Tracy Hightower-Henne: Hi, listeners. On today’s podcast, we are going to talk about abortion and we are doing a series about abortion and today is part one. So we’re going to talk about the history of abortion where we’ve been. And then in future episodes, we’re going to talk about where is abortion now? We will talk about what’s called judicial bypass, which is when a young person wants to have an abortion without the consent of their parents. And more topics. So check out our abortion series and with us today we have Andi Grubb and Andi is our first guest speaker outside of our law firms. We are super excited to have Andi here.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Welcome. Thank you so much. I’m so honored. Oh yes, everyone’s going. I need, I need. I need applause.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: That was not a sound bit that was real clapping, y’all. Golf clap. So, Andi, tell us about you.
Andi Curry-Grubb: So yes, I am Andi Cory Grubb. I am the state executive director for Planned Parenthood in Nebraska. I focus a lot on our public affairs, work, our advocacy work, working with our state senators and communities to keep access to abortion legal, which is our primary goal this coming year, and then also to to continue to expand access where we can.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, we are so excited to have you here. Q And when when we first asked if you wanted to come on the podcast and talk about like the legalities of abortion and you made the comment like, Oh, well, it’s two lawyers, I don’t know how much I can add, and I was like, No, you are the expert on this stuff, so let’s chat,
Andi Curry-Grubb: Ok, and you to just have to chime in with the legal expertise because that I do not have
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Most of the time, Susan, just Google, some of it. While we’re on the podcast,
Susan Reff: That’s yeah, why not? Let’s use Google when we need, when
Tracy Hightower-Henne: We need to and thought we are talking. After the United States Supreme Court heard the arguments in Dobbs versus whole Women’s
Andi Curry-Grubb: Jackson Women’s Health Organization,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: See, that’s why we need you. J. Wu, yeah, I kept hearing them say that and thinking, why are they saying that?
Susan Reff: And that’s a clinic in Mississippi.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yes, it is. The only abortion clinic that remains in the state of Mississippi
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Are is it in Jackson, Mississippi?
Andi Curry-Grubb: It is, in fact, in Jackson, Mississippi, where in
Tracy Hightower-Henne: The state is Jackson?
Andi Curry-Grubb: You’re asking Google geography
Susan Reff: Question or their finger that’s pointing to the top?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: No. And the reason I ask is because part of abortion things is how close is the closest clinic?
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yes, right? Absolutely. And that’s something that that impacts Nebraska pretty significantly as well.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Frankly, I don’t even know where Mississippi is on the map.
Susan Reff: Oh, come on, it’s by Florida and Alabama.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yeah, I could find this state on a map without question. Ok, the city of Jackson.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Have you been to Mississippi?
Andi Curry-Grubb: I have never been to Mississippi.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: You ever want to go there? Yeah, sure. That sounded sarcastic.
Andi Curry-Grubb: I I think there’s a lot of amazing culture in history there that I would actually love to see. But yes,
Susan Reff: I just think it must be really
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Hot and swampy, swampy
Andi Curry-Grubb: Swamp. And unfortunately, they are in the news a lot for doing things that aren’t great. Yeah, humans.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. Ok, Susan, you just pulled up a map of Mississippi.
Susan Reff: We want to start there because you didn’t know where it was. Oh, remember, it’s between Arkansas and Alabama.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I do like how you spell Mississippi, though. Did you ever do the little song? Yeah, totally. Mississippi. Here’s a funny story. There was a better part to the song I didn’t say right.
Susan Reff: My mom was one of four and the only girl and her brothers were big pranksters. And when they all learned how to spell Mississippi, you know, when you’re like a littler kid, they told her to write it all over the house. And so she wrote it on the walls, on the lampshades, on the couch cushion. Oh my god, forever. That was always, you know, your mom was so bad, she wrote Mississippi on the couch cushions. And then she said, But my big brothers made me so and she’s like, and I spelled it right.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I was gonna say, Did she spell it right? Yeah, yeah. I think it was like,
Susan Reff: Am I snake snake? I snake snake I. Like, I don’t know something she drew snakes know when you were trying to spell it this.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh no, no, no. The song that I spelled was just the letters. I just didn’t get the tune right. I promise that was the song that I knew.
Susan Reff: Ok, so I’m still trying to figure out where it is.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I know you’re still googling it. Your Google just told you what time it was.
Susan Reff: I know. What are you looking at? Let’s see. It’s coming.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: It looks like it’s pinching the screen way out.
Susan Reff: South, central. Oh, OK. It’s close to Louisiana. Ok. But. You know, pretty central. Mm-hmm. It does look like it’s on an interstate.
Andi Curry-Grubb: That would make
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Sense. Jackson.
Susan Reff: All right now we know more about Mississippi and my mom.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And we definitely know how to correctly spell Mississippi, which is also a mess, right? Yes. Yeah. When I was speaking of the case, I earlier this week I said Missouri and I was like, Well, there’s two S’s in there, but there’s Florida. Mo. Yeah, yeah. So on this episode, we are going to talk about the history of abortion, and in our second episode, we’re going to talk about where we are today, which is talking about Jackson Hole women’s health case. So when we talk about the history of abortion, we really
Susan Reff: Are around abortion.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh yeah, OK. Since we are a legal podcast, but when we talk about the history of the law around abortion specifically, really, we’re talking about Roe v. Wade. And then we have this other case too, right? Yes. So Roe v. Wade was 50 years ago. Yeah. And really, as we’re sitting here today, the whole country is talking about whether Roe v. Wade is going away. Right? But the other case that we hear about is Casey. And what happened in Casey?
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yeah. So Roe versus Wade, you know, most folks are familiar with that. It is the one that established the constitutional right to abortion through the 14th Amendment. So that was kind of the initial landmark. And then in nineteen ninety two, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey was before the Supreme Court. And I think one of the things that’s really interesting about digging into the Casey case is that
Tracy Hightower-Henne: It wasn’t that the music guy Casey Kasem. Oh, Casey Kasem. Yes, yes, yes.
Andi Curry-Grubb: The one of the interesting things is how similar that time
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Was
Andi Curry-Grubb: To today.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Nineteen ninety two.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Politically, politically, right, because
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Of some of fashion, too, because like overalls are coming back. Oh, there you go, see?
Susan Reff: Yes, it is like a retro.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And we were just talking about Lisa Frank. I had Lisa Frank in 1992. Yeah. Everything.
Andi Curry-Grubb: All coming back, including attacks on abortion. Yeah. Although those haven’t stopped, unfortunately. Right. So, yeah, but the part of what happened that I find fascinating with Casey is that the the Third District Court had ruled in favor of the state of Pennsylvania and their law and upheld the law. So it ended up, but they didn’t actually provide their ruling until six days after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the court. Mm hmm. And a lot of folks think that they were waiting for the fifth vote to overturn Roe versus Wade because Casey really, at the time was seen as a very strong potential to overturn Roe versus Wade. There were five conservative judges that had a history of of being anti-abortion. I think a big difference is the extreme rawness of that court is nowhere near what we have today. So I think today is very different. But the the context was very similar. And so what what was at stake in Casey was the state of Pennsylvania had put a bunch of restrictions on access to abortion, things like a twenty four hour waiting period, a requirement that young people notify their parents that they’re having an abortion. There were some requirements of things that had to be reported to the state about abortions that took place. There was actually a requirement that a woman had to notify her husband that she was having an abortion, which just sounds so archaic to me. It’s shocking to think that that was just
Tracy Hightower-Henne: 30 years ago, right in nineteen eighty
Andi Curry-Grubb: Two nineteen ninety two. Yes. And so so all of these laws had been. It was what they were challenging at the Supreme Court. And because if
Tracy Hightower-Henne: We go back, Roe v. Wade basically says you have a you have a right to abortion. Pre viability, exactly. And viability means that the fetus could survive outside the woman. Exactly. And they decided it was a brown twenty four weeks.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Correct. And that’s one of the things that gets talked about now is that, you know, science is different than it was 50 years ago. So, you know, there are there have been changes to that. But generally they they consider viability anywhere between about twenty two and twenty six weeks.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So then from the time that ROE passes 50 years ago, all these states in those 20 years are saying, OK, fine, you can have an abortion, but we’re going to make these restrictions
Andi Curry-Grubb: Right, right? And they had been trying these restrictions for years, basically since Roe was was settled. And so but they were all struck down by other courts, so lower courts struck them down. None of these laws had gone into effect. So Casey was really the first time that one of these was getting to the point of being in front of the Supreme Court. And so what was at stake was essentially this was a direct challenge to Roe versus Wade. That was how it was. It was heard at the Supreme Court. If they ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, it would uphold Roe versus Wade. If they ruled in favor of Casey, it would decimate Roe versus Wade or overturn it. What actually ended up happening is that they upheld Roe versus Wade, but they added this undue burden test to to the law. So basically what they said is, yes, you have a constitutional right to an abortion up to viability, and the states cannot place any undue burden on someone seeking that. But what they did is they actually kept the Pennsylvania laws in place. They upheld those laws, saying that they did not present an undue burden.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And those are what we call the trap laws correct.
Andi Curry-Grubb: The only one they did not allow was the husband one, by the way. Thank God, I know,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Actually, I’m surprised that they
Andi Curry-Grubb: Particularly considering that, you know, it’s much more common and discussed and talked about today that it’s not just women who have abortions transgender men. Non-binary folks, this impacts a lot of different people and a lot of people that don’t have
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Unmarried women, yeah, or people, yeah, but trap laws, which was interesting. I had to look that up because in my mind I was like, Oh, they’re just trapping you right? But Trap Laws stands for targeted regulation of abortion providers, correct? So Casey ultimately said you can still have abortions, but trap laws are fine, so long as they don’t present an undue burden on the pregnant person.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Exactly. And that the floodgates opened and states really started going to town coming up with all the creative ways that they could chip away
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And testing
Andi Curry-Grubb: Abortion access. Yeah, and they were they were tested for years and some were left in place and some weren’t. There is actually the time period between 2011 and 2016 was when the court system was quite conservative, and that was actually a time period where more abortion restrictions were put into place than any other time period in history. That’s when Nebraska started seeing a bunch of them passed. And that’s really where most of the restrictions, the trap laws that that we have in place today were started.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So when we talk about the trap laws, give us some, some examples. We have a twenty four hour waiting period. What does that really mean? Sure.
Andi Curry-Grubb: So in Nebraska, one of the trap laws is that a patient seeking an abortion has to undergo state mandated counseling twenty four hours prior to their appointment. Perfect. Yeah, we want
Tracy Hightower-Henne: The state to mandate us counseling.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yes, and especially when some of what the State Council’s on is factually untrue. So things like abortion potentially leading to breast cancer, which has zero scientific basis whatsoever.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So during the state mandated counseling, they’re giving incorrect information.
Andi Curry-Grubb: About twenty five percent of the information that that is given is is incorrect.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Wow. And so is the state mandated counseling. There’s specific things that they have to say to the patient before the abortion can happen.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Twenty four hours prior. So that’s where the twenty four hour waiting period comes in. And basically the idea of this counseling is to try to dissuade people from getting abortions
Susan Reff: By saying scary things like you’re going to get breast cancer and you’re
Andi Curry-Grubb: Going to deal with mental health issues, which has been proven wrong, that you know, most women who get abortions are incredibly happy with their
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Decision. Yeah.
Andi Curry-Grubb: So 30 years later, 20 years later.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So just using the twenty four hour waiting period and the state mandated counseling as examples. So Nebraska brought those in place after Casey and said, OK, here’s some of our trap laws. And then they’ve gone through the court system in Nebraska, and at some point they’ve been decided that they are not an undue burden on a women’s right or a person’s right to have an abortion. Correct. Lovely.
Andi Curry-Grubb: And not all of them go through the courts. It depends on, you know, what precedent is what caught it. Can you know, it’s all there?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And I think sometimes when I have conversations about this with friends and family, maybe that aren’t really, you know, legal legally minded. I get a lot of comments like, Whoa, but what’s what’s a big deal? Like twenty four hours, that’s no big deal or the parental consent. So Nebraska has a parental consent right for minors. And the other one that I think I think Nebraska has is that when you’re in an abortion clinic and you have your ultrasound being done, the ultrasound screen has to be faced towards the patient. And at Planned Parenthood, the patient is told you don’t have to look at the screen, but we are required to face the screen towards you.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yeah, that’s absurd. Yeah.
Susan Reff: So I’ve had an ultrasound. I wasn’t pregnant, but I didn’t. The screen wasn’t facing me, so I don’t think that that’s like the usual medical way an ultrasound is done.
Andi Curry-Grubb: That’s why it’s called a trap lock, because it’s very targeted, very specifically to abortion providers. Yeah, no one else who does ultrasounds has to follow that same. Yeah, no. And I mean, a waiting period to have a medical procedure, there’s no other medical procedure that they force you to contemplate your decision. Yeah, before you do it. And I think it really goes back to the general idea that that these people can’t be trusted with the decision, which I think is is one of the really harmful.
Susan Reff: Like we know more about what’s good for you than you do. So we’re going to tell you right?
Andi Curry-Grubb: And it’s even politicians saying they know more about what should happen to these people than
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Doctors like
Susan Reff: You. And and and we could delve into this more, but like doctors, you know, they’re in a tough spot. You know, like I think a lot of doctors think abortion is, you know, the right choice for certain pregnant people at certain times in their life. But then these some of these laws specifically target their ability to practice medicine, correct? And they say, you know, you can’t. Only certain types of doctors can perform abortions, correct, and only doctors with certain admitting, what’s the admitting?
Andi Curry-Grubb: So we don’t have yeah, we don’t have that one in Nebraska, but a lot of other states passed these. You know that that physicians that provide abortions have to have admitting privileges to local hospitals, and it’s
Susan Reff: Most hospitals run by a Catholic
Andi Curry-Grubb: Church. Hey, wait a minute.
Susan Reff: Yeah. How is this tied together? So yeah,
Andi Curry-Grubb: Exactly. They basically came up with this, you know, workaround that they knew most of these hospitals would deny. Yeah, privileges to someone who performs abortions, and so it prevents them from being allowed to practice.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And then there was different ambulatory.
Andi Curry-Grubb: What there was there was the requirement that abortion clinics have to be ambulatory surgical sites. So you have to have a doorway that can fit, you know, stretcher. Yes, exactly. And hallways that have to be a certain width and
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Like in the procedure room has to be a certain size
Andi Curry-Grubb: Exactly all of this stuff. And again, it’s it’s trying to paint a picture of abortion being dangerous, which it’s not. It’s one of the safest medical procedures you can get.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And but that trap law specifically was problematic for a lot of abortion clinics because when it was passed, the abortion clinics had to financially change their clinic and open doorways and things like that when it just was never necessary.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Right. And that’s what we’ve seen across the country is that these laws have done what the authors of them intended, which is reduce access to abortion and closing the clinics. And we’ve had clinics. I mean, clinics have closed. That’s Mississippi didn’t always just have one provider. They’ve had more than one in the past, and they’re down to one because it’s the only one that can survive with all of these attacks. Texas is another one. I don’t have the exact numbers, but you know, if you go back twenty five years to how many providers there were versus today, it’s shocking for such a gigantic state that they’ve closed so many clinics because of these.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And so one of the trap laws, is it true that one of ours in Nebraska is a 20 week ban, even though the viability is somewhere between 20 and
Andi Curry-Grubb: 20 for Nebraska was the first state to pass a gestational ban. And it was a 20 week ban. So they and they determined that that was not an undue burden and it was challenged and it held.
Susan Reff: Was that in the after Casey, like was that it
Andi Curry-Grubb: Was two thousand ten? Hmm. So it’s kind of right at the beginning of that time frame when we really saw. Yeah, just the floodgates open of these trap laws.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So it took that long.
Susan Reff: Well, so here’s probably what happened. They did. They come in and say like, Oh, OK, so rose to twenty four weeks. What can we get away with in Nebraska? How low can we get?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Which is exactly what Mississippi is doing?
Susan Reff: How low can we get the number? And then did did it, you know, like? Average out up to 20, and
Andi Curry-Grubb: The gestational lions were different than. A little bit different than kind of some of the other trap laws that were that were enacted because they were. You know. They were. Targeting the viability component as opposed to the undue burden component, yeah. So so it was a little bit different, and I do think that was why that one took a little bit more time for them to test out. Mm hmm. Whereas, you know, a lot of the other trap laws, again, the reason that so many of them were put into effect in that five year time period is because of the changes in the courts. It’s just, yeah, truly the difference in who sits on those benches is is significant
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Unless let us not forget that it’s the president who appoints those judges that sit on those benches. Exactly.
Andi Curry-Grubb: The federal court benches and the ramifications go so far past that actual president lasts for a long time.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yes, thankfully sarcastically, half of know a third of our Supreme Court is from the Trump administration. Yes. So I think when we look at the history of the legality of abortion and then we look at where we are now, it’s that crazy cycle of what, why are we where we are?
Andi Curry-Grubb: And we don’t know. Right? Yeah, right. Yeah. I do think it’s that huge difference in the courts, though, as to why we are where we are. These states have been trying this stuff for. Fifty years. Yes. This isn’t brand new on their part, it’s just the shift in, you know, we also have to talk about it and look at gerrymandering and voting rights and the makeup of lawmaking bodies that are not representative of the people anymore. Because that’s the other thing is, we know that three quarters of Americans support Roe versus Wade staying in place. Yeah, that’s a pretty vast majority of people. And yet these, you know, extremist lawmakers are making the decisions for everyone else.
Susan Reff: I just googled the average length of the U.S. Supreme Court justices term, and it’s 17 years. That’s a that’s a pretty long time. Yeah, so. And are the newer appointees from Trump? A lot of them are a lot younger than some of the other appointees. And why would you ever retire from the Supreme Court until you’re at least of retirement age? So it’s a lifetime appointment
Andi Curry-Grubb: Forever, and that’s the Supreme Court. But that’s also a lot of the federal appeals courts, too. That was part of the strategy was to appoint young judges. Yes. So they were.
Susan Reff: Well, we’ve seen that locally. We have some judges on our bench who are in their 30s.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, on our Nebraska Supreme Court bench.
Susan Reff: Well, even yeah. And even some of our lower courts, which you know, can be a stepping stone to going forward. So judges matter and they’re not supposed to be political, right? They’re supposed to base their decisions on past decisions, not their. Stance on things, what’s called precedent, yeah, yes, precedent.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Not to be confused with president,
Andi Curry-Grubb: Thank you for that clarification. Sure. But yeah, and I think the thing that gets you mentioned this, Tracy already that like people ask, why? Why is that a big deal? Why is it twenty four hour waiting period a big deal? Why are these things a problem? And and the problem is it it puts abortion more and more out of reach for a lot of people. So we always like evidence shows that these kinds of restrictions most significantly impact people with lower incomes, people of color, people who live in rural communities. That’s a big one that our state is a part of. Is this what’s what we call an abortion desert that basically runs down the middle of the country from North Dakota all the way down to Texas? And it’s this place where it’s people who live there would have to travel more than seven hours to get to the nearest abortion
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Provider, and that is a direct result
Andi Curry-Grubb: Of the trap laws. And that’s a direct result of
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Trap law that Casey allowed.
Susan Reff: Yeah, yeah. And and to just give a little bit of info to people who may not know that you can have an abortion by taking medication so you wouldn’t necessarily need to be in a room with a medical provider who would be doing a procedure on you. You could take the medication at home, correct, you know, and monitor your symptoms after, right? So, you know, like we can do telehealth for anti-anxiety medications, for all sorts of crazy things.
Andi Curry-Grubb: In Nebraska, we can do telehealth for anything except abortion. Yeah, we have a law on the books that bans telehealth from being used to provide medication abortions, but I
Susan Reff: Could maybe go get a benzo, you know, and I might be addicted and I could get that. If I’m living in a very rural community where I don’t have a medical provider, I can zoom in with someone in Omaha or Lincoln, and I can get that and I can abuse it as much as I want.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yeah, and you can get necessary medical service you can get. There’s all kinds of stuff and that’s and Nebraska actually has some of the more progressive telehealth laws than other states, and a lot of states have caught up since the pandemic. But even prior to the pandemic, Nebraska is pretty good on telehealth. They had good reimbursement rates for providers and things like that that that make it easier for medical institutions to use telehealth. But the one thing that they have banned is abortion. And you know, Iowa, our neighbor state, was the first state to actually use telehealth for medication abortion, and it’s been happening there for I can’t remember how many years, eight years, maybe or so, but they, you know, patients still comes to a clinic. They go through all of the same procedure that they would. Normally they have an ultrasound, they have an education with a clinic staff. They go through. Everything is exactly the same. They go into a room and they sit and talk to the physician via video conference. The physician is not in the same building, and they, the physician, reviews all of the information that’s been collected, reviews the ultrasound talks to the patient directly. And if they determine that this patient is a candidate for medication abortion, they push a button, a draw opens and the pill is dispensed to them. And it’s been proven oddly actually more safe than in-person medication abortion, which I don’t know how that’s possible. It probably was just like a, you know, little weird statistical thing. But yeah, it’s it’s been proven so incredibly safe. So there’s no reason to ban it other than to push abortion out of
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Reach when it’s the only thing that is banned by telehealth.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Exactly. Yeah. And that again, I mean, that has such significant impacts on folks in rural parts of our state and the country that they it makes it a lot harder for them to access abortion.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. So I want to end with a couple of things that people can do. You know, as we’re thinking about abortion and Nebraska and how to help Planned Parenthood, you’ve told us some, some of those ways. The first is contact your senators. Yes. And why is that important?
Andi Curry-Grubb: So particularly in the state of Nebraska, and we’ll kind of get into this more on the next episode, but we need to tell our state senators that we don’t want. Have an abortion here. They need to know they need to hear from folks. We. We know that Nebraskans support individual liberty. They support Roe versus Wade, staying legal. They need to listen to people and recognize that folks don’t want abortion banned here. So tell your senators you don’t want abortion banned in our state.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And the other thing too is we have a lot of senators who are warriors for Planned Parenthood and for reproductive justice and telling them thank you is really important too, right? They are the ones that are in the Legislature really talking about this right and why it’s important. So telling them thank you is helpful to.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Absolutely, absolutely.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And the next thing we talked about was educating people about the right terminology and sharing information. That’s correct and science based and all of that. So tell us more about that.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Absolutely. So I think doing some homework on. On the impacts of these laws, what why we need to be concerned about these things to educating yourself, educating your neighbors, your friends, your family, your colleagues, whoever will listen to you, you know, making sure that we’re we’re really conscious of how we talk about abortion as well, that, you know, this is something that most people believe is a decision that should be left to a pregnant person and their family, their friends, their faith, community, if they have one and their physician and they shouldn’t be in the hands of politicians. So educating ourselves on how we talk about it to to just reaffirm that shared value that so many people have around bodily autonomy and folks being allowed to make decisions about their own bodies.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yes, you can start by listening to our podcast, right? That’s good education. And also, you know about senators, we’ll share a link to how to find your senator. Yes, you can contact only not only your own senator, but you can contact all the senators if you’d like. Yes. And then the third is donating money.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yes, absolutely. So Planned Parenthood North Central States is the organization that provides sexual and reproductive health services and education here in the state of Nebraska that includes abortion services in Omaha and Lincoln and donating to Planned Parenthood North Central States supports those services. We also have Planned Parenthood advocates of Nebraska, which is a Si4 organization, a 501 four organization that is a subsidiary of Planned Parenthood North Central States. And we work very specifically on the legislative side of things, the advocacy work and electing officials that support sexual and reproductive health care and rights.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So donating to either both of those organizations is very helpful for Planned Parenthood and not only in today’s atmosphere, but all the time.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Yes, yes. All the time we, you know, we are always in need of. This is one of the challenges with kind of the stigma around Planned Parenthood and abortion and sexual health in general is that we don’t have access to a lot of public funding like other health care providers do. So we do rely a lot on donations and support from the community to make sure we can keep providing services to patients. And so that is always incredibly helpful and put to good use.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And I love the Planned Parenthood’s message is here for good. Hmm. And one of the things I don’t know if Kerry even knows that at some point she sent a text. Oh, it was on giving Tuesday, and she said, Who should we donate to X, Y or Planned Parenthood? And it was a typo, and I was like, Oh, that’s perfect. I love it. Good.
Andi Curry-Grubb: But yeah, so yeah, I think, you know, again, we’ll get into that. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re we’re going to keep fighting. We’re going to keep providing services and making sure that we’re here for our patients, no matter what. Yes.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, thanks for being here today. And I think on our next episode, we’re excited to have you back and we will talk about where we are today with abortion.
Andi Curry-Grubb: Fantastic.
Susan Reff: Andi thank you.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the lady lawyer League Podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts, if you would like to learn more about our firm, Hightower-Reff Law, please visit us at H R Law Omaha.com. We’ll see you next week.
