Welcome to Truth Be Told. I'm Tanya Mosley. As of the re-airing of this episode, 13 states in the U.S. have a total abortion ban.

Seven states ban abortion at or before 18 weeks of gestation, and 21 states ban abortion at some point after 18 weeks.

In the weeks before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,

we sat down to talk about what body autonomy and reproductive health will look like for us

in the post-Rovey Wade world.

The stress of racism and barriers to care, including abortion care,

are part of a downward spiral in reproductive justice. And too often those

stressors play out in our wombs as fibroids and cancers. In this episode, we talk about seeking

justice and liberation. Thank you for listening. And please like and share and leave a review.

It helps other listeners find us.

Before we get started, I have something I need to say.

I've been writing, rewriting, and deleting what I'm about to share.

And it's not because I'm ashamed.

It's because this society believes there is a side to take over whether women and black and brown people should have agency over our bodies.

And as an American journalist, there's this imagined neutral space I'm supposed to sit in, even though the

rules to this profession were created by men, white men, based on what and whom they deemed important.

Think about that for a moment, the erasure that needs to happen for a black woman like me

to sit in that neutral space.

I had an abortion when I was 22, six months from college graduation, and $20,000 in student loan debt.

Paying for an education my family could not afford.

I made the mistake of getting pregnant, a mistake I'd been told my entire life not to make. That other thing my family

could not bear or afford, another single mother with a long list of dreams deferred.

...