The Post-Roe Reality: Jenice Fountain
July 20th, 2023
“Abortion ban is only a precursor to criminalizing pregnancy.”
Jenice Fountain is the Executive Director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive justice organization in Birmingham that serves Alabama, Mississippi, and the deep south. We discuss what the actual lived experience is in Alabama, a year after the Dobbs decision.
Since the Dobbs decision, pregnancies are less safe in states where abortion is prohibited. Exceptions to protect the life of the pregnant person do not work in reality because interventions are only offered at the last possible moment. Having conversations about abortion helps destigmatize, spread the word about what to do in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, and where to find resources.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Jenice Fountain
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis
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Jenice Fountain Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
The Dobbs decision overturned Roe versus Wade about a year ago now. And within six months of this decision, over 20 states have passed legislation to ban abortion. Our last conversation on the podcast about abortion rights was before Dobbs was decided. And now it's time to find out what it's actually like on the ground in a state where abortion is banned.
Joining us today is Jenice Fountain. She's the executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive justice organization in Birmingham that serves Alabama, Mississippi, and the Deep South.
Thank you for joining us. Welcome to Future Hindsight. Jenice Fountain: [00:00:59] Hi. Thanks, Mila.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:01] You are in Alabama, one of the states where abortion is banned. In fact, abortion is restricted across the entire region in the South. How have things changed on the ground since Dobbs was decided? What's the lived experience?
Jenice Fountain: [00:01:18] The lived experience. Well, on the funding end or on the Yellowhammer Fund end, we shifted from obviously providing abortion funding to about 150 clients per week to not being able to fund it all; and then shifting to kind of doubling down on our family justice programming, which is supporting people that are going to birth or forced to birth. That looks like diapers, financial assistance, helping people that are navigating domestic violence while they're pregnant, and also plugging people into resources that are a little bit more culturally competent because we know without abortion access that people that can't get across state lines or go to birth. And we also know that Alabama has that horrible maternal mortality rate that is actually higher than the national average for black birthing people in the state. So a lot of the work looked like, how do we figure out who's going to be left out in the efforts post Dobbs because
we knew that people would shift to assisting folks getting out of state. And we knew that people that were not going to leave the state were going to get left out of the conversation entirely. And they still need assistance. So a lot of it has been how do we get people to resources around birthing and how do we keep people safe that might self-manage? How do we keep people safe that might try to get across state lines and get caught? Because Alabama is definitely a really heavily surveilled state.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:42] Hmm. Yeah. So a lot of people being left behind and not getting any services, whether that's getting an abortion or even getting good maternal health care or getting care for if they have a child afterwards. So, of course, we all know that the Dobbs decision was leaked before it was official. So you were ready for it when it actually happened. Plus, Alabama passed a trigger law in 2019 prohibiting abortion in almost all circumstances that you knew would take effect after the Supreme Court decision. So what was the mood? What was the first thing you did to get ready?
Jenice Fountain: [00:03:20] Well with the leak, we saw it coming. And so we made sure that the people that had already reached out for care, we streamlined the process as much as possible of getting them to care. It looked like telling people, "Hey, we know you have an appointment scheduled. You might want to see if you can move the appointment up. You might want to see if you can get whatever care you need as soon as possible. You might need to go ahead and take those days off work. You might need to go ahead and plan this out for the next few weeks rather than wait for whatever time you had in mind." And also getting messaging out to people that were still in the contemplate stage that looked like, "if you're considering it, your time is about to honestly run out." And then prepping for, again, people that were going to be left out of the conversation. I know we say that a lot, but it's really sad the ways in which people don't consider folks that don't have the ability to get up and leave. I think now one of the closest places is Illinois. Some people in Alabama haven't left Alabama at all. So going to Illinois with no PTO time, no time off, no child care, no gas, no reliable transportation, no funding, it's not feasible for everybody. And then also looking at the fact that when we talk about exceptions, the only exception is if the person birthing's life is in danger. And reminding people what that feasibly means in practice. Because when you hear that it sounds reasonable, they're going to give you an abortion if your life is in danger. But in practice, in real life, with these laws on the books, it looks like doctors contemplating while your life is in danger. It looks like, "Am I going to lose my medical
license for providing you this care that you need in this state that has banned it?" And so when we had the conversation about abortion exceptions, we need to really think about, okay, this is what this says, but what is it like in practice? Because abortion exceptions in practice don't work. They're not real. They don't function in the way that they should. And we're in partnership with some medical doctors in the state that are saying that they're having to go through their practice or go through hospitals and perform it and push doctors to do it literally still, when people's lives are at the end. The intervention isn't soon enough to where the exception really does what it's supposed to do. It's really like the last minute thing of like, "okay, they really might perish in this moment. I guess we'll do an abortion."
Mila Atmos: [00:05:52] Yeah, it's when the pregnant person is already at death's door essentially is what you're saying is when the intervention is happening and that the calculus is first and foremost about the doctor keeping their license as opposed to... you know, being accredited in the state of Alabama. And I totally, of course, appreciate that no matter what, we still need those doctors. And you mentioned about the maternal health care that is problematic as it is in Alabama. I want to know now, so like if you are somebody who needs an abortion in any of these areas in the south, what's the decision making process to get access -- short of going to a place like Illinois? Like you said, some people have never left the state. What are your options? How do you go about it? What's your decision tree?
Jenice Fountain: [00:06:40] Unfortunately, it's kind of like -- and I'm always speaking from the lens of people that are marginalized with less accessibility. It's always like if you know someone knowledgeable or if you know where to look. And I really can't say enough that living under so many different systems at once doesn't really allow you to have your full toolbox to address these needs. And so a lot of people are relying on knowing someone that they can safely have the conversation with because the ambiguity of the law has really ended a lot of public conversation or discourse around abortion as well. In my experience now post Dobbs, people are leaning on someone else knowing like they're reaching out to their local person. That's like, "Hey, I need an abortion. Where do I even start?" And then us having to navigate the conversation in a way that's not incriminating, like speaking in third person or having to point to legislation or the World Health Organization instead of just being able to be like, Hey, you need one mife and four miso and you need to do these things." We have to say, "Oh, the
World Health Organization says that if one had to," you know, and it's it's a real hindrance. But I think the scariest part of it is if you don't know anyone's safe. Then you just take it among your own hands and whatever devices you have. And those devices are very slim in this state.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:12] Yeah. Well, you just mentioned that you really have to be careful the way that you communicate so you don't incriminate yourself or the other person who is seeking an abortion. So considering that there are aiding and abetting laws in Alabama, you know, which restricts you from giving good advice, what is the work that you can do today?
Jenice Fountain: [00:08:33] So a lot of what we're doing at Yellowhammer Fund now is arming other people with all of the information, all of the resources that we have, because we know that aid access exists for people that need to get to care and need to figure out how to get an abortion. But not everyone else does. And there's only six of us. And so we had a fellowship in which we brought in 25 people that we knew were trusted communicators in their communities, but also very much so marginalized and gave them everything that we had. We gave them safer sex kits. We gave them emergency contraceptives. We taught them how to engage with legislation, how to read Alison, which is the online portal for dealing with your legislators. We taught them how to self- manage their abortion, what resources they needed after self-managing an abortion, resources around birthing and really just arm them with everything that we could so that people wouldn't always have to find a Yellowhammer fund or find an organization that was aligned and they could find someone in proximity to them that had the information. I think that's the biggest piece because we want to give people the power they need. Like it needs to be as simple as finding someone in your neighborhood or finding someone in your social circle already. And so we're going to keep with that theme of like, how do we give out everything we know? How do we make lots of us? We have like 25 hubs from the Fellowship because we gave them literally everything that they could possibly need to know to assist someone that they care about that needs care.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:06] So where are these hubs? Where can people access the Yellowhammer Fund fellows?
Jenice Fountain: [00:10:13] So we have the fellows online. It is very much so intentionally not disclosed where they physically are.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:21] Okay, that's good. That's good. I respect that.
Jenice Fountain: [00:10:24] Yeah, they're still accessible in that some of these folks are kind of like shifting to being part of our field team, but they're online, they're accessible online. And so it's a matter of like reaching out and saying you need resources. And we still follow up with everybody. We still give out resources. We just can't fund. Sometimes it looks like us pointing to different places where you can get care, where you can get aftercare. And sometimes it looks like, "Oh, hey, we have a person that's a close proximity to you that can have this conversation with you." I think it's going to be like a gradual thing that covers more bases as we go, but for the time being, their reach is going to be their folks that are already in close proximity to them. And the work has changed a lot in other ways. We're going to have a legal fund soon because we know that this state is very much so a carceral state. And I don't know if you saw the legislation that was just proposed, the HB 454 that would make it a homicide to terminate your pregnancy in this state has routinely repeatedly said that the intention for the abortion ban was to punish the provider. And everyone said, "well, it's fine because it's a provider." Everyone leaned on that while we were screaming, "It's coming, it's coming." We just, you just have to wait until it reaches the pregnant person. And now this bill says that if you terminate your pregnancy, it will be a homicide. And if your pregnancy is unviable, you still cannot terminate it or will still be a homicide. And so when we talk about this pregnancy consequences or the abortion ban, and when people say, "oh, well, I might not have an abortion anyway, so I don't mind or whatever, or it punishes the provider," we have to look at the real possibility that someone will miscarry in a state with really heavy medical bias and go to whatever service is available in the state and be deemed as someone that tried to carry out their own termination of a pregnancy. Like, abortion ban is only a precursor to criminalizing pregnancy, especially in a state like Alabama.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:35] Yeah, well, I want to get to the criminalization of both providers and pregnant people. But before we get there, I feel like we should talk about having your own abortion because this is going to be, like you mentioned, if you do it yourself, if you, let's say, go to aid access.org and get abortion pills and let's say you have a
complication, you can show up at the hospital and you can say you're just having a miscarriage. You don't actually have to say that you took these pills, but can you actually get caught when you are online and getting the medication or if it's being shipped to you by mail, which is how I understand it works? Can that be intercepted? Does the state know what are the repercussions?
Jenice Fountain: [00:13:22] So we always advise for people -- and this is something I noticed is like actually really not known or realized, people post about abortion a lot and post about needing one really publicly and use Messenger to talk about needing an abortion. And that is not safe. And it might as well be a public Facebook status. If you talk about needing an abortion on your Messenger, you may as well just hold up a sign and say, "I'm trying to get abortion access." We always advise people to use any amount of secure network that they can. We communicate on Signal a lot. And although that's not really, it's not foolproof, it's not super definitive on safety, but my understanding of access is that it's really discreet. If you could do it to a P.O. Box or if you could do it to something that's not your personal traceable home address, it would probably be better. But I do advise not ever having the conversation with anyone other than who you have to have the conversation with. We've seen lots of cases where people's intimate partners report them for their abortion. I've seen that happen. So like I would just advise using a safe network. If you can send it somewhere that's not your personal address to be picked up, then that sounds like a better idea than sending it to yourself. Although federally, since HB 454 is not a law yet, and so I want to say that you can still get medicine federally shipped without risking being criminalized now.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:53] Right.
Jenice Fountain: [00:14:53] So my advice to get it shipped elsewhere would be if they
were successful in criminalizing the medication.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:00] Yes. Well, it's interesting about the criminalization, because I feel like to your point, first they went for the provider and now they're really going after the pregnant people, which is really their goal all along, even though people tried to deny it forever. But I think even now people are being criminalized under, for example, in Alabama, the chemical endangerment law or in other places, for example, where they say, of course you're committing a homicide against your unborn child. But before we go
to the chemical endangerment law, let's talk about the doctors and what this is really doing to the landscape of maternal health care, because the criminalization of people who perform an abortion, the jail term in Alabama is 10 to 99 years. And so, of course, this has affected the care for people who are pregnant and who want to be pregnant. What's this doing to maternal health care writ large in places like Alabama?
Jenice Fountain: [00:15:57] I think I can't say enough that the exception does not function in society in the way that people think it does. Or in medical practices at all. I talked to Dr. Yashica Robinson about having patients, or being in a hospital, where she's witnessing patients have to wait until the last moment. She had a person that needed an abortion, and due to the law and people's hesitancy to perform abortions instead of doing the abortion, while it would have been a simple procedure, they waited until she was septic and had to perform a C-section, which was obviously a major surgery. And she ended up obviously in intensive care for a longer time than she would have needed. You have to always add that on top of us having really high maternal mortality rates as it is and morbidity rates. And then you have to look at the doctors that already have bias. You know, I just think like it just shifts every conversation. It shifts every dynamic. Health care is already terribly, horribly biased in this state. And if you don't know where you can find someone that you can trust, you might not even disclose what you have going on. And even before you can get to talking about doctors around abortion, some people aren't even going to seek care at all when they need medical care out of fear of being criminalized for self managing even if they didn't.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:29] Right. Right.
We are going to take a quick break to share about a podcast that's committed to having meaningful conversations about important topics, just like we are here on Future Hindsight. It's called Talkin' Politics and Religion Without Killin' Each Other. I know, I know. We're not supposed to talk about politics and religion. Right. But why is that? It's because the loudest, most extreme voices have taken all the oxygen out of the room. Well, that's where Talkin' Politics and Religion without Killin' Each Other comes in. Each week, they bring in a diverse array of elected officials, faith leaders and some of the best journalists in the country. Many of the guests are recognizable public figures that we all know and love. But it's also regular folks just like the host Corey Nathan. They're really easy to find on Apple, Spotify, and all the major podcast apps as well as their
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And now let's return to my conversation with Jenice Fountain.
Well, so one of the things that was really interesting when I was researching for this interview about the chemical endangerment law in Alabama, it was really created to address the meth problem. But my understanding is that, of course, a lot of pregnant people get tested for drug use without their knowledge. And similarly, the infants. And the attorney general, Steve Marshall, said he wants to incarcerate pregnant people for seeking abortion pills under the chemical endangerment law. But what you said just now is that they actually want to do that with a new bill, which is a homicide bill. He walked back the comment about the chemical endangerment law, but it's nonetheless chilling. So how, practically, is this law already being used to target pregnant persons?
Jenice Fountain: [00:19:55] It has terrified everyone. So I think people leaning on the fact that he walked it back are leaving out the impact of him having said it at all. I've seen the impact of the state's need and will to give fetus personhood. We've had clients that have been pregnant and been attacked. Right. And had lost their pregnancy and the state tried to name that manslaughter. And so we talk about personhood of pregnancy. It's not just the abortion piece. It's also just criminalizing pregnancy itself. But I think that the function of Steve Marshall's statements always had the impact that he intends, which is to terrify people out of having the conversation. Abortion, the the word here is already heavily stigmatized. And the more you hear someone say, "oh, we're going to incarcerate people for abortion." If you don't have time to really look into something or follow up, all you hear is incarceration in pregnancy or incarceration in abortion, and you're going to put those together and it's going to stifle your ability to navigate resources or health care. I also want to uplift the testing of pregnant folks without their consent, because that's really, really, it's bad in Alabama as a whole. It's horrible in Huntsville in their medical care system. And I think people don't realize what that means. It's so connected, right? Maternal health and then abortion care, and being tested, and the mandatory reporting we have in the state. Because people don't know you don't have to consent to being tested when you're pregnant here. We've had people
get tested, test positive for THC. And if you don't know the practices of child protective services of the state or the Department of Human Resources in the state, you won't know what they're supposed to do subsequently. And they know that lower income people aren't privy to what the process is supposed to look like. So they have removed babies out of the mom's care and not allowed them to retest in the state. And so it's just so much more to it because when we look at what does this mean and practices and the state says, oh, we're going to streamline adoption process. You know, or you don't know. But, you know, as a black or brown person, that means, okay, they're going to take children out of my care. And then we have so many adoption agencies that somehow manage to be for profit in this terrible way. And it's like, are we really talking to people that have this Christian ideology around fetuses or are we talking to people that know that they can put children into a for capital system of adoption? Or are we talking to people that like to incarcerate folks at the highest rate that they can, and make more ways to streamline people into a carceral system? Are we talking to people that are responding to publications that indicated that white people would be the minority by 2043 and know that 60% of fetuses terminated for abortion are white. I think it's a huge spectrum. And so when people say, "oh, maybe if they knew what this meant for people's health care; or, you know, that's just their values, it's a different..." That's not that. They know exactly what they're doing. It's a very strategic thing. Overturning Roe wasn't overnight. It was a very long process. There's been a lot of things that gave this movement the second and third winds that it has. And so when we talk about anti- abortion movements, when we talk about anti-abortion protesters or this narrative, it's so important to realize how much of a death threat this is to actual living people that could carry pregnancies. And how we address it matters. If we address it as it's ignorance, then people are going to address it in a soft way. There's nothing about the way that this movement has attacked birthing people that is soft, that is empathetic in any way. And so our need to empathize with folks that are offering us death threats is really alarming to me.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:05] Mm hmm. Yeah. You're clearly super passionate about reproductive justice, and you have been a dedicated grassroots organizer for a long time. And you're talking just now about for profit adoption agencies, which almost sounds like a joke, right? It sounds like it came from some sort of, like, dystopian novel. You also started a non profit organization called Margins: Women Helping Black Women. And it's a local community aid organization that addresses the reproductive,
financial, and material needs of low income black mothers and their children. So with everything that you've just said, how does your work at margins complement the work you do at Yellowhammer Fund? Give us the whole 360 view.
Jenice Fountain: [00:24:53] So it's funny because I actually started Margins when I was like working at a $1 an hour piece of job facing a lot of the marginalizations or intersections of poverty, of being like almost homeless. It's just being really deep into the system of capitalism and of patriarchal violence. So when I started it, I was really bad off myself. I was doing a lot of like giving lunches during the summertime to kids that were out of school during Covid and then also doing backpack drives. We did financial assistance, we did domestic violence things, and Yellowhammer Fund reached out before I knew of them and they were like, "Hey, the family justice work you're doing is an important aspect of reproductive justice. Do you want to be contracted to do what you're doing? So we can have like kind of a full spectrum, like birthing decision support organization?" I was like, "Really? Sure." And so I came on as like Family Justice organizer for two years and I was still doing like more of the right to parent work. And then so with the Dobbs decision, they were kind of like, "do you want to take over as director?" And I was like, "This is a weird time to become director of an abortion fund." But we really try our best to go the full amount of supporting people through all of their reproductive decisions. And I think a lot of people say that a lot. We still have to examine the ways that it shows up in their work, because I really tired of words being said publicly and then the work not reflecting that. So a lot of times that looks like, okay, we know who's most marginalized, we know who's most impacted. We know this is going to disproportionately impact Black and brown folks or queer and trans folks, undocumented, disabled people. And then after that, you don't see the work show that at all. It's just people know what to say, and then they go back to whatever works and whichever way they're doing it. How it all comes together is that we're always thinking, who's going to get left out? Like, who is the most vulnerable in the moment? And how do we shift the power and presence that we have to really, one, back them up, uplift whatever work they're doing or whatever they're facing in a way that says that we know that we're not experts at their lived experience they are. Like, we might be reproductive justice experts, but we're never going to approach someone with the idea that we already know how best to serve them, like everyone's individual. We're always trying to have a dialogue with people and see what they offer a conversation as well as really serve them where they're at and meet them where they're at.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:36] Yeah, that's important to serve people where they are as opposed to trying to get them to come to you or see your point of view. It's really difficult. In any case, like you said, you don't want to disclose your locations at Yellowhammer, which is good in the current environment. So what is the work that Yellowhammer did before the Dobbs decision? What did it look like?
Jenice Fountain: [00:27:57] So before the Dobbs decision, we were doing mostly abortion funding. We did some transportation to clinics. We did emergency contraceptives, safer sex kits. And we did like any practical assistance that you might need to navigate care. So like, there's a lot of places where you could get abortion funds, but maybe not gas or maybe not childcare funds or maybe not any amount of money that might make up for your missing work. So we did things like that. And the transport, we sometimes we would take people to Atlanta because Alabama, you had to wait like a 48 hour period after coming to the clinic and then come back. That's not really feasible for a lot of folks with jobs that don't have any leave or PTO or whatever, sick time. So we were taking people to Atlanta to do one day services, but that was most of the work pre-Dobbs. And then also going the extra mile because we would have some people that are like, "I'm sleeping in my car and I need an abortion." And then it was like, "yeah, we're going to get you an abortion. And we also don't want you to recover from an abortion in your car. So maybe we can get you a room and talk about some services so you can get maybe some resources around housing or talk about why you're in your car, sleeping. What do you need, food, you know?" And I think that's how it works really well to have Margins be a part of Yellowhammer Fund because we got to like not recreate a wheel but still guide people through the services. So it's like, I don't want to give someone an abortion that's hungry and ignore the fact that they're hungry also.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:33] Right. Yeah. So you gave very comprehensive care and now you're reduced, very much reduced, to what you are able to do today. So if you could wave a magic wand, we know that legislation is not going to be changing overnight. What would you need in this moment that would be the most helpful to you on the ground?
Jenice Fountain: [00:29:53] Well, after the Dobbs decision, we got 8000 orders for emergency contraceptives, which is a lot for our small team. And we only recently caught up. We have a more streamlined process. But I think what would be helpful most is people figuring out where they fit in. And then doing that, I think people will see, "Oh, well, they need money, so I can't assist." But there's other ways you can evolve. We pack emergency contraceptives, we pack safer sex kits. We're literally literally on feet once a month and stationed in a neighborhood with all of the things that we offer, with all the information. And then we're also on foot otherwise, just having conversations with people, so you can plug in at anyone's capacity. Like there's a lot that we can do online. Like you could come help write thank you notes. There's a lot of ways to get plugged in. I would like people to feel less discouraged by not having monetary ways to plug in and reach out and figure out where they're best suited and have the conversation about abortion. At the dinner table at the soccer game, I bring up abortion every chance I get, literally. All right. What do we... We're going to church Sunday? Yeah, that's cool. And what about abortion? Every time it's like if you don't say abortion, it's not helpful. It's just like adding to the stigma around abortion. Get educated. If you're in a place where you can safely get a lot of information on self managing an abortion and where to go and get as much information as possible and share it, a lot of what's happening is that people don't have any information. And if you don't have it in your toolbox, you can't use it.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:34] Right.
Jenice Fountain: [00:31:34] And after the fellowship, we had someone say that they overheard their niece talking about needing an abortion and how it's illegal and they just would have to carry out the pregnancy. And she was like, "Wait, no, actually you can do this. You can do that. This is how you use the pills. This is what you tell them if you have to go to the emergency room." And all these things, it's that that's really going to keep us safe. It's our people knowing and having information that's going to keep people safe. In a post Dobbs world.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:00] I also speak about abortion all the time, wherever I can, with unsuspecting people, I like to say. And I had a conversation with these two men, it was like a family dinner or two families. They're not Americans. And so we had this conversation about abortion being banned and they did not understand that even if you have a miscarriage and you need miscarriage care, you can't get it unless you're septic.
And they're like, "What? But then you're like two minutes from dying." And I said, "Yes, that's exactly right." And they just didn't understand it. And they're, you know, they're everyday people, they read the newspaper. But it's really almost incomprehensible, I think, the way that things are reported. So people don't understand what that means. You know, they don't understand just how sick you have to be in order to get care. So what are two things an everyday person can do to advance reproductive justice? And the first thing that I heard you say here is talk about abortion. Just talk about abortion. Use the word so that it will stop being stigmatized and share information. What's the second thing that you would like people to do?
Jenice Fountain: [00:33:10] I would like people to... Wait. Did we already say get all the information? I think that's just critical. Like arm yourself ahead of time, have emergency contraceptives ahead of time, have access, or have a way or process to get to medical care or abortion medication ahead of time. Know as much as you can so that you can advocate for someone else. And if you're in a position where, you know, if you get pregnant, you're just simply going to go across state lines, figure out how you can make sure that someone else knows that you have resource and you're willing to assist them if they need it.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:49] That's good advice. So if I'm looking for information online, where would you point people to?
Jenice Fountain: [00:33:54] Information on like abortion? Speaker3: [00:33:56] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:57] About abortion care.
Jenice Fountain: [00:33:58] A good place is Aid Access. And if you email us, we have a list that we'll send you for literally every stage of the process that you would need. And also the miscarriage hotline is a good one for people that are self-managing and need to know if maybe they feel like something may have gone wrong or what resources are available in the area to follow up.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:21] Excellent. Where is the miscarriage hotline? Where do I find that.
Jenice Fountain: [00:34:24] The miscarriage and abortion hotline is mahotline.org and there's a number on there and you can tell them... I mean, if you don't feel comfortable saying you tried to self-manage, which you would be safe in doing so you could just talk about miscarry. They know what to expect after taking abortion pills. There are like 99%, 98% effective. And so the likelihood that you'd have an issue with them is slim to none. But people worry. And so it's good to have a place where you could go and have that conversation. But if you're a local in Alabama, there's West Alabama Women's Center as well, and they do telehealth appointments. So you can talk about any of your pregnancy outcomes with them regardless of how you landed at the outcome.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:07] Thank you. Great resources. So here's my last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Jenice Fountain: [00:35:14] I don't know if I'm functioning off of hope as much as I'm functioning out of sheer rage. I think there's some hopefulness in seeing people organize together around this, like Yellowhammer Fund, like West Alabama Women's Center, like Oasis Women's Care. But I think a lot of it now is rage, because I know that all of these systems together are keeping folks so tired and poor and hungry and nomadic that we can't really always adequately engage and fight back. If I'm being honest, I function out of rage. I function out of knowing that people's real lives are in danger. And I'm functioning out of knowing the ways in which this is going to change the trajectory of folks' lives in a state that is not going to care what we need post pregnancy.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:09] Yeah, I hear you. Well, I think there is space for rage. There's space for anger to fuel our activism for justice. Thank you very much for being on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Jenice Fountain: [00:36:24] Thank you, Mila.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:26] Jenice Fountain is the executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive justice organization that serves Alabama, Mississippi, and the Deep South.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Landon Mascareñaz and Doannie Tran, co-authors of The Open System: Redesigning Education and Reigniting Democracy.
Doannie Tran: [00:36:51] We think that politics is really the marshaling of public will to do something great, to do something that you can't do alone. And so we think acknowledging that there is a public leadership aspect to being an education leader is one of the most fundamental mindset shifts. And then all of the practices sort of flow from that.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:11] That's next time on Future Hindsight. Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Seriously, we do. And actually, quite a lot of people listen to the show there. If that's you, Hello! If not, you'll find punchy episode clips, full interviews and more. Subscribe at YouTube.com/FutureHindsight.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me.
Until next time, stay engaged!
The Democracy Group: [00:37:45] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.