(00:00:01):
When I was 19, I got pregnant.

(00:00:03):
I was a good person, a smart person.

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I would have been a good mother.

(00:00:08):
I loved my baby.

(00:00:10):
So I went to an adoption agency that specialized in young unwed mothers,

(00:00:14):
and the experience truly scarred me.

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They talked to me like I was a vessel and not a person.

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It became clear to me that whoever adopted my baby would be trading their financial

(00:00:24):
privilege for my child.

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Why couldn't I have that money to raise my own baby and save everyone the trauma?

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I couldn't face it, so I had an abortion.

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I had an abortion because I loved my baby and could not give them to people I

(00:00:37):
didn't know and could not raise them myself.

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In a different world, I would have chosen differently.

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We don't have a different world,

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and the people who claim to oppose abortion are working overtime to ensure we never

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have a different world.

(00:00:51):
Hi, I'm Zahn Valines, and this is the Liberating Motherhood Podcast.

(00:00:56):
Today,

(00:00:56):
we are going to talk about bad ideas about adoption,

(00:00:59):
coercive adoption,

(00:01:00):
and adoption trauma with my amazing guest,

(00:01:03):
TJ Raphael,

(00:01:04):
the reporter of the Liberty Lost podcast.

(00:01:07):
TJ is an award-winning investigative journalist focusing on the intersection of

(00:01:11):
reproductive health,

(00:01:12):
politics,

(00:01:12):
and science.

(00:01:14):
In June 2025,

(00:01:15):
she released the multi-episode audio documentary,

(00:01:18):
Liberty Lost with Wondery,

(00:01:20):
one of the world's leading podcast production companies.

(00:01:23):
The series dives deep into a modern-day maternity home where motherhood is treated

(00:01:27):
as a privilege,

(00:01:27):
not a right.

(00:01:29):
The show paints a vivid picture that exposes the coercion and manipulation birth

(00:01:33):
mothers often experience across the adoption industry.

(00:01:37):
Following its release,

(00:01:38):
Liberty Lost quickly climbed Apple's coveted Top 200 podcast chart,

(00:01:42):
topping out as the number two series in America and reaching number one in their

(00:01:46):
society and culture section.

(00:01:48):
The show was praised by critics across the globe for its raw vulnerability and

(00:01:51):
startling revelations,

(00:01:53):
and won gold at the 2025 Signal Awards for best documentary.

(00:01:58):
For her work on Liberty Lost,

(00:01:59):
TJ won a front page award from the News Women's Club of New York for investigative

(00:02:03):
reporting.

(00:02:04):
And she is currently nominated by the Podcast Academy for an Ambie Award for best reporting.

(00:02:09):
Before her time with Wondery,

(00:02:11):
TJ was an on-air host,

(00:02:12):
reporter,

(00:02:13):
and senior producer for Sony's global podcast division.

(00:02:17):
Two of her most notable podcasts with Sony include Cover Up,

(00:02:20):
The Pill Plot,

(00:02:21):
about the American abortion wars,

(00:02:23):
and Biohacked,

(00:02:24):
Family Secrets,

(00:02:25):
about the shadowy business of sperm and egg donation.

(00:02:28):
Prior to Sony,

(00:02:29):
TJ was part of the leadership team overseeing Slate Magazine's podcast network,

(00:02:33):
which garnered 180 million downloads a year.

(00:02:36):
She began her career in audio journalism in 2013 when she took on a multifaceted

(00:02:40):
role at WNYC,

(00:02:42):
the largest public radio station in America.

(00:02:45):
TJ began her career in print journalism with reporting and editorial roles at the

(00:02:49):
Village Voice,

(00:02:50):
the New York Daily News and the Legislative Gazette,

(00:02:53):
grounding her audio work in traditional investigative and accountability reporting.

(00:02:58):
TJ is mixed race,

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Puerto Rican and Irish,

(00:03:01):
and was born and raised in the New York City metro area.

(00:03:04):
She is the first in her family to graduate from college.

(00:03:07):
Today, TJ lives in the world's borough, Queens.

(00:03:10):
When she's not making podcasts,

(00:03:12):
she likes to take trips to ride the Coney Island Cyclone and spend time with her

(00:03:15):
husband,

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Christopher,

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her border collie,

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Smokey,

(00:03:17):
and her great Pyrenees,

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Cooper.

(00:03:20):
TJ, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

(00:03:22):
I'm so excited to have you here.

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Hi, thanks for having me.

(00:03:25):
It's great to be here.

(00:03:26):
Um, that's, that's so much.

(00:03:28):
And obviously we're going to be talking primarily about Liberty Lost,

(00:03:31):
but I'm probably going to want to talk to you a little bit about your other

(00:03:34):
podcasts too.

(00:03:35):
So we'll just cover what we can cover.

(00:03:37):
Absolutely.

(00:03:38):
Uh, before we get started, I'm going to give my usual administrative reminders.

(00:03:43):
This podcast depends on reader support,

(00:03:45):
which you can offer in the form of heart reacts,

(00:03:47):
positive reviews,

(00:03:48):
and shares on social media.

(00:03:50):
Comments and other engagement also really help boost the podcast visibility.

(00:03:54):
And if you're a super fan,

(00:03:55):
you can become a paid subscriber on Substack or on Patreon.

(00:03:58):
Paid subscribers get at least eight extra essays a month, plus a bonus podcast episode.

(00:04:03):
They also get access to the private Liberating Motherhood support community.

(00:04:07):
To sign up, visit zon.substack.com or liberatingmotherhood.org.

(00:04:13):
So TJ, this is just such an amazing podcast.

(00:04:16):
I told you before we started recording that

(00:04:19):
I knew about it for a while before I listened to it,

(00:04:21):
but I kept avoiding it because I knew it was just going to infuriate me.

(00:04:26):
But what I was struck by is that you were able to tell these really sad stories in

(00:04:30):
a way that inspired hope and that helped us see the humanity of everyone involved,

(00:04:36):
even some of the sort of bad guys.

(00:04:39):
So can you just tell me a little bit about Liberty Lost,

(00:04:42):
how you came to do this and what you learned from it?

(00:04:46):
Yeah,

(00:04:46):
Liberty Lost is an investigation really into the private adoption industry and

(00:04:55):
maternity homes across the United States.

(00:04:58):
We primarily tell that bigger story through looking at one specific maternity home.

(00:05:04):
It's called the Liberty Godparent Home,

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and it sits on the campus of Liberty University,

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which is America's most powerful evangelical community.

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college in the United States and one of our most powerful Christian institutions.

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Almost every American president since Ronald Reagan has visited Liberty University.

(00:05:26):
Its alumni have argued cases for the Supreme Court,

(00:05:29):
have gotten jobs in the White House,

(00:05:32):
have been elected to Congress.

(00:05:34):
And Charlie Kirk is an alumni of Liberty University.

(00:05:39):
So Liberty University is an incredibly powerful institution.

(00:05:44):
And yeah,

(00:05:44):
I had never heard of this maternity home until I got a tip from a woman named Abby

(00:05:51):
Johnson,

(00:05:52):
who would wind up becoming my primary source for this series.

(00:05:56):
When Abby reached out to me, it was in the summer of 2022.

(00:06:02):
She was 31 years old at the time.

(00:06:04):
I'm two years older than her, so we were close in age.

(00:06:08):
And she told me that she had been sent to this maternity home

(00:06:12):
on the campus of Liberty University in 2008,

(00:06:15):
and that there she faced pressure,

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shame,

(00:06:20):
coercion,

(00:06:21):
and religious manipulation until she surrendered her baby for adoption to an

(00:06:26):
affluent Christian couple.

(00:06:28):
That alone was shocking to hear,

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but also knowing that it had ties to Liberty,

(00:06:36):
to Jerry Falwell,

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the founder of the university and the founder of the Moral Majority,

(00:06:41):
alarms bells started going off for me pretty immediately.

(00:06:45):
And so that's kind of where I began my reporting.

(00:06:50):
And I realized along the way,

(00:06:52):
you know,

(00:06:53):
it took about two years for us to make this series and release it,

(00:06:57):
that Liberty Godparent Home and its associated adoption agency,

(00:07:03):
Family Life Services,

(00:07:05):
were not unique.

(00:07:07):
They're actually symptoms of a much bigger problem that we have in the United

(00:07:12):
States as it relates to vulnerable pregnant women,

(00:07:17):
adoption,

(00:07:18):
and Christian maternity homes.

(00:07:21):
And so that's really how this story came about.

(00:07:24):
I connected with Abby in the summer of 22.

(00:07:28):
I began really reporting on this story in earnest the following year in 2023.

(00:07:34):
I think my first interview date with Abby is August 1st, 2023.

(00:07:38):
And yeah,

(00:07:39):
the series was released in June,

(00:07:43):
2025 to coincide with the anniversary of the overturning of Roe versus Wade.

(00:07:49):
So I'll tell you, your series kept popping up in my podcast feed.

(00:07:53):
And I had dozens of people tell me that I needed to listen.

(00:07:57):
And a bunch more say, well, you need to bring her on the podcast.

(00:08:02):
And like I said,

(00:08:03):
I resisted and I resisted because I knew it was just going to send me into a state

(00:08:07):
of rage.

(00:08:09):
But what I initially thought is that I thought that your podcast was about the

(00:08:15):
maternity homes of the past.

(00:08:18):
I did not realize that this was still such an ongoing problem and that this kind of

(00:08:24):
coercion is happening now.

(00:08:27):
So that to me was just like stunning.

(00:08:31):
And it's appalling that this is happening.

(00:08:33):
It's appalling that so few of us

(00:08:35):
including in the reproductive justice movement, even know about it.

(00:08:39):
Can you talk a little bit about,

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you know,

(00:08:42):
I think some people hear of these places and they're like,

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oh,

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it's nice.

(00:08:45):
You know, they're pregnant and they don't want to be.

(00:08:46):
And so they get taken care of and then they give their babies to loving families.

(00:08:50):
Can you explain why that's not really what's happening and what is happening?

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Yeah,

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I think in theory,

(00:08:58):
maternity homes would be a good thing,

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you know,

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because who goes to a maternity home,

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you know,

(00:09:04):
kind of like you were just alluding to,

(00:09:05):
it's a vulnerable pregnant woman or a pregnant person.

(00:09:11):
Maybe they don't have support in their lives.

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They don't have access to a safe or stable partner.

(00:09:17):
And they're pregnant at the same time.

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So it's sort of this perfect storm of circumstance.

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And that might lead someone to seek out a maternity home.

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The problem is most of these maternity homes,

(00:09:30):
my research found that a huge number of these facilities are affiliated with a

(00:09:36):
group called Heartbeat International.

(00:09:39):
And Heartbeat International is one of the world's largest anti-abortion organizations.

(00:09:45):
They have a presence on every inhabited continent.

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And what happens within these maternity homes that are affiliated with Heartbeat or

(00:09:56):
affiliated with other anti-abortion organizations or evangelical institutions is

(00:10:03):
the women inside these facilities often get the message that it would be better for

(00:10:07):
them to place their children for adoption,

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that their babies deserve a two-parent household

(00:10:15):
a heterosexual household at that.

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And it's not right to be a single mother.

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It's not right that they may end up needing government assistance.

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And that the best thing that this pregnant person can do is to permanently separate

(00:10:31):
from their child.

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And so a lot of that is rooted in evangelical doctrine.

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You know,

(00:10:39):
I'm not saying that this is something all evangelicals believe,

(00:10:44):
but unfortunately there is a big section of the community that,

(00:10:48):
you know,

(00:10:48):
views single motherhood through a lens of shame and stigma and believes that,

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you know,

(00:10:55):
a child should not stay with a single mother.

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And so the women inside these facilities,

(00:11:01):
yeah,

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especially when they're living there,

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they're hearing day in and day out throughout their pregnancy,

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you know,

(00:11:07):
it's better to separate from the child.

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And oftentimes they don't have that external support.

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That's why they're in a maternity home.

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And so

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I would love to see secular or progressive institutions open up maternity homes

(00:11:24):
because I do think there is a need for vulnerable pregnant women and other pregnant

(00:11:29):
people to be able to find safe harbor while they're pregnant and be able to get on

(00:11:34):
their feet.

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But as it stands right now, most of these institutions

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come with an agenda,

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and that is a very conservative,

(00:11:45):
Christ-centered agenda that espouses certain beliefs.

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Yeah, the shame and the stigma is really prominent.

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And I think it's easy to kind of be dismissive of it if you have not grown up in

(00:11:59):
that kind of culture or not familiar with how it functions.

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But to me,

(00:12:03):
as a listener,

(00:12:04):
kind of like looking in from the outside,

(00:12:06):
I was struck by how this maternity home wasn't just like a place to land where you

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were maybe shamed a little bit.

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It was really functioning like a prison, right?

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And it seemed like the people who run this home are really taking advantage of the

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stigma and the shame that these young women feel.

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And they're often capitalizing on the fact that these women are very young and

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they're often very sheltered.

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And so these women feel like they're in trouble and they may not even know that

(00:12:34):
they're allowed to leave.

(00:12:35):
I just I couldn't believe how trapped these these young women were.

(00:12:43):
Yeah,

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I mean,

(00:12:43):
I was told by multiple subjects who we feature in the podcast who are at the

(00:12:49):
maternity home during different years that,

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you know,

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doors and windows were locked around the clock,

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that they couldn't exit the building without a chaperone.

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There was a small courtyard that was completely fenced in with,

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I think it was a brick wall was the fencing around it.

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And they even needed a chaperone to just go out there and sit.

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Um,

(00:13:12):
Abby Johnson,

(00:13:12):
my main subject,

(00:13:13):
she told me that a house parent told her that if she tried to open a door or window

(00:13:19):
without permission,

(00:13:20):
an alarm would go off.

(00:13:22):
The girls inside the facility were not allowed to have jobs,

(00:13:25):
so they were not allowed to try to work,

(00:13:28):
to get some money,

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to hopefully have some resources when they gave birth.

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And any cash that they did have,

(00:13:36):
according to the official Liberty God Parent Home Handbook,

(00:13:39):
which I was able to obtain verified copies of,

(00:13:43):
any cash they had,

(00:13:45):
the facility held on to it.

(00:13:47):
And they had to get permission from the executive director to take more than $10

(00:13:52):
out of their money account.

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Their phone calls were monitored.

(00:13:58):
You had a chaperone standing next to them while they were making calls.

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And so,

(00:14:05):
yeah,

(00:14:05):
for a lot of the women I spoke to,

(00:14:08):
they said it really did feel like a prison and that their movements were

(00:14:13):
restricted.

(00:14:13):
I mean, a former staffer who I spoke to, Brittany Reynolds, we feature her in the show.

(00:14:19):
I wish we actually would have had more space to include more of what she shared with me.

(00:14:25):
But she even said in terms of the girls were expected to do chores around the

(00:14:30):
maternity home,

(00:14:31):
vacuuming,

(00:14:32):
dusting,

(00:14:33):
things like that.

(00:14:34):
And if everybody was in the living room vacuuming or dusting and somebody had to go

(00:14:39):
to the bathroom,

(00:14:41):
they had to ask for permission to leave the room.

(00:14:44):
Even their movements within the home were being controlled.

(00:14:47):
And so, yeah, it's this incredibly controlling environment.

(00:14:51):
Most of the residents did come from either evangelical or Christian fundamentalist

(00:14:57):
families where they were

(00:14:59):
know shamed with purity culture growing up told by church leaders told by their

(00:15:05):
community that sex outside of marriage is wrong that they'll go to hell if they do

(00:15:10):
it and of course they did have sex and they wound up pregnant on top of that so a

(00:15:16):
lot of them described feeling like they had a scarlet letter already on them and

(00:15:22):
the cultural beliefs of the home

(00:15:25):
were reinforcing that Scarlet Letter and used it as an attempt to get women to

(00:15:31):
separate from their children,

(00:15:33):
that,

(00:15:33):
you know,

(00:15:34):
if they wanted to redeem themselves for that sin of premarital sex,

(00:15:40):
for that sin of getting pregnant out of wedlock,

(00:15:44):
the path to redemption was through adoption.

(00:15:47):
And so, yeah, it was, you know, everywhere they looked, this kind of

(00:15:52):
shame and stigma was being used as a tool to get them to separate from their

(00:15:56):
children permanently.

(00:15:57):
Yeah,

(00:15:58):
it's just shocking how aggressively these girls are framed as bad and treated like

(00:16:05):
they have done something criminal and something very serious criminal.

(00:16:10):
So I'm wondering if you can tell listeners a little bit about

(00:16:15):
Abby and some of the other women you follow in the podcast and what happens to them over time.

(00:16:20):
I don't want to spoil the story, but if you could give highlights.

(00:16:24):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:16:25):
So Abby Johnson is the primary subject in the podcast because,

(00:16:31):
you know,

(00:16:32):
she was my original tip as well as she was there most recently.

(00:16:37):
She had entered into Liberty Godparent home in January of 2008.

(00:16:43):
She stays there until she gives birth in July of 2008.

(00:16:47):
And yeah, Abby came from an evangelical family in North Carolina.

(00:16:53):
She had done a purity pledge to her father where she promised to wear a ring that

(00:16:59):
symbolized the fact that she would remain a virgin until she got married.

(00:17:04):
You know, Abby was homeschooled.

(00:17:06):
She was very sheltered and she meets a boy named Nathan through her homeschool

(00:17:13):
community and they start hanging out.

(00:17:15):
And for a while, everything is really innocent.

(00:17:17):
They're hanging out in groups.

(00:17:20):
Nathan really likes her.

(00:17:21):
She really likes him.

(00:17:22):
They have a first kiss.

(00:17:23):
And then she says, can we not kiss for a while?

(00:17:25):
I just want to hold hands.

(00:17:27):
And he's cool with that.

(00:17:28):
And they have this kind of really sweet and tender teenage relationship.

(00:17:33):
They sneak around.

(00:17:33):
They watch The Notebook on a portable DVD player in the backseat of his car.

(00:17:39):
They're hanging out, going to Taco Bell youth group meetings.

(00:17:42):
And eventually Abby's feelings for Nathan grow stronger and they start to kiss and

(00:17:48):
eventually they start having sex.

(00:17:50):
And,

(00:17:51):
you know,

(00:17:52):
Abby's explains that,

(00:17:53):
you know,

(00:17:54):
she was carrying a lot of shame around having sex,

(00:17:57):
even though,

(00:17:57):
you know,

(00:17:58):
it's something she wanted to do because of her religious upbringing,

(00:18:01):
she was feeling that shame.

(00:18:02):
And so she was constantly telling herself, well, we're not going to do it again.

(00:18:06):
So I don't want to buy condoms because if we have the condoms, we'll do it again.

(00:18:10):
And so they're not using birth control.

(00:18:12):
When her parents find out about the pregnancy,

(00:18:18):
they decide to send her away to the Liberty Godparent home.

(00:18:22):
Abby's two older sisters are students at Liberty University.

(00:18:26):
Her mother, Debbie also attended Liberty.

(00:18:30):
And they learn about the Godparent home and they learned that if Abby completes the

(00:18:35):
program,

(00:18:37):
she can get a full ride scholarship to Liberty University.

(00:18:40):
Now, back in 2008,

(00:18:42):
that scholarship was worth $100,000.

(00:18:45):
Of course,

(00:18:47):
in the United States,

(00:18:48):
it's illegal to exchange cash for a baby,

(00:18:51):
but it seems that scholarships are a different story.

(00:18:56):
And yeah,

(00:18:56):
Abby finds herself there at the godparent home for months,

(00:19:00):
and she tries and tries and tries to resist the shame,

(00:19:05):
resist the pressure,

(00:19:07):
She seeks out help from her counselor there that is employed by the godparent home,

(00:19:13):
who basically brushes off her request for help.

(00:19:17):
And then in one final attempt after she gives birth,

(00:19:21):
she also goes to the adoption caseworker and says,

(00:19:25):
you know,

(00:19:26):
I don't want to do this.

(00:19:28):
And the caseworker says to her, you know, basically,

(00:19:32):
wouldn't it be selfish of you to keep your son?

(00:19:35):
You know,

(00:19:35):
this couple is,

(00:19:36):
is,

(00:19:37):
you know,

(00:19:37):
really deserving,

(00:19:38):
you know,

(00:19:39):
in so many words,

(00:19:39):
I'm paraphrasing here.

(00:19:42):
But,

(00:19:42):
you know,

(00:19:43):
Abby at 17,

(00:19:44):
you know,

(00:19:45):
she tries everything and basically she,

(00:19:47):
she describes being just beat down and she eventually goes through with placing her

(00:19:52):
son for adoption.

(00:19:54):
The other women that we feature in the series include Tony Popham.

(00:19:59):
Toni was 12 years old when she became pregnant.

(00:20:04):
She and a neighborhood boy who was 13, they started exploring and Toni became pregnant.

(00:20:12):
A lot of the grownups in Toni's life wanted her to get an abortion.

(00:20:18):
That is not something that she wanted.

(00:20:21):
And she went to her mother, who was a Christian fundamentalist and very pro-life.

(00:20:27):
And her mom said, I'll help you.

(00:20:29):
And her mother speaks with her pastor.

(00:20:31):
The pastor suggests sending Tony to the godparent home, which she does go there.

(00:20:36):
And she describes sort of endless pressure.

(00:20:40):
She described the facility as pure torture, actually.

(00:20:43):
She used that word torture.

(00:20:45):
endless pressure to get her to place her daughter for adoption.

(00:20:49):
You know, Tony essentially is standing her ground.

(00:20:53):
I mean,

(00:20:54):
I give her a lot of credit as,

(00:20:55):
you know,

(00:20:56):
a 12 year old,

(00:20:57):
or she was 13 by the time she got there.

(00:20:58):
I mean,

(00:21:00):
to be able to stand up and say, you know, this is my choice.

(00:21:03):
And,

(00:21:03):
you know,

(00:21:03):
I think,

(00:21:04):
you know,

(00:21:04):
some feedback I've gotten from listeners was,

(00:21:07):
well,

(00:21:07):
maybe,

(00:21:07):
you know,

(00:21:08):
somebody like Tony should have gotten abortion.

(00:21:10):
She was so young.

(00:21:12):
And,

(00:21:12):
you know,

(00:21:13):
probably if this would have happened to me at my age,

(00:21:17):
my parents would have wanted me to end the pregnancy too.

(00:21:19):
And I probably would have.

(00:21:21):
But at the end of the day,

(00:21:22):
I think one of the things I was trying to show is that we need to allow people to

(00:21:28):
make their own reproductive choices.

(00:21:30):
We can't insist people do anything when it comes to whether or not they will have children.

(00:21:37):
And so, yeah, Tony said, you know, I want to keep this child.

(00:21:42):
Her mother,

(00:21:42):
excuse me,

(00:21:43):
her grandmother was actually adopted at birth and her grandmother supported Tony's

(00:21:48):
decision and said,

(00:21:49):
you know,

(00:21:49):
I was adopted and I don't think you should place this baby for adoption.

(00:21:53):
So Tony, you know, gets her grandmother's support.

(00:21:55):
Eventually her mother comes around and yet,

(00:21:58):
you know,

(00:21:59):
she shares this with the godparent home saying,

(00:22:01):
you know,

(00:22:01):
I have support now.

(00:22:03):
And yet when she goes to give birth in the delivery room,

(00:22:09):
one of the staffers from the godparent home begins to pray over her body while

(00:22:14):
she's trying to push and praying that she makes the right decision

(00:22:20):
and places her daughter for adoption so the coercion was lasting literally um

(00:22:25):
through birth um and tony was roommates with a woman that um is also featured in

(00:22:31):
the podcast zoe shaw um zoe has a you know similar more similar story to abby i

(00:22:37):
think um

(00:22:38):
She was a little bit older.

(00:22:39):
She was 15 when she found out she was pregnant through her boyfriend that she liked at the time.

(00:22:46):
She wanted to marry him and she wanted to keep her daughter.

(00:22:51):
She would go to the counselors at the godparent home and express that that was her

(00:22:56):
desire and try to find help.

(00:22:59):
And they, again, just brushed her off.

(00:23:02):
and then Zoe becomes resigned to the fact that this is her fate,

(00:23:07):
that nobody's coming to her rescue and she does wind up placing her daughter for

(00:23:12):
adoption.

(00:23:12):
The other two people who we feature,

(00:23:19):
less so their smaller kind of roles in the podcast,

(00:23:21):
but I think still equally as important,

(00:23:25):
are Sarah P.

(00:23:27):
Sarah was 18 when she became pregnant.

(00:23:30):
She got pregnant as a result of sexual assault.

(00:23:34):
She had gone to visit a cousin out of state, went to a party, drank too much.

(00:23:39):
She had

(00:23:40):
came from a very sheltered home.

(00:23:42):
That was one of the first times she was drinking.

(00:23:43):
And she said the last thing she remembered was somebody climbing on top of her.

(00:23:48):
But Sarah grew up in this devout evangelical community.

(00:23:53):
She was taught that abortion was murder.

(00:23:56):
And she told me, she's like, I didn't want to be a murderer in the eyes of God.

(00:24:02):
So the only choice I had was to

(00:24:04):
have this baby and place it for adoption, which is exactly what she does.

(00:24:10):
And Sarah also gets the scholarship to Liberty University.

(00:24:13):
She then goes on to work there as a house mother and is working with girls.

(00:24:20):
And Sarah had been all in on adoption when she entered the godparent home,

(00:24:25):
so she never saw the other side.

(00:24:28):
And when she sits down with girls who say,

(00:24:30):
hey,

(00:24:30):
I want to keep my baby,

(00:24:32):
she wants to help them make a parenting plan.

(00:24:35):
But as Sarah goes through the questions that the godparent home provides her,

(00:24:39):
she starts to realize that the whole plan seems designed to make you realize you

(00:24:45):
can't do it alone.

(00:24:47):
That there are questions there that these girls have issues answering and that then

(00:24:53):
the suggestion would be,

(00:24:54):
well,

(00:24:54):
if you can't figure this out,

(00:24:55):
then maybe you should do an adoption.

(00:24:58):
And so that's Sarah P's role.

(00:25:00):
And then finally,

(00:25:00):
in our final episode,

(00:25:01):
we have a little bit of a story from a woman named Anna Smith.

(00:25:05):
Anna became pregnant at 18.

(00:25:08):
She had been experiencing homelessness at the time.

(00:25:11):
She had aged out of foster care and her foster parents said, you can't continue to live with us.

(00:25:16):
She was living out of her car.

(00:25:18):
she starts dating a guy,

(00:25:20):
you know,

(00:25:20):
she's staying at his house,

(00:25:22):
they have sex,

(00:25:22):
she gets pregnant,

(00:25:24):
but then he wants nothing to do with her after he learns about the pregnancy,

(00:25:28):
you know,

(00:25:29):
Sarah's back on the street and she decides to go to the godparent home.

(00:25:34):
She thought that they were going to help her figure out what her options were.

(00:25:37):
But by the end of it, she felt like she also had no choice but to place

(00:25:43):
her daughter for adoption.

(00:25:44):
And so those are the main,

(00:25:46):
and then I should also say there's Nathan Johnson,

(00:25:48):
who is the boy Abby was dating and Abby and Nathan after Abby leaves the maternity

(00:25:54):
home,

(00:25:55):
They actually wound up getting married and they went on to have two other children.

(00:25:59):
They're no longer together today.

(00:26:00):
They recently separated.

(00:26:03):
But yeah, I mean, they were together for about 15 years after that.

(00:26:08):
And,

(00:26:08):
you know,

(00:26:08):
even Nathan,

(00:26:09):
though he wasn't a resident of the godparent home,

(00:26:12):
he also experienced abortion.

(00:26:16):
You know, basically the folks at the godparent home were children.

(00:26:20):
trying to convince him to sign away his parental rights,

(00:26:23):
saying that he might be able to get a scholarship to the school too if he did that.

(00:26:28):
And then he was also experiencing pressure from Abby's parents who threatened to

(00:26:32):
charge him with statutory rape should he try to keep their child,

(00:26:37):
even though Abby says that she was 16 when they had sex and Nathan at that time was

(00:26:43):
18,

(00:26:43):
they're two years apart.

(00:26:46):
And so under North Carolina law,

(00:26:51):
that wouldn't have qualified for a statutory rape.

(00:26:54):
Unfortunately for Nathan, his family did not seek legal counsel.

(00:26:58):
They just talked to their religious community and the religious community suggested

(00:27:04):
that,

(00:27:04):
you know,

(00:27:05):
it might push Abby's parents to make good on their threat if they obtain a lawyer.

(00:27:09):
So unfortunately he never got a lawyer, but yeah, he was also manipulated by the godparent home.

(00:27:15):
And so that's sort of an overview of our main characters in Liberty Lost.

(00:27:20):
I mean, the level of just shameless coercion is really stunning and difficult to overstate.

(00:27:27):
And there were so many times in the series where I was just like screaming like,

(00:27:32):
no,

(00:27:32):
no,

(00:27:33):
no,

(00:27:33):
like say no.

(00:27:34):
But I think...

(00:27:36):
The thing that's so sad and that's so important to consider is that,

(00:27:41):
well,

(00:27:41):
first of all,

(00:27:42):
I mean,

(00:27:42):
the people running this home knew very well that many of these girls did not want

(00:27:49):
to give up their babies and knew very well that these girls weren't consenting to

(00:27:52):
that and pushed them into it anyway.

(00:27:55):
Yeah.

(00:27:56):
But then the other bit is that,

(00:27:58):
you know,

(00:27:59):
we can talk about the rights that mothers have and that people have to their

(00:28:03):
children.

(00:28:04):
But if you don't have access to any resources like a lawyer or money or knowledge

(00:28:09):
about what rights you have,

(00:28:11):
you have no mechanism through which to enforce those rights and therefore they

(00:28:15):
don't really exist.

(00:28:18):
And I think that helps explain why this home is so controlling,

(00:28:22):
like why there are locks on the windows.

(00:28:26):
Yeah, I completely agree.

(00:28:27):
And I think,

(00:28:28):
you know,

(00:28:29):
the only in 2008,

(00:28:30):
the only access to a computer that Abby had was in the godparent homes,

(00:28:36):
one room school.

(00:28:37):
And there was an aide, you know, a teacher right there that was employed by the facility.

(00:28:41):
So she couldn't even

(00:28:42):
you know,

(00:28:42):
Google things if she wanted to,

(00:28:44):
you know,

(00:28:45):
she was completely dependent on the information provided to her by the godparent

(00:28:50):
home.

(00:28:50):
And,

(00:28:51):
you know,

(00:28:52):
it's interesting,

(00:28:53):
Sarah P,

(00:28:54):
who was a resident and then went on to become a staffer there later on,

(00:29:00):
she told me,

(00:29:01):
you know,

(00:29:02):
from the point of view of many people that worked at the home that,

(00:29:07):
you know,

(00:29:07):
they had this attitude that it's not right if you try to get social services,

(00:29:11):
if you know you need a housing voucher,

(00:29:13):
if you need to get on food stamps,

(00:29:15):
if you need any kind of government assistance.

(00:29:20):
That's not right.

(00:29:21):
And so I think that's one of the reasons they were not even attempting to connect

(00:29:26):
these young girls and women to social services that would allow them to keep and

(00:29:32):
parent their children.

(00:29:35):
They just didn't believe that that was right.

(00:29:37):
And they didn't want to offer them any help to do that.

(00:29:41):
I think it's also ideological in that

(00:29:44):
You know,

(00:29:45):
the people that worked at the home believed in things like purity pledges,

(00:29:50):
believed that premarital sex was wrong and that it was a sin and that these women

(00:29:56):
needed to atone for that sin.

(00:29:59):
I mean,

(00:29:59):
we didn't actually play this part in the podcast,

(00:30:01):
but Abby told me at one point they had her...

(00:30:06):
Her counselor's daughter came in to the godparent home one day and she was singing

(00:30:12):
a song,

(00:30:12):
like it was like a little presentation.

(00:30:14):
And she sung this song called, Heal the Wound but Leave the Scar.

(00:30:21):
And Abby interpreted that as,

(00:30:24):
she has wounded her body,

(00:30:27):
she has sinned,

(00:30:29):
she has violated her body by having sex and she needs to be left with a scar.

(00:30:35):
And that scar is adoption.

(00:30:37):
That scar is her not being allowed to keep her son.

(00:30:42):
And so I think the ideological attitudes within the maternity home helped shape a

(00:30:48):
role in whether or not they were interested in trying to connect these girls and

(00:30:52):
young women with resources.

(00:30:55):
Yeah,

(00:30:55):
the attitudes that you point to,

(00:30:57):
the idea of these girls is just like vessels for someone else's child.

(00:31:02):
I think it's easy to dismiss this as like a weird religious ideology or an outlier.

(00:31:09):
But to me,

(00:31:09):
I see so many parallels between how these girls and women are treated and how we

(00:31:15):
think of women,

(00:31:16):
how we think of mothers,

(00:31:17):
how we think of birthing people more broadly.

(00:31:20):
What connections do you see?

(00:31:21):
Yeah, I see, I think single motherhood

(00:31:28):
is still very stigmatized throughout the United States.

(00:31:34):
Whether or not you're in a religious community, it's become more socially acceptable.

(00:31:40):
I had a single mom.

(00:31:42):
My parents divorced when I was young.

(00:31:44):
I love single mothers.

(00:31:48):
But I think that in many communities across the United States,

(00:31:52):
there is still women who have children who are not married, carry that scarlet letter still.

(00:32:01):
And I think that throughout,

(00:32:04):
over the course of my reporting,

(00:32:07):
I realized that the same language of redemption is used throughout the adoption

(00:32:12):
industry,

(00:32:13):
as well as,

(00:32:16):
in faith-based maternity homes.

(00:32:19):
I actually,

(00:32:20):
in the podcast,

(00:32:21):
we played a clip from one of the VPs at Heartbeat International,

(00:32:26):
and she says,

(00:32:27):
you know,

(00:32:27):
adoption is the greatest redemptive choice ever.

(00:32:31):
And I don't understand why somebody who engaged in consensual sex and became

(00:32:38):
pregnant would need to find redemption.

(00:32:40):
And that's, again, related to an ideological attitude.

(00:32:44):
That's a religious belief.

(00:32:46):
And I think that as I've dug into research on adoption more broadly,

(00:32:53):
up to 80% of infant adoptions in the United States are done through religiously

(00:33:00):
affiliated institutions.

(00:33:02):
I don't think a lot of people realize that.

(00:33:05):
And so,

(00:33:06):
you know,

(00:33:07):
you have these have pregnant women maybe considering this and they connect with

(00:33:12):
these adoption agencies and they get told kind of the same language.

(00:33:19):
I spoke with one woman in the series,

(00:33:21):
Katie Burns,

(00:33:24):
and she actually she's very interesting because she actually used to sit on the

(00:33:28):
board of a crisis pregnancy center.

(00:33:31):
And she wound up leaving the pro-life movement and leaving her work at the Crisis

(00:33:36):
Pregnancy Center because Katie had gotten pregnant at 19 and felt pressured to

(00:33:40):
place her daughter for adoption.

(00:33:42):
And she said, I wanted to help people.

(00:33:46):
And when she was on the board of this Crisis Pregnancy Center,

(00:33:49):
they really just wanted to push adoption because of this belief that single

(00:33:55):
scandalous women

(00:33:57):
having babies and needing government support, that's bad.

(00:34:02):
Let's make sure these babies go to the quote unquote, right kinds of homes.

(00:34:07):
And so I do see this cultural belief, unfortunately, play out throughout the industry.

(00:34:14):
Well,

(00:34:14):
and in terms of this redemption narrative,

(00:34:17):
it's redemption through an act of,

(00:34:18):
like,

(00:34:19):
really immense pain and trauma.

(00:34:22):
And that's just completely, like, swept under the rug.

(00:34:25):
And I really appreciate how your podcast centers the suffering of these women.

(00:34:30):
And not just these women, but their parents sometimes and their partners.

(00:34:34):
And it's a terrible trauma.

(00:34:37):
Yeah, I mean...

(00:34:41):
According to the sociologist Gretchen Cision,

(00:34:45):
who I did interview for the podcast,

(00:34:47):
you know,

(00:34:48):
birth mothers,

(00:34:49):
whether or not they went through a maternity home,

(00:34:53):
often report deep feelings of grief and pain for their entire lives.

(00:35:00):
You know,

(00:35:02):
And a lot of the birth mothers I've spoken to,

(00:35:05):
they have also shared with me that even someone like,

(00:35:09):
let's say,

(00:35:09):
Sarah P,

(00:35:10):
who actively wanted to choose adoption,

(00:35:12):
you know,

(00:35:13):
she told me,

(00:35:14):
you know,

(00:35:15):
it's still hard on her,

(00:35:17):
even though that was the choice she wanted and the choice she made,

(00:35:20):
because she just dated this baby for nine months and

(00:35:25):
You know, she felt him kick.

(00:35:26):
She felt him move.

(00:35:27):
She gave birth to him.

(00:35:29):
You know, he is a part of her.

(00:35:32):
And she does have a very good relationship with his parents, the people who adopted him.

(00:35:37):
And she's still in contact with him.

(00:35:39):
But it's still painful because it's her son that she placed for adoption.

(00:35:44):
And so I don't think,

(00:35:45):
you know,

(00:35:46):
I think oftentimes in the movies and on TV,

(00:35:49):
we see these brief portraits of birth mothers,

(00:35:53):
who place their children with smiling couples and then they're just guided off

(00:35:57):
screen and we never hear from them again.

(00:35:59):
And from what my reporting and research has found is birth mothers usually

(00:36:04):
experience intense and ongoing grief and trauma related to adoption.

(00:36:11):
And so,

(00:36:11):
yeah,

(00:36:12):
I mean,

(00:36:12):
those things are not talked about or promoted by adoption agencies because if they

(00:36:19):
had that kind of informed counseling related to this,

(00:36:22):
I'm not sure how many people would want to actually make that choice.

(00:36:27):
Yeah.

(00:36:27):
So I wonder if in light of all of that has,

(00:36:31):
I think some people might dismiss the maternity homes as like weird outliers of

(00:36:36):
like,

(00:36:36):
well,

(00:36:36):
that happens to some women who are in extremist sex,

(00:36:39):
but mainstream adoption is probably fine.

(00:36:42):
I wonder how you feel about that idea.

(00:36:45):
And if this podcast has shifted your perspective on adoption more broadly.

(00:36:51):
Yes, absolutely.

(00:36:52):
I mean,

(00:36:53):
This has radically reshaped my views on adoption.

(00:36:59):
Research shows, I actually in November did a piece with NPR.

(00:37:03):
I traveled to a conference of birth mothers in Atlanta and I talked to dozens of

(00:37:10):
birth mothers there.

(00:37:13):
And most of them, 90% of them didn't go through maternity homes.

(00:37:20):
I spoke with one woman who is just kind of starting out on this journey right now.

(00:37:26):
And she is 31 and she got pregnant by her boyfriend.

(00:37:33):
And when she found out they broke up,

(00:37:36):
she was kind of struggling in all of the classic millennial ways.

(00:37:40):
But she lived in Seattle.

(00:37:41):
The rent was really high.

(00:37:42):
She didn't know how she was going to make it work.

(00:37:44):
She was having to

(00:37:46):
move out of the house that she was living with her boyfriend and find a roommate.

(00:37:49):
And she's like, you know, I'm pregnant.

(00:37:51):
She didn't want to get an abortion.

(00:37:53):
She thought that maybe I can figure this out by the end of nine months.

(00:37:57):
And that didn't happen.

(00:37:58):
And she connected with an adoption agency and in the hospital after her son was

(00:38:03):
born,

(00:38:04):
she wanted to change her mind,

(00:38:07):
but she didn't have enough money for a car seat.

(00:38:10):
And she said, because she didn't have enough money for a car seat,

(00:38:13):
She didn't know how she would be able to take him home.

(00:38:15):
And so she felt that she had no choice but to just continue with the adoption.

(00:38:18):
And that's just, I mean, devastating, obviously.

(00:38:23):
And yeah, I think that the adoption industry

(00:38:30):
they need vulnerable pregnant women and pregnant people to say,

(00:38:36):
I want to separate from my child.

(00:38:38):
And if you look at available research from peer-reviewed studies,

(00:38:44):
the number one reason why women pursue adoption is because they lack financial

(00:38:49):
resources and support.

(00:38:52):
And so if you were to

(00:38:54):
offer people access to safe and stable housing, access to SNAP benefits, access to healthcare.

(00:39:03):
If you were to create the conditions that would allow somebody to raise a child,

(00:39:08):
99% of people don't want to continue without adoption.

(00:39:13):
And so really the adoption industry,

(00:39:15):
I mean,

(00:39:16):
it functions by making sure vulnerable pregnant women separate from their children.

(00:39:23):
Yeah, it's just it's all so scary and sad.

(00:39:27):
So I'm curious.

(00:39:28):
I think the temptation when you listen to something like this is to think,

(00:39:32):
OK,

(00:39:32):
well,

(00:39:32):
now that this has come to light,

(00:39:34):
everything's going to change and people are going to be shamed into better behavior

(00:39:38):
at these sorts of places.

(00:39:40):
Has anything changed since the airing of the podcast?

(00:39:43):
What's going on with these sorts of maternity homes now?

(00:39:45):
Yeah.

(00:39:47):
Yeah,

(00:39:47):
I mean,

(00:39:47):
I think,

(00:39:49):
unfortunately,

(00:39:50):
the Liberty Godparent Home,

(00:39:52):
it's still open,

(00:39:53):
it's still operating,

(00:39:55):
as well as its,

(00:39:56):
you know,

(00:39:57):
adoption agency,

(00:39:58):
Family Life Services.

(00:40:01):
I see some momentum from adoptees,

(00:40:07):
so adult people who were adopted,

(00:40:10):
that are leading the conversation now to push to provide people with

(00:40:17):
more resources.

(00:40:17):
And I see really incredible organizations.

(00:40:20):
There's one called Reproductive Justice in Adoption that are also pushing to, you know, help.

(00:40:28):
They helped,

(00:40:28):
I think,

(00:40:29):
Planned Parenthood rewrite their section on their website regarding adoption.

(00:40:32):
And I'm hopeful that birth mothers are going to continue to speak up.

(00:40:38):
You know, for a long time, women didn't have the

(00:40:44):
ability or the platform to be able to speak about these issues.

(00:40:47):
Social media didn't exist like when we think about the baby scoop era back in the 50s and 60s.

(00:40:54):
But now this new generation is taking to TikTok to share these stories,

(00:40:59):
both birth parents as well as adopted people.

(00:41:02):
And so I think that there is starting to be some kind of cultural shift around the

(00:41:08):
ways we think about adoption.

(00:41:11):
But I think that there's a long way to still go.

(00:41:13):
If you look at a group like,

(00:41:17):
let's say,

(00:41:17):
the Congressional Coalition and Adoption Institute,

(00:41:20):
which is

(00:41:21):
a bipartisan group made up of lawmakers who push for adoption friendly legislation.

(00:41:27):
Most of those lawmakers are, you know, adoptive parents themselves.

(00:41:32):
And so you think about the power differentials,

(00:41:34):
like,

(00:41:35):
you know,

(00:41:35):
if you're a vulnerable pregnant woman and you place your child for adoption,

(00:41:39):
you might be doing that out of poverty.

(00:41:43):
You don't have the same kind of power as a senator.

(00:41:47):
And so I think we all need to be thinking critically.

(00:41:50):
And I think we as a society need to,

(00:41:54):
you know,

(00:41:55):
push for family preservation policies and family preservation policies are the same

(00:42:00):
kinds of policies that could help anyone.

(00:42:03):
You know,

(00:42:03):
I'm talking about access to affordable housing,

(00:42:07):
talking about access to healthy food,

(00:42:09):
to clean drinking water,

(00:42:10):
to health insurance,

(00:42:12):
to childcare.

(00:42:14):
all of those things can mean the difference between somebody pursuing adoption and not.

(00:42:18):
And all of those things could help all of us.

(00:42:22):
And so I think continuing to push for policies that support women and families and

(00:42:29):
vulnerable people is the way that we're going to see real change.

(00:42:35):
And that's a long road, obviously.

(00:42:37):
Yeah, well, and I think, so let's see if I can articulate this well or not.

(00:42:43):
The thing that I kept thinking about while I was listening to your podcast is that

(00:42:47):
we pretend that we have an egalitarian world and that women and men are equal and

(00:42:52):
all of this.

(00:42:52):
And one of the ways that we're able to do this is that we create these social

(00:42:57):
structures that control women while the law still says they're equal.

(00:43:03):
So we can see this in things like household labor inequality and how this creates

(00:43:07):
So much work for women to do that just like suppresses their dreams and makes it

(00:43:11):
very difficult for them to lobby for political change because the workload is just

(00:43:15):
too unbearable.

(00:43:16):
And we also see this with this sort of adoption,

(00:43:20):
pregnancy,

(00:43:21):
single mother narrative where we just shame and stigmatize and treat these women as

(00:43:25):
bad.

(00:43:27):
And I just, I think that's really important to highlight.

(00:43:30):
And I'm just,

(00:43:31):
I'm so glad that you're doing that and showing that like we can,

(00:43:34):
things can seem like they're okay and things can seem like they're equal.

(00:43:38):
But underneath all of this,

(00:43:39):
look at all of these ways that we're controlling women and shutting them off from

(00:43:43):
their dreams and really like harming and traumatizing them.

(00:43:45):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:43:48):
I mean, I think if you look at the current administration process,

(00:43:52):
they have cut Medicaid, which pays for 40% of births in the United States.

(00:44:01):
They have cut childhood programs, they have cut food assistance, they have cut housing programs.

(00:44:08):
And I think they very clearly have articulated an agenda that prioritizes white

(00:44:15):
male power over everyone else.

(00:44:18):
and the subjugation of women.

(00:44:20):
And that can be through,

(00:44:22):
yeah,

(00:44:23):
cutting,

(00:44:23):
you know,

(00:44:24):
family preservation programs,

(00:44:25):
that can be through restricting abortion access,

(00:44:28):
that can be prosecuting women for having miscarriages.

(00:44:33):
And,

(00:44:33):
you know,

(00:44:33):
I think their new,

(00:44:35):
the new Heritage Foundation agenda,

(00:44:37):
the,

(00:44:37):
you know,

(00:44:37):
vision for the family,

(00:44:38):
I think they're calling it,

(00:44:40):
you know,

(00:44:40):
says that like,

(00:44:41):
you know,

(00:44:42):
women need to have less education because when they do,

(00:44:44):
they have children more often and earlier.

(00:44:48):
And so I think that there is a cohort in the United States that very actively wants

(00:44:57):
to see us return,

(00:44:58):
you know,

(00:44:59):
to the 1950s.

(00:45:01):
And they are pushing that agenda right now.

(00:45:04):
And I think we need to be aware of it.

(00:45:06):
We need to call it for what it is and continue to fight and push

(00:45:10):
for policies that you know don't just benefit women or birthing people but benefit

(00:45:17):
families and and really benefit all of us as you know people who live in a society

(00:45:21):
yeah yeah i i really appreciate you talking about that and also just talking more

(00:45:27):
broadly about the fact that like women aren't a separate kind of human like

(00:45:31):
policies that the benefit women benefit us all so yeah um okay so i would like to

(00:45:38):
hear briefly about

(00:45:40):
your prior two podcasts, Cover Up and Biohacked, in case people want to listen to those.

(00:45:46):
And also, if you have any other projects in the works that people might want to hear about.

(00:45:51):
Yeah,

(00:45:51):
so Cover Up the Pill Plot is a show I put out with Sony's Global Podcast Division

(00:45:58):
in June of 2023.

(00:46:01):
So basically, I went from that to working straight with Abby on Liberty Lost.

(00:46:06):
But Cover Up is, it's just, I...

(00:46:09):
love this story.

(00:46:10):
Honestly, it's, it's helpful.

(00:46:12):
It's incredible.

(00:46:13):
It's,

(00:46:14):
uh,

(00:46:14):
basically focuses on a group of radical feminists from the Bay area who were active

(00:46:21):
in the early nineties.

(00:46:22):
And they are like, you know, kind of punk riot girls.

(00:46:26):
And they team up with,

(00:46:28):
um,

(00:46:29):
this fancy pants,

(00:46:30):
New York city activist,

(00:46:31):
who was actually one of the founders of NARL pro-choice America.

(00:46:36):
and they want to bring the abortion pill to America.

(00:46:40):
The abortion pill was released in Europe in the 1980s and in the early 90s.

(00:46:44):
They want it here because they realize very smartly,

(00:46:48):
and I think we're seeing this now,

(00:46:50):
that if you could end a pregnancy with a pill,

(00:46:55):
any doctor theoretically could prescribe it and it would make abortion much harder

(00:47:00):
to regulate.

(00:47:01):
And so these activists devise a plan where they're going to find a pregnant woman,

(00:47:06):
fly her to London where the pill is legal,

(00:47:10):
the abortion pill at that time,

(00:47:12):
obtain the pill,

(00:47:13):
fly back to the United States and intentionally tip off customs that they're

(00:47:18):
entering the country with this illegal medication.

(00:47:21):
They want to do that to trigger an arrest and to basically challenge this ban

(00:47:27):
through the US court system.

(00:47:29):
And that's exactly what they do.

(00:47:31):
And that podcast kind of documents that journey with the original participants.

(00:47:37):
And then they take it all the way up to the Supreme Court.

(00:47:41):
Unfortunately,

(00:47:41):
they do lose in the court and it takes several more years for the abortion pill to

(00:47:46):
become legalized.

(00:47:48):
But while that is all happening, there's rapid anti-abortion terrorism happening at clinics.

(00:47:56):
Clinic bombings, people are being shot.

(00:47:59):
There were acid attacks.

(00:48:01):
And that also connects to why these activists so desperately wanted the pill to be

(00:48:08):
legalized,

(00:48:09):
because if you could remove abortion from solely abortion clinics,

(00:48:12):
it would provide much broader protection for everyone.

(00:48:16):
And so as part of my reporting,

(00:48:18):
I also interviewed a convicted domestic terrorist who engaged in some of these

(00:48:24):
activities and kind of document the struggle there to pass the FACE Act,

(00:48:30):
which protects clinics from anti-abortion violence and kind of document the journey

(00:48:37):
from the early 90s until,

(00:48:40):
2000,

(00:48:40):
the year 2000,

(00:48:42):
when the abortion pill finally gets legalization,

(00:48:45):
September 2000,

(00:48:47):
following month,

(00:48:48):
George W.

(00:48:49):
Bush and Al Gore have a presidential debate and the election happens and we all

(00:48:53):
know the rest is history.

(00:48:55):
So it really came in just under the wire.

(00:48:58):
And so that's what Cover Up the Pill Plot is about.

(00:49:00):
It's seven episodes and

(00:49:02):
It's an inspiring story, honestly, of activism.

(00:49:06):
Biohacked Family Secrets is, yeah, about our unregulated fertility industry.

(00:49:13):
I basically came to that story after a friend of mine from college,

(00:49:19):
I hadn't seen her in about 10 years.

(00:49:22):
And I was catching up with her, what's new, what's going on?

(00:49:25):
And she said, well, I just did a DNA test and found out my dad is not my biological father.

(00:49:30):
And I was conceived with a sperm donor and I probably have 150 siblings.

(00:49:34):
And I was like, wow, can I record you?

(00:49:37):
Because I'm a nosy journalist.

(00:49:39):
And so I started kind of working with her just on her personal story.

(00:49:44):
But as I kind of started asking questions, I'm like, wait, how is this possible?

(00:49:48):
How is that possible?

(00:49:50):
I realized that there are not a lot of...

(00:49:54):
you know, safety regulations basically in place in the fertility industry.

(00:49:57):
You know, fertility medicine is incredible.

(00:50:00):
You know, I've had my eggs frozen.

(00:50:02):
I know people who have conceived children via IVF.

(00:50:06):
But when it comes to questions of donations,

(00:50:10):
there are a lot of what I see as unethical practices

(00:50:14):
in the industry related to sperm donation, but also with egg donation as well.

(00:50:19):
And so it really is,

(00:50:21):
it's an anthology and each episode covers kind of a different topic related to the

(00:50:25):
industry,

(00:50:26):
but really dives deeply into questions of shame as well as identity,

(00:50:32):
genetics and community.

(00:50:35):
So that's what Biohacked is about.

(00:50:38):
It sounds awesome.

(00:50:39):
And I'm sure people will love it.

(00:50:41):
What are you working on now?

(00:50:44):
Yeah, so I'm in the process of just starting to develop some new stories.

(00:50:51):
I, you know, basically we wrapped Liberty Lost in July over the summer of 25.

(00:51:00):
And unfortunately Wondery,

(00:51:01):
the company that produced the show,

(00:51:04):
you know,

(00:51:05):
I was on staff at that time and they announced that they were laying off the entire

(00:51:08):
editorial staff.

(00:51:10):
So despite the massive success of the show,

(00:51:14):
you know,

(00:51:16):
they just,

(00:51:16):
you know,

(00:51:17):
Amazon decided they did not want to have in-house journalists anymore.

(00:51:21):
So yeah,

(00:51:23):
I took some time off,

(00:51:25):
especially after the sprint that I had had between going straight from cover up to

(00:51:29):
Liberty Lost.

(00:51:30):
And it was kind of three years of working nonstop.

(00:51:34):
And so I took some time off at the end of this year.

(00:51:37):
And now, you know, it's February.

(00:51:38):
I'm just kind of restarting, looking at some new stories.

(00:51:43):
One story that I'm

(00:51:45):
beginning to research for is what I would have done as a season two of Liberty Lost

(00:51:51):
had,

(00:51:51):
you know,

(00:51:52):
the company continued.

(00:51:53):
And it's looking at a girls residential facility that's currently still

(00:51:58):
operational,

(00:51:59):
a Christian residential facility for girls and young women who have behavioral

(00:52:04):
issues.

(00:52:04):
So eating disorders, anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation.

(00:52:11):
Unfortunately,

(00:52:12):
this facility has no doctors on staff and the program will basically help you pray

(00:52:18):
away your eating disorder or your depression.

(00:52:21):
And shocker, it doesn't work.

(00:52:24):
And a lot of the women that I've now connected with,

(00:52:28):
I've connected with about 10 women who have gone to these facilities.

(00:52:33):
They have been in California,

(00:52:34):
they've been in Missouri,

(00:52:37):
Tennessee,

(00:52:38):
and they're opening a new location in Nashville.

(00:52:41):
And I basically am starting to investigate that facility.

(00:52:45):
I feel like this has echoes for our bigger society about,

(00:52:49):
you know,

(00:52:50):
the ways women's health is not taken seriously.

(00:52:52):
And also these ideas that women's,

(00:52:54):
you know,

(00:52:55):
problems are not important,

(00:52:56):
they should,

(00:52:57):
you know,

(00:52:57):
be seen and not heard kind of thing.

(00:52:58):
And so that's,

(00:53:00):
I'm just kind of getting started digging in from a reporting perspective,

(00:53:05):
as well as starting to look separately on a different story about,

(00:53:10):
the concept of parental alienation in the family court system.

(00:53:15):
And,

(00:53:15):
you know,

(00:53:15):
this has been,

(00:53:16):
this was a tactic that was popularized by Woody Allen after he was accused of

(00:53:22):
molesting his children.

(00:53:25):
He hired a psychiatrist to say that, you know, Mia Farrow, his wife had just alienated him.

(00:53:31):
And then that's why the children were saying that.

(00:53:33):
And unfortunately this parental alienation theory has gained popularity in the years since.

(00:53:38):
in the family court system.

(00:53:40):
And it is used by people,

(00:53:43):
you know,

(00:53:44):
when people are getting a divorce,

(00:53:46):
an abusive partner will say,

(00:53:48):
no,

(00:53:49):
I'm being alienated and I need access to the children and to my ex spouse.

(00:53:55):
And I've found that they are,

(00:53:58):
you know,

(00:53:59):
some really scary things happening there as it relates to power dynamics in the

(00:54:04):
court system.

(00:54:04):
And so that's a story that I'm just also in the early stages of pursuing.

(00:54:08):
So, yeah.

(00:54:09):
I really hope you do more about parental alienation because I don't personally

(00:54:15):
write a lot about parental alienation,

(00:54:17):
but it connects a lot to my work because parental alienation,

(00:54:22):
family courts,

(00:54:23):
child custody is like the main thing keeping women in abusive relationships.

(00:54:29):
You know, this idea of children as property who have to be split 50-50.

(00:54:33):
I just spoke with a woman last week who...

(00:54:36):
Left her abuser and,

(00:54:38):
you know,

(00:54:38):
she thought that she was getting free and she got an initial restraining order and

(00:54:42):
it seemed like everything was going well.

(00:54:44):
And ultimately the courts gave him 50,

(00:54:47):
50 custody and he murdered their child about three weeks ago.

(00:54:50):
Oh my God.

(00:54:52):
And, and this is happening like everywhere.

(00:54:54):
And,

(00:54:55):
and,

(00:54:55):
you know,

(00:54:55):
we,

(00:54:55):
we hear about the murders,

(00:54:56):
but what we don't hear about are like the molestations,

(00:54:59):
the emotional abuse and,

(00:55:01):
the just years and years and years of trauma inflicted on these children,

(00:55:04):
because we just think that,

(00:55:05):
you know,

(00:55:06):
abusive men should have access and that if you accuse a man of abuse,

(00:55:09):
you must just be an alienator.

(00:55:13):
Exactly.

(00:55:14):
Yeah.

(00:55:14):
So I've connected with an activist down in Georgia and she's actually got a bill

(00:55:20):
introduced in the state house there that would hopefully curtail some of this

(00:55:26):
parental alienation to be used in court,

(00:55:28):
as well as

(00:55:30):
you know,

(00:55:30):
there are now reunification camps where basically courts ordering children to

(00:55:36):
reunify with a parent.

(00:55:40):
And so that happened to her and she's got this legislation.

(00:55:44):
And I know that now in eight states, they've banned these reunification camps.

(00:55:49):
But, you know, I feel like this is connected to

(00:55:52):
the bigger issues that we see.

(00:55:54):
And I think, you know, the Trump administration, again, is pushing for no-fault divorce.

(00:55:58):
I think this ties in there as well.

(00:56:00):
And so,

(00:56:01):
yeah,

(00:56:01):
I'm kind of in the early stages of interviewing people and starting to build out,

(00:56:09):
yeah,

(00:56:09):
what a story would be.

(00:56:10):
And so,

(00:56:11):
you know,

(00:56:12):
for your listeners,

(00:56:13):
if anybody wants to keep up with my work,

(00:56:15):
you know,

(00:56:15):
you can check out my website,

(00:56:17):
which is tjrafael.com,

(00:56:20):
or I'm on Instagram,

(00:56:21):
At TJ Rafts.

(00:56:23):
I have a blue sky, but I don't really use it.

(00:56:24):
I feel like I should probably start more.

(00:56:27):
But I'm there and I'm on TikTok too.

(00:56:30):
And so,

(00:56:31):
you know,

(00:56:31):
people can follow me,

(00:56:32):
you know,

(00:56:33):
a lot of times my reporting will take,

(00:56:36):
you know,

(00:56:36):
the shortest runway I usually do is a year.

(00:56:39):
So,

(00:56:40):
it could be a while for me to actually get something out,

(00:56:42):
but that's because I really take the time to do the deep research and the reporting

(00:56:46):
around it.

(00:56:47):
So you can kind of keep up with me online.

(00:56:50):
And when something drops, I am that person that will blast it everywhere constantly.

(00:56:54):
So yeah.

(00:56:55):
Yeah, please do.

(00:56:57):
So don't, after we're done recording, I have a few things to talk with you about this.

(00:57:02):
But listeners, I will put all of TJ's information in the show notes.

(00:57:07):
And

(00:57:07):
Definitely,

(00:57:08):
if you have stories relevant to this,

(00:57:10):
like,

(00:57:10):
please reach out to her because this is such a huge,

(00:57:13):
important topic to cover all of these topics,

(00:57:15):
really.

(00:57:16):
TJ,

(00:57:17):
you're doing such amazing work and you are bringing to light the terrible things

(00:57:22):
that happen in darkness.

(00:57:23):
So thank you for doing that.

(00:57:26):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

(00:57:27):
This was so great.

(00:57:28):
And yeah,

(00:57:29):
if any listener has a tip about anything,

(00:57:31):
my inbox is always open and I'm always interested.

(00:57:34):
So yeah.

(00:57:34):
Awesome.

(00:57:35):
Wonderful.

(00:57:36):
Well, thank you so much.

(00:57:37):
And listeners, I will be back with you next week.