07

whether we had illegal abortion are not.

15:09

We all knew generally what it was all about.

15:12

But hearing the details of it, and

15:16

particularly I think listening

15:19

to the women who went through pregnancy

15:22

and gave their children their baby up

15:24

for adoption, it

15:26

all just made me angry or in

15:29

truth. Starns held meetings

15:31

all over the city gathering plaintiffs. Amazingly,

15:34

women turned up, women stood

15:36

up, They told their stories, and

15:38

they agreed to be deposed

15:41

on the record. Flow Kennedy

15:43

took Susan Brown Miller's deposition. Kennedy

15:46

and Stearns and the rest of their team wanted

15:48

the women to testify in court, in open

15:50

court, but the judges, a

15:53

three judge panel of men, they

15:55

didn't want life testimony in their courtrooms about

15:57

abortions. They probably

16:00

thought, well, there's going to be lots and lots

16:02

of lots of testimony. You know, we

16:04

don't have the time for that, We don't want to do it. You

16:06

do it out there and then you give us paper. But

16:09

I think they didn't want to hear from a lot of emotional

16:11

women speaking out was something

16:13

new. But it's important to remember too

16:16

that so was the lawsuit itself. Women

16:18

were not part of the picture, and nobody

16:21

was interested in women other than stopping

16:23

us from getting abortions. But

16:26

the court would never decide on the case because

16:28

in the spring of nineteen seventy the New

16:31

York State Senate legalized abortion. Overnight,

16:34

New York became something of an abortion capital.

16:36

The CDC reported that by nineteen

16:38

seventy two, New York City had nearly

16:40

twice as many abortions as live births

16:44

because the legislature made abortion legal.

16:47

The courts declared Abrahmwitz versus

16:49

Lefkowitz moot. The case

16:51

was basically thrown out. Florence

16:53

Kennedy had hoped that the case would go all the way to the Supreme

16:56

Court and change US laws on abortion

16:58

nationwide. That didn't happen. Instead,

17:01

a case out of Texas Rovie Wade

17:03

got to the Supreme Court and it would be argued

17:06

on very different grounds a right to

17:08

privacy. But the Red

17:10

Stockings and radical feminism

17:12

left a profound legacy behind consciousness

17:16

raising and speaking bitterness. And

17:18

in the very moment that legacy was being

17:20

founded, you could already see

17:23

too how all this could backfire

17:28

if everyone's speaking bitterness. Does

17:31

everything come down to a duel of personal

17:33

stories, one grief pitted

17:35

against another, suffering versus

17:38

suffering. Could

17:40

it be that this, this endless

17:42

duel of bitterness? Could

17:45

it be that this is

17:47

what killed truth? In

18:00

nineteen sixty nine, radical feminists had

18:02

argued that women are the experts about their

18:04

own bodies. They'd also written

18:06

a manifesto. It said, we

18:08

regard our personal experience and our

18:10

feelings about that experience as the basis

18:13

for an analysis of our common situation.

18:16

Another group of women liked this approach to liberal

18:19

feminists. Liberal feminists wanted

18:21

to get elected to political office and pass new

18:24

laws about women based on what women know from

18:26

their personal experiences. Laws

18:28

about abortion, laws about rape, laws

18:30

about discrimination and employment and education.

18:35

They also wanted to amend the Constitution.

18:40

In nineteen seventy two, Congress passed the

18:42

Equal Rights Amendment and said to the states

18:44

for ratification. It's

18:46

amazing when you think about it, that it wasn't already

18:48

law. But all the IRI really says is

18:51

that you can't discriminate on the basis of sex.

18:53

It had first been introduced to Congress in nineteen

18:56

twenty three, and by the middle of the nineteen

18:58

seventies it still hadn't been ratified,

19:00

but it looked like it was just about to

19:02

become law. It had been ratified by

19:04

thirty five states, only three short

19:07

of the number needed. Meanwhile,

19:10

liberal feminists had gotten really ambitious.

19:12

They decided to hold a national meeting,

19:15

a giant speak out. The

19:17

point of the conference was to adopt a national plan

19:19

of action. The

19:28

National Women's Conference opened in November nineteen

19:30

seventy seven in the Houston Coliseum.

19:33

Think of it as a second Constitutional Convention,

19:36

except much bigger and with women.

19:39

It was a grand and glorious right accompanying

19:42

the torch on

19:45

its long journey.

19:47

Weeks earlier, a torch had been lit in Seneca

19:50

Falls, New York, the state of the first Women's

19:52

Rights Convention that had been held in eighteen

19:54

forty eight. Then a relay of more than

19:56

two thousand female athletes from

19:58

Lean and lanky marathon runners to brawny field

20:01

hockey players carried that torch twenty

20:03

six hundred miles to Houston. It

20:05

was meant to change history. Two

20:08

thousand delegates from fifty states gathered

20:10

in Houston, along with twenty thousand

20:12

attendees, including Susan Brownmiller

20:14

and Florence Kennedy. Maya Angelou

20:17

gave the convocation, we American

20:20

women view our history with equanimity.

20:23

We allow the positive achievement

20:25

to inspire us and the negative

20:28

omissions to teach us. We

20:31

recognize the accomplishments of

20:33

our sisters, those famous

20:35

and hallowed women of history, and

20:38

those unknown and unsung

20:40

women whose strength have

20:43

given birth to our strength. Three

20:45

First Ladies were there too, Lady Bird Johnson,

20:47

Betty Ford, and the current First Lady,

20:50

Rosalind Carter. Jimmy

20:52

sorry that he couldn't be here today, and

20:55

I wanted to come and be with here. In

21:05

fact, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. And

21:11

and I trust that you are not going to

21:13

say he said a woman to do a man's

21:16

job. Members

21:20

of Congress turned up to Bella Abzug

21:22

and Barbara Jordan. She was the keynote

21:24

speaker and There were celebrities,

21:26

Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, Billy

21:29

Jean King, the tennis player, and

21:31

Jean Stapleton, she'd played Edith on

21:33

all in the family. Gloria Steinham,

21:36

a founder of the National Women's Political Caucus,

21:38

was there, and so was the president of the

21:40

Girl Scouts of America, who called the meeting

21:42

to order using a gavel once

21:45

used by Susan B. Anthony, and

21:47

I rise to advance this body

21:49

in favor of the Equal Rights

21:52

Amendment. A lot

21:54

of the women at that conference were there to celebrate,

21:57

including Anne Richards, later the Governor

21:59

of Texas. One of her daughters,

22:01

then just a little girl, would one day

22:03

serve as president of Planned Parenthood. On

22:07

behalf amound matters. Who

22:10

cannot find women in

22:13

the history texts of

22:15

this country in the elementary

22:17

skills, I gotta say, you

22:19

still can't find many women in those books today,

22:21

and you also really can't find much about the National

22:24

Women's Convention. There were huge

22:26

tensions in that cavernous hall in Houston.

22:30

Madam chair pro

22:32

family, pro life delegates are being

22:35

denied points of privilege.

22:38

I asked, moment, please, justin, momma,

22:40

please the parliamentary and instructed the

22:42

chair. The chair had to pound that gavel a lot

22:46

just for starters. Think about this. One

22:49

out of every five elected delegates to the

22:51

Convention opposed the Equal Rights

22:53

Amendment. There were huge debates on the

22:55

floor about a resolution supporting lesbian

22:57

and gay rights. This was a

22:59

movement founded on the idea of women's common

23:01

knowledge, their common personal experiences,

23:04

but it had a fatal weakness because

23:07

one experience for all women. There

23:10

wasn't one experience. Black feminists

23:12

and Latina feminists in particular, rejected

23:14

that premise. At the conference, women

23:17

of color formed a minority caucus.

23:19

Some of their thinking was informed by black feminists

23:21

from Boston who would offered a theory of what would

23:24

come to be called intersectionality. They

23:26

said, we have in many ways gone beyond

23:29

white women's revelations because we are dealing

23:31

with the implications of race and class as

23:33

well as sex. That week

23:35

in Houston, a lot of that nuance got

23:37

lost and there was a lot of fighting.

23:40

One resolution in particular rent the

23:42

hall asunder Resolution

23:45

twenty one. Next item on the

23:47

agenda is the Resolution on Reproductive

23:49

Freedom. It included a call for sex

23:52

education and insurance coverage of both contraception

23:54

and abortion, and an endorsement

23:56

of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe

23:59

v. Wade. The first speakers

24:01

rose in support. Then the conservative

24:04

delegates spoke out, and I rise in opposition

24:06

to this resolution. If the American

24:09

women do not drive

24:11

out this flaw in the philosophy

24:13

of what is called a feminist movement,

24:16

drive out of flaws suggesting that

24:18

they can kill people that are less powerful

24:21

than them than they have become

24:23

much worse oppressors than any

24:25

of the men that they accuse of oppressing

24:27

them.

24:30

Please come to order, Please

24:33

come to order. It took a while to quiet

24:36

down the crowd long enough to call the roll, but

24:38

the chairmanaged it encounter the votes.

24:40

The resolution on reproductive

24:43

freedom is adopted. Please

25:01

come to order and be seated.

25:05

A group of pro life women rush the stage

25:07

carrying a giant photograph of a fe Other

25:10

women fell to their knees weeping, and

25:12

that singing they're singing. All

25:15

we are saying is give life a chance.

25:20

Fifteen hundred reporters attended the conference,

25:23

but strangely, the whole thing seems

25:25

to have been swallowed up by the earth itself. I

25:28

ask you, have you ever heard of the nineteen seventy

25:30

seven National Women's Conference. I'm

25:32

guessing not reporters covered

25:34

it, but given the ambition of the thing, the

25:36

coverage was scant. NBC

25:39

News included a report in its News Hour,

25:41

a conference's stand on the Equal Rights

25:44

Amendment will be incorporated into a national

25:46

plan of Acting, a set of legislative

25:48

proposals to be sent to the President and Congress.

25:51

The question now is how seriously

25:54

will all those men take the suggestions

25:56

made by all these women. It

26:00

would turn out not very seriously. But

26:02

Houston wasn't about men versus women?

26:05

Who was about women versus women? Mainly

26:08

because conservative women organized a counter

26:10

conference across town in

26:12

the Astrodome. The organizers

26:14

described their assembly as a pro God,

26:17

pro life, pro family rally.

26:22

The leader of this gathering was Phylish Slaughly,

26:24

a mother of six from Missouri with a perfect

26:26

blonde buffant who very often dressed

26:28

impeccably in a pink suit and pumps. Slaughly

26:31

was a political genius, and she devoted all

26:33

of her talents to defeating the Equal Rights Amendment.

26:36

She founded a national organization called

26:38

Stop ear. She told

26:41

her followers era means abortion.

26:43

She also rallied women to her movement by tying

26:46

the era to rights for gay men and lesbians.

26:49

In Houston, she claimed she'd been

26:51

banned by the National Women's Convention, and

26:53

on its third day she held a press conference

26:56

to say the conservative women hadn't

26:58

had the chance to speak their truth. If

27:00

you were at the convention last night, I

27:03

think you also must have been impressed

27:05

with the fact that there really isn't any debate

27:08

on the equal rights. Most

27:11

of the speakers at the pro life, pro family

27:14

counter conference spoke the language of radical

27:16

feminism, the language they'd adopted,

27:19

a language that by now had suffused the culture

27:21

and altered the nature of political conflict.

27:24

We are busy engaging raising

27:26

the consciousness of the fabric all

27:29

over America, and we are

27:31

in the business of raising the consciousness

27:33

of our ray makers in Roshington,

27:37

and when Philish Slaughly took the stage, this

27:39

crowd went wild. Many

27:41

had been to the other conference, the National Women's

27:43

Convention, but now they were home with

27:46

family. There

27:48

are many differences between this

27:51

meeting and the one in that other hall

27:53

today. I'm very proud

27:55

that they excluded me from that

27:57

convention. The whole thing was

28:00

designed as

28:02

a media event, a charade

28:05

to go through the motions of these funny

28:07

state conferences and national conferences

28:10

in order to pass resolutions

28:13

that were pre written and prepackaged

28:16

a year and a half ago, to tell

28:18

league Congress and the state legislatures

28:21

that this is what American

28:23

women want. By

28:25

coming here today, you have shown

28:28

that that is not what American

28:30

women want. The women

28:33

in the astrodom waved bibles,

28:35

they wept, and they spoke out, and

28:38

they endorsed their own resolutions, including

28:41

their own version of an Equal Rights Amendment,

28:44

Equal Rights for Fetuses. Therefore,

28:46

be it resolved that the Congress enact and

28:49

the States ratify a mandatory Human

28:51

Life Amendment to the Constitution to

28:53

protect all persons born

28:56

and unborn. Some concession,

28:59

it resolved that we oppose the modification

29:02

of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

29:05

All in favors say I

29:10

all right. Therefore, be it resolved

29:12

that homosexuality, lesbianism,

29:15

or prostitution shall not be

29:17

taught, rarified, or otherwise

29:19

promoted as acceptable through

29:21

the laws of society through the adoption

29:24

of children are within the institutions

29:26

such as our stools. All in favor

29:29

SII. By

29:32

rallying conservative women against the Equal Rights

29:34

Amendment, largely on the back of arguments

29:36

about abortion and homosexuality, shlaughly

29:39

managed to turn the tide against the ear

29:41

a ding Dong the Witches

29:43

Dead Erie, opponents saying when

29:46

word came of its defeat five

29:48

years later in nineteen eighty two, the

29:51

National Women's Convention had failed

29:53

and was soon forgotten. In

30:03

the nineteen sixties, radical feminists

30:05

argued that the personal is political,

30:08

that live experience the speaking

30:11

of bitterness counts as evidence.

30:14

In the nineteen seventies, liberal white

30:16

feminists embraced this idea too, and

30:18

so did African American feminists, and

30:20

so too, in the end did conservative women,

30:23

who very soon would help elect a conservative

30:25

to the White House. It's

30:28

morning again in America.

30:31

Today, more men and women will go to work

30:33

than ever before in our country's history. In nineteen

30:35

eighty, three, years after the dueling women's

30:37

conferences in Houston, Ronald Reagan

30:40

was elected president. Earlier, as

30:42

governor of California, he'd signed a bill

30:44

liberalizing abortion laws, but he'd

30:46

since become a staunch ally of Philish Lafley's.

30:49

In nineteen eighty he ran on a GOP platform

30:52

that included a plank dedicating the party

30:54

to the right to life for unborn children.

30:58

This nation cannot continue turning

31:01

a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking

31:03

of some four thousand unborn

31:05

children's lives every day.

31:08

That's one every one second. One

31:11

person who was really affected by that speech

31:14

of Reagan's was a doctor named Bernard

31:16

Nathanson. Nathanson

31:18

had for a long time conducted abortions,

31:21

but he changed his mind about abortion, he said,

31:23

after the development of ultrasound. Reagan's

31:27

speech convinced him to make a film

31:29

released in nineteen eighty five. It was

31:31

another kind of consciousness raising. Now,

31:34

for the first time, we have

31:37

the technology to see

31:39

abortion from the victim's

31:42

vantage point. The film is called

31:45

The Silent Scream, and

31:47

so for the first time, we

31:50

are going to watch a

31:52

child being

31:54

torn apart, dismembered,

31:58

disarticulated, crushed

32:02

and destroyed by

32:04

the unfeeling steel

32:07

instruments of the

32:09

abortionist. Nathanson

32:11

was a doctor, but he narrates the film

32:13

as if he is a lawyer eliciting

32:15

testimony from the fetus its

32:17

personal experience. He's a

32:19

ventriloquist speaking out the

32:22

fetus's truth. Once again,

32:24

we see the child's mouth wide

32:26

open, in a silent scream. In

32:28

this particular freeze frame, this

32:31

is the silent scream

32:34

of a child threatened him imminently

32:37

with extinction. Prominent

32:39

physicians, obstetricians and gynecologists

32:42

criticized the film as misleading

32:45

and inaccurate. Said that the cortex

32:47

of a fetus of this age wasn't developed

32:50

enough for the fetus to feel pain, and

32:52

of course the film simply erases

32:54

the body of the woman. Most

32:56

of the film involves Nathanson showing plastic

32:59

models or ultrasound film from inside

33:01

the uterus, Lots of models of fetuses,

33:04

lots of fetuses inside uteruses, but

33:06

not really inside women's bodies. Barely

33:09

see any women, and none of

33:11

them speak. They're utterly silent. Reagan

33:17

saw the film and talked about how much it had affected

33:19

him. He said he wished every member of Congress

33:22

would watch it. Silent Scream

33:24

aired, among other places, on Jerry Falwell's

33:26

TV show, and it was also widely

33:28

shown at high schools across the country. But

33:31

pretty often the broader public just argued over

33:33

what they'd seen. They didn't really disagree.

33:36

They argued absolutely abortion

33:38

had become either all one thing, a

33:41

brutal murder or all

33:43

another thing, just another medical

33:45

procedure. This

33:47

had become a debate about moral absolutes,

33:50

about who is good and who was

33:53

evil. It had also

33:55

got bound together with another

33:57

movement, the victims rights movement.

33:59

Well lot a victim to testify a criminal

34:02

may go free. The

34:04

victim's rights movement began in nineteen

34:06

seventy five with the publication of a book

34:09

called The Victims by a

34:11

law and order conservative from the

34:13

Heritage Foundation named Frank Carrington.

34:16

He wanted laws that would be tougher on criminal

34:18

defendants and harsher punishments for

34:20

the convicted. He and other conservatives

34:23

were waging what's known as the War

34:25

on Crime. A lot of feminists

34:28

joined that war. They wanted more

34:30

aggressive prosecutions and stricter sentences

34:32

for violent crimes against women and children.

34:35

Believe the women, they said, listen to

34:38

their testimony, not just about

34:40

abortion, but about rape

34:42

and domestic violence, and child abuse

34:44

and more. And then in asking

34:47

for harsher punishments for men, they

34:49

made common cause with conservatives. The

34:51

innocent victims of crime have frequently

34:53

been overlooked by our criminal

34:56

justice system, and their pleas for justice

34:58

have gone unheated and their wounds,

35:00

personal, emotional, and financial,

35:02

have gone unattended. This is Ronald

35:04

Reagan speaking in the Rose Garden, April

35:07

nineteen eighty two. So I am signing

35:09

today an executive order establishing

35:11

the President's Task Force on Victims of

35:13

Crime. Reagan's task Force recommended

35:16

that victims of crime be allowed to speak

35:18

during sentencing hearings to explain

35:20

the nature the scale of their suffering.

35:23

This kind of statement came to be called victim

35:25

impact evidence. As

35:28

a matter of intellectual genealogy, it

35:30

comes from consciousness, raising from speaking,

35:32

bitterness from speaking your truth. Let

35:35

the victims speak. The

35:40

Me Too movement is founded on the evidentiary

35:42

principles of the victim's rights movement. Believe

35:45

the women speak your truth. In

35:48

twenty eighteen, Larry Nasser, an Olympic

35:51

gymnastics coach, was convicted of sexual

35:53

assault the abuse of children.

35:56

His sentencing hearing in a Michigan courtroom

35:59

was broadcast on live television. Something

36:01

that doesn't happen very often, and

36:03

something that really doesn't happen very often. The

36:06

judge allowed one hundred and fifty six

36:08

women to deliver victim impact

36:10

statements. Thank

36:13

you, what would you like me to know? For

36:17

the last year I have lived behind

36:19

the shadows of the name Jane Doe.

36:22

I was afraid to be identified as myself and

36:25

didn't want to accept this as my story. But

36:27

I can't push it off anymore. This happened

36:30

to me, and I have a name. My

36:33

name is Jassie Powell. Here, honor. If it's

36:35

okay with you, I'll be addressing

36:37

the dependent directly for a lot of this statement.

36:39

You may I

36:42

still remember the first time I ever saw you.

36:44

Larry March

36:47

twenty sixth twenty Their

36:51

statements are harrowing. They're

36:53

hard to listen to the courage

36:56

it took to say those things, but

36:59

the whole thing is also weird.

37:02

More than one hundred and fifty women delivered impact

37:05

statements in court. Nasa

37:07

had been charged with sexual assaulting only

37:09

ten of them. By this point,

37:11

he had also already pled guilty, and

37:13

he'd already been sentenced to sixty years in prison

37:16

on child pornography charges. So

37:19

what were all those statements? That is sentencing hearing

37:21

about in a

37:23

courtroom cluttered with cameras. One

37:26

hundred and fifty six women spoke of the harm

37:28

Nasser had done to them, But

37:30

these were crimes for which he had not been tried.

37:33

On Twitter, using the hashtag me too, people

37:36

expressed relief and excitement and

37:38

gratitude to the judge. They

37:41

thought she was a hero. But

37:43

a lot of legal scholars were shocked at

37:45

the way the judge handled her courtroom, and

37:47

at how watching the sentencing hearing on television

37:50

felt something like watching a daytime talk show.

37:53

It's not that those legal scholars questioned

37:55

the suffering of the women who spoke that day, or

37:58

the truth of what they had to say, or

38:00

even that they needed to say. It

38:03

is that they questioned the place of those statements in

38:06

this courtroom.

38:10

Saying this out loud to you is extremely

38:12

uncomfortable for me, and I'm

38:14

sure for everyone who is listening it

38:19

is supposed to be uncomfortable.

38:23

I would be doing myself and

38:25

the other brave women here a

38:28

great disservice by

38:30

shying away from what is now

38:32

my truth. The

38:36

Me Too movement is both lifted and

38:38

burdened by the history that came before

38:40

it, a history that carries

38:42

this idea. Everything

38:45

I say is true, everything you say is

38:47

a lie. To question me is

38:49

to do me harm if we disagree.

38:52

Whichever of us has suffered more wins.

38:56

Fighting child abuse and sexual assault

38:59

is crucial. No question

39:02

those movements have done great good, but

39:05

that doesn't mean they haven't also contributed

39:07

to an epistemological chaos

39:09

seized by absolutism. Proceed,

39:13

please, my

39:15

name is Christine Blasi Ford. During

39:18

the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett

39:20

Kavanaugh, people wore buttons

39:22

that read I believe Christine

39:25

blasi Ford. I tried

39:27

to yell for help. When

39:29

I did, Brett put his hand over my

39:31

mouth to stop me from yelling. It

39:33

was hard for me to breathe, and

39:36

I thought that Brett was accidentally

39:38

going to kill me. She spoke

39:40

her truth, and then he

39:43

spoke his. I

39:45

was not at the party described by

39:47

doctor Ford. People

39:50

tweeted, I believe Brett

39:52

Kavanaugh. I'm here today

39:54

to tell the truth. I've

39:57

never sexually assaulted anyone.

40:02

What was the truth? Honestly,

40:05

it was hard to say for

40:07

the record. I believed her. I

40:10

believed her because of my personal experiences.

40:13

I believed her because my experiences of being

40:15

a person in the world are a lot

40:17

more like her experiences than like his.

40:21

But is that enough? I

40:23

don't think that's enough. People

40:27

keep on speaking bitterness with absolutism

40:29

of the abortion debate. This

40:32

divide though it isn't about abortion. Actually

40:35

it's not even a divide, because

40:38

here's the thing everyone seems to agree on. Speak

40:42

your truth. So

40:44

who killed truth? Maybe?

40:48

Everyone?

41:02

The Last Archive is produced by Sophie Crane

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