Liberating Motherhood

“The adoption industry needs vulnerable pregnant women.” — TJ Raphael
Who gets to be a mother? And who gets to decide? This is the question at the heart of TJ Raphael’s incredible podcast series, Liberty Lost. 
Much of the adoption industry treats women as vessels for someone else’s child. Their trauma, their desires, their beliefs do not matter. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the right-wing adoption industry, where women and girls are often coerced or even forced into giving up their babies. 
Reproductive justice demands not only that women have the right not to have children, but also that women have the right to have and raise their children if they want. We see over and over again how patriarchy undermines both via abusive ideas about single mothers, sexuality, motherhood, and child development. 
There is no doubt that some women truly do wish to give their babies up for adoption, and that not all adoptions are coercive. But the data suggest that coercive, ideology-based adoptions may be the norm. Up to 80% of adoptions are through religious institutions. Moreover, most women who give their babies up for adoption say that, if their financial situation were better, they would not give up their babies. 
In her podcast series, TJ digs into just one religious institution: the Liberty University Godparent Home. It markets itself as a safe and supportive space for young mothers, but TJ’s podcast series reveals the coercive tactics it uses to take women’s babies. 
Research consistently shows that women who give up their babies for adoption experience intense grief and trauma. This is a fact that compels the question: Why are so many organizations pouring so much money into taking women’s babies rather than helping them to keep them? 
You can listen to Liberty Lost here. 
About TJ Raphael

T. J. Raphael is an award-winning investigative journalist focusing on the intersection of reproductive health, politics, and science. In June 2025, she released the multi-episode audio documentary Liberty Lost with Wondery, one of the world’s leading podcast production companies. The series dives deep into a modern-day maternity home where motherhood is treated as a privilege, not a right. The show paints a vivid picture that exposes the coercion and manipulation birth mothers often experience across the adoption industry. 
Following its release, Liberty Lost quickly climbed Apple’s coveted Top 200 Podcasts chart, topping out as the No. 2 series in America, and reaching No. 1 in their Society & Culture section. The show was praised by critics across the globe for its raw vulnerability and startling revelations, and won Gold at the 2025 Signal Awards for Best Documentary. For her work on Liberty Lost, T. J. won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York for investigative reporting, and she is currently nominated by the Podcast Academy for an Ambie Award for best reporting.
Before her time with Wondery, T. J. was an on-air host, reporter, and senior producer for Sony’s Global Podcast Division. Two of her most notable podcasts with Sony include Cover Up: The Pill Plot, about the American abortion wars, and BioHacked: Family Secrets, about the shadowy business of sperm and egg donation.
Prior to Sony, T. J. was part of the leadership team overseeing Slate Magazine’s podcast network, which garnered 180 million downloads a year. She began her career in audio journalism in 2013 when she took on a multifaceted role at WNYC — the largest public radio station in America.
T. J. began her career in print journalism, with reporting and editorial roles at The Village Voice, The New York Daily News, and The Legislative Gazette, grounding her audio work in traditional investigative and accountability reporting.
T. J. is mixed race — Puerto Rican and Irish — and was born and raised in the New York City metro area. She is the first in her family to graduate from college.
Today, T. J. lives in the world’s borough — Queens. When she’s not making podcasts, she likes to take trips to ride the Coney Island Cyclone, and spend time with her husband, Christopher, her border collie Smokey, and her Great Pyrenees, Cooper.

Patriarchy destroys relationships, and it has turned dating into a nightmare. Jennie Young is fighting back with her Burned Haystack method, and now the method is a book. Through her work, Jennie endeavors to teach women to detect red flags before they become obvious, and to thwart abuse before it happens. Dating is the most dangerous thing most of us do, and I have no doubt that Jennie is saving lives. 
In this podcast episode, Jennie and I discuss: 

Why dating is so awful, and why men seem like they’re getting worse. 

What the Burned Haystack method is, and how it can reduce the stress and misery of dating. 

Specific rhetorical and behavioral patterns to look out for in early dating. 

Why dating advice really is a matter of life and death. 

And much more! 

The first date video I mentioned early in the podcast is here. Jeff and I discuss the Application to be Zawn’s Boyfriend here. 
Jennie Young’s book will be out April 7th. If you want publishers to take on more feminist authors, please consider pre-ordering. Pre-orders are a huge determinant of a book’s success, and you can create a more thriving marketplace for all feminist authors by buying Jennie’s book. 
About Jennie Young

Jennie Young is a professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, specializing in applied rhetoric, humor, and feminism. She holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and discourse studies from Case Western Reserve University and a satire writing certificate from Second City Chicago. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s, Ms. Magazine, HuffPost, and others and covered by major media outlets such as The New York Times, RollingStone, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Wall Street Journal.
Visit Jennie at her website here, and be sure to check out her Substack. You can join her man-free support group on Facebook.
You can preorder her book, Burn the Haystack, here.
Find all books referenced on the podcast, as well as additional book recommendations, here.

Why is misogyny so widespread, even when men claim to love and care about women, even among those who believe they are feminists? Male supremacy helps explain this phenomenon. 
The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism defines male supremacy as follows: 

[A] cultural, political, economic, and social system, in which cisgender men disproportionately control status, power, and resources, and women, trans men, and non-binary people are subordinated. Such systems are underpinned by an ideology of male supremacism, the belief in cisgender men’s superiority and right to dominate and control others. While male supremacism also intersects with other axes of oppression, such as racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and heterosexism, it motivates and undergirds the types of events described above. Male supremacism manifests in various ways, including physical and sexual violence, militarism, and exertion of control over women’s, trans men’s, and non-binary people’s bodies.

These norms pervade everything we do, even if we rarely or never speak about them out loud. 
Soraya Chemaly has been writing about, and fighting, male supremacy for decades. Her new book, “All We Want is Everything,” analyzes male supremacy, cogently demonstrates its existence, and offers insight on how we build a better world. I truly loved this book. It’s so tightly argued, chock full of accessible statistics. It might be the book to give to the man in your life, if only to see that his beliefs do not change in response to new information. 
This is Soraya’s second appearance on the podcast, and I’m so lucky we got to talk again. In this episode, we discuss a wide range of topics, such as: 

What male supremacy is, and how it interlocks with other systems of oppression. 

Why and how male supremacy conceals its own existence. 

The myth of a boy crisis in education, and the social purposes it serves. 

The norm of affirmative action for men in colleges and elsewhere. 

How schools reinforce gendered labor in parenting and marriage. 

Men’s refusal to accept anything women do as work. 

The weaponization of women’s fatigue, and why depriving women of rest plays such an important role in their oppression. 

The nature of activism as a group struggle across generations, and how we sustain activism when we become demoralized. 

You can find “All We Want is Everything,” all of Soraya’s books, and all of the books I mention on the podcast at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. 
About Soraya Chemaly
Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning author and activist, who writes son topics related to gender norms, inclusivity, social justice, free speech, sexualized violence, and technology. She is the director and co-founder of Women’s Media Center Speech Project. She is also the author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, The Resilience Myth, and the newly released All We Want is Everything.
You can find her articles in numerous publications and anthologies, in talks and media appearances, and just about everywhere anyone is discussing gender.

I wrote recently about how men are using AI to prop up their belief in their own superiority. This propaganda is nothing new. Men have, for thousands of years, used every tool at their disposal to spread false ideas about women’s inferiority and demonic nature. 
Sarah Ruden is a translator, a classicist, and the author of Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women. She came on the podcast to discuss her new book, which outlines how popular literature and culture have long normalized women’s subjugation by spreading lies about women. 
We ended up having a sprawling conversation during which we talked not just about this book, but about her translations work, Biblical views of womanhood, and so much more. It was such a treat to get to pick such a brilliant mind. No matter what you’re interested in, I think you’ll find something compelling in this episode. 
A few of the topics we discuss include: 

The long history of constraining women’s reproductive rights in service of men, including anti-abortion poems by the poet Ovid. 

The alliance between anti-abortion ideology and authoritarianism. 

Why history is more than a set of facts, and why it matters who tells stories from the past. 

What Sarah has learned as a translator of the Biblical Gospels, and why good translations are so crucial to our understanding of the world. Sarah talks specifically about how the canonical translations of the Gospels suppress women’s point of view and demean women. 

Why our beliefs do not spring up out of nowhere. Not only is propaganda everywhere, but it has always been everywhere. 

The similarities between red pill bros and the men who have translated sacred texts and beloved secular literature. 

The line from Roman anti-abortion rhetoric to the rhetoric of today’s far right, including a focus on genocide. 

The role of anti-abortion politics in imperialism. 

Why the anti-abortion movement has co-opted the Holocaust to justify extreme violence. 

The Catholic church’s shift toward more flexibility on everything except for abortion. 

About Sarah Ruden
Sarah Ruden is a leading translator of the ancient literature of the West. In a career spanning both essential Greek and Roman Classics and sacred literature, she has set new standards for accuracy, stylistic integrity, and accessibility. Her work, including cultural and human-rights journalism, is deeply concerned with questions of power and truth, in accordance with her Quaker faith. She has won Guggenheim, Whiting, and Silvers grants, and numerous other awards.She has a PhD in classical philology from Harvard University.
Her latest book, Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women, came out March 3rd. You can find this wonderful book, as well as several of Sarah’s other books, in the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

I’m on vacation this month, so am re-releasing this excellent episode with Dr. Emma Katz. 

Content warning: This podcast extensively discusses all forms of intimate partner violence, some child abuse, and briefly discusses the death of a child, but not in graphic detail. 
Intimate partner violence is much more than physical violence. Every physically violent perpetrator was, for a time, not physically violent. The emotionally abusive, degrading, and controlling environment these perpetrators create is ultimately what enables the physical violence. 
Our society recognizes only a very limited number of behaviors as abusive, which is why so many women feel shocked and stunned when their partners finally become violent. When you understand coercive control, though, it becomes clear that the violence is part of a controlling strategy. 
Coercive control is the environment abusers create, and it’s much more—and much worse—than just violence. While it is deeply isolating, it follows very predictable patterns. In this podcast, we talk about topics such as: 

What coercive control is, and why it is the norm in heterosexual relationships. 

Why a relationship can be abusive even if there is no physical violence. 

How to tell if your relationship is abusive. 

Why abusers abuse their partners. 

The most common strategies abusers use. 

Why abusers cannot be good fathers.

Helping a child recover from exposure to domestic violence. 

How gender socialization renders women more vulnerable to abuse. 

Risk factors for the father weaponizing the child against the mother. 

Emma Katz, a world-renowned expert on coercive control, focuses her research and writing on the effects of coercive control on children. She dispels the notion that a man can abuse the mother but still be a “good dad,” and talks extensively about how courts often replicate abusive norms. 
These coercively controlling men might seem cunning, but they’re largely following the same playbook. Understanding that playbook empowers women to recognize abuse earlier, to identify when it is happening, and potentially, to leave. 
I highly recommend Dr. Katz’s Substack. Find that here. Read more about her on her website, or buy her incredible book here.