POPSUGAR: Can you describe your initial reaction to learning the news of Roe v. Wade's reversal on June 24?
Chabeli Carrazana: I was at my desk here in my house in Orlando, watching SCOTUSblog and. . . . someone said, "There's a one-in-eight chance Dobbs [v. Jackson Women's Health Organization] comes today." And then maybe 10, 20 seconds after that, the notification comes up. Once I read on my screen that Roe and [Planned Parenthood v.] Casey had been overturned, I took a pause because it was almost unbelievable to be reading that on a screen. We knew it was coming. We expected it was going to stay the same as what we had read in the draft decision. And we were prepared. But just to see it, I had to take a pause and take it in. I took my glasses off and just looked at it for a while. It was truly still shocking in the sense that we were reversing 50 years of precedent.
For us at The 19th, we had been talking about this for such a long time. This is a central coverage piece for us. It's the largest breaking news event that we will probably ever cover. It's hard to get into "go, go, go" mode right away when you see something like that, so I had to take a second to process. And then I changed tabs and looked at our spreadsheet on clinics and said, "OK, which ones am I calling?"
PS: What has it been like reporting on abortion, an issue that so intimately impacts women?
CC: As a woman, as a journalist, all these identities are layered. I'm also 34 weeks pregnant, and that adds another layer for me too. In a way, I'm feeling fortunate that I'm pregnant right now as this is happening because it helps give me a new frame of reference for the kind of conversations we're having with folks, in terms of the questions I'm asking. I also had two miscarriages last year, so I understand how complicated pregnancy is, how difficult pregnancy is, how difficult it is to become pregnant, how many things can go wrong. Having all of that going into this has made me understand it on a level that I think I wouldn't have otherwise.
"It feels like one of the most important stories I'll ever cover as a person who could be directly affected by some of these decisions." — Chabeli Carrazana
There are all these different identities that inform this work now and make it feel more critical. It feels like one of the most important stories I'll ever cover as a person who could be directly affected by some of these decisions. That makes you so much more invested in all of the work and doing it right and doing folks' stories justice. It's been an emotional time.
PS: In a word, what emotion comes to mind when you think about reporting on the overturn of Roe v. Wade?
CC: Overwhelming, of course. It's like the fire hose is nonstop, from the moment it happened to the foreseeable future for us. The laws are complicated and nuanced in every state, and trying to keep track of all that is difficult, so it's just a constantly changing mass of chaos.
PS: What's your take on journalistic bias in situations like these? Do you think it's possible to remain unbiased while discussing abortion access as a woman?
CC: I think the conversation about bias in journalism has evolved. There's this sense that journalists have to equally serve both sides of an issue in order to maintain this appearance of no bias, but do both sides require equal attention? I cover a lot of racism in economic institutions — do both sides require equal representation of their thoughts? With something like that, no.
We are all, as human beings, biased, and as journalists, we are also human beings. All people have their own thoughts on whatever the news of the day is. But can they then produce work that is fair to the story? Not necessarily to both sides, but fair to the story, fair to the truth? I think the answer is yes, we absolutely can do that, and we have continued to do that without this strict idea that journalists can have no bias. The reality is that our stories are better because we lean into the experiences that we have to help inform the work. It's what I was talking about with being pregnant while doing this. I don't want to set that side of myself apart from this because it helps me understand the story in a way that I otherwise would not understand it, and it gets me closer to the truth.
PS: Have you been doing anything to protect your mental health the past few weeks?
CC: This is a tough question because there's a sense of it feeling very overwhelming, but at the same time, very critical and important, so you kind of get in this mode of going nonstop. I feel like, what could be more important for me to do than this? In the first couple of days and hours, it felt like everything else could be tabled for this, so in a sense, I haven't thought about what I need to do to take a break because it doesn't feel like there is an opportunity to take a break yet. There's so much that we need to focus on. But I have tried. I went to the beach last weekend with my dog and my husband, and we tried to just stare out at the ocean.
It's hard to find the time to think about myself when I'm having conversations with people who are talking about depths of despair that are hard to wrap your head around — people who have been sent home after sitting in a clinic lobby expecting to receive their abortion that day and then called back three days later and being told, "Actually, we can see you now." And clinics that are wondering whether they'll be able to stay open. And other people who are facing the reality of a world that they are not familiar with, that they've never lived in, which is a world where Roe is not there.
I feel very fortunate that I get to write about their stories and that they trust me with those stories, and I really want to be doing that.
