Outlawed

Behind the bans and restrictions on abortion and trans healthcare is a desire to control bodily autonomy and enforce rigid gender roles. With colleagues who provide care to transgender patients being doxxed and threatened perhaps more than abortion care providers right now, Bev and Jonas sought the insight of the ACLU’s Chase Strangio, the first openly trans lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme...

You’ve probably heard podcaster and radio star Hillary Frank tell a story on This American Life or her podcast The Longest Shortest Time. But none quite like this one. Just in time for spooky season, Bev and Jonas talk to Frank about her new audiobook, Wed Locked, a thriller built on the pressures of women to smile through their pain. She talks to Bev and Jonas about the dynamics between couples i...

Despite what it feels like when social media serves up an expensive cure-all for an ever growing list of symptoms, menopause shouldn’t be a secret to be discovered while doomscrolling in bed. Omisade Burney-Scott, Founder of the Black Girls Guide to Surviving Menopause , uses the power of narrative to envision a world where people are never alone on their journey: where your doctor, your friends,...

Lawyer and author Jennifer Weiss-Wolf describes the experience of menopause as entering her “no f%#ks left to give era” and embracing the power many feel in this stage of life. As a public policy expert on reproductive health, she testified at the first congressional hearing dedicated to menopause in Washington, DC on September 16th. Bev and Jonas get the scoop on how she builds support for new le...

Reproductive health care touches multiple decades and events in a patient’s lifetime. So why not get care from a provider who was there when you got your first period, sprained your ankle in college sports, or was there when you gave birth? Bev and Jonas talk with the amazing Dr. Robin Wallace about providing abortions as a family physician and why more medical specialties should do the same. Base...

As Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi declares, no one should have pain with IUD insertion. In this wild and wildly instructive episode, Bev and Jonas break down the actual steps of the infamously painful procedure and then dive into solutions with Dr. Moayedi, an OB-Gyn whose reputation as a provider of the “Best IUD insertion in Texas” leads to a mini gameshow challenge to rate pain relief options. This conve...

It’s no wonder that the podcast The Retrievals was launched by true crime favorites Serial Productions and the NYT. As host Susan Burton tells Bev and Jonas on Outlawed , the first season of the hit show underscored how women’s pain in IVF treatments intersected with a criminal investigation. The original perpetrator was stopped, but what was uncovered about how pain is perceived and treated or ig...

Season 3 is coming your way with new episodes every week starting September 10th! We start the season talking about pain: interviewing Susan Burton (host and producer of The Retrievals) and Dr. Ghazeleh Moayedi, founder of Pegasus Health Justice center. Together we dive into the topic of pain and how we can better address it. We’ll have a series about the challenges of training Ob-Gyn’s in the wak...

Enjoy today's guest episode from Bodies , produced and hosted by Allison Behringer. The overturning of Roe v. Wade has severely restricted how doctors can access training in abortion care and it's already having a devastating ripple effect on patients seeking all kinds of reproductive care. Two medical residents in abortion-restricted states fight for training and for the future health o...

While we're taking a break this summer we're excited to share some re-runs and episodes from other podcast friends. Today's episode takes a deep dive into the common 1st trimester clinical conundrum of pregnancy of unknown location. Listen along as Nick and Fei talk with Dr. Erin Cleary about pregnancy of unknown location and ectopic pregnancy. Have an IUD story you want to share fo...

The stories out of Texas are numerous and heartbreaking. In our third episode of Outlawed, we’ll meet two people from Texas. One is a high-risk OB-gyn physician who cares for some of the sickest patients and pregnancies. She talks about the impact of the Texas abortion ban (SB8) and Dobbs on the healthcare she can provide people and explains why these laws lead to substandard care. The second pers...

As we reflect on the 4 year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, we wanted to go back and share our very first episode of the podcast from Fall of 2024.  We introduce you to our hosts, Dr. Beverly Gray and Dr. Jonas Swartz, along with a woman named Sally, a nurse who answers the phone at an abortion clinic and is the first point of contact for those seeking care in North Carolina. Whether you’ve bro...

Summer’s here and it’s time for Outlawed’s season 2 finale! Bev and Jonas reflect on the podcast’s original goals of making it easier to have those tough conversations about abortion, and highlight some of the best advice from show guests so far to spark your confidence at poolside gatherings and backyard barbecues. Plus, hear what we have in store for the September launch of season 3.  Whether yo...

Many people we know and love are adopted or have adopted, but where adoption fits into a reproductive justice framework is nuanced and complex. Dr. Gretchen Sisson, a researcher at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at UCSF, has been studying adoption systems and interviewing birth mothers for over a decade. In this moving conversation she dispels myths about abortion, adoptio...

Last week's rollercoaster of legal rulings and misinformation about mifepristone is enough to cause whiplash. Even Bev and Jonas are confused! So these two justice-seeking OB-Gyns activated the bat signal for all defenders of abortion pill access, and got three reproductive health superheroes into the studio, stat. Legal professor David Cohen, public health specialist Dr. Ushma Upahdyay, and...

It was nearly 17 years ago that Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in his church for providing abortion care. In this episode, Bev and Jonas speak with retired OB-Gyn Dr. Shelley Sella, who was trained by Dr. Tiller, and calls him “a midwife at heart.”  She became one of the first women to openly provide third-trimester abortion care in the United States, and advocates for a midwifery model of car...

Wandering wombs? Terrifying tampons? After-birth abortions? Science keeps advancing, but peddlers of misinformation persist. In this episode, fact-wielding OB-Gyns Bev and Jonas become a myth-busting trio with the addition of OB-Gyn Dr. Fran, who went viral fighting shady claims with clarity and humor in the arenas of TikTok and Instagram. With tips on how to distinguish legitimate accounts, when...

The who, where, when, and how of abortion in the United States is challenging to measure, yet understanding the healthcare landscape post-Dobbs remains important for meeting patient needs. The Guttmacher Institute is a trusted source for abortion data collection and analysis, and released full-year 2025 abortion incidence and travel data this week. Bev and Jonas ask all their nerdy questions and r...

As abortion providers with families of their own, Bev and Jonas know that abortion is an essential part of many parenting stories. There is no right way to have a family, though today’s guest Jamilah Lemieux will offer great advice and insight if you ask. Jamilah is an author and cultural critic, and pens the Care and Feeding advice column for Slate . She chose both motherhood and abortion as a si...

Bev and Jonas leave their white coats and their egos behind to better understand the existing network of abortion care outside the clinic. Science journalist Rebecca Kelliher, author of the book Just Pills: The Extraordinary Story of A Revolution in Abortion Care (Beacon Press 2025), provides global context to the like-minded outlaws and heroes making medication abortion accessible. Public health...

We’re doctors, not cops. But as more and more miscarriages and self-managed abortions lead to arrests and prosecution, the medical system and law enforcement have become entwined in unsettling ways. Kim Mutcherson, a law professor at Rutgers and expert on reproductive justice, helps us understand the new reality of medical providers reporting patients for essential healthcare, and the biases that...

Heather Booth is an original outlaw who provided access to abortion care before Roe, as a founding member of the Jane Collective. Bev and Jonas are thrilled to get a masterclass from 80-year-old Booth this week in how word-of-mouth networks, resolve, and hope can fuel the  fight against injustice right now. Saddle up and join us. 

Who is your favorite dynamic duo? Batman and Robin? He-man and She-ra? You probably don’t have a sociologist and lawyer pair on your list, but we would argue that you should! This week Bev and Jonas have a conversation with an amazing duo - law Professor David Cohen and sociologist Dr. Carole Joffe. They wrote a book last year called " After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court ended Roe but not abor...

We're replaying one of our favorites from season 1 - an interview with Professor Katie Watson from Northwestern. She is the author of Scarlet A: The ethics, law, and politics of ordinary abortion and has been widely published in the medical literature regarding the ethics of reproductive health care. We discuss a variety of topics on today’s show including: myths about abortion after birth, t...

Traveling during the holidays is full of unexpected mishaps due to the sheer numbers of fellow travelers. Travelling for an abortion is challenging all year round — because lawmakers have designed it that way.  In front of every obstacle, people who care are there to help others through it with dignity. Bev and Jonas meet Mike Bonanza of Elevated Access, a pilot flying people privately for free to...