Stories of a Real-Life Handmaid's Tale with T.J. Raphael
Sounds Like Impact: A newsletter for audio and action
Welcome to Sounds Like Impact!
This edition was guest curated by T.J. Raphael, creator of Liberty Lost.
Content warning: Some of these shows contain stories of medical abuse/neglect, violence, and other trauma. Please take care when listening.
ICYMI: Last edition, we had a guest curation on “Women’s Health Inequities” by Erin Bump.
Into the Stacks:
- recently launched. It’s about how art has been created and used for activism / social change.
- is “an Investigative media company providing you with objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, original journalism that examines America’s anti-LGBTQ landscape and elevates everyday American heroes.”
Reminder: To guest curate, be interviewed, advertise and more, click here.
🎧 #AudioForAction Guest Curator: T.J. Raphael
Stories of a Real-Life Handmaid’s Tale
The true reality of the struggle for reproductive justice plays out like a harrowing drama in these incredible podcasts.
-T.J. Raphael; Host, Reporter, Senior Producer, Lead Writer of Liberty Lost
Follow T.J.’s work on Instagram at @tjraphs.
In Evangelical homes across the United States, sex outside of marriage is a sin against God. So, when Abbi becomes pregnant at 16, her devout parents hide her away at the Liberty Godparent Home, a little-known facility for pregnant teens on the campus of Liberty University. The Home says it helps girls decide what comes next – whether that’s parenting their babies or placing them for adoption. But inside the facility, the girls hear a different message: God wants their babies to go to more “deserving” Christian couples. Some girls will find the strength to fight back. Others will have no choice but to give in. And some, like Abbi, will turn their grief into resistance – and take a stand against the system before more mothers lose their children to adoptions they never wanted.
Embedded: The Network*
Decades ago, Brazilian women made a discovery that allowed them to have safe abortions without a doctor, regardless of the law. Now, as abortion restrictions rise across the United States, their method is shaping how American women have abortions, too. In this three-part series, hosts Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez of Futuro Media's Latino USA chart the global, loosely connected network that brought this abortion method to millions of women.
*Please note: The Network is a mini-season within the Embedded podcast feed from NPR.
The Conspiracy Tapes: The Pill Plot*
In the 1990s, a ragtag group plotted an international drug smuggling scheme and set up a secretive lab to cook up tablets. However, they weren’t trafficking narcotics – they were fighting to bring the abortion pill to America. The Pill Plot takes listeners inside the epic struggle facing activists who battled presidents, the Supreme Court, militant anti-abortionists, would-be assassins and murderers.
*Please note: The Pill Plot is a season within The Conspiracy Tapes podcast feed compiled for Sony Music’s “The Binge.”
Dozens of women came to a clinic at Yale for fertility treatment. All of them experienced unexpected and severe pain during a procedure called the egg retrieval. They said that their pain was not taken seriously by their health care providers, or that they were not believed. As a consequence, they came up with their own explanations for their pain. Often they blamed themselves.
In the months that followed, it was discovered that a nurse at the clinic had been stealing fentanyl used in patient procedures and replacing it with saline. Now the patients who were in pain had an explanation for it — and lots of questions for the institution that let this happen.
Season 1 of “The Retrievals” named a problem: Women’s pain is often ignored. Season 2 asks: What are the solutions?
*Please note: Only the first two episodes of each season are available without a NY Times subscription.
🚨 Calls to Action
Curated by Ayo
Follow
for the latest coverage on abortion bans.Read these interviews with T.J. Raphael (Mutha Magazine, Glamour, Religion Dispatches) and/or watch an interview with Joy-Ann Reid about Liberty Lost.
Check out this past Sounds Like Impact interview with the team behind The A-Files: A Secret History of Abortion.
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