S5 Ep. 1: WTF, Texas … Again?: Elizabeth Wetmore and Kathryn Nuernberger on SB8, the History of Abortion, and Roe v. Wade in Danger

Novelist Elizabeth Wetmore and essayist and poet Kathryn Nuernberger join hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss Texas’s new abortion law. As the Lone Star State’s SB8 invites anyone to sue those “abetting” an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, Roe v. Wade has never seemed more at risk. In this episode, Wetmore talks about the Southwest’s history of suppressing women’s rights to birth control and reads from her novel, Valentine, which takes place in Texas and depicts a cast of women struggling to navigate the aftermath of sexual violence and access to abortion in 1976. Then, Nuernberger reads from her essay collection, The Witch of Eye, and her poetry collection, RUE; she discusses midwives, witch trials, herbalism, torture, and how these subjects help us interpret the history of women’s reproductive rights.       

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected readings:

Elizabeth Wetmore 

• Valentine
• "Women and Horses (1976)"

Kathryn Nuernberger

• The Witch of Eye
• RUE
• Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past 
• The End of Pink
• Rag & Bone 

Others:

• SB8
• “Abortion on the border: Legislation in Texas and criminalization in Chihuahua” by Veronica Martinez (La Verdad) and Victoria Rossi (El Paso Matters)
• "Abortion on the border: Activists stay resilient" by Veronica Martinez (La Verdad) and Victoria Rossi (El Paso Matters)
• “What It's Like to Run a Planned Parenthood in Texas” by Olga Khazan (The Atlantic, 2016) 
• “Why I Violated Texas's Extreme Abortion Ban” by Alan Braid (The Washington Post)
• Interventions for Women by Angela Hume 
• Eve's Herbs by John M. Riddle
• The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo 
• Regarding the Pain of Others  by Susan Sontag 
• WTF, Texas? Lacy M. Johnson and Natalia Sylvester on Surviving the Recent Storm and Unraveling the Whitewashed Myth of Texas (Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4, Episode 12) 

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