free, i was born free ♪ ♪ 13 --born free ♪ >> tuesday from robert zoellick, discusses the economy and reconstruction efforts with the shington post live at 2:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span now, our free mobile video app and online at c-span now or. -- and online at c-span.org. >> donald trump talked about his time at the white house while speaking to the fah d freedom coalition. you can watch that tonht at 9:00 eastern. after 10:30 florida governor on

this avail his pn a recent campaign stop in texas and you can watch on the c-span now video app or online at c-span.org. >> amy littlefield joins us now. covering abortion and reproductive rights for the nation magazine, joining us from newton, massachusetts. good morning to you. guest: good morning, john. host: >> the headline, the message they have received is that you don't deserve to be cared for and life on the abortion order land, what is the abortion borderland? my article focuses on one of the borderlands we have in this country. we are divided between states that they had abortion or heavily restricted or states that have gone further than ever to protect it. i focused on the texas and new mexico border. texas restricts abortion most heavily. there are three bands in effect

in the state including one that allows civil enforcement mechanisms allowing private lawsuits to be filed against anyone who aids or events abortion after six weeks and another that is a criminal abortion ban and then the pre-rose law from the 1800s. they are the epicenter of different strategies that are being used to try to punish anyone who tries to help someone to get an abortion. to the left of that you have new mexico, among the states who have gone the furthest to protect abortion access. the government there authorized public money to support abortion and create new avenues or care. so, so you have these legal battles being teed up in the abortion border land. but you also have patients who are moving across, from texas to new mexico every day. the other thing to remember is that texas is at the western

edge of a block across the deep south where abortion is banned. patients across the region are making their way to these states. in the story i focus on one of the women shepherding texas abortion patients across this abortion border land to new mexico for procedures at great personal risk to herself. host: do we know specifically in new mexico the number of clinics that have opened in the years since dobbs? guest: yeah it's interesting, new mexico handled a relatively small number of abortions compared to texas, where there are more than 55,000 in texas, a tiny a fraction of that in nevada and new mexico. providers there have really had to scale up. clinics in the south that were forced to close. the pink house, the plaintiffs in the supreme court decision that overturned roe v. wade, they moved to new mexico. we have seen dr. alan grave, the

only doctor who openly violated the six week ban, he has closed down his clinic and opened one in new mexico for women's health. whole wooden's health has opened a clinic in albuquerque, new mexico. we are seeing providers moving there. there are more clinics in the works, more operations in the works to bring more access to new mexico. so the providers there are scaling up and doing everything they can. leaders in the state are doing everything they can to protect abortion access at the legal level. meanwhile, texas antiabortion activist are making inroads with city level ordinances that revise the con stock act and use it to ban abortion nationwide, teeing up what could potentially be the next big supreme court case on abortion over whether to revive this 19th-century law that would in effect institute a abortion ban if antiabortion

activists get their way. host: i want to come back to the comstock act. but staying on your trip to new mexico, an interesting analogy that some of the folks you interviewed made was equating some of their efforts to bring people into new mexico for treatments as to something like the underground railroad, helping people to escape slavery. guest: i profiled a woman named reverend erica ferguson. she's been in the movement for abortion rights for many years. she had two abortions herself. one when she was 14, another when she was 18. she told me it was the warmth and compassion from the staff that took care of her when she had her abortion that motivates her to care for people in the abortion borderlands today. she openly does this work even though she lives in texas and understands the risks involved. she called her project the tubman travel project and says

she calls it that because after harriet tubman, of course, because of the routes taken by people who need abortions out of states where it band and into states that are legal remind her of the states -- of the routes taken by people fleeing slavery. i want to be careful here, of course there is no, you can't draw a parallel to american chattel slavery, but these are her words. she is a black woman. she understands the risk of criminalization for her is ever present. as for many people of color in this country. and she's willing to take on the risk on these trips. what she does, one day a week she goes to an airport in north texas and meets a group of strangers. all of them need abortions. some of them are teenagers. some are moms who have teenagers at home. some of them are rape victims. some are people who just need the abortion care and have to leave their families, their jobs and lives for a day to make this

trip because abortion is no longer legal in their state. they board the plane with reverend ferguson and the first thing she does is tell her abortion story. she tells the women, you are going to be safe and you are going to be cared for. she told me that is the way that her ministry shows up. she doesn't preach about god, she says you will be safe and i will take care of you. she flies with them to albuquerque where they receive their abortion and they go back to the new mexico religious coalition office that i got to visit. it's in an office building in downtown albuquerque. it feels like a field hospital on the a border -- abortion border land. they have cots set up for patients to rest in. art supplies for kids. they had rom comms. they have massage therapists coming in. do luz and healing justice workers who support the people who come from out-of-state.

they have volunteers and go to great lengths to take care of the patients. cruz told me they want to counteract the message sent by the texans, which is that you don't deserve to be care for. they say no you do deserve to be cared for and you deserve that care. the most moving part for me is what happens at the end of the journey when they are getting ready to fly back to texas, reverend ferguson stands before this group of women and often times they have found commonality with each other and bonded over the course of the day and says to them that this is where we say goodbye because you have done what you are here to do. and in the event that when we touched down in texas there are authorities waiting there to arrest me, walk away as if we have never met. she understands the risks she is taking herself in this laboratory have testing over different strategies to try to punish people who are helping others get abortion.

she understands the risk she is taking that she doesn't want to extend to those women and she tells them to walk away from her. and then she gets on the plane.

>> combat to the comstock act, what that is and how antiabortion advocates are trying to use the act. >> there are various strategies in place to get to the end goal the antiabortion movement has united around for decades. that is personhood for the embryo at the moment of fertilization. the question has always been less about where they are headed, more about how to get there. the comstock act is an 1873 law

used -- it is named for anthony comstock, who boasted of getting tons of people arrested, even driving some of them to suicide with his crusades against anyone who was circulating pornography, pornographic drawings are mentioned. he wanted anyone sharing information about contraception. of course, abortion was covered in this, specifically the mailing of abortion drugs or devices. enforcement of the laws has not happened in almost a century, because of court decisions and modifications to the law have caused people to forget they exist. antiabortion activists have been watching. they believe the comstock act might be they are key to ending abortion nationwide.

it supports the argument the comstock act is still good law and bans the mailing of any abortion drugs or devices. that would force any providers to shut down. if they cannot use the mail to get there devices or drugs, information could be wrapped in here, they will not be able to operate. we saw the strategy in the lawsuit that was used to take down the abortion pill. we have also seen the strategy from texas antiabortion activists martha dixon and jonathan witchel. in cities or new mexico to tee up the supreme court on whether the comstock act would ban abortion nationwide. one strategy where abortion activists are increasingly

saying they want to ban all abortions nationwide from the moment of fertilization and this is one avenue they are pushing together. host: how soon could that appear before the supreme court? guest: we have already seen the method for stone case where they were trying to overturn the two drug regimen for abortion that would have severely curtailed access nationwide potentially, even in blue states. what we see in the supreme court is that they have led the status quo. they have already considered a lawsuit that had the comstock argument in it, but they didn't

say anything about the act when they left the status quote in place. they could have the opportunity very soon. the question of whether they entertain the argument is another question. i think that what we are seeing, new mexico state officials have filed legal challenges trying to protect their state laws saying abortion is legal, you cannot be passing ordinances with the comstock act in our state. teeing up the battles that these strategists hope will force the supreme court to take up the issue. if you have enough balls in the air, eventually the courts might say well we need to resolve this. host: let's chat with a few callers set up for you already. judith, line for republicans, you are up first with amy littlefield. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm 73 years old. and is it -- host: what's the question? caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. question, i'm 73 years old and i was wondering, is abortion a fo