Lynsea Garrison
After the abortion, how did that affect you afterward? Did you kind of carry that with you? Or did you change at all as a teen?
Tara Wicker
I felt very out of control of my own life and my own space. I felt really, really displaced.
Lynsea Garrison
Tara wicker said her abortion at 16 left her feeling choiceless. Choiceless initially about her pregnancy, but also the decision to terminate it. She said she wasn't the same afterward.
Tara Wicker
And so I think at that moment in time, my whole personality changed. I wanted to be able to control my own life. As a matter of fact, the funny thing is Janet Jackson had a song called Control.
Janet Jackson
This is a story about control. My control.
Tara Wicker
And I was like the poster child for that song.
Janet Jackson
When I was 17, I did what people told me.
Tara Wicker
And I thought I was Janet Jackson because she talked about being in control of her own life. And I remember thinking, how helpless. I felt not being able to make my own decision to keep my own baby.
That moment in my life where I felt so powerless, I apparently made some internal vows that I need to be able to stand for what I believe is right for myself. And for me, it was becoming this new person.
I created a whole new Tara. Yeah.
Yep. That's what I did.
Lynsea Garrison
So no longer pregnant, the new in control Tara, she graduated from high school, eventually went on to college, married that same boyfriend she had at 16.
Tara Wicker
Six kids later.
Lynsea Garrison
They too have six kids together.
Tara Wicker
My oldest child is 26, and my baby is 8.
Lynsea Garrison
She started a development company, worked in the mayor's office, ran for city council as a Democrat, served in city council. She worked on a hodgepodge of issues, like improving struggling neighborhoods, drafting ordinances, regulating Airbnbs, ensuring debris cleanup after storms in the city. But for over 30 years, abortion wasn't part of Tara's public persona. And she never betrayed that secret she held inside.
Tara Wicker
I locked it away into a place where I just pretend like it never happened.
Lynsea Garrison
She never talked about it.
Tara Wicker
Until Jonathan Burton called my husband.
Lynsea Garrison
In 2019, when Tara was 49 years old, her husband, a pastor, got invited to a luncheon by an anti-abortion advocate. Her husband was sick and couldn't go, but Tara was asked in his place.
Tara Wicker
And I did. I went. And I had convinced myself I was just going to go, kind of do the elected official thing. I was going to come to the back. Hi, how you guys doing? And sit in the back. And literally, I was an hour late for the luncheon because I literally was just going to show my face.
Lynsea Garrison
She walked in, ducked down, kind of sat in the back. And then one of the organizers spotted her.
Tara Wicker
He said, we have Councilman Wicker here in the back. And would you like to say a few words? And I remember thinking, no, I don't want to say anything.
Lynsea Garrison
She didn't intend to speak, but —
Tara Wicker
At that point, I started walking up to the podium.
Lynsea Garrison
All of a sudden, she felt her feet moving toward the podium.
Tara Wicker
And it was the slowest walk. Everything kind of went in slow motion. And it took me what seemed to have been forever to walk up to that podium. And I remember, as I'm walking up to the podium, my heart was beating so fast. And I'm like, what in the world. Am I about to die? Am I about to fall out? And I remember just hearing the voice of God say I want you to share your testimony about what happened because it was a pro-life event. And I'm sitting here, like I don't know these people. I've never talked. It's been 30 years. I've never had a conversation with anyone about this. I am not sharing my story with a bunch of strangers.
By the time I got to that podium, I don't even remember how it happened, but I started to share with them what happened to me when I was 16.
Lynsea Garrison
And just like that, Tara told her secret in public. She told the people there about her pregnancy at 16, how she didn't know what all of her options were, how the whole ordeal left behind this horrific hole, made her feel isolated and alone. And she felt like she could never really talk about it until that moment.
Tara Wicker
And when I shared, it it was as if my whole life exhaled.
Everyone in the room was standing to their feet. Everyone was clapping. And there was not a dry eye in the room. And I had pastors' wives that would come up to me afterwards that said, that happened to me. I had an abortion. And I've never been able to talk about it to anyone.
I think that especially growing up here in the south, I think that Blacks speaking out on particular issues, for whatever reason, there's this mode of silence that we bad things happen in our communities. We know bad things happen in our families, but you don't talk about it. But I knew that luncheon changed my life forever. Forever.
Lynsea Garrison
After that, Tara is catapulted into Louisiana's anti-abortion movement. And it's at a really big moment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh had just recently been confirmed to the Supreme Court, and states were passing an unprecedented number of laws trying to chip away at Roe. And Louisiana was among them. Trying to pass through a law that banned abortion after six weeks. And Tara was swept up in that momentum.
Tara Wicker
Look, we're having this pro-life rally.
Lynsea Garrison
She was asked to speak at a Louisiana Life March.
Tara Wicker
Sure. No problem. I love to. And then it dawned on me what I had just committed to. And I'm like, oh, my God. What did I just do?
Lynsea Garrison
It was in the media.
Tara Wicker
It was in the newspaper.
Lynsea Garrison
Her abortion story was resonating.
Tara Wicker
There was no hiding anymore.
Lynsea Garrison
And then she was offered a job as state director for Louisiana Black Advocates for Life, an initiative under Louisiana Right to Life.
Tara Wicker
And I remember being at the pro-life rally. And my daughter Trinity, she looked at me, and she said, mom, she said I thought that you told me that the bulk of people that were getting abortions were Black people. And I said, it is, baby. That's the statistics. And she looked around, and she said, well, why are we the only ones here? Where are we? And I said, well, that's why we're here. They help break the silence.
Lynsea Garrison
When Tara got underway in her new job, she deepened her knowledge of abortion. She learned that 65 percent of abortion patients in Louisiana are Black. And then she learned some history. She researched planned parenthood. The part of its history where its founder Margaret Sanger aligned herself with the eugenics movement in the US. The belief that the human race could be improved through selective breeding. She learned how eugenics often targeted poor people, those with disabilities, and people of color. All of this motivated her.
Tara Wicker
The more that I talked about it —
Lynsea Garrison
So she starts visiting Black churches, Black communities to talk about abortion. To tell people what she's just learned and bring it out from the shadows. She tells them that the high percentage of Black abortion patients is eroding the Black population. She tells them that Black Americans used to be the biggest minority in the US. Now, they're the second largest after the Hispanic population. And with that erosion in population, Tara argues, is also the erosion of Black culture in this country. And to Tara, it all amounts to a genocide of the African-American race.
Do you see this as a civil rights issue?
Tara Wicker
Yeah. I do. I think that when you talk about the value of human life and the contributions of a race, it does become an issue of civil rights. And do I have even the right and the ability to make decisions that would be beneficial to continuing the legacy of the African-American race?
Lynsea Garrison
I looked into this. And while Margaret Sanger did align herself with the eugenics movement, scholars say there's no actual evidence that she tried to control the Black population. And while it's also true that the birth rate for Black Americans has been steadily declining since the '90s, the Hispanic population would be larger than the Black population regardless. And that's largely because of high birth rates and high levels of immigration among Hispanic people in previous decades, not because of abortion rates among Black Americans.
Still, Tara finds the high percentage of Black women in Louisiana getting abortions to be alarming. And while she's not alone in thinking this, her views are not the norm. An overwhelming majority of Black Americans, 68 percent, think abortion should be allowed in most or all cases, significantly more than White Americans. So Tara gets confronted about her position a lot. Like recently, when a Black man approached her.
Tara Wicker
I was at a community meeting. And I was standing at the door. And I was giving out flyers for the pro-life summit. And I remember this man came up to me. And he said, so let me get this right, he says. So you're a Black woman, but you're pro-life? And I said yeah. And he said, well, I'm not really sure because there was a point in time in history where African-Americans did not have the opportunity to have a choice and have their own decisions about things, and things were forced on them. And so I really see it as you taking away a person's right.
Lynsea Garrison
Tara looked at him and went straight to the fetus inside the womb.
Tara Wicker
Then we started having the conversation about the reality of the baby and the voice of the baby.
Lynsea Garrison
That this was not about the rights of Black women. This was about Black fetuses not having any.
Tara Wicker
He got quiet for a moment. And I remember he was reflecting. And he kept saying, OK, well, yeah, that makes sense. Oh, I never thought about it that way. Being able to highlight that to him helps him understand the difference.
Lynsea Garrison
And Tara says that the recent dialogue around Black Lives Matter after police killings like Alton Sterling in Louisiana and George Floyd on a national scale have only helped her get through to people.
Tara Wicker
There's been so much conversation out there about celebrating and protecting Black Lives. And you know, Black Lives Matter until we're having a conversation about in the womb. So the reality of it is do Black lives really matter?
Lakisha Harris
We want to start with a Black life, start with the person that's going to give birth to the Black life. What does that person want, right? What does that being want? Does that being want to have a child? No.
Lynsea Garrison
That life matters.
Lakisha Harris
That life matters. Absolutely. The life that's here. Her life, their life matters.
Lynsea Garrison
While Lakisha Harris was working as a doula in Chicago, helping support pregnancies, she decided she also wanted to help support people who didn't want to be pregnant. So she decided to volunteer at the abortion clinic in Chicago.
Lakisha Harris
I do remember the first time I was an escort at the clinic in Chicago. And the anti-abortion activists had these pictures that was blazing of dismembered fetuses. And would come up to the cars. And I remember them being so angry with me because I was a Black woman defending abortion access. And like you are committing genocide against your own people. And this is eugenics. And these are White protesters. And I was so stunned by that. I remember being so stunned and didn't have the language, right? That was the first time with me even hearing the word eugenics. So I had to go home and study.
Lynsea Garrison
Like Tara, Lakisha also learned about the history of eugenics.
Tara Wicker
There are parts of our history that is inclusive of eugenics, right? That is a truth. And there's also part of our history of women, Black women, is that we never had a say in how our bodies were used, who utilized them for what. In 1992, I never gave consent to be part of an experiment about birth control, right? But also, I deserved birth control access. Those are the two truths that exist in my life. So while part of the narrative of eugenics is like a truth, the part of that narrative that other people get to decide what to do with their body. And that is, like for me, a whole truth and whole reality.
Lynsea Garrison
Lakisha eventually moved to New Orleans and continued to advocate for abortion access. And in 2019, when the governor signed into law that six-week ban on abortion, Lakisha helped lead a sit-in inside the Capitol building in Baton Rouge. The protesters were eventually led out of the building by law enforcement. Lakisha was arrested.
As an increasingly anti-abortion climate swept over Louisiana, at times even threatening to shut down its clinics, Lakisha continue to push for access for years, becoming a visible leader in the fight for abortion access. And then in June, she was named the co-executive director of Lift Louisiana, one of the state's most prominent reproductive health organizations, lobbying and fundraising for abortion access across the state. It's kind of the rival to Tara's organization, Louisiana Right to Life. But right after she was hired, Roe v Wade was overturned.
Tara Wicker
We knew what was coming. We knew it. Yeah.
Lynsea Garrison
And since that decision, Louisiana has been in a kind of legal tug of war over abortion. The state's trigger bans, laws on the books that would ban nearly all abortions in the state, were blocked by a series of rulings and temporary restraining orders, allowing Louisiana's clinics to stay open. But just a couple of weeks ago, an appeals court ruled that the bans could go back into effect. And the state's clinics had to stop providing abortions once again. And Lakisha is worried about what that means for Black Louisianans in particular.
Lakisha Harris
Yeah. We're in a state that is rife with poverty for Black people. So imagine what they're going to experience when they have to travel four states to get to Illinois to get an abortion. I always think of myself and imagine that young woman who was 16 when she got pregnant, and thinking about Chicago was like a lifetime away. And that was like what? 68, 70 miles.
You're going to have to go thousands of miles to go to get an abortion now. And it makes me sad.
It makes me deeply sad.
Lynsea Garrison
What's your greatest concern, or what are your greatest fears?
Lakisha Harris
My greatest fears is that there will be more criminalization. Like we live in a state that is already heavily criminalized. So my greatest fear is that they will not only criminalize providers because that's the language right now, but they will start to criminalize people who seek abortions. And they said that they won't, but they will. Eventually, they will.
Lynsea Garrison
If the trigger bans stay in place, providers could potentially face fines of up to $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. But Lakisha says the law's language is nebulous.
Lakisha Harris
Who is the provider? It could be the mother that went and got the — because you can still get mail order medicine for abortions, right? So the mother that gets the package out of the mailbox and hands that medicine to their child could be a provider, right? So that language is so loose that anybody that's trying to help a person access abortion could be incarcerated.
Lynsea Garrison
Are you worried that Black Louisianans in particular could get tangled up more often?
Lakisha Harris
Oh. That's who it is. That's who will be. And that's who I'm talking about. More incarceration for Black people. So yeah. Surely.
Lynsea Garrison
Ever since Lakisha moved to New Orleans, she's continued her work as a doula. She does it for free, floating around from family to family, almost like a fly on the wall in people's homes.
Lakisha Harris
So what I'm seeing is like women really stress the hell out about every aspect of their life as a doula. I'm seeing the lack of resources, the lack of family support, the lack of mental health care. Just lack, lack, lack, lack, lack.
Lynsea Garrison
Louisiana also has one of the highest rates in the nation when it comes to maternal mortality for Black women. So Lakisha is worried about what all of this adds up to for Black people now that more Black women may have to carry pregnancies to term. And as a doula, she's preparing for that.
Do you anticipate an influx of clients who might —
Tara Wicker
Of course. We anticipate it. Yes. Yes. Yes. We anticipate that because that's going to be the reality.
I think that when we have the conversation about it's going to be African-Americans that's going to suffer the most, the question that I will have is who's suffering the most now? I mean, these neighborhoods are suffering from basic needs, basic quality of life. I mean, it shouldn't be something basic that I have to have a car to be able to just get something as basic as eggs, bread, and butter, just to make breakfast. Where do I go in the neighborhood to find a banana?
Lynsea Garrison
In Baton Rouge, Tara also sees a lack of basic resources in Black neighborhoods, including hers.
Tara Wicker
Is riddled with gunshots and prostitution.
Lynsea Garrison
She still lives in the house she grew up in, same neighborhood. Except now, it's no longer bustling. It's economically depressed. So when it comes to the lack of resources for Black Louisianans, on this, Lakisha and Tara agree. But Tara doesn't see abortion as a solution to those inequities. Only a symptom of a deeper problem.
Tara Wicker
So we actually have identified 20 properties.
Lynsea Garrison
So Tara is preparing for a post-war world that caters to the needs of the most vulnerable. She says for too long, part of the anti-abortion movement has been pro-birth, not pro-life. So she's trying to get funding for homes, for moms and their babies. So that resources are less of a problem.
Tara Wicker
To me, that should never be a decision that a mom has to make, whether or not I can financially take care of my baby versus the only option I have is to kill my baby. I mean, what a horrible decision to have to be faced with.
Lynsea Garrison
Do you think abortion should ever be on the table? Are there any circumstances where you would see why someone would do that or cases where you think it could even be necessary for a person.
Tara Wicker
I have a hard time thinking of a scenario where we should end a human's life just because they don't come here in the best situation in circumstances.
Lynsea Garrison
What about the situation of the mother's life at risk? Louisiana has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. I think it's four Black women for every one White woman. So what about in that case?
Tara Wicker
So even in that sense, there have been so many times where the doctors have said, if you go through with this, you could die, and the baby could die, and both of you could die. And so there have been so many situations where God has intervened and that mom ended up having the baby anyway. She lived, and the baby ended up living. So even though it may be a risk or even the doctors — doctors are wrong all the time. And if there's a risk that, hey, this baby may not live, or you may die, I just don't think that we should be in a position of playing God in those scenarios. I think that ultimately, life and death is in His hands. And we should allow that to play out.
Lynsea Garrison
Over the past several weeks, Tara has been busy going to court. And following what happens with the court hearings, determining the fate of Louisiana's trigger bans. The decision that reinstated the bans was finally some good news.
In New Orleans, Lakisha had already been preparing for the day abortion disappears. She's planning a big rally of people who will travel from Louisiana to Illinois to show how difficult that journey is.
Even though the clinics aren't providing abortions right now, it's unclear what will happen in Louisiana. The attorneys who are fighting to block the bans tell me they could get another injunction, suspending the trigger bans once again. So it's possible the legal ping pong could continue.
While the state wobbles between two fates, these women, whose lives are inverses of each other, like a photograph and its negative, are bracing. Bracing for either a Louisiana that mirrors what they want or Louisiana that mirrors where they've been. No matter what ultimately happens, only one of them will get the future they want. The future they've been running towards. While the other one might find herself, in a sense, back to where she began.
Lakisha Harris
We've come to the steppes again to make history.
Lynsea Garrison
Back to seeing more realities like the one she experienced at 16.
Lakisha Harris
To reach deep inside until everyone has access, has full access to choice.
Tara Wicker
No other 16-year-old has to be faced with the understanding of the thought that she's alone in this, that you're not alone. You do have options. You do have choices. You do have a family, a community, a village. That is here, ready to support, love you, and provide all the resources that you have. So this work is not over. We have a lot of work to be done.
Lakisha Harris
And know that we are not giving up and conceding anything in Louisiana. We will continue to fight.