(00:00:01):
I have had two kids in family court.

(00:00:03):
First,

(00:00:04):
dad was charged with domestic violence,

(00:00:06):
was given 50-50 joint time starting out,

(00:00:09):
have had to co-parent with him.

(00:00:10):
He's been aggressive at court-ordered exchanges.

(00:00:13):
I've been co-parenting since child was one and child is now 15.

(00:00:17):
Child started reporting abuse emotionally and physically by dad and started

(00:00:21):
refusing visitation due to dad's angry outbursts.

(00:00:24):
Police and family courts all sided with dad and stated dad could discipline however

(00:00:28):
means necessary.

(00:00:30):
I was reprimanded by Family Court and lost custody.

(00:00:33):
My child still reports abuse by Dad and favors me.

(00:00:37):
Second Child Dad has reported in writing to being a pedophile and having a problem

(00:00:42):
with underage images.

(00:00:43):
Family Court gave Dad 50-50 custody of the child at 4 months old.

(00:00:48):
Child started reporting sexual assault by Dad at 4 years old.

(00:00:51):
I took Child to be investigated and reported a lot,

(00:00:54):
but then Family Court twisted it to look like I coached the child.

(00:00:58):
Hi, I'm Zawn Villines and this is the Liberating Motherhood Podcast.

(00:01:01):
Today,

(00:01:02):
as you might expect from that vignette,

(00:01:04):
we are going to be talking about how the legal system affects women,

(00:01:23):
How women can affect the legal system and what we can do to fix the myriad things

(00:01:27):
that go wrong within our system.

(00:01:30):
Before we get started, a few quick administrative reminders.

(00:01:33):
First,

(00:01:34):
you can find any of the books that I might mention on the show as well as a ton of

(00:01:38):
reading lists and recommendations on the Liberating Motherhood bookshop page at

(00:01:42):
bookshop.org slash shop slash liberating motherhood.

(00:01:46):
The Liberating Motherhood website has a cornucopia of information about my work and

(00:01:50):
about this podcast,

(00:01:52):
including details on how to appear on the podcast,

(00:01:54):
how to submit a story for the podcast,

(00:01:57):
how to submit an advice question,

(00:01:58):
and how to contact me.

(00:02:00):
Check it out at liberatingmotherhood.org.

(00:02:03):
And finally, just a reminder that this podcast is free, but it is not free to make.

(00:02:08):
My work exists solely because of the commitment and generosity of paid subscribers.

(00:02:12):
People who pay to support this work get a bonus podcast every month,

(00:02:25):
If you would like to help support the podcast in non-financial ways, you have lots of options.

(00:02:30):
One thing that you need to understand is that social media algorithms across the

(00:02:35):
board are suppressing feminist and leftist content.

(00:02:38):
They think that people don't want to see it.

(00:02:40):
They Think That People Only Want Outrage Driven Writing And Audio You Can Tell Them

(00:02:45):
Otherwise By Giving The Algorithm What It Wants And What It Wants Is Engagement So

(00:02:50):
Sharing Comments Likes All Of This Really Do Help Benefit The Podcast And The Other

(00:02:55):
Thing That Is Really Beneficial Is Leaving A Positive Review On Your Favorite

(00:02:59):
Podcast Platform I Know I Say This At The Beginning Of Every Podcast I Know That

(00:03:04):
You probably fast forward through it.

(00:03:06):
I know you're probably tired of hearing it,

(00:03:08):
but I'm going to keep repeating it because I want to keep making this podcast.

(00:03:11):
And also because having a higher profile for the podcast helps me get amazing

(00:03:18):
guests like the guests we have today.

(00:03:20):
So today I'm going to be talking with Inimai Chediar.

(00:03:24):
She is president of A Better Balance.

(00:03:27):
She leads the organization's pioneering efforts to advance fair and supportive work

(00:03:31):
family policies like paid family and medical leave.

(00:03:34):
Paid sick time and fair and flexible scheduling and to combat discrimination

(00:03:38):
against pregnant people and family caregivers in the workplace.

(00:03:42):
She is a leading civil rights attorney and justice advocate with more than two

(00:03:45):
decades of experience leveraging the law to advance transformative reforms.

(00:03:50):
With deep experience in litigation, advocacy, coalition building, and communication,

(00:03:56):
Her approach to serving as a Better Balance as president is framed around the

(00:03:59):
intersectionality between social justice,

(00:04:02):
racial justice,

(00:04:03):
and workplace policies that advance meaningful change for women and families.

(00:04:07):
Her personal experiences also drive her passion for a Better Balance's mission to

(00:04:11):
build a future where all workers can care for themselves and their loved ones

(00:04:15):
without risking their economic security.

(00:04:18):
She was appointed as president of a Better Balance in 2024.

(00:04:21):
Previously,

(00:04:23):
She served as Deputy Executive Director of the Justice Action Network,

(00:04:27):
the nation's largest bipartisan criminal justice reform organization.

(00:04:31):
Her leadership and coalition building helped secure the passage of the First Step

(00:04:35):
Act,

(00:04:36):
which released over 30,000 people from prison,

(00:04:39):
the Fair Chance Act,

(00:04:40):
and other key federal legislation.

(00:04:43):
She also served as the Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for

(00:04:46):
Justice,

(00:04:47):
where she established the center as a national leader in ending mass incarceration,

(00:04:52):
authored groundbreaking reports on crime and incarceration,

(00:04:56):
positioned criminal justice as an issue central to the 2016 and 2020 presidential

(00:05:01):
elections and the national narrative,

(00:05:03):
and worked to transform law enforcement.

(00:05:06):
Through her leadership,

(00:05:07):
mass incarceration became recognized as more than an issue of criminal justice

(00:05:11):
reform and was successfully framed around the deep and generational impact it has

(00:05:16):
on families.

(00:05:17):
She also served as counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union,

(00:05:21):
Legal Fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity and Litigation Associate at

(00:05:26):
DeBose and Plimpton LLP.

(00:05:28):
She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Chicago Law

(00:05:32):
School,

(00:05:33):
is widely published in numerous journals,

(00:05:35):
reports,

(00:05:35):
and books,

(00:05:36):
and is quoted extensively across top-tier national media outlets.

(00:05:40):
I'm so excited to have you here.

(00:05:42):
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

(00:05:45):
Thank you so much for having me.

(00:05:46):
I am very excited to talk to you today.

(00:05:50):
I'm really excited to talk to you and I'll tell you kind of the main reason why is

(00:05:54):
that you have straddled two very,

(00:05:58):
to my mind,

(00:05:59):
different areas of law.

(00:06:02):
You know,

(00:06:02):
you're working on family leave sorts of issues now,

(00:06:05):
but you've previously worked on a lot of criminal justice reform.

(00:06:08):
And I feel like it's pretty uncommon to talk to a lawyer who has so much experience in both.

(00:06:13):
So I think it's awesome.

(00:06:15):
And I thought we might start by talking about what you do,

(00:06:20):
what you're currently working on,

(00:06:21):
and how you landed here.

(00:06:24):
Yes, happy to.

(00:06:25):
So A Better Balance is a national organization that works on making the workplace

(00:06:34):
more fair for women and for individuals generally.

(00:06:38):
And so what we do, we focus on...

(00:06:44):
Broadly, I would say legal change that takes many different forms.

(00:06:48):
So we have for the last two decades been fighting in the states to pass laws that,

(00:06:57):
so one,

(00:06:59):
allow for paid sick time and two,

(00:07:02):
allow for paid family medical leave.

(00:07:03):
So paid family medical leave is longer term medical leave.

(00:07:08):
So if you need to be out for parental leave or you yourself have a

(00:07:14):
some kind of medical condition or your child or one of your loved ones does that a

(00:07:19):
law like that would protect you both from having ensuring that you have job

(00:07:27):
security and also continue making sure that you are continue to be paid we also

(00:07:32):
have advanced laws at the state level and most recently a few years ago at the

(00:07:38):
federal level

(00:07:39):
called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

(00:07:41):
So that ensures that pregnant workers have access to accommodations and time out of

(00:07:50):
work to take care of pregnancy-related needs.

(00:07:55):
And we do, in addition to passing state laws and federal laws, we also

(00:08:02):
run a free legal helpline.

(00:08:04):
So this is where we provide advice to all workers,

(00:08:10):
mostly women who are calling in about specific violations from their employers,

(00:08:16):
and then we help them directly by providing legal advice.

(00:08:21):
We also then,

(00:08:23):
when we recognize certain patterns of violations that are happening over and over

(00:08:28):
again,

(00:08:29):
we then bring

(00:08:31):
Broader Cases in Court and Class Action Cases.

(00:08:35):
So that's a little bit about what I do now in terms of how I got here.

(00:08:43):
I went to law school because I wanted to help people.

(00:08:47):
I know that probably sounds a bit naive and perhaps common, but that is what my desire was.

(00:08:55):
I had actually initially thought about potentially becoming a therapist.

(00:08:59):
And so I was trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.

(00:09:03):
And I ultimately decided that I thought that through being a lawyer,

(00:09:07):
I could bring about systemic social change.

(00:09:11):
in a way that I couldn't if I was helping individuals one by one.

(00:09:15):
So I went to law school with this passion.

(00:09:17):
I knew that I wanted to do something particularly to help people of color or to help women.

(00:09:25):
I didn't really have it exactly in my head what I wanted to do, but I knew that it was

(00:09:31):
something helping one or both of those two groups.

(00:09:34):
After law school,

(00:09:36):
I went through a roundabout way,

(00:09:40):
ended up in criminal justice reform and worked on the broader initiative to end

(00:09:47):
mass incarceration.

(00:09:49):
As you might know, we have 5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners.

(00:09:54):
So we definitely have an over-incarceration problem.

(00:09:58):
I worked on that for many years.

(00:10:00):
It was incredibly rewarding,

(00:10:02):
a really intense and issue that affects a lot of communities in the country.

(00:10:14):
During that time, I went through a long and difficult journey to become a mother.

(00:10:22):
And then when I was pregnant,

(00:10:25):
I had some complications and when,

(00:10:28):
well,

(00:10:29):
I had a debilitating pregnancy for both pregnancies.

(00:10:33):
And then when both babies were born, they both had medical issues.

(00:10:37):
So going through all of this,

(00:10:40):
I started thinking about how so many other women in my support groups did not have

(00:10:47):
the supports at work that I had.

(00:10:50):
I had access to paid leave.

(00:10:51):
I had access to sick leave.

(00:10:52):
I had access to accommodations.

(00:10:54):
Both of my pregnancies, I was only able to work from home.

(00:10:57):
I wasn't able to go into an office.

(00:11:00):
I had a ton of doctor's appointments.

(00:11:01):
My kids had a ton of doctor's appointments.

(00:11:04):
And I realized that so many other women don't have access to these same abilities

(00:11:12):
to get out of work.

(00:11:13):
And so I very deliberately was,

(00:11:17):
you know,

(00:11:17):
when I was pregnant with my first kid,

(00:11:19):
I said to myself,

(00:11:21):
when I have my baby,

(00:11:24):
I am going to go and do something different and get involved in some of the more

(00:11:31):
specific gender equity work that was happening around workplaces.

(00:11:36):
And so I was very intentionally looking to shift

(00:11:40):
into the gender and workplace realm.

(00:11:45):
So that is how I ended up at ABB.

(00:11:49):
Well, I love that you shifted.

(00:11:52):
You know,

(00:11:52):
I love that motherhood maybe didn't change your focus,

(00:11:56):
but expanded it because I think that's a lot of people's experience of motherhood.

(00:12:01):
I have a lot of questions about the work you're currently doing.

(00:12:05):
But before we get to that...

(00:12:08):
I want to talk a little bit about the legal system more broadly,

(00:12:10):
and specifically the role of lawyers within it.

(00:12:14):
The thing that I'm constantly surprised by is,

(00:12:16):
first of all,

(00:12:17):
I have an international audience,

(00:12:18):
so many of them don't really know how the American legal system works,

(00:12:22):
but also Americans don't really know how the American legal system works.

(00:12:26):
It's very popular to hate lawyers.

(00:12:29):
This seems almost reflexive and unthinking.

(00:12:33):
And it is because in our legal system,

(00:12:35):
a lawyer is typically the only person whose specific job it is to protect people's

(00:12:39):
rights.

(00:12:40):
I often say that anti-lawyer culture is anti-justice culture and that the efforts

(00:12:45):
to get people to hate all lawyers are specifically designed to get people to

(00:12:49):
distrust the legal system and to not assert their own rights.

(00:12:52):
So I'm hoping you might just, for people who are skeptical of lawyers or litigation,

(00:12:58):
Talk briefly about why both can be so important and the role they play in social change.

(00:13:06):
Yes.

(00:13:08):
So it's interesting when I tell people I'm a lawyer,

(00:13:11):
I feel like I do get a similar response where it's perhaps negative or skeptical.

(00:13:17):
And then when I tell them what I do, then they shift their thinking.

(00:13:22):
Yeah.

(00:13:23):
Most of the lawyers that I've interacted with in my career have been social justice

(00:13:29):
lawyers at all the organizations that I've worked at.

(00:13:32):
The legal system is a really amazing and very powerful vehicle for social change.

(00:13:42):
I think that we need

(00:13:47):
As the Civil Rights Movement,

(00:13:49):
even as the Criminal Justice Movement has shown,

(00:13:52):
we need all sorts of different strategies.

(00:13:54):
So you need a litigation strategy,

(00:13:56):
you need a policy strategy,

(00:13:58):
you need a organizing and grassroots strategy,

(00:14:01):
you need a communication strategy.

(00:14:05):
So I really do think,

(00:14:07):
you know,

(00:14:08):
in terms of what we do,

(00:14:09):
we are using the law to very specifically advance the rights of working women.

(00:14:17):
One way to do that is to secure new rights.

(00:14:20):
And so to be passing these bills that we write and then work to get passed.

(00:14:27):
That can be incredibly powerful because that can mean the difference of whether or

(00:14:32):
not a woman is allowed to go on light duty instead of heavy duty when she is in her

(00:14:40):
third trimester pregnancy.

(00:14:42):
And that can make a huge health difference in terms of her health and also the

(00:14:48):
health of her future baby.

(00:14:50):
And so

(00:14:53):
That's one way that we are using the power of law for good.

(00:14:57):
We also, as I mentioned, bring systemic litigation.

(00:15:01):
So right now we have a large class action against Amazon in New York on behalf of

(00:15:08):
all disabled workers in New York that focuses on

(00:15:15):
violations where Amazon has refused to provide specific accommodations to disabled

(00:15:22):
workers when they have asked for them.

(00:15:24):
We have other cases where we are representing pregnant workers that also have had

(00:15:31):
their rights violated by Amazon.

(00:15:34):
And so this is another way that we are able to use the power of the law for social justice.

(00:15:39):
But yeah, it's very interesting.

(00:15:40):
I think that when people first think of lawyers,

(00:15:42):
they think of like people who are out to just get money and people who are working

(00:15:48):
for big corporations and don't necessarily think of the social justice nonprofit

(00:15:53):
lawyers.

(00:15:55):
Yeah, absolutely.

(00:15:56):
And I mean, I my husband is a civil rights litigator, so I'm kind of

(00:16:00):
My only exposure to lawyers is in people who are in the fight with us.

(00:16:05):
And I always try to remind people that for every insurance defense lawyer you

(00:16:11):
encounter,

(00:16:12):
there's someone fighting them.

(00:16:13):
And those people are doing important work.

(00:16:16):
So I want to talk in some detail about pregnant and postpartum workers and their

(00:16:25):
And in some cases their lack of rights,

(00:16:27):
because I know that my international listeners are just appalled by how few rights

(00:16:31):
pregnant workers have in the United States.

(00:16:33):
But on the flip side,

(00:16:35):
you know,

(00:16:36):
I work with a lot of women who really believe that they have no rights at all as a

(00:16:40):
pregnant worker.

(00:16:41):
And it's so important to educate them about

(00:16:46):
One,

(00:16:46):
the rights that they do have,

(00:16:48):
and two,

(00:16:48):
the fact that those rights only exist if they enforce them.

(00:16:51):
So could you talk a little bit about what you wish pregnant workers knew?

(00:16:57):
Yes.

(00:16:57):
So I think one of the most important things to know about is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

(00:17:04):
So this was a bill passed by Congress in 2022 So that means that it applies

(00:17:10):
nationwide to everyone in the country It applies to most employers What it does is,

(00:17:23):
so there's,

(00:17:25):
I would say,

(00:17:25):
two parts to this,

(00:17:27):
if you were to boil it down

(00:17:29):
One is the right to workplace accommodations, and the second is the right to time off.

(00:17:35):
So workplace accommodations.

(00:17:36):
So this is,

(00:17:38):
for example,

(00:17:40):
if you are a cashier at a gas station that is normally required to stand at the

(00:17:48):
cash register,

(00:17:50):
But you are in your third trimester and it would be harmful to your pregnancy to be

(00:17:55):
standing for that long.

(00:17:57):
You can request an accommodation to sit on a stool.

(00:18:02):
You can request an accommodation for water breaks,

(00:18:06):
for being put on light duty,

(00:18:09):
for working from home.

(00:18:11):
There are all sorts of different types of accommodations, you know, mostly physical.

(00:18:18):
that the law allows for.

(00:18:19):
And the standard there is that it must cause the employer undue hardship.

(00:18:26):
So it's really hard to prove undue hardship.

(00:18:28):
So many of these accommodations,

(00:18:30):
as long as you're still able to get the,

(00:18:33):
as long as you're able to still contribute and get work done,

(00:18:36):
the employer really does need to provide the accommodation.

(00:18:41):
And the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act actually applies

(00:18:45):
even more broadly beyond pregnancy.

(00:18:48):
So not only does it apply to when a woman is pregnant,

(00:18:51):
but it also applies to if you're seeking fertility treatments,

(00:18:55):
if you are in menopause,

(00:18:58):
if you are seeking abortion care,

(00:19:02):
if you are having some other kind of issue with menstruation or anything really

(00:19:07):
reproductive.

(00:19:09):
And so the second prong of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is also time away from work.

(00:19:14):
So the employer is required,

(00:19:16):
they're not required to pay you,

(00:19:19):
but they are required to provide the time off if you need it for a prenatal

(00:19:24):
appointment,

(00:19:25):
for an IVF appointment,

(00:19:27):
for any other type of reproductive-related appointment.

(00:19:33):
So that is very basically what the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

(00:19:38):
allows for.

(00:19:40):
As I said,

(00:19:40):
the employer has to prove undue hardship and it has to also be what they call an

(00:19:44):
iterative process.

(00:19:45):
So there needs to be some back and forth between the employee and the employer to

(00:19:49):
be able to go back and forth and figure out what would be the best accommodation

(00:19:53):
for the employee.

(00:19:55):
So that's generally in terms of

(00:19:59):
The rights, that's probably the strongest right out there.

(00:20:01):
There's also rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other pregnancy

(00:20:05):
laws at the state and federal level as well.

(00:20:08):
But the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is the most on point federal bill.

(00:20:16):
In terms of your other question around enforcement and how it really only works

(00:20:21):
whether it's been enforced.

(00:20:24):
So I'll use as an example some of our cases into Amazon.

(00:20:28):
For the last five years,

(00:20:29):
we have been looking into Amazon,

(00:20:33):
and what we've learned without question is that one of the richest,

(00:20:38):
most consequential,

(00:20:39):
and powerful companies in the world is systematically abusing,

(00:20:43):
targeting,

(00:20:44):
and pushing out low-wage employees,

(00:20:46):
specifically pregnant and disabled workers.

(00:20:49):
So these are women who are shift employees, hourly employees, and really physical labor workers.

(00:20:57):
So we are bringing lawsuits, including class action, on behalf of these women.

(00:21:01):
This trend is actually fairly widespread.

(00:21:05):
So it's occurring at other companies that are household names,

(00:21:08):
not just Amazon,

(00:21:09):
but also places like Chick-fil-A,

(00:21:11):
Walmart,

(00:21:11):
Speedway.

(00:21:12):
And this is how it basically plays out at Amazon.

(00:21:16):
So when a woman asks for a pregnancy or disability accommodation,

(00:21:21):
so for example,

(00:21:22):
sitting on a stool or leaving early for a doctor's appointment,

(00:21:26):
These companies are denying their requests or punishing them for having basic needs

(00:21:32):
that are legally protected.

(00:21:33):
And then in many cases, they fire the worker

(00:21:38):
and place them or threaten to place them on unpaid leave.

(00:21:41):
So this basically ends up being a no-win situation for women who are economically

(00:21:46):
at the lowest rung of the workforce and forces them to choose between keeping their

(00:21:51):
job or protecting their health,

(00:21:54):
including safely holding on to an unborn child.

(00:21:58):
And so what these companies are doing is in direct violation of the Pregnant

(00:22:02):
Workers Fairness Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

(00:22:07):
One question worth asking is why these women are being targeted in this way and why

(00:22:12):
this is allowed to have gone on for so long with very minimal to no public

(00:22:17):
attention brought to it so it continues.

(00:22:21):
And I think the answer there is that these are the most vulnerable workers.

(00:22:24):
These are the workers that have the least amount of power,

(00:22:28):
both politically,

(00:22:29):
legally,

(00:22:29):
economically.

(00:22:30):
And this is really where my organization seeks to step in and to provide these

(00:22:34):
women with a voice,

(00:22:36):
but also provide them with the legal tools to be able to enforce their rights and

(00:22:42):
secure them.

(00:22:44):
So this is an overarching issue at many companies where there are chronic problems

(00:22:54):
with accommodations being improperly denied.

(00:22:58):
And so this is one example of where the enforcement is really critical.

(00:23:07):
Well, thank you for doing it.

(00:23:09):
I know that it's demoralizing and enraging and just exhausting work, but it has to be done.

(00:23:15):
And so thank you for leading the charge on that.

(00:23:19):
Where are things with this Amazon lawsuit?

(00:23:22):
Like what's going on with it?

(00:23:24):
Yeah,

(00:23:25):
so in November 2025,

(00:23:27):
so about six months ago,

(00:23:28):
we filed a class action against Amazon seeking to hold it accountable for the

(00:23:36):
treatment of thousands of hourly workers across New York State.

(00:23:39):
So our lead plaintiff there is Kayla Leister.

(00:23:42):
She's 27.

(00:23:44):
She picks and packs at an Amazon warehouse in upstate New York, earning $23 an hour.

(00:23:48):
She has a

(00:23:52):
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome,

(00:23:54):
so that's a genetic connective tissue disorder that is manageable with precaution.

(00:23:59):
So with limited accommodation,

(00:24:01):
such as occasional seated work and exemption from climbing ladders,

(00:24:05):
she could have continued safely and productively to do her job.

(00:24:10):
But instead,

(00:24:11):
Amazon denied her a chair,

(00:24:12):
required her to climb,

(00:24:14):
and repeatedly placed her on unpaid leave that she neither requested nor needed.

(00:24:19):
And then she was later threatened with termination for attendance infractions tied

(00:24:24):
to those same medical issues.

(00:24:26):
And the result was unfortunately predictable,

(00:24:29):
lost income,

(00:24:29):
mounting debt,

(00:24:30):
and ultimately job loss.

(00:24:32):
And

(00:24:34):
So we are now in preliminary stages of this lawsuit.

(00:24:42):
We are waiting to move through some procedural motions.

(00:24:47):
And so, like I said, we just filed it.

(00:24:48):
So it's at the very beginning stages.

(00:24:51):
But we do have identified many other workers who are in similar positions to Kayla

(00:24:59):
and are ready to move the case forward.

(00:25:04):
Well,

(00:25:05):
I hope you guys just trounce them in court,

(00:25:07):
although I know it's going to be long and slow and years,

(00:25:10):
but,

(00:25:11):
you know,

(00:25:11):
eventually I hope it's a slow rule that just crushes them.

(00:25:16):
So the thing that I really like about your body of work is that you have worked on

(00:25:22):
sort of all of the things that all of us know need to get fixed,

(00:25:26):
paid sick leave and,

(00:25:28):
you know,

(00:25:28):
not abusing pregnant workers,

(00:25:30):
the just really obvious fundamental human rights stuff.

(00:25:35):
The thing that I am constantly puzzling over is that everyone I know supports these things.

(00:25:42):
But our politicians continue to treat these like fringe issues,

(00:25:46):
especially when they are women's issues.

(00:25:49):
Why is this?

(00:25:50):
Why do you think politicians continue to view women's human rights as like a

(00:25:55):
special interest niche?

(00:25:59):
Yeah,

(00:26:01):
fantastic question and something that I've thought a lot about and a lot of the

(00:26:06):
work that we do at A Better Balance is trying to break through on this challenge.

(00:26:13):
So a couple of things here.

(00:26:15):
One,

(00:26:17):
yes,

(00:26:19):
everyone that we talk to says they support paid leave and says that they support

(00:26:24):
accommodations,

(00:26:26):
but I think unfortunately it is not

(00:26:30):
in the top five of what people vote on or what most people vote on.

(00:26:36):
So I think that this issue has a little bit of a challenge where there is broad

(00:26:41):
consensus,

(00:26:42):
but it's not truly a priority.

(00:26:44):
So I think that few voters are voting on it.

(00:26:49):
Um, and I think that few, um, politicians are running on it.

(00:26:55):
Like some, some have, but I do think that, um,

(00:26:59):
Yes, there is support, but it needs to rise up the frong of being at the top of the list.

(00:27:07):
So I think that's one thing, and we are trying to do that.

(00:27:12):
The second thing,

(00:27:13):
I think that politicians haven't fully tapped into or realized that this can be a

(00:27:24):
winning issue.

(00:27:26):
So take for example in Virginia we had Governor Spamberger campaigning on paid

(00:27:35):
leave and she just signed sorry the legislature just passed and she had she had

(00:27:42):
previously signed with amendments and so they just passed her version of the bill

(00:27:48):
yesterday so this is something where she actively campaigned on it she

(00:27:53):
Put forward in her campaign that she was a working woman and this was important to

(00:27:57):
working women and was able to pass it through an estate that is not crazy liberal.

(00:28:08):
So I think that that I'm hoping can really show people that this is an issue that

(00:28:14):
people can run on and champion and deliver and that voters will have their back

(00:28:20):
when they do this.

(00:28:22):
So,

(00:28:24):
yeah,

(00:28:24):
I mean,

(00:28:24):
we had similar challenges to this with criminal justice reform where,

(00:28:29):
I guess with criminal justice reform,

(00:28:30):
the arc was slightly different,

(00:28:32):
but there was a point in time where most people came to understand that we did need

(00:28:37):
to reduce our prison population,

(00:28:39):
but it wasn't a top issue that voters were voting on.

(00:28:43):
And so we did a lot of work around trying to

(00:28:48):
get the issue further into the media narrative,

(00:28:53):
the mainstream narrative,

(00:28:54):
social media narrative,

(00:28:55):
just the culture narrative,

(00:28:57):
so that it would further rise up and really truly be a priority.

(00:29:02):
So we're trying to do some of that work on this issue as well.

(00:29:05):
Okay.

(00:29:08):
So I want to switch a little bit to criminal justice reform and mass incarceration.

(00:29:14):
And I kind of want to

(00:29:16):
Add that we often conceive of mass incarceration as a men's issue.

(00:29:20):
You know, it's something that happens to men.

(00:29:22):
But women are roughly 10% of the incarcerated population.

(00:29:27):
Most incarcerated women are violence survivors,

(00:29:29):
and many are in prisons and jails because of survival crimes.

(00:29:33):
Roughly 10% are pregnant at some point during their incarceration,

(00:29:37):
and I feel that they just get completely forgotten.

(00:29:41):
So

(00:29:41):
Would you mind talking a little bit about how criminal justice reform is a women's

(00:29:46):
issue too,

(00:29:47):
and also how the effects of mass incarceration are not limited to incarcerated

(00:29:52):
populations?

(00:29:55):
Yes, so great, very thoughtful question.

(00:30:04):
The first part of the answer, so

(00:30:08):
A lot of women do get caught up in the criminal justice system,

(00:30:13):
and the prison system itself is made for men.

(00:30:20):
Prison obviously is a terrible place to begin with,

(00:30:24):
but it causes even more challenges and problems for women.

(00:30:28):
For example,

(00:30:30):
For decades, many states were doing this practice of shackling pregnant women.

(00:30:38):
So this is something that I worked on in my previous role where we brought to

(00:30:44):
public attention this issue of shackling female prisoners who were pregnant and

(00:30:51):
trying to ban that in various different states.

(00:30:55):
And this is one very egregious example of how the prison system isn't built with

(00:31:02):
women's needs in mind.

(00:31:05):
But there are many women who do get caught up in the criminal justice system,

(00:31:10):
many of them for fairly small crimes.

(00:31:15):
So a lot of women are in there for

(00:31:18):
Drug Crimes for Theft Crimes and usually they're it's because they're poor right so

(00:31:24):
they're poor so they're trying to um sell drugs on the side or you know they're

(00:31:30):
they're stealing something to to be able to provide for basic needs um so yeah I

(00:31:35):
mean I definitely think that um

(00:31:39):
So it's important that we highlight that mass incarceration is also a women's issue.

(00:31:45):
I also want to talk a little bit about your second point, which is that

(00:31:50):
I think one of the ways that mass incarceration is a women's issue is because of

(00:31:55):
what you said,

(00:31:56):
that the consequences reverberate far beyond prison walls.

(00:32:01):
So through decades of mass incarceration,

(00:32:04):
the United States has basically deleted swaths of Black men from their communities.

(00:32:12):
And that leaves...

(00:32:16):
a whole generation of children who are raised without fathers.

(00:32:21):
And then you have women who are both trying to be the primary caretaker and trying

(00:32:29):
to be the primary breadwinner.

(00:32:31):
And that puts a lot of pressure on women.

(00:32:34):
Also,

(00:32:34):
this entire situation puts a lot of pressure on children and has a host of really

(00:32:43):
difficult economic

(00:32:45):
and Social Consequences for the loved ones who are left behind when someone is taken to prison.

(00:32:55):
Yeah, it's so sad.

(00:33:00):
And the thing that I always tell people is that when you incarcerate one person,

(00:33:04):
you punish their whole families.

(00:33:06):
So even if you think that person is disposable, which they're not, the people around them

(00:33:12):
or not.

(00:33:13):
I want to get on my soapbox about the shackling of pregnant people for a second

(00:33:17):
because we so Pamela Wynn here in Georgia kind of led the charge on getting

(00:33:24):
legislation passed to end the shackling of pregnant people because she was

(00:33:30):
incarcerated and shackled and her baby died as a result of it.

(00:33:34):
So we worked with her for years and years and years to get legislation passed and

(00:33:38):
it passed and everyone was so excited.

(00:33:41):
And what's ended up happening is that nothing has changed.

(00:33:44):
They just find loopholes.

(00:33:46):
They just manufacture loopholes to shackle pregnant women.

(00:33:50):
Oh, she's crazy.

(00:33:51):
And what they mean by that is that they saw her cry one time.

(00:33:55):
And so I share that because we need that legislation.

(00:33:59):
It's so important.

(00:34:00):
But what we also need

(00:34:02):
is impact litigation for when they seek out these loopholes.

(00:34:06):
And I think that's a big part of what you're doing right now with Amazon,

(00:34:11):
what organizations in criminal justice reform are doing right now.

(00:34:15):
We have to have those lawsuits because that's the only way to enforce these rights.

(00:34:19):
Yeah, 100%.

(00:34:22):
I think you can pass the law, but it also needs to be implemented and enforced.

(00:34:28):
And I'll say that's one of the things...

(00:34:30):
that I have been very impressed with A Better Balance doing.

(00:34:34):
And one of the reasons that I came to work here, I think a lot of legal advocacy groups

(00:34:40):
And,

(00:34:40):
you know,

(00:34:41):
including many of the ones that I worked for in the criminal justice context,

(00:34:45):
focus on passing the bills and don't necessarily do the follow through of the

(00:34:51):
implementation and enforcement.

(00:34:53):
And that's something that,

(00:34:54):
at a Better Balance,

(00:34:56):
our attorneys are really conscious of and want to ensure that when a law is passed,

(00:35:02):
it's actually operating in the intended way.

(00:35:04):
That's so wonderful and that's so important.

(00:35:07):
I'm really, really glad that is happening.

(00:35:10):
Going back to the criminal justice reform bit,

(00:35:13):
you know,

(00:35:13):
a lot of listeners to this podcast come at the law from the perspective of

(00:35:18):
victimization.

(00:35:19):
They've been raped, they've been stalked, they've experienced violence from an intimate partner.

(00:35:23):
And I am,

(00:35:25):
and they are,

(00:35:26):
consistently stunned by how unseriously the courts take this sort of violence.

(00:35:30):
You know, we see it everywhere, the man in Shreveport who just murdered his children and

(00:35:35):
And the media reports all say,

(00:35:38):
you know,

(00:35:38):
there are no warning signs except for just a few domestic incidents.

(00:35:41):
The police seem shocked.

(00:35:43):
The man with history of abusing his partners and children would then kill them.

(00:35:47):
And, you know, none of the rest of us with any sense are shocked.

(00:35:50):
So it's enraging.

(00:35:52):
But I also kind of understand why people respond to this and they want harsher

(00:35:58):
sentencing and they want more incarceration and they want fewer chances.

(00:36:03):
Can you talk a little bit about sentencing incarceration reform and why harsher

(00:36:09):
penalties are not the solution to this problem?

(00:36:14):
Yeah.

(00:36:19):
So all of these issues are complicated.

(00:36:22):
So I'll start out by saying that it is interesting to me that

(00:36:29):
Simultaneously,

(00:36:30):
people will hold the belief that longer sentences aren't the answer when they're

(00:36:39):
talking about criminal justice reform generally,

(00:36:42):
but at the same time also hold the belief that if somebody committed like XYZ

(00:36:47):
specific crime,

(00:36:48):
then they definitely should get the death penalty or life in prison or whatever.

(00:36:52):
So I do think there's some cognitive dissonance there between people being able to

(00:36:59):
understand conceptually about this and versus when there are certain crimes that

(00:37:06):
really trigger people's emotions and are really awful.

(00:37:09):
But looking at the research and the data and the decades of failed experiment of

(00:37:17):
mass incarceration,

(00:37:18):
longer sentences don't do anything to deter crime.

(00:37:24):
So what has been shown to deter crime is swift and certain punishment.

(00:37:29):
So honestly,

(00:37:30):
this is I don't mean to make light of it,

(00:37:35):
but it's a little bit like disciplining a toddler,

(00:37:37):
right?

(00:37:38):
Where it's like you want like they need to know this is going to happen to you and

(00:37:42):
this is going to happen to you right away.

(00:37:45):
And that is what reduces the

(00:37:51):
That is one of the things that reduces crime.

(00:37:56):
People don't sit there thinking about, oh, if I do this, I'm going to go away for 20 years.

(00:38:01):
That's not the way that people are thinking.

(00:38:04):
So that's one thing to touch on.

(00:38:05):
The second thing is that so many of these issues have really complicated underlying issues.

(00:38:13):
Causes that are far beyond an individual's decision-making.

(00:38:18):
So there's mental health issues at play,

(00:38:20):
there's economic stressors,

(00:38:22):
there's structural and societal and racial dimensions that it's just far beyond an

(00:38:31):
individual's individual decision-making.

(00:38:34):
And so for these and various other reasons,

(00:38:38):
They have discovered that longer sentences do very little to reduce crime.

(00:38:48):
So here's an issue that I've been ruminating on for a while and I have not come up

(00:38:52):
with any solutions and I don't know how to solve it.

(00:38:56):
So I think you might have some more insight than I do.

(00:38:59):
It seems like no matter what legislation we pass,

(00:39:04):
our culture weaponizes it against the most vulnerable and the most oppressed.

(00:39:09):
A classic example is when regions passed mandatory arrest policies for domestic

(00:39:15):
violence,

(00:39:16):
victims become more likely to be arrested than the people who attacked them.

(00:39:22):
How do we fix this?

(00:39:24):
I mean, obviously ending racism and white supremacy and sexism would be a solution, but

(00:39:29):
More realistically,

(00:39:30):
is there anything we can do to prevent every single positive thing we do from being

(00:39:37):
weaponized against the most vulnerable?

(00:39:41):
Yeah, so I would say I agree with you that there is a lot of that going on.

(00:39:50):
I think maybe I'm a little bit more optimistic.

(00:39:55):
I do think that

(00:39:57):
Many of these laws do have positive impacts,

(00:40:03):
do have their intended positive impacts,

(00:40:06):
even if they're not precise and even if they're not as much as we would like.

(00:40:12):
But to your point about the laws that are being weaponized,

(00:40:16):
I mean,

(00:40:16):
some of this is just a lack of resources in the system,

(00:40:21):
a lack of education,

(00:40:24):
a lack of training.

(00:40:27):
The mandatory arrest,

(00:40:28):
I mean,

(00:40:28):
that is controversial too because there's,

(00:40:31):
you know,

(00:40:32):
one school of thought that says that.

(00:40:39):
You Should You Know This Automatically Means This Is Going To Be Resolved In A

(00:40:44):
Criminal Justice System And So Therefore People Are Not Going To Get The Social

(00:40:47):
Services And Support That They Need To Actually Solve The Problem Because The

(00:40:51):
Criminal Justice Using The Criminal Justice System To Solve These Other Problems Is

(00:40:55):
Just Putting A Band-Aid On The Situation And Making It Worse In Some Cases Or Many

(00:41:00):
Cases So I Think Using The Mandatory Arrest To Begin With Cuts Both Ways I'm

(00:41:10):
but then the issue of it being used against victims I mean that is like bias a lot

(00:41:19):
of that is probably bias in the police system and who they're looking at what

(00:41:23):
colors the victims are and how they um relate to people in the community um so yeah

(00:41:32):
I just it's it's it's very complicated which I feel like it's not a satisfying

(00:41:38):
answer

(00:41:39):
But I do have hope and I am optimistic.

(00:41:41):
I do think that passing these laws is the main way to be able to achieve change.

(00:41:47):
Yes, we have to make sure they're implemented properly.

(00:41:49):
Yes, we have to make sure the actors that have discretion are using the discretion correctly.

(00:41:53):
I mean,

(00:41:53):
that's a big thing that legal change in and of itself can't fix,

(00:41:58):
which is what you're talking about,

(00:41:59):
which is how actors in the system themselves are using their discretion and whether

(00:42:04):
they're using it for good or not for good.

(00:42:07):
And

(00:42:09):
whether they themselves are biased and then how that is affecting outcomes.

(00:42:13):
I don't think that's an unsatisfactory answer at all.

(00:42:16):
I mean, this is a complex system built upon layers and layers and generations of oppression.

(00:42:21):
So of course, the solutions are going to be complicated.

(00:42:24):
And I think it's helpful when we acknowledge that,

(00:42:28):
you know,

(00:42:28):
it's not just this one weird trick will solve it all.

(00:42:31):
So I appreciate that.

(00:42:34):
I want to move outside of the legal system a little bit to something that I think

(00:42:38):
is going to be really resonant for a lot of listeners.

(00:42:41):
When I was doing research for this episode,

(00:42:43):
I found an article you wrote from Ms.

(00:42:45):
Magazine that was just incredible about the false promises and exploitative

(00:42:49):
practices of the IVF industry.

(00:42:51):
So I'm going to read a little excerpt and I would like to talk about this a bit if

(00:42:56):
that's okay with you.

(00:42:57):
Here's what you say.

(00:42:59):
IVF was a hot button issue in this year's election.

(00:43:02):
But today's discussion about whether IVF should remain legal leaves out a fundamental point.

(00:43:07):
It assumes that IVF works.

(00:43:10):
This is,

(00:43:10):
however,

(00:43:11):
far from the truth for many,

(00:43:13):
especially black and brown women and older women,

(00:43:15):
for whom assisted reproductive technology is far from a miracle cure.

(00:43:20):
Why are we selling women on the idea that they can easily get pregnant after 40

(00:43:24):
when we know that's exceedingly rare?

(00:43:26):
The answer is money.

(00:43:28):
I would love to hear a bit more about this about whether you think this is an

(00:43:31):
example of medical racism and misogyny and about what you think needs to be done

(00:43:36):
about this thank you for bringing this up this is one of my favorite things to talk

(00:43:42):
about one of my pet peeves is people

(00:43:52):
Thinking that getting pregnant over 40 is easy and thinking that you can just go to

(00:43:58):
IVF and that's a magic bullet that's going to solve everything for you.

(00:44:01):
I think that this is an example of women of color and older women being left out of

(00:44:08):
the conversation.

(00:44:09):
I think that when people think about IVF, they are focused on white women who are

(00:44:16):
are in their 30s and have some kind of infertility,

(00:44:21):
a specific infertility challenge,

(00:44:23):
like they have PCOS or endometriosis or something.

(00:44:26):
And that is what IVF is made for.

(00:44:29):
And those women usually get a large number of eggs and are able to go through the

(00:44:35):
IVF process and have kids.

(00:44:36):
And many times one egg retrieval will yield multiple kids for them.

(00:44:41):
But now what's happening is that IVF,

(00:44:44):
not now,

(00:44:44):
but for the last whatever decade is happening,

(00:44:48):
is that doctors are sending older women to IVF purely based on age.

(00:44:52):
So I was sent to IVF even before we tried conceiving,

(00:44:57):
even before we were even attempting to,

(00:45:01):
and I just went to get things checked out.

(00:45:03):
They said, you should go to IVF, you're over 40, you're going to have better

(00:45:08):
Luck with that and I just thought this is insane like why am I being sent to IVF

(00:45:12):
like we haven't even tried to conceive naturally and so in my case I didn't have

(00:45:20):
anything underlying but it was due to my age I had sorry I shouldn't say that I

(00:45:24):
didn't have an underlying typical fertility issue what I had which many women of

(00:45:32):
color going through IVF have I had a large fibroid which is

(00:45:37):
um very common in black and brown women and when it was removed it damn so I had to

(00:45:44):
get it removed in order to sustain a pregnancy because it was too big and when it

(00:45:48):
was removed it damaged my uterus and so my issue was not in terms of creating the

(00:45:54):
egg itself it was more in being able to then carry um carried a term and they

(00:46:01):
haven't really looked into solutions for that right like all of the um

(00:46:07):
Focus on IVF has been around just getting the golden egg and getting the embryo.

(00:46:13):
When we did our first round of IVF,

(00:46:16):
everyone,

(00:46:17):
myself included,

(00:46:18):
thought that like,

(00:46:18):
oh yeah,

(00:46:19):
one round,

(00:46:19):
it's going to work.

(00:46:20):
And everybody was shocked when it didn't.

(00:46:22):
And we actually tried many rounds locally here in New York And then I realized that

(00:46:29):
most of these doctors do not know how to get older women pregnant It took me a

(00:46:35):
while to figure that out and a lot of wasted money And then I ended up going to a

(00:46:42):
clinic out in Denver

(00:46:45):
to um do all of my treatments and the only way that I was able to do that is

(00:46:50):
because I had this was during the pandemic so I had a remote job I had flexibility

(00:46:55):
to be able to go to these um go to the procedures I had the money to be able to fly

(00:47:02):
out there I had in medical insurance um and most women do not have this and so yeah

(00:47:08):
I mean I think people think that IVF is easy and it's really not and

(00:47:12):
So many women in my support groups who are older,

(00:47:16):
who are black and brown,

(00:47:17):
end up with no child.

(00:47:18):
And I was very, very lucky that I ended up with two kids from it.

(00:47:23):
It's so sad and it's so unsettling.

(00:47:25):
I have a number of friends who have gone through IVF and I guess I'm a good

(00:47:32):
unofficial infertility doula because they all seem to kind of like drag me into it

(00:47:35):
with them.

(00:47:36):
So I've seen a lot of it.

(00:47:38):
And the thing that I am constantly struck by is how awful the actual process is and

(00:47:46):
how much it puts your body through and often,

(00:47:49):
frankly,

(00:47:50):
how kind of degrading and condescending the medical professionals are.

(00:47:54):
And it's not nothing.

(00:47:56):
It's not a small thing for us to ask of women.

(00:48:00):
And I think when we consider the fact that we are asking women to do this over and

(00:48:04):
over again,

(00:48:05):
and it may not work,

(00:48:07):
and their partners may not appreciate the massive sacrifice it is,

(00:48:12):
the whole picture just looks a lot bleaker.

(00:48:17):
Yeah,

(00:48:18):
the process itself is very complicated and it's more so complicated when you have a

(00:48:23):
difficult case.

(00:48:24):
So when I was shopping for clinics and trying to find a new clinic,

(00:48:31):
I ended up speaking to,

(00:48:33):
just through friends of friends,

(00:48:35):
connected me to other women who had used this clinic out in Denver.

(00:48:41):
And many of them, like,

(00:48:43):
They did one round,

(00:48:44):
they had no idea what their medications were,

(00:48:46):
they didn't remember anything,

(00:48:48):
they barely saw their doctor and it all worked out for them and they had multiple

(00:48:52):
kids from it.

(00:48:53):
Whereas people like me knew every medication,

(00:48:56):
lobbied the doctors for the medication,

(00:48:58):
went and did research and then asked for specific procedures and medication.

(00:49:02):
I spent so much time researching the problem of IVF,

(00:49:07):
researching the cutting edge medicines and protocols and asking for them.

(00:49:13):
going to different doctors.

(00:49:14):
I did 15 different consults with,

(00:49:15):
again,

(00:49:17):
because of the pandemic,

(00:49:18):
everybody was doing these on televisits over video.

(00:49:21):
And because I had insurance,

(00:49:22):
it was $20 for a consult,

(00:49:24):
which would co-pay for a consult,

(00:49:26):
which most women don't have that,

(00:49:27):
right?

(00:49:28):
So...

(00:49:30):
but I did so it was an entire advocacy campaign and it is something that I think

(00:49:38):
people don't fully appreciate how difficult it is and I found the most difficult

(00:49:42):
thing to be actually mixing the medicines so when I did egg freezing which I did on

(00:49:50):
you know obviously I was single in 2016 I would spend like over an hour like

(00:49:58):
Mixing the medicine,

(00:49:59):
mixing it incorrectly,

(00:50:01):
needing to use a different vial,

(00:50:04):
all of that,

(00:50:04):
it just wasn't intuitive to me.

(00:50:07):
I'm a lawyer,

(00:50:07):
I'm not a scientist,

(00:50:08):
so needing to mix one milliliter of this fluid with two milligrams of this powder,

(00:50:14):
I messed it up so many times.

(00:50:18):
And that for me was one of the, and most women, nobody talks about this.

(00:50:23):
Like no one talks about all of these details of how complicated this is.

(00:50:27):
And like you said, also what your body goes through, not to mention.

(00:50:31):
Yeah, it's, it's a lot.

(00:50:37):
So, okay, so you've, you've had two children from IVF now, right?

(00:50:42):
Yeah, one kid, um,

(00:50:45):
So I froze my eggs in 2016 and then we did IVF.

(00:50:52):
So my five-word surgery was in 2020 and that sort of is what I would call the core

(00:50:58):
of what set off my health issues and maternal health issues.

(00:51:03):
And then my kids had a bunch of downstream effects.

(00:51:07):
And so my first kid, we got pregnant in 2022.

(00:51:13):
No, no, yeah, 2021, I guess.

(00:51:17):
And she was born in 2022.

(00:51:20):
And then we did fresh eggs then.

(00:51:24):
So I used my 42-year-old eggs for that.

(00:51:26):
I wanted to save the frozen eggs for a second kid.

(00:51:29):
And then I had very bad luck with the frozen eggs.

(00:51:35):
The first batch I did over here in New York

(00:51:38):
And those all died in the lab.

(00:51:42):
And so then we shipped the second batch of those over to Colorado.

(00:51:47):
And then I had my kid for my frozen eggs last year.

(00:51:50):
So she just turned one.

(00:51:54):
Well, I'm glad your kids made it here.

(00:51:56):
I'm also sorry that you had to go through all of that.

(00:52:00):
Have you heard this kind of emerging research investigation into the idea that like,

(00:52:08):
We don't really know how to correctly freeze eggs,

(00:52:10):
and maybe egg freezing doesn't actually work so well.

(00:52:14):
Yes.

(00:52:16):
That's another thing,

(00:52:16):
right,

(00:52:17):
that people think egg freezing is an insurance policy,

(00:52:19):
and it's not.

(00:52:20):
I froze 21 eggs,

(00:52:23):
and only one egg made it into an embryo,

(00:52:26):
and I was lucky enough that that one embryo turned into a kid.

(00:52:29):
Wow.

(00:52:31):
And I don't think people realize, like, in retrospect...

(00:52:35):
To really do egg freezing and to make it be an insurance policy,

(00:52:39):
you would need to freeze like 60 eggs at three different clinics,

(00:52:43):
which is some of the advice that people are giving now,

(00:52:45):
which is obviously insanely expensive.

(00:52:47):
But yes, I think that they don't...

(00:52:51):
Egg freezing is really... Eggs are very, very fragile and it's very difficult to freeze.

(00:52:58):
And yeah, it is definitely something...

(00:53:03):
that most people don't know about, that egg freezing is not a guarantee.

(00:53:09):
So having gone through this and more or less come out on the other side with what a

(00:53:15):
lot of people pursuing IVF would consider a successful outcome,

(00:53:20):
what would you tell other women?

(00:53:22):
Because I know so many listeners are going to hear this and say,

(00:53:26):
well,

(00:53:26):
okay,

(00:53:26):
but what was the recipe?

(00:53:27):
Like what worked?

(00:53:29):
What do you wish you knew?

(00:53:30):
And what do you wish other women knew going into this?

(00:53:34):
So I wish I knew how hard it was going to be for over 40.

(00:53:37):
I feel like as modern women,

(00:53:41):
as feminists,

(00:53:43):
as progressives,

(00:53:45):
I really didn't pay much attention to the biological age issue and I didn't really

(00:53:52):
want it to be an issue.

(00:53:53):
I didn't wait on purpose.

(00:53:54):
I was

(00:53:57):
I was looking for a partner and it took me a lot longer to find a partner than I

(00:54:02):
thought it would.

(00:54:03):
But I did not expect it to be this difficult.

(00:54:06):
So that's one thing is it's not easy to have kids in your 40s.

(00:54:11):
I'm sure that there are many stories where people have had an easy time.

(00:54:14):
I don't think that is true for women of color or women who have any kind of

(00:54:22):
So that's the top thing.

(00:54:26):
The second thing in terms of the recipe.

(00:54:29):
So I approached having a kid the same way that I approached passing legislation.

(00:54:37):
I did an entire campaign.

(00:54:39):
I spent so much of my time on this.

(00:54:42):
I researched.

(00:54:43):
I called doctors.

(00:54:44):
I talked to other women.

(00:54:46):
I found information.

(00:54:47):
I very proactively asked for specific things at doctors.

(00:54:51):
I talked to my doctor all the time.

(00:54:53):
Many women who go through this only talk to their nurse.

(00:54:56):
They don't know that you can actually request multiple appointments with the doctors.

(00:55:00):
So I'm sure my doctors thought I was annoying, but I talked to them all the time.

(00:55:03):
I

(00:55:06):
I didn't just follow what the doctor said if I had followed what the doctor said I

(00:55:12):
would have died I probably wouldn't have had my two kids just in general from all

(00:55:16):
of the medical things that we've been through because I think doctors know a lot

(00:55:23):
but they don't know everything and they particularly don't do well when you don't

(00:55:27):
fit a textbook a textbook definition of something which I think is the case for

(00:55:33):
many women of color

(00:55:35):
And I always questioned what the doctor said,

(00:55:40):
I asked them,

(00:55:40):
I asked a lot of questions,

(00:55:42):
did my own research,

(00:55:44):
and I prayed a lot.

(00:55:47):
And I was prepared and ready to

(00:55:51):
like go through all of our finances like I had an apartment in New York that I sold

(00:55:56):
to pay for IVF treatments so I mean it's crazy but like that's how badly I wanted

(00:56:02):
kids so it was a lot of work and it was a lot of resources and I mean worth it but

(00:56:09):
hard yeah I mean I don't think it's crazy you know this is perhaps our most intense

(00:56:16):
biological drive and I often think about

(00:56:21):
Women who desire kids with that intensity and who go through all of this and for

(00:56:25):
whom it's not successful and what they've lost.

(00:56:28):
And it's just, it's very sad.

(00:56:31):
It's really sad.

(00:56:32):
And I will say many women that I know who weren't successful,

(00:56:38):
but a lot of it is like the doctors tell you that

(00:56:42):
Like they act like they know everything.

(00:56:44):
So like many doctors will tell women,

(00:56:48):
okay,

(00:56:50):
you're whatever,

(00:56:51):
48 years old,

(00:56:51):
you must go to donor eggs.

(00:56:53):
I wish they wouldn't say that.

(00:56:55):
I wish they would say,

(00:56:56):
hey,

(00:56:56):
there's this other clinic over here and they actually specialize in this different

(00:57:01):
cutting edge medicine.

(00:57:02):
Maybe you should go try them.

(00:57:03):
So this is the other thing that I was really struck with with IVF,

(00:57:06):
which I didn't realize until I did all of those consults that,

(00:57:11):
um,

(00:57:13):
All of these clinics do it differently.

(00:57:15):
They all do it differently.

(00:57:16):
Even from doctor to doctor, it varies.

(00:57:17):
It's not like a cardiologist where you walk in and there's like,

(00:57:21):
you know,

(00:57:21):
99% of doctors all do a stent in the exact same way.

(00:57:26):
Like that's not what this is.

(00:57:27):
Every single clinic does it completely differently.

(00:57:31):
And there's no...

(00:57:35):
Transparency into any of this.

(00:57:36):
And the only way that you find out what they do is to actually go through it.

(00:57:41):
And most of them use the first round as a test round.

(00:57:45):
So you're wasting, what, $30,000 on a test round just for them to see how your body reacts.

(00:57:51):
And then they end up calibrating and this, that, and the other.

(00:57:53):
So yeah, I mean, I think that something else I'd want women to know is

(00:58:00):
all these doctors do it differently.

(00:58:01):
If it doesn't work at one place, switch doctors, switch clinics.

(00:58:09):
There are many different ways to approach this and there's different ways to get

(00:58:13):
success and different people's bodies are going to work with different things.

(00:58:18):
That's such helpful advice.

(00:58:20):
And I think that's going to hopefully help at least one person listening to this.

(00:58:25):
So thank you for that.

(00:58:26):
And

(00:58:27):
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

(00:58:29):
This has been amazing and illuminating and you've just done so much and I know

(00:58:33):
listeners are really going to appreciate having you here.

(00:58:36):
Thank you so much.

(00:58:37):
I'm really happy to talk to you and really enjoyed our conversation.

(00:58:42):
Awesome.

(00:58:43):
Listeners,

(00:58:44):
so I am going to put lots of additional links and information in the show notes

(00:58:48):
where you can learn more and I will be back with you next week.

(00:58:52):
So thank you for listening.