Final Straw: The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

Long-running anarchist radio show and podcast the Final Straw speaks with Bayla Ostrach on reproductive healthcare.

This week on the show, we sat down with Bayla Ostrach, an activist, anarchist, longtime defender, provider of and researcher around issues of reproductive healthcare. We speak about experiences researching and working on the issue in Catalunya, the battle for abortion and reproductive autonomy in the so-called US, the challenges faced by independent clinics against the business model of clinic chains like Planned Parenthood, legal and material pressure and attacks by anti-abortion extremists as well as the cultural and political struggle to defend and expand the ability for people to get safe, affordable, full spectrum and stigma-free abortion and reproductive care more broadly.

* Content warning, because we are discussing a stigmatized series of medical procedures adjacent to sexual, social and political violence, listeners should be advised and we’ll put warnings in a few places during the episode. If you are hearing the radio version and want to hear a longer version of this show, and to listen at your own pace, check out our full podcast at our website, to be followed in about a week by a transcript for easy reading & a zine for printing.

A list of people, works, and resources mentioned by our guest:

• Loretta Ross work on reproductive justice.
• Into Our Own Hands – Sandra Morgen (book)
• Carol Downer
• Abortion Care Network : national network of independent clinics
• Abortion Stigma Syndemics

Good sites:

• https://abortioncarenetwork.org
• https://abortionfunds.org/
• https://www.sistersong.net/
• https://www.carolinaabortionfund.org
• https://arc-southeast.org/
• https://www.icah.org/blog/
• https://www.guttmacher.org/
• (Guttmacher generally has good abortion research summaries but beware their employment practices are garbage https://prismreports.org/2021/)
• https://www.icah.org/blog/ (for RJ quotes)
• Into Our Own Hands (good history of the self-health movement)

Citations for two shared documents co/authored by Bay:

• Ostrach, Bayla. “Social Movements, Policy Change, and Abortion Access in Catalunya.” Anthropology Now 10, no. 2 (2018): 1–11. https://www.tandfonline.
• Ostrach, Bayla, and Roula AbiSamra. “Abortion Complication Syndemics: Pathways of Interaction between Structural Stigma, Pathologized Pregnancies, and Health Consequences of Constrained Care.” In Stigma Syndemics: New Directions in Biosocial Health. Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2017. https://rowman.com/ISBN/.

photo: Claudio Schwarz via Unsplash

by Final Straw via It's Going Down