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Passionate about modern feminist issues? Want to learn more about how today's political, academic, and cultural leaders strive for a future of universal equality and justice?
Join NOW in a podcast dedicated to intersectional feminist discussions in American society with leaders in entertainment, sports, politics, and science. From conversations on constitutional equality, to economic justice and reproductive rights, listeners will find new ways to learn, engage, and get empowered.
Listen for new episodes released every other Wednesday.
Rose Brunache (00:00)
you
Amy Littlefield (00:01)
And the other part of that is that there is this ability to look away from dead women, especially when they're black, especially when they're low income.
you know, that has been a seminal part of our abortion politics in this country, right back to the death of Rosie Jimenez in the 1970s and then the death of Becky Bell in the 1980s. And then looking more recently, the death of Portia Gamese, the woman who died in Texas, whose youngest son now chases after women with braids on the street because they look like his mommy, because doctors would not take care of her because of the anti-abortion laws in the state of Texas. Those are the names, the deaths that we need to remember.
One of the mysteries I was trying to solve in this book is like, why is one death not enough?
Kim Villanueva (00:43)
you
Hello and welcome to Feminism Now. I'm Kim Villanueva, the president of the National Organization for Women. Reproductive justice has been one of NOW's core pillars since our organization began. Even after the passage of Roe vs. we knew the fight wasn't over. Anti-abortion groups immediately began picking at our rights, trying to tear them back down. And in 2022, they succeeded. In Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade.
and decided that abortion legislation was the role of the states. To some people, it might have seemed like a very sudden decision, but for those of us who follow reproductive rights, we knew. We saw the years-long campaign to get us to this moment, one where now abortion is all but banned in 17 states. Of course, people blame the justices and the politicians who handed abortion rights in this country to its demise, but who was behind them? Who gave them the ideas and kept the fight alive? Rose and I are excited to sit down today with Amy Littlefield.
the abortion access correspondent at The Nation and author of the new book, Killers of Roe, my investigation into the mysterious death of abortion rights to talk about who really killed Roe versus Wade. We know reproductive rights is near and dear to many of you. We'd love to hear from you about what you think about the dog's decision, how it's impacted your life and your advocacy. You can call now at the number in our show notes and send us a voice message or email us a voice memo at feminismnow at n-o-w dot o-r-g.
Reproductive justice is not just a matter of philosophy or a way to think about bodily autonomy. The loss of Roe versus Wade has had real physical implications for millions of women. The Dobs decision did not stop people from having abortions. People still get the healthcare they need, whether it's pills through the mail or crossing state lines. But that means they get it at higher risk. Women have died for lack of necessary abortions. Arianna Smith's body was forced to remain on life support in Georgia against her family's wishes.
until the baby was delivered. Women have received, over and over again, stark messages that our bodies and our wishes no longer matter. So we're so glad to have Amy Littlefield with us today, someone who can talk with us about who is responsible for this pain and suffering and what we need to do to get our rights back. Amy, thank you for being here.
Amy Littlefield (03:07)
Thank you so much for having me on the show, Kim and Rose. It's such a pleasure to be with you.
Kim Villanueva (03:11)
You conducted your book very much like a true crime novel, know, a murder investigation, sort of like an Agatha Christie story, trying to figure out who done it. And you interviewed a lot of suspects. This means you talk to a lot of very interesting characters in your book.
Amy Littlefield (03:26)
That's a kind word for some of them.
Kim Villanueva (03:28)
from hyper-religious people who travel, you know, holding model fetuses to the most hidden politician behind the Hyde Act. How did you choose these people and how did you get to meet them?
Amy Littlefield (03:38)
So the murder mystery theme really started out partly as a way to entice myself to tell this story. I'd reported on abortion for more than a decade when it became clear we were going to lose the constitutional right to abortion. And murder mysteries are my escape. I'm sure that's true for a lot of your listeners. for many women. We like to disappear into worlds where justice is served up in the end, right? And everything's tied up in a nippo and the detective sets things right. And so that's kind of how it started.
As I went along the way, I realized it was the right structure for the story that I wanted to tell. And that's in part because each section of my investigation was focused on the death of a woman as a result of anti-abortion policy. So I started with these deaths and then began tracing the policies behind these deaths and looking at the people who are responsible. And what I found is that
those folks were often not the people whose names were attached to the legislation or the people we'd already heard of or the Supreme Court justices or Donald Trump or kind of the people who we tend to blame when we think about how we got to where we are, right? Sometimes it was these quieter suspects, these people who had been sort of living in obscurity. And so it was exciting to kind of track these people down and interview them.
Rose Brunache (04:53)
Well, you are, of course, a proponent of reproductive rights, and you report to the nation, which is left-leaning. Most of the people, however, that you spoke to are extremely right-leaning in this book. Why do you think they let you follow them, and why do you think they agreed to talk?
Amy Littlefield (05:09)
I wonder the same thing myself, Rose. I think it's such an interesting question. And I think it differed for each one of them. I mean, so when I went into these interviews, I was very upfront about who I was. I said, you know, I'm a pro-choice. I support abortion rights. If you Google my name, that's going to be pretty clear to you. I think if I identify myself as the abortion axis correspondent of the nation, there's not a lot of mystery there. But what I said was, you guys have done something pretty impressive, right? You overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
I want to learn how you did it and I want to learn in particular about the grassroots story of how you did it, how you built a pretty impressive social movement, which even though I disagree with every part of what you're doing, I have to admit it's pretty impressive. And that often, you know, I think being upfront in a way set people at ease or caused them to kind of trust in a way I was being upfront, I was being authentic about who I was.
I think for some of the people, know, I talked, for example, to a man named Paul Herring who wrote a first draft of the Hyde Amendment, the ban on federal funding of abortion that killed Rosie Jimenez. You know, I think he talked to me because he was trying to convert me to Catholicism. Like, I think that, like, our interviews mostly consisted of me asking him questions and him trying to sell me on Catholic theology and save my soul. Some of the men talked to me, I think, because they love hearing themselves talk.
Kim Villanueva (06:31)
True
politician.
Amy Littlefield (06:31)
Yeah, I feel like it's not telling too feminists that like, did you guys know that men really like to talk about themselves? It's probably not a shock, but some of them like Randall Terry, for example, the leader of Operation Rescue, the guy who brought legions of people to the doors of clinics to co-opt the tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience and reverse engineer them against feminism. He, I think genuinely just loves the media, loves the spotlight, loves
talking about himself. I think the motives varied, but they're sort of intertwined with their motives for passing these anti-abortion policies in the first place.
Kim Villanueva (07:10)
Yeah, it's interesting because it sounds like for some of them it was ego as opposed to being a true believer. So how would you describe the difference between the people who are the true believers in trying to have abortion outlined and those who are just politicians and just trying to get votes?
Amy Littlefield (07:24)
I see this alliance between the true believers and the opportunists as the defining alliance that led to the death of abortion rights, right? At least the legal death of abortion rights. We still have abortion access in this country, right? I don't want anyone to think we don't. Limited, yes. And of course, women dying preventable deaths as a result of abortion bans in more than a dozen states. I want to point out, I did find true believers and opportunists on both sides of this story, right?
And I kind of was fascinated by being able to find people who were true believers and yet had found political opportunities, people who were really savvy organizers and yet seemed to really be motivated by a sense of true belief. And so when it came to the anti-abortion movement, the sort of ultimate true believer was this man, Paul Herring, who was deeply devout Catholic, had been raised by a Catholic mother in Texas.
used his law degree to bring these sort of long shot legal maneuvers to try to subvert abortion access. He, I think, genuinely believed that the fetus was a human being, believed that his church, you know, was, that the teachings of his church wanted him to protect, you know, the fetus. He believed very profoundly that as a Catholic and as someone who was following what he believed were the teachings of his church, he was going to get into heaven.
I sort of thought of him as like the most basic unit of the anti-abortion movement, this driving force or these sort of true believers who really believe and are hyper-focused on this goal. But he couldn't have succeeded without the opportunists, right? Without people like Henry Hyde, who, know, Henry Hyde was also a Catholic, also opposed abortion, but was very savvy, knew how to make friends, knew how to use this to his advantage, knew how to use abortion to get re-elected.
So you see folks like that, people like Richard Vigri, who I interviewed for the book, one of the architects of the conservative movement, who were saying, how do we use abortion to peel Catholic voters off from the Democratic Party? How do we use abortion to build the coalition for our unpopular economic policies and for our wars abroad? How do we bring that into our messaging in order to get people like Ronald Reagan, of course, elected? And so
This alliance between the true believers and the opportunists is really what manufactured abortion as a political issue for the conservative movement in this country. But it was also complicated because there were people who I looked at who I thought, you're a believer, but you're also a complicated, opportunistic kind of guy.
Rose Brunache (10:06)
Of course, those true believers have influence through policy. Can you talk about what the pipeline is and for people protesting outside clinics and for preaching in churches to actual legislation?
Amy Littlefield (10:18)
want to start with the Hyde Amendment, which for me was sort of the smoking gun in the death of abortion rights. This is the policy that cuts off public funding of abortion so that low income people, people on Medicaid in most states, no longer have access to abortion. And so that the people who really care about access and care about reproductive justice and not just the legal right to abortion, they're going to spend their time raising money to try to pay for people's abortions.
And so it reshapes the abortion rights movement from that moment forward as well. ⁓ And so the pipeline from the believers to the opportunists to get this policy passed really starts with the Catholic Church, right? Which in the 1970s, the Catholic Church basically is the anti-abortion movement, right? And they have this amazing infrastructure, which is Catholic churches all across the country.
And so in 1976, Henry Hyde introduces the ban on federal funding of abortion. And I tell the story of how, you know, Paul Herring, the true believer, had presented the idea to the bishops. It got shot down early on. And then this man, Bob Bauman, who's a much more unpopular member of Congress, taps Henry Hyde on the shoulder and says, you're a popular guy. Why don't you introduce this ban? Henry Hyde introduces it. And it's having a tough time getting through Congress, which at that point had a Democratic majority.
And there were Democrats who might have opposed abortion, didn't think it was so great. And yet, you know, they looked at the Hyde Amendment and said, isn't this transparently discriminatory? I mean, you're banning abortion specifically for poor people. You can't do that. And so what happened is that the Catholic bishops got involved. And so that's really an example of how the true believers are sort of coming up with this idea in those early days.
Kim Villanueva (12:02)
Talking about the true believers, they all have a common tie, it seems. They have this overarching motive in Catholicism. Can you talk more about the motive? You touched a little bit earlier about it.
Amy Littlefield (12:13)
There was this motive that emerged time and time again in my reporting. And it was so simple that it shocked me a little bit, especially as someone who didn't grow up in a faith household. Time and time again, the men who had proposed these anti-abortion policies, when I would ask them, what drives you, what motivates you, they would give me some version of, I believe that I'm going to get into heaven as a result of my activism against abortion.
And that felt so opportunistic in a way that it almost felt like the true believers really were hunting for the ultimate opportunity of all, right, which was their own salvation.
Kim Villanueva (12:51)
It's almost has a patriarchal feel to it as well. You know the fact God patting you on the head saying you did a good job. You know sort of taking your control away from you. ⁓ Well this is really fascinating and I have more questions to follow up. But first we're going to take a break. So we'll be right back. ⁓
Rose Brunache (13:12)
Hi everyone, it's Rose. Spring is here and that means we are closer than ever to our national conference in celebration of our 60th anniversary. We are looking forward to learning and joining together in community with all of you. Our conference helps us take action, it keeps our hopes and dreams alive, and it helps us know where we can best make an impact. The national conference will be June 26th through 28th in Alexandria, Virginia. And we would love to see you there. Check out the details at ⁓
Kim Villanueva (13:47)
Okay, we're back for more amazing conversation with Amy Littlefield, the author of Killers of Roe. So even when Roe was the law of the land, there were limitations, especially in the form of the Hyde Amendment that bars these federal funds for abortion. it keeps getting renewed over and over. Can you talk about how it got passed in the first place and why it keeps getting renewed, even when there is bipartisan support for it?
Amy Littlefield (14:10)
Yeah, I mean, so what's fascinating about the Hyde Amendment, right, is it passes, of course, with the pivotal role of the Catholic Church in influencing lawmakers to get it passed. It passes crucially in 1976, which is a year when the crucial base of evangelical voters are sort of making their mark on electoral politics at the national level for the first time. Right. And so, of course, Jimmy Carter, you know, evangelical background himself.
And we see the strategists of the so-called new right, the conservative movement, folks like Richard Vigory scratching their heads saying, okay, listen, we've got this fiscal conservatism, right? And then, you know, they needed something else, right? To get enough of an electoral base to actually elect a president, right? Or, you know, to start winning elections. And so,
Social conservatism, abortion being the flagship issue, became the third leg on the stool of conservative powers, as Vickery referred to it. And the defenders of the Hyde Amendment, led by Henry Hyde, were making the argument that this was a middle-of-the-road policy, that whatever you may feel about abortion, our taxpayer dollars shouldn't pay for it. And that term, taxpayer dollars, is a red herring that I unpack, because what does that mean?
It means white men paying for things that principally women of color need right over and over again we see that phrase used as really a racist dog whistle right to say you know taxpayer funding what do mean you mean white christian man right the same language was used to say that women of color should be sterilized because we shouldn't have to pay for the social services that their children need right it's the same sort of the flip side of the same.
logic and so all of that was sort of swirling. was a lot of racist motivation, a lot of, you know, fiscal conservatism coming together with social conservatism and this sort of marriage that has defined our politics ever since, you know, the roots of it were planted in 1976 with the initial passage of the Hyde Amendment.
Rose Brunache (16:08)
In your book, I was struck about how often it was Democrats, people who were pro-reported rights, who gave up and gave in on abortion to get legislation. This is true even though they know members of their party and in fact, even a majority of the country and most of the country supports abortion rights. Why is that, do you think?
Amy Littlefield (16:29)
So I think there's two levels to that, right? One is looking at the pro-choice activists in this country and the choices that they made. And the Hyde Amendment, again, I think is a smoking gun. In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment. That was devastating because I think everyone believed there was a good chance that the Supreme Court might strike it down. That didn't happen. And then, of course, the other thing that happens in 1980 is Ronald Reagan gets elected, right? This three-legged stool of conservative power works out.
and all of a sudden you have this, the first quote unquote first pro-life president coming into power. And so I looked at meeting minutes from a meeting that happened right when Reagan was on the verge of coming into office and a whole bunch of, you know, four mothers in the, know, pro-choice and feminist movements were gathered around. And all of these leaders from groups like NARAL, Planned Parenthood, et cetera, are now National Organization for Women. Let's not forget them sitting around and saying, you know, what are we gonna prioritize?
We're under fire. The Hyde Amendment's just been upheld. Reagan's coming into office. Congress was threatening this idea of a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. And so in that moment, there was a very, very direct discussion of what the priorities were going to be. And one of the priorities discussed was poor women. And the decision was made, you know, this is important, but right now we need to focus on the looming threat of a constitutional amendment. That's a bigger threat. It would affect more people.
And to me, reading this, you know, decades later, it felt like a turning point, right? I could see triaging happening and Faye Wadleton was a nurse, so that felt appropriate, right? There's this triage going on of saying, these are the threats that we're facing and we have to address the most urgent one, the one that's going to affect the most number of people first. But so it wasn't this like decision of,
Let's forget about poor women. Let's forget about women of color. We need to just defend Roe and that's it because that's all we care about. was a much more it was sort of like the threats were mounting. Right. And the odds were stacked against them. And I think also these leaders understood they were being out organized at several key points along the way. And when you combine that with the amount of institutional support from politicians like Ronald Reagan coming into power, I could sort of understand these difficult decisions.
that were made even though I could also see the harms.
Kim Villanueva (18:50)
In your book, you did talk about two major issues or areas where women's rights groups and the liberal politicians failed on repo rights. You know, one, as you said, was failing to protect people in poverty and the other was failing to protect people of color. Do you want to talk a little more about how they ended up contributing to the death of Ro?
Amy Littlefield (19:08)
Yeah, absolutely. There was also a lack of support from Democratic politicians, right? Centrist Democrats, including our former president, Joe Biden, supported the Hyde Amendment for many years. It was seen as this middle ground. And the same was true of parental consent legislation, which affected young women, right? Especially young women who didn't have a safe parent they could go to and who didn't have the ability to go petition a judge if they needed an abortion. And so...
I think what we saw was the rights of marginalized people, young people, women of color, low income people, first in this incremental fight. And if there had been a firmer line drawn and if there had been more of an understanding among voters and among organizers that this is where it was headed, I think it could have been potentially stopped earlier.
Kim Villanueva (20:02)
also thought it was interesting that you talked about the Freedom of Choice Act and the fact that the one person who stood up and said that it didn't work for women of color and people of low income was a black woman, Carol Moseley-Baron. Do you just want to touch more about that a little bit?
Amy Littlefield (20:15)
I'm so glad you brought that up. this was, you we hear a lot of after the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we heard a lot of why didn't Democrats codify Roe when they could have? And so I wanted to actually answer that question because I wasn't sure I knew the answer. And so I revisited a few key historical moments when that might have happened and didn't. Right. And one of them was in the early 1990s when Bill Clinton was in office, when you had Democrats in control of Congress.
And it looks like potentially they're going to repeal the Hyde Amendment and it looks like they might enshrine Roe v. Wade into federal legislation. The first thing that happens is that there's a knockdown drag out fight. Henry Hyde says a bunch of racist things, which was kind of his MO, aggravates members of the Black Caucus, drives at least one of them to tears. There's a battle and the Hyde Amendment is renewed.
and is not ⁓ overturned. Okay, so that again, democratic complicity in this legislation, which has already become the status quo. The next thing that happens is there's a bill called the Freedom of Choice Act that would codify Roe in federal legislation. And there's a divide within the feminist and pro-choice movements. One, you know, more radical, more intersectional faction of the women's and feminist movements wanted a version that would
repeal parental consent and restore public funding. And then there was a more conservative wing that said, no, we should just codify Roe. We shouldn't touch parental consent, shouldn't touch public funding. And the divide became public. You know, it was flaring in the newspapers. And what happened is that Senator Carol Moseley-Bron, right, pioneering black woman senator who had to endure all kinds of stuff, including, you know, the racist Senator, Jesse Helms, whistling Dixie at her in the elevator. I mean, just an amazingly strong person.
who had grown up with an understanding of poverty herself and with a core belief that it was worth taking a stand for low-income women, she removed her sponsorship of the legislation. And so what ends up happening is she gets scapegoated by the press and by white pro-choice leaders like Kate Michelman from NARAL who say,
You kill this bill, you you're an absolutist, you're a purist, you know, we have to just try to get something or we'll get nothing. And, you know, this was sort of a Rorschach moment, right? It's like for me, it's like you could look at this and say, this is, know, Carol Mosley Braun and Patricia Ireland. You could say they're crazy and they're the reason, you know, they were so purist and that's why this didn't pass. Or you could say it's Democrats, you know, lukewarm support for abortion rights.
It's the fact that no one is taking a stand for women of color and doing the right thing. And that's why this didn't pass. And actually, it's worth standing up for the most marginalized and doing the right thing. And so I feel like this debate, like really the pro-choice movement has one debate, right? Which is, you fight for everyone or do you fight for only some people?
And that debate comes up time and time again in this history. And I think it's a crucial part of how we lost Roe v. Wade to begin with.
Kim Villanueva (23:40)
appreciate you mentioning Patricia Ireland because she was president of NOW at the time and you know, NOW was among the group that said we stand for all women, not just a few. So, thank you.
Amy Littlefield (23:48)
That's
right. That's right. One of my favorite interviews that I did for this book was with Terry O'Neil.
Kim Villanueva (23:53)
⁓ right, yeah, she was a hunk.
Rose Brunache (23:55)
This would not be a podcast about the death of Roe v. Wade if we didn't talk about Ronald Reagan, the first pro-life president, even though he was a president a full generation before the opposition. What role did the Reagan administration play in eventually bringing down Roe?
Amy Littlefield (24:11)
⁓ One of the wildest experiences I had reporting this book was visiting the Ronald Reagan Library out in California, where there is scarcely a mention of abortion despite Ronald Reagan's pivotal role as the quote unquote first pro-life president. He does things like pass a global gag rule, right? The ban on organizations abroad that receive US funding.
from even so much as mentioning or referring for abortion, right? Something that again, endures today, restored under every Republican president ever since. He addresses the march for life from the White House balcony. He rhetorically defends the anti-abortion position. He calls the right to life the right without which all other rights have no meaning, which is...
using this framing I talk about in the book of creating a civil rights movement for white people, a civil rights movement for fetuses that helped white people sort of avoid having to think about white supremacy because they could just like join this other thing that looked a lot like a civil rights movement, but it was defending fetuses. And of course, the suspects that I was investigating in that chapter were not just Reagan himself, but
the white women who supported this Republican president, even though they themselves espoused pro-choice points of view. And I found some of these women wandering around at the Reagan Library. And one of them was a docent who actually volunteered her time at the Reagan Library. And yet, when I told her what I was working on, she told me she was pro-choice. She was like, women in Texas are going to die.
You know, I was like, I know, why are you here volunteering at the Reagan Library? And so that became sort of a way to understand not just, you know, the 1980 and 84 election, the 2024 election, right? And how it is that white women crucially have been willing to vote for anti-abortion Republican presidents, even though they themselves might be pro-choice. Ronald Reagan, basically, to sum up, played a crucial role, not just in terms of advancing anti-abortion policies,
But he also just rhetorically created this alliance, kind of cemented the centrality of the anti-abortion position within Republican politics and solidified this coalition that conservatives would use time and time again to elect Republican politicians.
Kim Villanueva (26:37)
Your book documents the laws and the people that picked away and picked away at abortion until Dobs happened and they haven't stopped. You know, there's now they're trying to outlaw Medicaid abortion by mail, but it seems that people don't really hear about it that much anymore or they just say, well, it's just going to be a little harder to do things. Why do you think it's so easy for people to look away when the rights are being taken away?
Amy Littlefield (27:00)
Yeah, it's such an important question. I think one answer to that is, you know, the number of abortions has increased every year since the Dobbs decision because of the boldness of shield and bravery of shield law providers who are mailing medication abortion into states where it's banned. And so it's not the huge, you know, dearth of access drop in access that had been anticipated because of these innovations. And the other part of that is that there is this
ability to look away from dead women, especially when they're black, especially when they're low income, you know, that has endured, that has been a seminal part of our abortion politics in this country, right back to the death of Rosie Jimenez in the 1970s, and then the death of Becky Bell in the 1980s, and then
You know, looking more recently, the death of Portia Gamese, the woman who died in Texas whose youngest son now chases after women with braids on the street because they look like his mommy. And he yells, that's mommy, because his mom is gone, because she died a preventable death, because doctors would not take care of her because of the anti-abortion laws in the state of Texas.
those are the names, the deaths that we need to remember. And I think one of the mysteries I was trying to solve in this book is like, why is one death not enough? Why was Rosie's death not enough to stop the Hyde Amendment in its tracks? Why is it that, and how is it that these policies can endure? And part of that is that there is this, you know, this way in which our politics is able to forget or ignore these women in a way that I think is wrong.
You know, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to call these policies out for what they are and to call them killers.
Rose Brunache (28:35)
Dobbs' decision really gutted us all. And while we will not stop fighting, it can seem really hard, especially as more people suffer due to lack of reproductive care. After all your reporting on this, what gives you hope?
Amy Littlefield (28:50)
I spent a lot of time with the true believers on the anti-abortion side. And what gave me hope was spending time with the true believers on the abortion right side. And so on election night 2024, I was in Amarillo, Texas. Trump was clear Trump was going to win. I was in a room full of abortion opponents and Trump supporters who had just suffered actually a devastating loss because the ordinance they were trying to pass
Amarillo, Texas, to stop women from driving through Amarillo to leave the state in order to get an abortion in New Mexico had failed in one of the most conservative parts of the country. Why had it failed? Because of a group of true believers, because of a group of people from Amarillo, Texas, who banded together, who used really savvy messaging, who went door to door, who convinced their neighbors that they should vote down this ordinance. And so I got to spend part of my election night watching these women.
dance their butts off in a bar because they were jubilant that they had won this local limited gas victory, even against the backdrop of so much loss. And seeing small examples like that, they don't, you know, win back our rights overnight, but step by step, doing the right thing, fighting for what's right, you know, they start to win incremental ground. And so I look at those examples, and I feel very hopeful.
Kim Villanueva (30:14)
Well, thanks for sharing that because a lot of times local actions can eventually lead to national impact. Simple steps can grow into major victories, hopefully. Well, Amy, thank you so much for being with us and for your excellent reporting.
Amy Littlefield (30:27)
Thank you so much, Kim and Rose, for your work and for having me. ⁓
Rose Brunache (30:35)
Hi everyone, Rose here. If you've been on the internet at all, you know AI generated images are very hard to spot. Most of us might see an AI image of a puppy or a video of someone doing something improbable and mistake it for reality. That might seem cute, but it makes AI very dangerous, especially to women and girls. AI is being used to create harmful non-consensual graphics, often sexualized or degrading in nature. These images can promote violence against women. AI systems perpetuate racial inequalities. They can destroy lives
and the images are very hard to take down. Join with now as we seek to pass laws around the use of AI in generating harmful images. You can learn more at Now.org.
Amy Littlefield (31:17)
you
Kim Villanueva (31:19)
Thank you so much for joining Rose and I as we speak with Amy Littlefield. Revictory freedom is so, so important to us and to now. And we're so glad that this was our last conversation of this season, because yes, this is the end of season five. But don't worry, we're going to take a breather and then we'll be back in a few months with more incredible conversations with people doing the hard and necessary work in the feminist movement. What do you think we should talk about next season? Is there someone whose voice you want to hear? We want to make the best feminist podcast we can. And we love to hear your input.
Please feel free to give us a call. Our number is in the show notes. You can call and record a voice message or email us a voice memo at feminismnow at n-o-w dot o-r-g. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next season.
Amy Littlefield (32:01)
you
Stop.