The Dr Jo Show

00:00:02:07 - 00:00:20:04
Unknown
What stops you from talking about abortion? What stops any of us from talking about it? We have the most extreme laws in the world, and yet all of us are mute. It's like this taboo. None of us say a word. And yet today, I'm going to introduce you to six amazing women who have decided to speak up and call this out.

00:00:20:04 - 00:00:33:09
Unknown
It's crazy what they're doing. And you're going to meet them. It's going to blow your mind. It's also going to give you courage. So that's today on The Doctor Joe Show, a book that really influenced me that I'm going to share with you guys. It's pretty dogged my copy because I've read it that many times. It's by Doctor Debby Garrett.

00:00:33:09 - 00:00:52:20
Unknown
She's done her PhD in this, and this is the monograph that she wrote after publishing her doctor research. It's called Elena's Gatekeeping, and she traces how anybody that's ever spoken up about abortion in Australia has been shouted down. And ultimately canceled and moved out of that field. You know, that that that's just been such a pile on that they just haven't been able to do it.

00:00:53:01 - 00:01:14:09
Unknown
And it kind of explains why we have the most extreme laws in the world where we don't have a robust debate, because it's like this unholy alliance between big abortion. So the industry that literally makes money off women's pain, and by killing their babies, there's the media and the big corporates and the pro-abortion forces within government. So that's Emily's list in the Labor Party.

00:01:14:09 - 00:01:36:04
Unknown
But it's even taken over the libs as well, as I'm sure you guys know, a number of liberal government introduced abortion up to birth. So there's this, this crazy, unholy alliance between these big forces, and they really shattered all of us so that we can't speak, we can't be truthful, we can't express fears or doubts. And, you know, I think that is why nobody speaks.

00:01:36:04 - 00:01:54:08
Unknown
That's why young women don't feel comfortable to speak. It's why you don't feel comfortable to speak about it to your friends at the dinner table, at Christmas dinner or lunch, or at the workplace. Like you just don't feel comfortable. And in Doctor Debbi Garrett Garrett's book, she traces this theory of alarmist gatekeeping. And she she looks at how there's these people within the system.

00:01:54:08 - 00:02:13:07
Unknown
I'm gonna put the book down, so I can tell you the story. So she looks at how these people who are the gatekeepers and they raise the alarm when people like us ask questions. And so she gives some examples. You know, Amanda Stoker, who was a assistant minister for women in the federal government, she's a Queenslander and Queensland was introducing abortion up to birth in 2018.

00:02:13:09 - 00:02:38:12
Unknown
She gives a speech at a pro-life march, and she basically talks about international human rights law and explains how they should protect babies in utero. She talks about the need to protect mother and child and, what that means. But after she gives that speech at that, at that pro-life event, she's labeled hate speech. It's labeled hate speech by Jackie Trad, who's the labor minister in the parliament who's introducing abortion after birth, the Guardian, the ABC, they all pile on.

00:02:38:12 - 00:02:56:12
Unknown
And she has given this speech, which is very reasonable and evidence based. And yet she's labeled as hate speech for expressing a position that abortion harms women. Similarly, the CEO of White Ribbon. Now, you guys with no white ribbon, it's, you know, you see the white ribbons that people wear. It's an organization that seeks to protect women against violence.

00:02:56:12 - 00:03:16:01
Unknown
Okay, they got a new CEO, Tracy McLeod. How? And she around this time, 27, 2018, she took down the parole abortion statement that was on White Ribbons website. And she said, we want to consult our membership on the issue of abortion because it's actually very complex for women. Reproductive coercion, is a big factor in why women get abortions.

00:03:16:05 - 00:03:32:02
Unknown
The fact that there's men in their lives forcing them to get abortions. I'm going to kill you if you don't get this abortion. You have to have this abortion literally paying for their abortions, walking them to the clinic. No one protecting these women who, fearful for their lives in their future or who feel, bonded to this man.

00:03:32:02 - 00:03:53:17
Unknown
And so there's that's a major issue that white women had seen sort of coming up. And it's in the literature as well. So the CEO very reasonably says we're going to consult our membership on this issue of abortion. Just even that even that decision to consult led to a huge pile on the same suspects. A giant carrot gets out on Twitter and just starts hacking into the CEO.

00:03:53:23 - 00:04:16:08
Unknown
You get who was it? Jenna Price in the Sydney Morning Herald, again, very pro-abortion advocate. He's got a column piling on ABC, the Guardian they all jump on. And basically Tracey McLeod how the CEO of White Ribbon who did not see this coming. She obviously hadn't read Doctor Debbie Garrett's book. I'm not even sure if it'd been published then, but she basically experiences this huge pile on where everybody says she has to go.

00:04:16:08 - 00:04:39:01
Unknown
She has to resign. She's anti-woman. How dare they do this? Abortion is fundamental for women. And so she then apologizes and she says, I didn't mean to do that. She puts the pro-abortion statement up on the website. She said, I've even paid for women to have abortions. I'm not anti-abortion. But do the gatekeepers forgive her? No. She is forced to quietly resign within one month of, you know, doing her big Mia culpa.

00:04:39:03 - 00:04:56:23
Unknown
And, you know, that's the end of that story. But what those stories show you is anybody that speaks up has that effect. Within three months of speaking out on social media, the president of the Women's Lawyers Association, Liam Moran, tweeted, made me get sacked because I'm a complete embarrassment to the university. The Advertiser is a hit paste anti-abortion lecturer under fire, apparently students in distress.

00:04:56:23 - 00:05:13:05
Unknown
But there's one anonymous former student. It doesn't even add up. We then say that I just get investigated after, investigated after investigated to the point that I have to go to the Fair Work Commission to not be forced to do a anti-bias course, that even though the university's own investigation found that I had never been guilty of any research misconduct.

00:05:13:05 - 00:05:29:17
Unknown
So all of that happened. But then I tried to introduce a bill in South Australian Parliament which just said that babies in the third trimester should be born alive. And at that point we see even more of a media pile on. So I get banned from the South Australian parliament. I get accused of bullying and intimidation without any evidence.

00:05:29:17 - 00:05:48:00
Unknown
All of that happens and it just shows you why nobody speaks up. So all of that to say you'd have to be crazy to speak out against abortion. But the reality is we have to because it is just so extreme and so today, I'm really excited that you are going to meet six amazing young women who've decided to do just that.

00:05:48:00 - 00:06:06:19
Unknown
And the other part of this whole journey is that I have felt deeply fulfilled through doing this, despite all of the attacks, the hip pieces, the shame that they try to enforce on you, inflict on you. I've actually felt never more alive and happy because I'm doing something that really matters. You know, I, I guess there's something in that.

00:06:06:19 - 00:06:19:13
Unknown
And the other part of this is that women have reached out throughout the last two and a half years saying things like, thank you for being my voice. I feel like I can't speak about this, but I'm so grateful that you do. And then increasingly, I had young women saying, how do we join you? How do we do this?

00:06:19:13 - 00:06:37:03
Unknown
So today you're going to meet the six young women who are Bread Flip, which is a new organization in Australia determined to take on the abortion establishment, to take back the might for women and to call out the big abortion line. So I'm here with Elspeth, one of the bad flip girls, women. Probably is more appropriate because, you know, young women.

00:06:37:04 - 00:06:54:23
Unknown
Before we jump into the video, I wanted to ask you a question. What was it that was holding you back from speaking up about abortion? And what has changed for you now? I think I had paused the seriousness of what abortion really is. I knew it was wrong. I knew that this was a human being and that they deserve the right to life.

00:06:54:23 - 00:07:16:23
Unknown
But I had kind of put a little bit of a pause on how serious that was. I kept hearing from you and from a few others online, like, this is the human rights issue of our generation. The conviction of that has ended up propelling me to say, screw it, I'm going to just put my whole self into actually fighting for the right of these human beings who are completely denied in our society.

00:07:16:23 - 00:07:32:02
Unknown
And the more time you spent thinking about that, the more outrageous it is. I hadn't put myself into saying that this is something I want to spend my life doing, because it seemed to get in the way of everything else I wanted to do. My career, people, friends. I worried that about what they would think of me.

00:07:32:04 - 00:07:48:02
Unknown
And now I've just got to the point where I go. Doesn't matter. None of that matters. This. This is a human rights issue of our generation. And I'm going to be one of the people who stands up to fight for them. So we've got an entire video to show you of when we all got together in Sydney, and we all met each other for the first time.

00:07:48:02 - 00:08:06:00
Unknown
So we're coming from all different parts of the country. And Anoushka is coming from Perth, Brett from Brisbane. They're probably the two furthest away spots and we all congregated in Sydney, to meet and to, you know, get to know each other and to sort of grow on this crazy journey together. This. All right, you start, you start, and then you.

00:08:06:05 - 00:08:19:20
Unknown
Okay, let's jump into it. This was so fun. Oh my gosh, I love this place. It was so beautiful. Yeah. We were in Watsons BI in Sydney, and, yeah, we booked a house so that we could all come together. We actually were all staying over it for a little bit, like a reality TV show. Oh my gosh, it did.

00:08:19:20 - 00:08:38:10
Unknown
It kind of felt like this weird, like girls getaway. But also we've got, like the massive issues that we need to tackle anyway. So it was sort of like we were filming a TV show just kind of started. We had this beautiful cheese platter in the morning when we got together. And, you jump straight into teaching us how to edit, which most of us were kind of a little bit like, this is going to be a steep learning curve.

00:08:38:10 - 00:08:52:16
Unknown
Yeah. I think I'm just going to say this I think show was the one that was the most like, I have no idea how to do it. Hey, look like these are small issues compared to what we are. Yeah. What we're really up against. Yeah, we did start by getting to know each other. It's not like we just jump straight into.

00:08:52:16 - 00:09:08:19
Unknown
No, it's true. We did. We went around and we sort of talked about the story and it was quite surreal, actually, to have all of us just come together, all of us on the road of choosing. Life has brought healing has brought depth. And yet it's been a struggle. But it's been it's not even a question of if it was worth it.

00:09:08:19 - 00:09:17:04
Unknown
Women are lied to that it's better to have an abortion than it is to pursue life.

00:09:17:06 - 00:09:38:24
Unknown
Like, that was something that was amazing to me, like just getting so created with the way it was being represented and even like seeing some of the footage they used in 2019. I use old footage from 2017 as well, so they weren't even reporting anything correctly, and that was just really upsetting. That started already to deal with the fact that I had had to watch them come.

00:09:38:24 - 00:09:56:08
Unknown
I think Australian society, we don't talk about things like this. It's so hush hush and yet it's happening to so many of us. So we went out to lunch and we started talking about how we were going to have this challenge to make our first reels together, afterwards. And we were all pretty nervous, actually, but it was really fun.

00:09:56:08 - 00:10:12:17
Unknown
Like, we it was really fun and we learned a lot from that challenge. It was so hot inside, and it's actually such a relief. And we came in and we just like got in the beds and just put the aircon on and yeah, kind of chilled and tried to figure out these apps. Yeah. There was this really one cool room in the bottom floor of the two story place that we were staying.

00:10:12:17 - 00:10:33:00
Unknown
And yeah, we just had it in bed. And I think I showed you guys, one of my actual unedited videos. That was really funny. So you guys who watch me on socials will say that it's just a 45 second clip, but really, it's taken me 5 to 7 minutes to film that. And those guys got to hear all of the dialog between me and typically my husband, who's filming me and the banter.

00:10:33:00 - 00:10:50:14
Unknown
And some of this is, my gosh, it's so hilarious. Yeah, get to get that inside of you. Yeah. We were all kind of relieved, actually. It gave us a bit of confidence, like, okay, you don't hit this in one shot. You know, you have to you take a few guys to get there. Yeah. So then you guys had the challenge of filming videos in pairs, and then we shared them with the group.

00:10:50:16 - 00:11:13:09
Unknown
Oh, this is actually really fun and humbling. So you go to share it like, it's quite hard to actually be vulnerable and like, share not just your story, but like, even just like your perspective or your insights and to put it on camera, like, it's no doubt that that's a difficult thing to do. We've got some like ahead of us to share it to the whole world, but we're willing and ready.