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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Tomorrow marks one year since the supreme court's landmark decision to overturn Roe v Wade. A new episode of USA Today's documentary series States of America brings viewers inside one of the very real repercussions, more births in an area with limited resources. The episode is titled The Post Roe Baby Boom Inside Mississippi's Maternal Crisis. Mississippi state health officials predicted an additional 5000 births a year due to the overturning of Roe v Wade.

The documentary follows several health providers and women navigating an overwhelmed healthcare system, politics over prenatal care, and the day-to-day tasks. We meet women like Shirley, a pregnant breast cancer survivor and mother of four, who had to make a decision to prioritize her health and family. Let's listen to a clip from the episode. This is Shirley explaining what was happening in her life when she got pregnant.

Shirley: I had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. I was actually at the end of my immune therapy treatment when I found out I was about four and a half months pregnant and it turned my world upside down. I was real shocked when I found out, but I was even more shocked to know that doctors here couldn't treat me and me be pregnant.

Alison Stewart: The Post Roe Baby Boom Inside Mississippi's Maternal Crisis airs on USA Today's streaming channels tonight at 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM on Samsung TV Plus, Roku, and Plex. You can also watch the full series on USA Today's YouTube channel. Joining us today is the show's senior producer and writer and my former PBS colleague, Mona Iskander. Hi, Mona. [laughs]

Mona Iskander: Hey, how are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing great. Also joining us is the show's executive producer and writer, Yasmeen Qureshi. Hi, Yasmeen. Welcome to All Of It.

Yasmeen Qureshi: Hi, how are you, Allison?

Alison Stewart: I'm well. Listeners, we'd like to hear from you. What is on your mind on this year anniversary of the supreme court overturning Roe v Wade? Have you or someone close to you had to seek an abortion? What would have happened if you or that person hadn't had reproductive options? What's on your mind on the eve of this anniversary? Give us a call or text at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or you can reach out to us on social media at allofitwnyc. Of course, you can always remain anonymous in your comments. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. That is the phone number and the text line as well.

Mona, 15 states have ceased nearly all abortion services since the decision overturning Roe v Wade, the Dobbs v Jackson women's healthcare organization case, a healthcare provider in Jackson, Mississippi. Practically, what did the court's decision in that case mean for women in Mississippi?

Mona Iskander: Yes, so in Mississippi, it had some of the most restrictive abortion laws even before the overturning of Roe v Wade, there was only one abortion clinic in Jackson called the Pink House. That was the only place where women could go for elective abortions for years. When the Roe v Wade was overturned last year, Mississippi's trigger law immediately went into effect. The state has today a now near-total abortion ban, except in two cases where there's a documented rape or when a woman's life is in danger, which is a tricky phrase because it really means when they're in imminent danger.

It is practically impossible to get an abortion in Mississippi. A woman would have to travel out of state, Carbondale, Illinois is about 6 hours north of Jackson. That's really the reality on the ground today for women in Mississippi.

Alison Stewart: Yasmeen, when you spoke to women for this film, and they talked to you about their reasons for seeking abortions, what do they tell you?

Yasmeen Qureshi: I think it's a myriad of things in a place like Mississippi. It's a very high-poverty area. There is limited access to things like contraception, to things like health care. There's a lot of uninsured women. I think that there is a need there. Then there was also this other thing that happened, which is medical need. If you look at Shirley's situation, she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, and four months into her treatment found out that she was pregnant. In Mississippi, because her life was not in imminent danger, she was not eligible to have an abortion there. I think there's a lot of situations that perhaps people hadn't even wrapped their heads around in terms of why women might need an abortion. That was an example of one.

Alison Stewart: Yasmeen, you mentioned contraception. Where does this fit into the conversation in Mississippi? How accessible are contraception, contraceptives?

Yasmeen Qureshi: I think that there are groups out there, one that we spoke with called Plan A, that are trying to make contraception readily available but the reality is that birth control costs money. I do think that that is a piece of the puzzle in terms of this as well. When you talk about lack of access and lack of resources.

Mona Iskander: I think also, just going to that point, is that Mississippi has one of the highest rates of uninsured people in the country. Yes, it costs money to be able to access contraception and if you don't have insurance, it's much more difficult to access that.

Alison Stewart: Yasmeen, as we go forward in the conversation, I'd love for you to give a shout-out to the reporter you worked with on this.

Yasmeen Qureshi: Yes, absolutely. States of America, our show's model is really that we try to work with local reporters across the USA Today network. We have a large network of local papers. The reporter that we worked with on this episode is Danielle Dreilinger and she's based out of the Tennessean. She's a regional south reporter who's done a lot of work on women's issues. We also have a paper in Mississippi that we partnered with. Our kind of model is to take journalists that are in place and that are part of the community and put them on air and have them be the ones that tell us the stories.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Mike on line two in Flatbush who has a question. I'm not sure you know the answer but we'll give it a shot. Hi, Mike. Thank you so much for calling All Of It.

Mike: Thanks so much for taking my call. I appreciate it. My understanding is that abortion medication has quickly become a major source, especially in red states where abortions are illegal. I'm wondering if your guest has any experience with how that's changed the landscape. People can do it at home, people do it at other places that are maybe more comfortable. There's aftercare needs that need to be addressed.

With respect to your last guest, Cynthia Nixon, I'm in New York, obviously, and even though it is legal here, there is still harassment. There are people invading clinics, locking clinics up with bike locks. The religious right is definitely heavy here even though it seems it flies under the radar. For example, there's a procession that goes every first Saturday of the month from St Pat's, old St. Pat's in Soho to the Planned Parenthood in Bleecker Street. A couple of groups, including New York City for Abortion Rights counter-protest this procession. There's a story to be told here too, in terms of access. It's not the sanctuary city that Eric Adams and his SRG army that are deployed every time to [sound break]

Alison Stewart: Mike, I got you. I hear you, you're passionate about it. Yes, I don't think anyone is thinking that we should be taking our eye off the ball on this subject. To Mike's original point, medical abortions in--

Yasmeen Qureshi: I think [unintelligible 00:08:37] [crosstalk]

Mona Iskander: --the abortion pill there. Yes, it is accessible to a certain extent. We did not go into that. We really looked at maternal care and what the impact of many thousands more babies in Mississippi would be on an already stretched maternal care system. I know from reporting on abortion in the past that that is certainly an option that's out there.

However, I believe in Mississippi it still is technically illegal and it's a hard thing to quantify how much that's happening, how many women are what they call self-managing their own abortion. I think when you talk about places like the Mississippi Delta, which is where we are, when you already have a lack of resources and a lack of awareness of some of these things, I don't know how many women know how to access the abortion pill. It's not so easy or so simple.

Alison Stewart: My guests are producers Mona Iskander and Yasmeen Qureshi. We're talking about The Post Roe Baby Boom Inside Mississippi's Maternal Healthcare Crisis, this on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v Wade. I want to play a clip from your episode and we can talk about it on the other side. This is Dr. Daniel Edney, the state health officer of the Mississippi State Department breaking down the challenges for Mississippi's healthcare systems. Take a listen and we can talk about it on the other side.

Dr. Daniel Edney: By definition, these are unwanted pregnancies for whatever reason, which tend to be high-risk pregnancies, and in Mississippi, it's usually driven by poverty and so when we're increasing the number of women who are already having significant challenges in life, added down to a high-risk pregnancy, we just added 5000 more to that. We don't have redundancy or resiliency in our healthcare system in general and if we strain that further, it was moving towards the breaking point.

Alison Stewart: Mona, what did healthcare professionals tell you about their concerns, about the strains on the healthcare system, and what it will do to prenatal care for pregnant women?

Mona Iskander: When we first approached this story, and I started reporting it, I really wanted to be able to embed with an OBGYN in Mississippi to really see how this law had changed their work and how it affected women and it was actually really challenging to find a medical professional who was willing to speak publicly about it, because abortion, it's a taboo, it's not something people want to talk openly about.

Anyway, after lots of reporting, we did find really an amazing doctor in the Mississippi Delta, Dr. Richardson, she's from the Delta, she's worked there 15 years. She gave us rare access to spend time with her and see up close what's happening. I'll tell you, she is working around the clock, she serves 4 to 10 counties because there are so many, what are called maternal care deserts in Mississippi, which means there's no OB, no birthing center, and so women have to travel hours just to access basic prenatal care. She is serving a very large number of women.

Like we said, it's a high-poverty area, so their women have preexisting conditions that would affect their pregnancy and she just basically wanted us to see the challenges that she faces to provide the care as a very dedicated medical professional, but also to speak to these women. We spent two days in her clinic speaking to women, and just really putting a face to the numbers that were here, that these are women who are working to support children already at home. A lot of her patients are in Medicaid or are uninsured and so with the landscape there is already challenging, and as Edney pointed out, now you're talking about thousands more babies and so it's an overstretched system.

Alison Stewart: Let's actually listen to a clip from Dr. Lakeisha Richardson, who you you've described, from your episode of The Post Roe Baby Boom Inside Mississippi's Maternal Health Crisis. Dr. Richardson is explaining some of the things that can go wrong during pregnancy. Let's take a listen.

Lakeisha Richardson: Most people think that pregnancy is an uneventful, beautiful experience but for those of us who are on the ground, we know what can happen when a pregnancy goes wrong. I've had pregnant patients have a heart attack or a myocardial infarction during pregnancy, postpartum hemorrhage, amniotic fluid embolism, pulmonary embolism, so there are lots of things that can go wrong in pregnancy.

Alison Stewart: Yasmeen, did you get a sense of why Dr. Richardson decided to make this her life's work?

Yasmeen Qureshi: Well, she told us that she's from the Mississippi Delta and she'd always seen the lack of resources that existed there and she was really passionate about trying to help women in particular. Mississippi has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, the US already has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries. Mississippi also has the highest stillborn rate, the highest infant mortality rate. There's a lot of complications of pregnancy there.

I think she just wants to help as much as she can. She doesn't turn anyone away. She takes patients regardless of their insurance status, regardless of where they live and that's why she's so busy.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some calls. Jennifer is calling in from Washington DC on line 1. Hi, Jennifer. Thank you so much for calling.

Jennifer: Hi there. Hi, Alison. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to start with cruelty is the point and it's obvious to me that it is. I was raped at 14, had an abortion, and went on to living my life to have gotten to the point of 72 years old today, thank God, but the cruelty is the point, and my point is for women who are suffering like this, I never got a chance to get at my rapist. I never got a chance to get back to him and if I had born that child, I don't know what I would have done with that child.

I think it is so absolutely sad. I can't underscore the sadness for women who have to experience this. You don't get justice if you're raped. You don't get justice and then you're saddled with a life who really should benefit from care. How do you not resent this imposition on your life? It changed me, it stopped me from going to school but I picked up, I became a victor instead of a victim. How many women in this-- It really is, I get back to my statement, cruelty is the point.

Alison Stewart: The point. Jennifer, thank you so much for calling in and sharing your passion and your thoughts, and being so candid. Carrie is calling in from Croton, New York. Hi Carrie, thank you for calling in.

Carrie: Well, thank you for taking my call. I just want to express my outrage. I'm also older, I'm 71 years old. In college and early 1970s when I started, I had a friend who had a septic abortion, she nearly died from it. We had enough sense to get her to the ER and she had to have surgery, at that time also there was no safe birth control. You couldn't get birth control unless you had parental permission. I found one doctor that would do it, and I organized a birth control network. There was not a safe way.

I just feel my life has been shaped by my reproductive history. I have two sons, I have three grandchildren, I'm so grateful for that but I've had two miscarriages and I have had two abortions, one was in New York and one was in Texas, it was during my medical training. At one of them, they handed me my IUD, it displaced and I became pregnant. I've treated ectopic pregnancies. I did it for [unintelligible 00:17:12], I've assisted in deliveries and I love children. I love the whole process but it's just cruel that you need a choice. I couldn't have had those children at that time. I was not at all equipped and I'm grateful that we had the right at that time and it's just so sad to go back. It's just outrageous.

Alison Stewart: Carrie, thank you for calling in. We got a text says, "Originally from Oxford, Mississippi living in Sunnyside. Limited contraception in the state comes from Mississippi being overwhelmingly Baptist, Evangelical. Politicians, conservatives adopting an abstinence-only stance based on the religion has always had a negative effect on the reproductive health of all Mississippi women. Sex education is basically not taught in a majority of public and private schools."

Yasmeen, in your piece, you do get into the religious aspect of it. What were some of the questions you had and what were some of the issues you want to touch on when you bring religion into the equation?

Yasmeen Qureshi: Well, I think like Mona said earlier, what we really noticed is that abortion is a taboo topic in Mississippi and it was really tricky even to approach this film down there because we felt like we were walking on eggshells to a certain extent and yet there were people that really had stories that they wanted to share. We did interview a pastor who is very anti-abortion pastor, but who does believe that we should be supporting women in their pregnancies and doing a better job of it.

He did say that but he also does feel like abortion is never a right path, even when a woman's life is in danger. I think that gives you a sense of the atmosphere in Mississippi from a religious perspective and I think just the challenges that women have in even speaking about these things, and figuring out what to do.

Alison Stewart: The name of the series is The Post Roe Baby Boom Inside Mississippi's Maternal Health Crisis. It's part of USA Today's series States of America. Mona, where can people see it again?

Mona Iskander: It is going to be airing tonight on USA Today's streaming channel, I believe at eight o'clock tonight, Eastern, correct? There's a website on the USA Today page, States of America. I also just want to give a shout-out to the economic hardship reporting project. They provided a grant for us to be able to really delve into this subject. Thanks to them.

Alison Stewart: Thanks to Mona Iskander and Yasmeen Qureshi, executive producers and writers on The Post Roe Baby Boom Inside Mississippi's Maternal Health Crisis. Thank you for your time and for your work.

Mona Iskander: Thank you so much, Alison.

Yasmeen Qureshi: Thank you, Alison.

Alison Stewart: There's more All of It on the way. I'll meet you right back here after the news.

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