The Day After The Day After The Election

Length: 29:39

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

election impact, emotional response, health effects, reproductive rights, Supreme Court, judicial appointments, bodily autonomy, medical professionals, immigration policy, healthcare shortage, miscarriage cases, birth worker challenges, community support, future outlook, political change

SPEAKERS

Ravae Sinclair, Denise Bolds

Ravae Sinclair

Hi everybody, and welcome to doula, that I'm one of your hosts, Ravae Sinclair,

Denise Bolds

and I'm the other host, Denise bolts,

Ravae Sinclair

S, the presidential election,: 2024

Denise Bolds

I'm not feeling good. I feel like my resistance is down. I have a horsey throat. I feel like I'm coming. I'm I'm flush, you know, like I got the flu or something. My resistance was shot this, this election results literally took me down. It took me down like it did back when his first term he won, back when Gore lost. This is the third time United States election has taken me out like this.

Ravae Sinclair

It's so major, I mean, and I think it has the impact. Like I told you yesterday, I had a runny nose. It just came out of nowhere, and I immediately acknowledge that my immune system is down. Yeah, yeah, this is this is tough, because the way America goes so turns the world. We are powerful in so many ways. And I think people really underestimate the power of casting that vote, that ballot. Now I have so many thoughts. My background being in politics. I used to work on Capitol Hill for a US senator. I'm a lawyer there. I feel all the things and have opinions about lots of it, but on a basic level, I feel betrayed. Yeah, it took me almost all day yesterday, talking to family members, talking to close friends. I kind of kept it tight yesterday because I needed to recover. I did definitely feel like, like the first half of the day I was like in the bed, under my weighted blanket, just trying, like in the dark room, just trying to absorb the enormity. And I absolutely feel like we are forever changed. Oh, yeah. And my fear is that we'll never get back to some of the freedoms and some of the some of the equitable, like we were on path to get some equity in some spaces. And now the whole It's like somebody just took the table and just flipped it. So, yeah, that that's how I feel. I feel betrayed, and I feel I'm pissed.

Denise Bolds

That's an understatement. I mean, I'm here in New York City. Is everybody knows. I live here in New York City. I live in Hell's Kitchen. I'm right in the epicenter of when the pandemic struck, and I see this president who's coming back for the second term as the pandemic president. I saw what he didn't do for the country. I saw what he didn't do for New York, being the epicenter of the pandemic, and when the when the election results came in, I got triggered. I went right back into pandemic mode, my body, my mind, my thoughts, my feelings, everything went back into pandemic mode. And that's not where I wanted to go back to. That's not what I want to be. And at the same time, I'm a black woman. I have a black son out here walking these streets and, and, and I'm a I'm a birth worker, and I've supported people through stillbirths, through atopic pregnancies, through incomplete terminations, you know, miscarriages and, and, you know, thank god medical science was there To help these people pull through, whether it be antibiotics for sepsis or whether it be a surgical procedure, to fully clean out that residual tissue and let that person heal. I don't think anyone needs to die from this. I really don't, but here we are, and there are women who have died since this whole Roe v Wade got revoked, and I'm just very upset about this, because this is going to impact generations, and I want my son to have a good chance at having a good family. I want there to be healthy women. We need future generations to perpetuate our communities, and this is not the way to do that. No,

Ravae Sinclair

it's not. I mean, I don't. When we look at the impact you say, you know, around Roe v Wade, the right to bodily autonomy and the access to birth control and all of that, that is gone probably forever, because if we look at the way things are set up, the way things. Are set up. Alito and Clarence Thomas have already said that if Trump wins, they're going to retire, and that gives an opportunity for their positions to be replaced by very young Supreme Court justices. Because right now, as it stands, Supreme Court Justice positions are a lifetime. So are federal judge appointments. There are hundreds of open federal judicial seats open, and we know that Trump's going to do what he did when he was in office. He's going to fill them with Republican leaning judges. By the way, we know that judges are supposed to be a political they're not supposed to have this political affiliation, but they are human beings on the earth, and they have opinions, and we know we can see in the way that they do rulings, the way that they vote. One of the one of the places that we see the erosion in privacy rights is like Griswold versus Connecticut Supreme Court case, which gives what we say, an umbrella or Penumbra of privacy rights. So right to privacy in your home white, and that's where we get abortion rights right. That's right to privacy, right to bodily autonomy, right to free speech. So we see this erosion under that Supreme Court case. They've said, we're going to dismantle that, and that is what we see happening. Well, this is our birth work. This is our work. Falls under these privacy rights and when they believe you don't have the autonomy, you don't have the privacy. Well, guess what we see the meme today. The young man said, your body, my choice. It's beginning. It has already begun. It began when they took away Roe v Wade, but the fight can't continue if the Supreme Court is stacked for a lifetime and if the federal courts are stacked. So let's say somebody wants to bring a case, they're going to it's going to go to state court, then it's going to go to federal court, and they can appeal it to the Supreme Court. The supreme court can decide never to even hear that case and move it back down to federal courts who would reaffirm it. This is why these judicial seats matter. If you have Republican leaning or anti Roe v Wade judges, we're never going to get that right back. No. And just like you said last week, three women died trying to get resolution to miscarriages. Let's talk about what it was they were losing their babies, and because when they went to have the ultrasound, doctors in these states where abortion is illegal and they have a heartbeat law, which means if they if they can detect fetal heartbeat, you can't have an abortion. You can't have the DNC, which cleans out the tissue, which cleans out the uterus. So they were debating from hospital to hospital. Navia, she was in Texas, a child. Well, she she was a child to her parents, but she was 18 years old, but her parents were pro life. Yes, they were. So they're in favor of this law in theory, right? But the minute it's their child, they want it done, right? They want the very thing that they didn't want me and you to have. But they want it done because it's their child, that's right. Well, their child is being buried. It sure is because those doctors, they wanted their license more than they wanted to be a good human Exactly. They don't want to go to jail Exactly. Imma tell you if I'm going to jail for some I'm doing it. Okay, that's going to be one of the reasons I'm going to jail. Because I'm am going to save a life. I'm going to do what I need to do to save a life. And they made those choices. So she went to three different institutions, and they let her die, and that's the fact they had the ability to take care of her. They understood she was miscarry. They weren't unclear about the diagnosis. They were very clear she was going septic, they understood, and they allowed her to die.

Denise Bolds

And as a black woman, I've had multiple miscarriages in my in my lifetime, I would if today, if those babies were viable, I would have been the mother of five or six kids, believe it or not, but I only carried one child to term, and I will tell you that when you are miscarrying, you are sick. It is painful, You are bleeding. You could be feverish, massive vomiting, abdominal pain. You are suffering. You are going through it. So for these women to have to go from hospital to hospital, sick, asking for help and being turned away or being referred to someone else. It's almost it's inhumane the amount of suffering they endured before they passed away. Her

Ravae Sinclair

mother was screaming and begging them, help her. Please help her. Don't let my baby die. Please help her. She lost a grandchild and a child. Child in

Denise Bolds

one breath. That was it last. Like I said, miscarriages are very difficult. I've supported dear friends through atopic pregnancies, once again, very painful fever. Once again, you're sick because this is this. This is an abnormality the body is trying to fight against this. This is this is not something where you're just sitting here talking like Ravae and I are, if you are experiencing this, you're you are going through it. You are ill. And there goes the Hippocratic Oath of taking care of someone. Do no harm. But they're they're sick. They

Ravae Sinclair

are sick. I was sharing with you a post yesterday. There was a thread in the Georgia doula group, birth worker group, where they were saying, are you all scared to get pregnant like that? You live in Georgia, you won't have what you need. And there were plenty of people saying, that's not true. I just had a GNC. No problem, no problem, no problem. And then, and it's so sickening, the disregard of people's experiences, because one person came on and said, Well, interesting. This heart heartbeat law, this is how it affected me. She went in, got it was clear she was miscarrying, but they could hear they had some kind of indication of heartbeat. And she went back several times each week, for four weeks, she was sick, like, as you said, sick. She had other children. She's working. She's trying to because she can't get off

Denise Bolds

work. Can't get off work. Well, get off work. I mean, you don't get any benefit for that. No

Ravae Sinclair

benefit, no excuse, no doctor's excuse. They just let it pass. Yeah, so it took four weeks, but for her to actually get the procedure, to be able to allow, be allowed to get the DNC. It says for a whole month, we let Americans do like suffer like this, psychological, physical, emotional, and then we want her to be a model parent. We want her to be a model citizen and go vote and and work. It's unconscionable. It's inhumane. They knew the the pregnancy wasn't viable. Oh, by the way, one of the other features that helped them know this wasn't a viable fetus was the fetus had a condition that would they would have died really, really soon after birth.

Denise Bolds

So the prenatal testing right? The prenatal testing

Ravae Sinclair

confirmed that, so they already knew, and then it started resolving by miscarrying in utero. She was not far along in the pregnancy, but far enough for them to actually have this genetic testing. And so we let an American woman suffer without their mother. Yes, here we go. Yeah. And so this is how we're getting the erosion. And I don't see it. We're probably never going to get it back. If this the courts get stacked. See, the lawyer mind goes to the judicial piece, the where the we're we might have a midterms, I don't know. We may or may not. I don't know how they're going to change government. But as we know it today, we'll have midterm elections. There'll be new congress people. In two years, there'll be new senators. We might take the Senate or that, whatever. That'll all change, maybe, unless they fundamentally change our system. But what won't change is those staff judges who have federal and Supreme Court who will have lifetime appointments. If there's one thing I pray to God that they are able to address before this administration changes at, you know, in the next two months, is to change the Supreme Court from a lifetime seat to a limited term seat. Yes, that's the one thing they can do that could make a difference for our future. That's the one major thing they can do. I

Denise Bolds

agree. I agree. And you know, as a birth worker, I'm a high risk birth worker. I'm here in New York City. I'm in the heart of the teaching, one of the largest teaching medical capitals here in the world. People doctors come from all over the country, all over the world, to train here in New York hospitals, because it is so elite, I have everything here, from Columbia Presbyterian to NYU to Lenox Hill. We've got them all here, specialties, everything from cancer to bone. Everything is here, and with this new administration that's coming in that's talking about immigration and immigrants and getting rid of immigrants, do you realize how many medical professionals are not natively born in United States? And what we have not reported on in the past two years, which I find very odd, but at the same time, I see what they're doing in the past two years, there has not been a mention of the healthcare shortage due to COVID healthcare shortages of nurses, physicians, mental health professionals, have all been almost decimated out from the pandemic. Okay? Traveling nurses are traveling from state to state, making Bucha amount of money because they're just there's such a shortage. And now, if we got a president's cabinet that wants. To take out immigrants. That's going to further impact our health care system, which has a large number of people working dedicated to health care and and medical sciences who were not born in this country. That's

Ravae Sinclair

right, and we saw it in our Facebook group birth workers for Kamala. One of our members in that group said this is devastating. They are a mixed status family, and they rely on the husband's income. And I it my indication is that the husband is not a citizen, and if there is pursuit of immigrants and deport, deporting them, her her children, they're gonna need to go

Denise Bolds

back. They have to make an exodus plan. They have to make an exodus plan. Yeah, and a lot of people are doing this. We saw this in the first round of the Trump administration when he, you know, had the temporary band on Muslims, as you were clarifying fine to me. And we had physician sitting outside of the United States because they attended a conference and they weren't let back into the country where their homes, their mortgages, their offices that they were caring for, they were sitting out there for weeks, months, waiting to come back in. So we said

Ravae Sinclair

they left cars in the

Denise Bolds

driveway, cars were in the parking lot, cars were in the in the in the airport, airport, yeah, they couldn't get back in. They couldn't get back in to pay their mortgage, to take care of patients, nothing, because

Ravae Sinclair

here and here's and here's why? Because when policies were being implemented under that administration, they were unclear. So customs officers, you know, homeless people, didn't know, can I let this person in? Are they would I be losing my job? Would I mean violating the law. What's the law? Remember, we were doing weeks of clarify the ban, what? Who can come in? Who can't we? It was weeks of that. So what happened? Everything stopped, everything, everything just stopped because people were afraid to make a move. This is exactly what's happening with doctors, with can they give this life saving medical procedure, a DNC. Can they give it to people? Because of this law, is it the heartbeat? Is it? Is it viability, or is it, is the person? Is the host? Sick enough? Well, what is sick enough? It's not clear. What is the definition of sick enough. You have to be damn near dead or dead like that's basically they're not intervening, because they still kind of hear heartbeat. Well, you and I know this fetal heartbeat thing is kind of interesting, right? Because there sometimes you have a heartbeat on the belly and you have a monitor on the belly, and then you have, because they, they can sometimes overlap, you have a monitor on the finger pulse, distinguish between fetal and and, you know, the birthing

Denise Bolds

and abdominal aorta, B, okay,

Ravae Sinclair

so we all know that sometimes the signals get crossed. So how do they know that that's not what's happening? Are you hearing moms or like, what are we doing? Now, maybe they're putting the finger on and then they're hearing they seen that there's a difference. But if we know, like in, you know the one case I talked about here in Georgia where the the mother reported in the Facebook group, this was a term, this, this, this baby was never going to live. Why are we having her suffer a whole month? Yeah, you already know what it is, so people are scared to trigger and so we're gonna, you know, we've had four years of this. We know what it is. We know what it is, but, but I believe it's actually gonna be worse. I don't believe he's at the helm. I don't I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but something we are. We know that we've there's been a decline, he opened the door, and there's been a decline of morality in this country. We have seen a we've seen a lot of energy and enthusiasm around militias and weaponry and controlling women's bodies. And I shared a post, there was a young man who did an interview of a white supremacist, a white nationalist. He was having dinner, and I will try to link this as a Tiktok. I'll try to link this in the show notes. He had dinner with a white nationalist, and the white nationalist just basically said, Well, we're saving the white race. We're making sure that we survive because you guys are reproducing. We're we gotta make sure that we are here. Then have the nerve to say we built this country.

Denise Bolds

When he said that, because I've got it here, because Ravae sends it to me, and I played it multiple times, when this white man had the gall to say that white people built this country, said, Who? And

Ravae Sinclair

the young man corrected me said, Well, his people, Chinese people, put the tracks right. And he corrected him, black, black Americans with we were enslaved people, because not all black people in America have the history of being a black American who were enslaved. My ancestors were enslaved. We built this country. We built this country. Hell. We built the White House, the capital. You built the Capitol building? Yes, we literally built it. Built it literally. Don't talk to me about who built this country, but at any rate, he said the quiet part out loud, yes, he did. We're trying to save white the white race, white folks, it's

Denise Bolds

no centricism. Okay?

Ravae Sinclair

He was like, we can't let you all outnumber us, and that's the direction we're going. So we have to get rid of you. We have to get you in another country, say, send you back so that we can survive. So this is, this is the agenda. We are talking what we're you and I are just saying what they're saying. They're saying the quiet part out loud. They're telling the truth. And that's so that's what we see. And I think that's what we're in for, men taking over, men controlling bodies, men controlling who's in this country and who's not. And I think we're just in for a wild ride. They

Denise Bolds

don't understand this country was never white. It was never found. It was never owned by white people. That's

Ravae Sinclair

what the young man said. No, it was black Americans and indigenous. And

Denise Bolds

what they don't understand is, okay, you want to do you want to never been the majority, by the way, never, they've never been, never been the majority. But you want to deport people. You're going to deport the very same people that can save your life, whether it be a medical situation, a tactical situation, they want to deport the people pulling in from the farms to your dinner table. I mean, I don't understand white people don't have the strength or gumption to do the work that a person of color have done for over 400 years

Ravae Sinclair

your food. Who's gonna fix your car? Who's gonna take your blood and keep you alive. Like you said, what we saw during the pandemic who was holding down this country essential workers. We saw what color they were,

Denise Bolds

essential workers. So it was the people of color who came together, and all those people of color that were in those medical institutions. I live around four major medical institutions. Every one of them had a refrigerated tractor trailer truck in front of them, and those people worked 24 hour shifts, and they worked until they literally had to prop them up against the wall of the building. They were exhausted. Yeah, I've never seen anything like that in my life until now,

Ravae Sinclair

and this is why. And if anybody follows me on social media, you see my posts, I'm done. Yeah, I'm gonna be doing my nails. Yeah, I am not saving and rescuing nobody. This is why I'm so glad that I've already been on this journey of not being a part of wide led organizations where I've already disenfranchised, disengaged myself from the fabric of these organizations, because over and over again we come in to save them. Over and over again, we we come in and they use us as poster. I see so many posts from all kinds of white LED doula organizations or birth work organizations, always quick to put a black face up. Now, when you don't have a black face around the table. You don't have a black face that's qualified to be around that table. You might have put them on around the table. Oh, they don't even have to be there, right? Going on the days of saving y'all, it's not doing it.

Denise Bolds

The glass Cliff does not have my name on it. Oh, exactly.

Ravae Sinclair

So I I'm going to be sitting and watching and with what I've said over and over again. I said it in my private member Podcast. I'm staying in my lane. I'm committed to my communities, my family, and if you're in my circle, committed folks going all out, doing all the things. But other than that, I'm going to be unbothered. So we already see some of the things that are happening. Right? You saw that Facebook post I shared with you. It was a Twitter post, actually, where the woman reported that her husband went to the small manufacturing company in small town. PA, that's strong company, and they were told by the company's president that they will not be getting their Christmas bonus this year because they now have to buy enough product to last one full year at this current rate of product purchase, because after January 21 the tariffs will eat into their profit. So they're trying to get ahead of it by ordering now so whatever money they have in the pot that they were going to give their employees, they now have to put and buy more product. So now people are learning how tariffs work, but you should have known that before you cast your ballot, and now you're going to learn that fat meat is greasy, and greasy meat ain't healthy for

Denise Bolds

you. No, it's not. No, it's not. It clogs up and it does. It doesn't serve as purpose. It kills you. We are going to learn the outcome of what we're doing here, because the gravity the America is not a white organization. Is not a White country. It is a country of multiple races, ethnicities, cultures and religions, and it's all contributed. It all contributed to the growth of this nation. And how dare somebody say, I'm white and therefore I need to be a peer and everybody else that no, absolutely no,

absolutely not.

Denise Bolds

We don't have enough white physicians. We don't have enough white teeth. We don't have you. There's

Ravae Sinclair

not enough white babies. Literally, there's not enough. Literally, there's not enough. And so here we are. So you ask the question, how you feel? Where do we stand? We are we are going to be building with survival and community in mind. I know that's what I'm doing. Absolutely. If you're in my sphere of influence, you're in my circle, that's what I'm on. If this is not something that you want to hear about, mute me. Delete me. Just delete me. Because at this point, it's always been serious, but the work got harder, and I only have the bandwidth for those who are coming with me. I am not. I'm gonna, if I'm a Harriet Tubman, this thing, I got to go with people who I can't drag you. I'm willing to support those who are looking for community, for connection, for change, for systems change, on a fundamental level, high level, at home across the border. Let's do it. But if there is not alignment, I don't want to hear from you.

Denise Bolds

No, no, I'm willing to work hard. I'm 60 years old. I've been through a lot of things here. The pandemic taught me exactly what I can do and what I can't do, and I'm ready to do the I'm ready to do the work, but I'm not going to sit here and argue over ignorance. I'm not going to sit here and entertain someone who is mediocre, someone who doesn't want to work hard, and someone who refuses to embrace the truth, I'm just not here for

Ravae Sinclair

it. And I think the main thing for me is I'm not here to argue with you. I don't I literally will not spend any energy trying to convince people that we matter, or that women's rights are important, or that reproductive health is critical. And I want to be a part of organization that doesn't talk about politics. Talk about politics. I don't want to be a part of organization that doesn't stand for human beings having birthing options, having access to great and supportive postpartum care. Literally, are the future of our country depends on people birthing and being healthy and thriving and surviving. I am here for that, and if, if you're not, I don't, I don't, we don't have anything in common, not

Denise Bolds

at all, yeah, yeah. But you know, we've got some good things that we're working on. Ravae and I are working on. Ravae has got, you know, the National Birth professional partners organization. I've got black women do VBAC. We've got a lot of great tools of empowerment. We've got a lot of great things coming out to really help birth workers to stay empowered, to stay healthy. Health is your wealth, absolutely is your wealth. And we understand in the birth birth worker space,

Ravae Sinclair

you there are a lot of lukewarm organizations. There are spaces that where you can't talk about some things. Listen, if you're looking for a space where you can be supported, where you can make a difference, where you can grow in your ability to make an impact, maybe you don't even know what you can do. We will be doing, I'll be doing a membership drive and open call for members for the National Birth and postpartum professionals organization coming up soon. So watch out for that. We have a community, online community space. I just recorded a couple of episodes for the private podcast where you can get guidance. Here. We are not here for inaction. We are here to support you. We're here to guide you, to make sure you are a skilled birth worker, because listen, families in America are going to need us more than ever. Access to quality care is going to become more and more challenging for all the reasons why we talked about shortage of medical professionals, hospitals not not being able to meet our need, because they can't do this. They can't do that without checking the legal books. Well, we're going to need to be well versed. We're going to need to be well supported. We're going to need to be healthy ourselves, and so join in our communities. You will have the support that you need and the connection that you need to thrive in this profession. So let's, let's get to it. Y'all, let's do love that, huh? Doula, that we are okay. That's our episode for today. We are so happy that you're joining us. Subscribe, like, rate this episode. Make sure you put us on the map, on podcast, on Apple podcast, so more people can find us. All right, all right. Y'all get out there and do what do. Okay, everybody. We'll see you next time

bye, bye.