Choice/less

Retired engineer and Lyft driver Rachel Brown came out as transgender at age 68. She's been using her time as a driver to educate her passengers in Massachusetts about an alarming referendum on the ballot this fall that could repeal transgender legal protections in the state. This is her story.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In the season finale, host Jenn Stanley talks to youth activists, artists, and their allies about putting abortion on center stage to fight stigma and change policy.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. So far this series has posed the question, if adults and children have a hard time talking about even the most basic sex stuff, then why do 38 states force minors to tell their parents if they're seeking an abortion? This episode explores what role schools should play in educating young people about sex.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In this episode, host Jenn Stanley explores what it takes to have open and healthy family communication, especially around polarizing topics like abortion. Sometimes those conversations go better than others. 

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In this episode, host Jenn Stanley talks to legal experts, including a former Cook County judge, about how teenagers in Illinois (and 37 other states) end up in court trying to prove they're mature enough to have an abortion.

Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS is all about teens, sex, abortion, and the law. In episode 1, Jenn Stanley takes you back to her own adolescence and talks with a former classmate about their experiences attending a small, all-girls Catholic high school.

From the archives: Before Season 4 premieres next week, we’re taking you back to a related episode from 2016 that explores what happens to teens who can’t involve a parent in their abortion decision but are forced to by the state.

Jenn shares some thoughts on the news and where we're headed.

Niky was called “the slut” in high school for her reproductive rights activism. Jane had to cross state lines to get an abortion at 15 without involving her parents. Veronica thought her grandparents would make her continue an unwanted pregnancy as punishment for having unprotected sex. Thirty-eight states require minors to involve a parent in their abortion decision. In some cases, parental consent is required with no exceptions, essentially banning abortion for many teens. Yet most of these states are doing little to nothing to teach teens about sex and how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Season 4 of CHOICE/LESS unpacks a simple question awash in complexity: if adults won't talk to young people about sex, how can the law mandate that teens involve parents in their abortion decision? Soon, host Jenn Stanley will help teens, parents, lawmakers, activists and anyone who cares about young people find some answers – and raise their own questions about what's right.

Part 2 of 2: If you haven't listened to Part 1, please check your podcast feed or visit https://rewire.news/gilead. Roy Moore lost, but barely. And his theocratic vision for the country lives on through Operation Save America (OSA), an organization committed to a United States in which abortion, homosexuality, Islam, and anything else its leadership considers "ungodly" is a criminal offense. In this two-part audio documentary, CHOICE/LESS host Jenn Stanley and Rewire investigative reporter Sofia Resnick team up to reveal the alarming ways OSA’s far-right ideology is worming its way into state and federal government. While often dismissed as a group of fringe extremists, OSA has a path to power–and even after Roy Moore's loss, it's farther along that path than you think.

Part 1 of 2: Roy Moore lost, but barely. And his theocratic vision for the country lives on through Operation Save America (OSA), an organization committed to a United States in which abortion, homosexuality, Islam, and anything else its leadership considers "ungodly" is a criminal offense. In this two-part audio documentary, CHOICE/LESS host Jenn Stanley and Rewire investigative reporter Sofia Resnick team up to reveal the alarming ways OSA’s far-right ideology is worming its way into state and federal government. While often dismissed as a group of fringe extremists, OSA has a path to power–and even after Roy Moore's loss, it's farther along that path than you think.

Last winter, Kentucky state lawmakers fast-tracked a bill to ban abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization. Heather Hyden, 30, of Lexington, Kentucky, talks about how that bill directly affected her pregnancy and her life. Learn more at Rewire.news today.

Calla Hales is the 27-year-old lead administrator of a regional chain of abortion clinics called A Preferred Women's Health Center, which she took over from her parents. She discusses her experience running a chain of clinics at such a young age, and what it's like growing up when the family business is abortion care.

Patrisse Cullors joins CHOICE/LESS again this week, and this time she’s talking to Alex Alvarez, a Latinx transgender man, about his decision to get pregnant and how he plans to parent.

Jenn and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors are joined by Black midwives Racha Tahani Lawler and Debbie Allen to discuss racism in health care and midwifery, and what it means to provide maternity care and support to communities who need it the most.

Stephanie Toti tells her story of arguing on behalf of Whole Woman's Health in the landmark Supreme Court case Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. Go inside the mind of a reproductive rights attorney as she prepares for the biggest case of her career on the biggest stage in the country.

CHOICE/LESS returns with a blockbuster episode as Jenn interviews former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis about the great lengths she took to kill the sweeping anti-abortion bill that later because the infamous Texas HB 2.

When people hear about racism in medical testing and research, they often bring up the infamous "Tuskegee Study," a decades-long program in which the government pretended to treat 400 Black men with syphilis. In fact, the government withheld adequate treatment to observe the effects of the disease. "There was a whole history of racism in medicine and research, but this was the definitive study that was well-documented," said Bill Jenkins, a statistician with the the agency funding the program at the time of the study, who helped to blow the whistle on it. In the final episode of CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, Bill Jenkins talks about the study, its legacy, and what we can learn from it.

Sterilization abuse so far has played a role in every episode of CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, but in our third installment, this abuse is front and center. Charon Asetoyer is a Comanche activist and women’s rights advocate. In this episode, she discusses the Indian Health Service’s extensive and deliberate campaign to sterilize thousands of Native American women in the 1960s and 1970s without their informed consent.

Long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) like intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants are becoming increasingly popular as birth control methods. Between 2011 and 2013, the number of women using an IUD increased 83 percent from the previous four years, according to a 2015 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. Though today LARCs are recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as very safe and effective methods of birth control, they have a troubled history that have made many people slow to accept them. In the second episode of our miniseries CHOICE/LESS: The Backstory, Loretta Ross, one of the founding mothers of the reproductive justice movement, talks about how her experience with the infamous Dalkon Shield IUD inspired her career as a human rights activist. Note: This updated episode features a correction of a minor audio issue from the previous version.