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Dystopian Realities: The Handmaid's Tale and Project 2025 | The Joy Reid Show, Aug 08, 2025
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Producer
Okay.
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Joy Reid
In the Margaret Atwood Nightmare novel and its Hulu series counterpart the Handmaid's Tale, fertile women are turned into breed mules, enslaved by wealthy right wing Christian couples who desire children that the wives cannot bear on their own. And so the Handmaids are chained to the household, subjected to rape by the Commanders, and forced to hand their children over to the green dressed wives to raise as their own with the help of also enslaved Marthas, who in the novel were most often women of color. The Handmaid's Tale told of a right wing version of America called Gilead, which came into being after a violent insurrection by Christian nationalists who enforced a theocracy on this new, violent and terrifying nation where being gay or lesbian was a crime punishable by hanging. And being a woman meant only three possible things bearing children for right wing Christian couples to raise wifedom or servitude. Now if you think that kind of dystopia would never be goals for any reasonable American, then you haven't read Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's playbook to birth a Christian nationalist America with similar rules and mores as Gilead, enforced by similar violence and dogma. It's a world in which American women will be all but cut off from academia, science, the military and business opportunities, and rerouted into only one of three possibilities bearing children for Christian couples to raise wifedom or servitude. Quoting the National Women's Law center, which reviewed Project 2025, Project 2025 seeks to impose a hierarchical, gendered, patriarchal version of society. It is particularly focused on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQ people to thrive outside of a male dominated heterosexual family. It also seeks to reinforce racial hierarchies through a variety of mechanisms. Attempts to roll back civil rights protections and end the federal government's efforts to achieve gender justice are embedded throughout the entire plan and in five overlapping 1 efforts to limit reproductive rights and penalize unmarried women 2 attacks on protections against sex discrimination and other efforts to expand gender equity 3 attacks on LGBTQI IA people 4 gutting of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and other racial justice measures and five Efforts to reduce access to and investments in anti poverty programs by prioritizing the interests of the wealthy over the needs of low income families who are disproportionately led by women, as well as attacks on immigrant families. But the truth is, decades before Project 2025, the Christian right has been working in the background of American life to try to impose Gilead on America. In the decades before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide and at a time when it was considered unbearably shameful for a woman to be pregnant outside of marriage, many unwed, particularly white pregnant women and girls, were sent to what was called maternity homes, where they were often coerced into surrendering their infants for adoption as soon as they were born, often without even giving them time to consider it, and with paperwork that barred them from ever finding or even contacting their children again, per the Associated Press. In 1883, the first Florence Crittenden Home opened in New York as a place to reform unmarried fallen women who were encouraged to keep their children. The goal changed by the middle of the 20th century when maternity homes began placing most babies with adoptive families. The so called baby boom was happening not only among married couples. A rise in premarital sex coupled with a lack of sex education and little access to contraception led to more unplanned pregnancies or for unmarried women and girls. Abortion was not yet legal nationwide and single motherhood bore a heavy social stigma. Between the end of World War II and 1973, in what became known as the Baby Scoop era, more than 1.5 million American infants were surrendered for adoption. An untold number of their mothers were sent away to maternity homes before giving birth. The homes became places to hide unintended pregnancies. Experiences varied, but many residents were isolated from friends and family, given little information about childbirth or their legal rights, they often used aliases during their stays. Most residents were middle class and white. Far fewer black unmarried women placed children for adoption and in the Baby Scoop era and many maternity homes at the time were segregated. Some maternity home residents never held their infants others were allowed visits for a period of time. Many of the homes were operated by religious organizations like Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army. The Crittenden Home creators were Episcopalians, and sometimes stories of abuse and neglect of the women in these homes emerged often decades later. But what Was most common were the stories of guilt and shame and trauma for women and girls who found themselves at their most vulnerable and unable to make decisions about their own pregnancies, their own lives and their own babies. For the last two years, journalist TJ Raphael has been investigating a modern day maternity home where pregnant teenagers, some as young as 30, 13, are locked in isolation, facing coercion, shame and religious manipulation until they surrender their babies for adoption to affluent Christian couples. The maternity home, called the Liberty Godparent Home, sits on the campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. It's still operating and announced plans to expand after the Roberts Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs ruling in 2022. The Liberty Home was created by right wing evangelical leader the late Jerry Falwell to be a quote, solution to abortion. Last year, the Biden Department of Education hit Liberty university with a $14 million fine for violating Title IX and its handling of sexual assaults. Buried deep in the DOE's final report, it was revealed that Liberty was forcing pregnant students to go to the godparent home or face expulsion. According to Raphael, quote, post Roe, there has been a dangerous resurgence of maternity homes which feels like no coincidence. For years, the former director of the godparent home sat on the leadership council for the National Maternity Housing Coalition, which is run by the world's largest and anti abortion group, and lays out a national strategy for maternity homes, unquote. Over the course of her reporting, Ms. Raphael has spoken with a Child Protective Services investigator who called the Liberty Maternity Home a quote, baby selling operation. Multiple women Rafael spoke to said they were pressured into relinquishing their children in exchange for scholarships to Liberty University. And she interviewed former staffers who are speaking out for the first time. Ms. Raphael is the first journalist to uncover this story and she has published her findings in a new six episode podcast series from Wondery called Liberty exposing the exploitation of young pregnant women at America's most powerful Christian University. And T.J. raphael joins me now. T.J. thanks so much for being here. Tell me about Liberty University's maternity home.
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T.J. Raphael
Yeah, the Liberty Godparent home was started in 1982 by Reverend Jerry Falwell. I've spoken to multiple women who went through the maternity home as pregnant teenage girls and young women both in the 1990s. And some people I talked to were there as late as 2008. And inside the home they describe an environment that pushed adoption using shame, coercion and religious manipulation population until these women surrendered their children for adoption to affluent Christian couples, often in exchange for scholarships to Liberty University.
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Joy Reid
So the women who were in this maternity home, were they students at Liberty University who got pregnant, or were they brought in from outside of the university?
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T.J. Raphael
The women I talked to were brought in from outside of the university. They all came from evangelical or Christian fundamentalist families. But in 2024, the Department of found in its final report on Liberty's mishandling of sexual assault cases through its Title IX investigation that numerous pregnant students were forced to go to the Liberty godparent home as a condition of their continued enrollment in the university, meaning they would face expulsion if they didn't go to this maternity home. And so, you know, this maternity home has been operational for decades. It's still open today. And according to sources that I've spoken to, as well as a former CPS investigator, this facility really isolates young women and pushes them into coerced adoption situations.
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Joy Reid
Let's talk about just for a moment, because you talked about Liberty University's mishandling or failure to properly handle rape investigations. Are some of the women who were in that home victims of rape on the campus, and then they're being essentially incarcerated in this home and forced into adoption situations? Is that what your reporting suggests?
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T.J. Raphael
Yeah. So I reached out to the Department of Education for clarity on that, because in their report, they don't specify whether the pregnant women going to the home were exclusively sexual assault survivors or included women who got pregnant through consensual sex. But one woman named Sarah Mays, she was unfortunately assaulted in the early 2000s. She was previously one of the Jane does in the Title IX case against Liberty. She has since identified herself, and she became pregnant after five men assaulted her. She went to the school's Dean of Women office, told them about this assault, told them about the pregnancy, and the school told her that she would have to go to the Liberty godparent home, where she could get a scholarship to the school if she placed her baby for adoption, or she could be expelled. So the doe, I've reached out to them several times. Unfortunately, to this date, they've really refused to answer my specific questions about how many young women were sent there and what happened to them and their children. But, yeah, this number absolutely could include women who got pregnant as a result of assault.
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Joy Reid
Talk about 2008 being the time period in which this, you know, primarily your reporting is discussing that is when the Department of Justice existed. Right? It existed during the Obama presidency. It existed during the Biden presidency. You know, if we're being honest, we really don't have a department of justice anymore. Pam Bondi has made it very clear the purpose of the Justice Department is to serve Donald Trump. The FBI has made it very clear that its purpose now under its current leadership, is to serve Donald Trump and to punish his enemies. Do you have any evidence that the current Department of Justice is taking an interest at this stage in potential mistreatment of women at this or other facilities or even of sexual assault?
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T.J. Raphael
Yeah, at this stage, you know, the department has of Education, which is the entity I reached out to because it was their final report on the Title IX cases. And they didn't seem at all interested when I reached out to them with the allegations that I presented, that I had spoken to multiple women who said they were pressured and coerced into surrendering their children for adoption in exchange for scholarships. As we know, it's illegal in the United States to exchange cash for a baby, but it seems that scholarships are a different story. So, yeah, I haven't heard back on whether they plan to take any action. When you look at the Project 2025 agenda, which has been championed by members of the Trump administration, there is an explicit call in that document to suggest adoption as an alternative to abortion. And there are calls to fund faith based adoption agencies. In Project 2025, the Liberty God Parent Home is physically connected to a faith based adoption agency. And so I really see this as a bigger issue of crisis pregnancy centers working in tandem with places like faith based maternity homes and adoption agencies.
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Joy Reid
And I will note, I just want to note for our audience that Linda McMahon is the head of the Department of Education and she and her husband, Vince McMahon, were implicated in allegations of sexual abuse at the WWE. So it doesn't shock me. I'll just say that her, an agency under her control would not have a great interest in pursuing issues regarding the sexual abuse of women and girls. This sounds a lot like, as you mentioned, Project 2025 being played out in real life. It also sounds like the Handmaid's Tale. And I don't know, you've probably been told that a lot by people who have listened to your Wondery podcast. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like a scheme to coerce young women and girls into birthing situations that ultimately provide babies for white Christian couples. Is that what you found?
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T.J. Raphael
Yeah, I mean, all of the women that I spoke to wanted to keep their children. So this maternity home claims to be a solution to abortion, but none of the women I spoke to were actively trying to end their pregnancies. They wanted their children. And we see that maternity homes are on the rise across the United States. More than a third have ties to one of the world's largest anti abortion organizations, Heartbeat International. They have a presence on every inhabited continent. And a former director of the godparent home was actually a founding member of Heartbeat's national Maternity Housing Coalition. And so that's a group that lays out a nationwide strategy for maternity homes. So we're seeing the rise of these homes across the country. Oftentimes in these homes, adoption is still talked of as a path to redemption for women who have had sex outside of marriage. And with the current budget bill being proposed and you know, just passed, we're going to see a vast cutting of social services services that could push vulnerable poor and low income pregnant women into maternity homes and into situations where they may have to permanently separate from their children.
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Joy Reid
Let me ask you how this intersects what you have researched in these maternity homes. And as you said, they are across the country. There's not just this one at Liberty University. This is a thing that is sort of sprawling across the country. How does this intersect with laws that ban abortion in conservative states?
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T.J. Raphael
So in states where abortion is banned, poor and low income women have fewer and fewer options. You know, research shows that women who are denied abortions generally don't pursue adoption as an alternative. What really winds up happening is women are in crisis situations. Maybe the safety net that they had suddenly has disappeared and they're seeking help. But in states where there is no access to social services, it can then push women towards adoption, towards unnecessary adoptions. And so we're really headed towards this perfect storm right now. You know, Medicaid, we're seeing cuts to that program. Medicaid pays for 40% of births in the United States. And so, you know, most people who get pregnant will not consider adoption. It's always the least popular choice for a pregnant woman. I think nationally about for the last 20 years, the adoption rate has hovered around 1%. Yet faith based maternity homes, I know that the Lamb of God maternity home in Utah, for example, or even the Liberty godparent home, they were reporting adoption rates of 45 or 50%. And so I really view this as part of a bigger strategy. You know, I think there are definitely individuals who only believe that children should be raised in the context of heterosexual Christian marriage. And I view these institutions as potentially predatory. You know, in theory, maternity homes are serving a need. People go there because they are pregnant and they need shelter and they need help. But when you have this very ethically murky situation behind it, that are exposing values that may be designed to separate women from their children. We really are staring down a very frightening crisis indeed.
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Joy Reid
And I wonder, because I did cover the family separation crisis in the first Trump administration, and it does seem that they're accelerating that as well. I don't know if your reporting has delved into whether, in addition to essentially forcing pregnant women who may be being forced to come to term, to bring pregnancies to term, to then adopt those children out to white Christian families. Very handmaid's tale. Have you looked into whether or not separated babies, separated children under the immigration, mass, mass deportation scheme are also being taken and given to these Christian couples?
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T.J. Raphael
You know, that is not something that I covered in my reporting, but I know that anecdotally, whenever, you know, I, in some ways view this story, honest, as potentially a failing on the left. Like, we have these vulnerable pregnant women who need help, and we have Planned Parenthood, which is a household name for abortions, for STD testing, for contraceptives. But there is no household name amongst progressive institutions for women to turn to when they are in crisis. Maybe it's because of a domestic violence situation, Maybe it's because the child's father is out of the picture. Maybe her family and community is not supported, supportive. And so what I would really like to see happen, especially as you know, we're seeing the defunding of Planned Parenthood through Medicaid cuts, is in addition to finding ways to support the right to choose to end a pregnancy, is finding ways to support people who want to keep and parent their children. You know, millennials are not having kids. They're rolling out programs to try to get more young people to do that. And yet at the same time, we're cutting services, we're cutting childcare, we're cutting health insurance. So I view maternity homes as a symptom of a much larger problem that we as a society need to be grappling with.
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Joy Reid
Yeah, absolutely. Because you're right, there has to be. And you know, nature abhor, is a vacuum. And if the only place people feel they can go are one of these maternity homes, it sounds so benign. Maternity home. You don't realize when you're walking in there what you're walking into. And that's my assumption, and I don't know if you're reporting backs that up, that some of the women who are going to these homes may not understand that the end result is that they lose custody of the child. Right?
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T.J. Raphael
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one woman I spoke to for the podcast, Anna Smith. She had previously been in foster care. She aged out at 18, she was homeless. She was seeing a boy. She got pregnant. The relationship did not last. She reached out to an older cousin who suggested that she go to the Liberty Godparent Home. You know, Anna was not interested in having an abortion. She was interested in getting help to keep and parent her daughter. And while she was there, she was not shown parenting resources. In fact, she was taken to the homes of prospective adoptive couples. She called them field trips as a way to show her how appealing adoption could be. And in the end, she wound up losing her daughter to adoption. The Liberty Godparent home, instead of providing her with a scholarship, they actually gave her an old beat up car. She was able to get around for about three months until the car broke down. She didn't have money to fix it. She had to sell it for 500 bucks. Eventually, without a car, she lost her job because she couldn't get to work. When she didn't have a job, she became homeless again. And so I think that that situation shows how people can go to a place like a maternity home thinking that they are going to get help and potentially wind up losing their child forever.
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Joy Reid
What legal resources, if any, are being provided for the women who are victims of these homes?
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T.J. Raphael
Yeah, I mean, right now there are not a lot of legal resources. One organization I would suggest, I interviewed the founder in the podcast. It's called Saving Our Sisters. And it's a group of women who have lost their children through adoption and they seek to help other women in crisis situations. They actually have a program called Sisters on the Ground where they will deploy a volunteer in person to advocate on a woman's behalf in a hospital, in an adoption agency, if she wants to reclaim her parental rights during the window where that is still allowed, they will help facilitate the exchange of custody at a police station. So that's an organization that's completely nonprofit and is doing really wonderful work. And I also know of RJ in Adoption. It's an organization made up of birth parents as well as adopted people who have actually worked with Planned Parents Parenthood to raise awareness on their website about potentially predatory adoption practices that pregnant people should be aware of. Again, if they are interested in keeping and parenting their children but need help.
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Joy Reid
And have you received any feedback from lawmakers? You talked about a failure on the left. Are Democratic lawmakers aware of this? Particularly in the places like Virginia where these homes exist?
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T.J. Raphael
The lawmakers that currently represent the Lynchburg area are Republicans. And at this point, I haven't made contact with them. I did make contact with the Virginia State Department of Social Services. They're the entity that's supposed to be overseeing places like maternity homes, like adoption agencies. I presented them with everything I had and asked them if they planned to open an investigation, and their answer was no. Instead, they directed me to an online complaint form. So, excuse me. The women I've spoken to are definitely interested in seeing reform here. But oftentimes, as my reporting shows, we see in state houses across the country, lawmakers continue to pass revocation windows to be shorter and shorter. So that's the period of time, legally that a birth mother might have to take her rights back. And those revocation periods keep. Keep getting shorter. And lawmakers even say we play in the podcast, you know, audio from state House floors where lawmakers say we haven't heard from any of the women who might be relinquishing their children. But I'm going to vote yes anyway on this bill. And so I think we need to be having a more comprehensive conversation about choice. Again, while it is extremely important to protect the right to choose to end a pregnancy, we need to also be thinking about poor and vulnerable people who want to keep their children and what we're doing to support them, both in the legislature and through various social services.
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Joy Reid
Yeah, because the alternative is we're viewing poor women and women of color as breed mules to provide infants to wealthy white Christian couples who perhaps cannot have children of their own. That's literally the handmaid's tale. TJ this is such great reporting. It's such important work, and I really thank you for sharing it with us. We will raise the alarm by airing this program, but hopefully people will hear that alarm and maybe, I don't know, try to do something about it. TJ Raphael, thank you so much. We really appreciate you. The podcast is available on Wondery. And please, everyone, download and take a look at it. We're going to throw that up on screen so that you can see it and you can hopefully listen and learn.
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T.J. Raphael
Thank you, T.J. thanks for having me.
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Joy Reid
You can read T.J. raphael's excellent reporting by downloading her investigative podcast, Liberty Lost, exposing the Exploitation of young Pregnant Women at America's most powerful Christian university. The podcast is a production of Wondery, and we have provided you a download link right here below so that you can get right to it. Please also subscribe to this channel by hitting subscribe below so you never miss an episode of the Joy Reed Show. And we'd also appreciate a like and a share. Don't be a lurker, become a subscriber. It is free and easy, but if you'd like to have more interaction, consider becoming a TJRS member or even a reader to gain personal access to exclusive content and live members only group chats, plus other benedies to come. And with that, I'll thank you for tuning in and we'll see you on the next the Joy Reid Show.
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Producer
Getting back to the basics grassroots level Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel Plenty can't tell the forest from the trees and I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in a dog Injustice anywhere, it's a threat to justice everywhere Let me make this clear, I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they rap the party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.