Liberating Motherhood

In 1994, Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, a caucus of 12 Black women, coined the term reproductive justice. The goal was to shift the discourse to a broader understanding of reproductive rights—the right not to become a mother, yes, but also the right to be a mother, to mother according to one’s values, and to explore the myriad way patriarchy, white supremacy, and other systems of power affect all of our reproductive lives, whether or not we have children. 
Feminism still has a long way to go to fully include the spectrum of reproductive issues women face. I’ve written extensively about the failures of mainstream discourse to center the experiences of mothers, who are the majority of women. 
Professor Carly Thomsen has devoted her life to studying feminist discourse and norms, and to better understanding how our politics impact our lives. She argues in her new book, Reproductive Justice, Queerly, that queering reproductive discourse is crucial to a more expansive feminism. In our interview, we talked about a wide variety of topics, including: 

How a gender studies education helped undo Carly’s anti-choice politics. 

The importance of bridging the gulf between reproductive justice activism and queer theory. 

What it means to “queer” something, and why it’s not exclusively about the LQBTQ+ community. 

How gender neutral language and other small changes can be low-value substitutes for actual change, and how the impulse toward gender neutral language can actually conceal oppression. 

How we can better manage disagreements within activist communities. 

Why it is sometimes easier to talk about conflict with people who are very different from us than with people who are in our activist communities. 

What it means to live a feminist, queer life in an anti-feminist, anti-queer world. 

Adoption discourse, and what gets lost in fairytales about how people make families. 

You can find Carly’s new book, Reproductive Justice, Queerly, as well as all of her books, all of the books I have recommended on the podcast, and a wide array of book recommendations, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. 
About Carly Thomsen
Carly Thomsen is an assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Middlebury College. She completed her PhD in feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University. Her work on reproductive justice, LGBTQ activism, queer rurality, and feminist pedagogy is published in Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Feminist Studies, Feminist Formations, Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice, Queering the Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies, The Legacies of Matthew Shepard: Twenty Years Later, andthe Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory.

Adoption is always the story of trauma—a surprise pregnancy, a parent giving up their baby, a baby separated from their parent. This does not make all adoption wrong, but it does make adoption much more complicated than the fairytales we have been sold. 
Most women say they would not have given their babies up if they had more money, and many say they were coerced into adoption. The trauma of giving up a baby can last a lifetime, and adoptees also often suffer trauma.
Patricia Meyer is on a mission to advocate for adoptees and first parents, and to end coercive and abusive tactics in the adoption industry. In this podcast episode we discuss topics such as:

The fairytales we tell about adoption, and how these obscure the reality. 

The unique issues adoptees face. 

The trauma of giving up a baby for adoption. 

How coercion figures prominently in adoption. 

The frequency with which black and gray markets play a role in adoption. 

How we use guilt and shame to silence adoptees. 

Treating babies like products rather than people.

The regulations and rules that might greatly reduce the suffering of everyone involved in adoption.

Patricia’s new book, Wonderland: Memoir of a Black Market Adoption, is out now. You can find all books I recommend on the podcast at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. 
About Patricia Meyer
Patricia Knight Meyer is an author, speaker, and adoption reform advocate. She was handed over as an infant along a Texas hospital curb in 1970. No agency. No judge. No paperwork. She was never legally adopted. She grew up with a fraudulent birth certificate and no legal documentation of who she was. The attorney who arranged her placement, according to her raising parents, extorted roughly $30,000 from them over the years that followed.
Her road to true identity began at 39. She started with no original records, no known birth name, and no confirmed date or place of birth. Using public record databases, she tracked down the trafficking attorney and uncovered a biological cousin trafficked by the same man.
She reunited with both of her birth parents. Her reunion video with her birth father has been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube. She received her first legal birth certificate at 47. Patricia tells this story in her debut memoir, WONDERLAND: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption (Unsolicited Press, November 3, 2026). The book arrives as an IndieReader Award Winner in True Crime, a CIPA EVVY Gold winner in Memoir, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, a Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist, and an Indies Today Memoir Finalist. Patricia also narrates the audiobook, released through her imprint YAYDNA Press.
She serves on the board of the National Association of Adoptees and Parents (NAAP), where she hosts the monthly NAAP Happy Hour. She is connected to Concerned United Birthparents, Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, Support Texas Adoptee Rights, Saving Our Sisters, and other advocacy organizations.
Her blog, My Adopted Life, reaches a booming community of adoptees, first parents and advocates. She keynotes adoption conferences and leads memoir writing workshops. Patricia has appeared on Al Jazeera’s The Stream and HuffPost Live. Her essays have been published in Ms. Magazine, Severance Magazine, Narrative Arc, and Kinsmen Quarterly.
Patricia left high school before graduating, earned her GED, and worked her way through community college. She was admitted to the journalism program at the University of Texas at Austin, where she graduated as a single mother. She went on to a twenty-year career in books and digital marketing.
She is also the founder of YAYDNA Genetic Greeting Cards, cards made for the complicated joy of DNA discovery and reunion, available on Amazon.
She splits her time between the Texas Hill Country and New Orleans with her grumpy Chihuahua, Ollie. She is mom to a photographer daughter and GiGi to two grandsons.

“Therapists can only go as deep with their clients as they’ve gone with themselves.” — Diana Fox Tilson

Why does therapy so often replicate and intensify the harm people experience in their exploitative relationships? Therapy, in theory, is a powerful tool for healing and personal change. But like any medical intervention, it poses risks and side effects. 
Therapy definitionally occurs behind closed doors, which raises the specter of exploitation and harm, even among therapists who truly do mean well. In most therapy sessions, only two people get to evaluate how things went—one of whom can be heavily influenced by the therapist, and the other of whom has a strong interest in viewing their own work favorably. 
In this podcast episode, I talk to therapist Diana Fox Tilson about why therapy so often causes harm, what we can do to find better therapy, and how to know if your therapy sessions are actually working. Some of the topics we cover include: 

Why therapy often goes so wrong, and how people who are genuinely good people can still do harm.

Zawn’s experience with a bad therapist. 

The lack of accountability in private practice, especially with the most vulnerable clients. 

Defensiveness among therapists. 

The normalization of oppressive scripts in therapy. 

The unique dangers of couples counseling. 

Differences in how men and women are treated in therapy, and how therapy can subtly reinforce gender norms. 

The professional and financial incentives for therapists to not challenge their clients. 

How to tell if therapy is working. 

How therapists can end up exploiting their clients, whether or not they intend to. 

Red flags in therapy. 

Why good therapists admit to mistakes. 

About Diana Fox Tilson

Diana Fox Tilson, LICSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice and writes Other Interests on Substack.

The witch trials did not target women—at least not explicitly. Yet somehow it was almost all women being executed and abused. This includes little girls. The witch trials are a case study in how the law can be gender-neutral, while still being highly gendered. 
In this podcast episode, I speak with Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, creators of the Witches of Scotland podcast, about their new book, How to Kill a Witch. The book draws parallels between the witch trials and today, offering lessons that have resonated for hundreds of years. More than being a lesson in history, though, this book shows us that the people executed were actual human beings whose lives and suffering mattered. In this episode we discuss a range of topics, including: 

How authorities justified the witch trials, and what they reveal about collective thinking, gender bias, and what we are willing to do to people we dehumanize. 

The parallels between the witch trials and how we treat women today. 

Whether something similar to the witch trials could happen again. 

The endless horror of interacting with men in public. 

Parallels between the witch trials and the public depiction of Lindsay Clancy.

How being “crazy” is the new witch allegation against women. 

The dynamics of victim blaming.

False confessions, and why they continue to happen today.

It’s crucial for us to acknowledge that this kind of frenzy isn’t just for bad or crazy people. It’s something we can all get swept up in—and on a smaller scale, most of us have been swept up in harmful groupthink, dehumanization, and vilification. 
It’s easy for us to view abusers as certain kinds of people, or abusive behavior stemming only from certain ideologies. But the truth is that abuse only ever comes from the idea that certain behaviors can justify abusive treatment. And perhaps the crucial lesson of the witch trials is this: as soon as you are willing to justify abuse of even one person, it’s much easier to convince you to abuse just about anyone. 
About Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi

Zoe Venditozzi grew up in North East Fife in Scotland and attended the University of Glasgow to study English. Following stints as letters editor at The People's Friend and selling answer phones at BT, Zoe qualified as an English teacher in New Zealand in 1999. 
Shortly after she moved back to Scotland where she started a family, worked in various schools and gained a Masters in Writing from the University of Dundee. After publishing her debut novel, "Anywhere's Better Than Here", Zoe kept teaching (in lots of settings including schools, universities, museums, libraries, children's homes and on the HMS Unicorn) and also became a writer in residence at Roxburgh House in Aberdeen and Reader in Residence for Dundee Libraries. 
Zoe joined Claire Mitchell KC on the Witches of Scotland campaign in 2020 and has co hosted 70+ podcasts episodes of the same name. Since then, Claire and Zoe have worked hard to redress the historical wrong of thousands of people being accused and many executed, for being witches. Claire and Zoe's book, "How to Kill a Witch - a Guide for the Patriarchy" will be published in May 2025. Zoe still writes fiction and is particulary interested in death, psychic phenomena and the horrors of womanhood.
Claire Mitchell has an honours degree in law from the University of Glasgow. She was a solicitor in private practice from 1996 and was called at the Bar in 2003. She became a Queen’s Counsel (QC, now KC) in 2019. She was President of the Scottish Criminal Bar Association from 2016 to 2018.
Mitchell leads the ‘Witches of Scotland’ campaign with Zoe Venditozzi to seek posthumous justice for women historically convicted and executed as witches in Scotland. The campaign used social media to reach the public and a petition to the Scottish Parliament as a way to influence policy makers.
The campaign has three goals: a pardon for those convicted, a formal apology from the Scottish government, and a national memorial. Mitchell hopes that laws used to dispense historic pardons can be used in these cases, as they have been done for the people in Salem, Massachusetts. 
Zoe and Claire are the authors of How to Kill a Witch. They also host the popular Witches of Scotland podcast. 
Zoe and Claire’s book, as well as all books I talk about on the podcast, are available at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. The LM Bookshop also offers a vast range of book recommendations in numerous categories.

Right wing opponents of women’s rights and bodily autonomy cannot win on the facts, so they’ve decided to create a fact-free world. And sadly, they’re winning the battle. Even media coverage of abortion often contains errors, and many of us have mistaken beliefs and ideas about pregnancy termination, even if we identify as pro-choice. 
Ushma Upadhyay, an abortion researcher, joined the podcast to discuss common misconceptions about abortion, as well as what the research actually reveals. Some of the topics we cover include: 

Research on the benefits of access to abortion, and common misconceptions about abortion. 

The increasingly important role of telehealth abortion, particularly as anti-choice terrorists become more aggressive and dangerous.

The far-reaching effects of abortion stigma, and the notion of abortion as something other people (not people like you) do. 

The Turnaway Study, which compares what happens to women denied abortions to women who go through with their abortions. 

Advancing New Standards of Reproductive Health, the organization with which Dr. Upadhyay works, publishes a voluminous quantity of data on abortion and reproductive health. Find direct links to some of Dr. Upadhyay’s work here. 
For almost a decade, I wrote a weekly column on abortion and reproductive justice. Most weeks, the column focused on new scientific research. It’s still a treasure trove of useful data and analysis. Find it here. 
About Ushma Upadhyay
Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH is a public health scientist trained in epidemiology and demography. She is in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Reproductive Sciences and is also core faculty of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH).
Dr. Upadhyay was born and raised near Boston, Massachusetts. As a person of South Asian descent, primarily raised by her mother who immigrated to the U.S. from Tanzania, she is drawn to reproductive health from a social justice perspective.
Dr. Upadhyay has expertise in abortion safety, abortion access in the U.S., medication abortion, and state-level abortion restrictions. She was Principal Investigator of the landmark California Home Abortion by Telehealth study (CHAT), which examined the safety, effectiveness, and acceptability of telehealth for abortion. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator of the REACH study, which aims to understand the intersections of preferences and access in abortion care. She is also leading a study on interest in a late period pill.
Gender and health justice have also been a central focus of Dr. Upadhyay's work. She has developed and validated the Reproductive Autonomy Scale and the Sexual and Reproductive Empowerment Scale for Adolescents and Young Adults, both of which researchers can use to quantitatively measure people’s power in matters related to contraceptive use, pregnancy, and abortion.
She earned a BA in Public Communication and International Studies from American University, her MPH from Columbia University, and her PhD from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.