Compassionate empathy and perhaps protect roe versus wade a little longer. The book is actually a shooting at a reproductive rights in mississippi, one of the eight states that only have one clinic left in america because of over 280 laws at the state level has shifted away a reproductive rate since for 2012. In my book a gun comes in with a grudge and start shooting, he kills some patients and hostages and he patients employees any take the rest hostage. One of the people he takes hostage is the 15 euro daughter of the Hostage Negotiator on the outside and the people in the clinic are a wide range of people who have all been brought here at this moment they believe Different Things about reproductive rights, use the individuals were prochoice and prolife and all of their points of view are very evenly and accurately represented. How do you storyboard a complex story like that with all sorts of connections and things going on. That is a particular question, there is another twist in this book that makes a difference from my others, its told in revert, the very first thing that you see is the standoff between the gunman and the Hostage Negotiator, every chapter goes back in our in time until the very end of the book and that was much harder than 90 is impeded, i wound up writing a 48 page outline because i had to write it chronologically, i also had to follow the storyline of ten diverse characters in an outline like that was about three pages lon long, little synopsis, i know the characters in the pot and the twist and i want to make sure i leave a paper trail, in this case there was so much going on i really needed to map it out and the magic was not in outlining but the editing, when i edited the book, i took little postit flag that i made my husband go get in a marked up the book by character and then i edited in reverse, ten different times like following each characters thread to make sure each story was coherent and then i added entirely going forward. How much time did you spend in jackson mississippi. About a week bouncing between jackson and alabama working in particular with an amazing man named doctor Willie Parker, an africanamerican Abortion Provider who identifies as a devout christian and says he performs abortions not in spite of his religion but because of it, he heard a sermon at church, about the Good Samaritan and he thought he was going to provide if not me he went back and got trained and goes all over the United States to the most underserved areas performing abortions to women who need it the most. He invited me too come shadow him. Why do you feel an important to tell us that youve not had an abortion. Only because its the truth but more importantly, if i had had an abortion, writing this book wouldve taught me too speak about it, one of the saddest tax that i came upon during the research of this book was the interview of 151 women who had terminated pregnancies, less than 25 wanted to be acknowledged, they wanted to use initials or student or an ominous. In the decade since they terminated, they still have not told parents, partners, friends, employees, they have kept it to themselves and to be completely honest when i was listening to the kavanaugh confirmation hearings, i was think about these women, when women dont tell their stories, narrative is visited upon them in one of lehman shane, you did something wrong you shouldve known better. I think that to me is the most resonant message from this book to take back the narrative to get rid of the umbrella of stigma that women who terminate a pregnancy or living under and women have to normalize this, one out of four women will terminate a pregnancy in the course of her lifetime. Putting a face to that instead of casting of selfish and evil is really important and its a way to take the narrative back. You observed actual abortions happening, what was up like for you. One thing that is upfront about we cannot talk about abortion and usingism, you may not feel that it is a person being killed but you are interrupting a life process, even if you are prochoice, you have to recognize that and he feels that we should acknowledge that and acknowledge what is being done during a termination, he biden m invited me too obsere a five, eight, and 15 week abortion, it was quite a privilege to be there with women who were going through a difficult moment and let me interview them before and after and to watch what was happening during, i tell you the five week and eight week took less than three minutes, the products of conception were nothing more shocking than if you blow your nose in a tissue and peek inside, the 15 weeks was a little different, it took seven minutes and mixed among the mucus and products of conception were things that looked very tiny and very human like, a small hand or an elbow, that was pretty shocking to see. But interviewing the woman who had that termination had had three children under the age of four, she could barely afford to feed them, she knew if she had her fourth child she would not be able to feed them, does that make her a good mother were very bad mother, it comes from which side your stated on. You personally are prochoi prochoice, how did you find jeanines voice . Jeanine is a character who is outside the clinic but in this particular day she put on the disguise and had gone into the clinic pretending to be a patient so she could secretly tape the workers into saying something incriminating and put on the internet. Jeanine is a character who does exist, every Abortion Provider that i spoke with for research has actually had multiple women who are protesters on their own table having an abortion or their daughter is having an abortion, going right back out the next day to protest. Jeanine for me is the voice of someone who is prolife, i did that Due Diligence as well and i spoke with people who identifies prolife and i have to say, i went in there with misconceptions, i went in there assuming that these people must be very evangelical, zealous, i would have nothing in common, in reality they were funny, smart, interesting, we had wonderful conversations, we just disagreed on one important point where this life begins, for me it hammered home that we had more in common with the people who think differently than we have not in common with them, these people to come from a place of deep compassion and deep conviction just like i would, they dont want to be seen as antiwoman anymore than someone prochoice wants to be cast, you never want to hear women use abortion as Birth Control, that is not true either, there really are misconceptions on both sides of the aisle. Youre telling a very topical story or youre telling in the page turner, how do you find the balance . I dont know how you find a balance except with practice and ive been doing it for a long time, i do love the concept of the novel as a way to educate about social justice. I think for example when i wrote this book i sat down and i Read Institute studies about reproductive rights and abortion statistics and things like that, most people do not sit down and do that on a daily basis but they might pick up a novel and you think youre picking up a booktv entertained, you think youre picking out a book that is going to whisk you away for a few hours, if i did my job right by the end of the book you think hard about a topic that you might otherwise not have approached, and that way i think fiction is so wonderfully sneaky because it really gets peoples minds to crack wideopen. One point to million abortions happening in the 1950s that you reported in this book prior to roe v. Wade. Yep and theres every reason to believe if roe v. Wade is overturned, we will continue to have abortion, they will just be unsafe and women will be in more danger, i think its really important to recognize this as a fact i did not know until i started researching the book, 97 of the work that planned parenthood and other clinics do has nothing to do with abortion, that part is federally funded in its womens healthcare, std testing cancer screenings and contraception and a lot of women in poverty use those clinics to get the healthcare, only 3 is abortion and is the only part of those clinics that fund itself, federal funding does not cover abortions, if you go to get when you have to pay for which means each week defund planned parenthood, all they will be able to do is abortion care which i know is not what protesters mean when they say defund planned parenthood, they think they will stop abortions but that will happen. Are Abortion Services possible. I would not say the profitable, no one isnt it to make a living but what they do is pay for themselves, they cover their own cost in the clinic because there are no federal funds already that are allocated to that. Basically what you will wind up doing if you get rid of federal funding is cut all the womans healthcare. Jodi picoult before we started we were chatting in the hallway in the studio and talking about your book tour in england, some of the questions that were asked. Its interesting i did not get that many questions but in england in the past week id multiple men in evidence that would ask me did you talk to the men who were helping make these decisions and the answer that i gave them was no actually i never spoke specifically to men because i was interviewing the women that were at the clinic during the procedures but in the course of my interview with the women i did ask them about their partners and what i found out the vast majority did tell their partners that being pregnant or they were considering an abortion and in cases when that did not happen it was usually because of rape or incest or the man had left the scene and was not involved anymore, what i did find out even when men were particularly supportive, when they paid for half the abortion, they drove the woman to the clinic, went in for the procedure, the women felt very alone and isolated and even though they recognize that their partner was trying and trying to connect with them, the predominant thought in their head, you do not understand it is still happening to me and not you. Maybe i should not do this but all of the book that over i read ive tried to find the character that you identify with so i found all live, am i way off. Yes. [laughter] that is an interesting character, beth is in many ways what the future of america could be in a postroe v wade world, she is a young girl who ran out of options, she tried to get a judicial waiver to get abortion so she doesnt have to tell her parents and something happens with the judge, he cannot be there that day and when he can reschedule it 30 past the legal limit that she could get an abortion in the state of mississippi, so she took matters into her own hands and ordering online medication abortion which right now is illegal. And in many states where we have seen statutes come into play, one on the ballot coming up in alabama on tuesday, when we see that, if you try to facilitate your own abortion, you could be tried for murder and that is what will happen to beth, i dont necessarily see myself as beth but all of is a 70yearold woman and i dont know what that means. [laughter] olive is a woman is at the clinic obviously not to get an abortion because she 70 shes there for other healthcare and i wanted her there specifically to point out that the reason people go to the clinics is not just for abortion care, i love olive because she is smart and the beating heart of the book and ill take that as a compliment but i would say if i can be anyone it would be doctor louis ward who is a Abortion Provider. I want to show the cover ive been looking at this and asking people what they think of the cover. What do you think of the cover . I think it is beautiful and looks like an impressionist painting and the more you look i that you realize their faces of women caught among the colors, i thought it was a really beautiful and interesting interpretation of the material inside it, it does not bother me but its pastel colors which we would consider more feminine because ultimately about womens Reproductive Health. If i were walking past that an airport, i probably, unless i was familiar with you would not stop and pick that up. I would argue that is not always a function of the cover. There actually is and ive been quite outspoken about a huge gender biased and publishing, sometimes we see it in the marketing of cover but that cover would never ever be a chiclet book for example, that would have a cartoon cover or just somebody womans body part on its like a hand or something. We know there is intense gender discrimination and publishing, we know because of a group that has actually done the number count, they do it every year they crunch numbers and they see how many female authors are being reviewed by traditional review outlets and then they look and see how many women are reviewers of these outlets and theyve expanded since it began years ago and they also look at people of color and disabilities and nonbinary authors and they start to see how white and how male driven publishing actually is and their statistics have been remarkable and upheld what we knew all along, what is really interesting about publishing, 66 are women, we know women will read men and women authors and men tend to read only men and part of that is the marketing to you, pardoninpart isthe fact that wod women fiction authors and not a lot that write about with false stricturstrickland in that cated often someone who called women fiction author is has less to do than the cover then between the authors legs. And i offer as an example my book small great things which is about racism in america which does not have a single kiss in it in which best romance novel and poland. I have no idea it makes me fear for the future of romance in poland. You were quoted in the New York Times in 2013 saying i dont mind that term, i dont happen to write it so i think its funny when people assume i do just because i happen to have a vagina. It is totally true, if i write that im sorry that youre picking up that book for chiclet. That is supposed to be something with humor in it, when i write a book about the holocaust, that would not be my first choice for a book, i love light fiction, i read widely and i think theres a place for that and all kinds of genre, i think its reductive to say all women right womens fiction, that is silly and a point years ago, wikipedia decided they were going to break out womens authors from american novelist but there was a huge uproar because they took all the women out of the americaamerican novelist page, u want to have a subcategory, awesome, i am for that but keep the women with american novelist to. Was there a thought process, lets make sure they get featured as well nobody consulted me but the problem is when you excerpt the group and you make them a subset without making them a larger group. Do you have any idea how many of your readers are women. I do i was so tired of being called a womens fiction author, i checked my fan mail and i can tell you 50 comes from men and they often write and say im sure im the only man reading your book because you been condition as men to read mail authors and i say no, be secure of your masculinity, i hear from many, many men, i love when men read my stuff they take away Different Things than women do, i would urge men who are watching the program, go to your bookshelf and cd read a female author for every male author, i bet you will find that you dont and maybe that is something you should change wife references to astronomy and a spark of life. One of the coolest facts about astronomy, the one that stayed with me forever, when we see light from afar youre looking into the past and this is a book about time in many ways, it goes chronologically backward, its about what brings people to believe the things that they believe about controversial topics, is that something that we find that the needs of our parents, pastor, friends, our own personal experience england and her father hugh the Hostage Negotiator is a single dad and this is what they bond over, and going to look at stars, it felt like the perfect metaphor for this particular book. Where does the title come from. The title has a great story, is not the original title of the book, my publisher did not like the original title. That was called moment of conception, to me it was not necessarily about where life begins as much as where police begins, they thought that was too clinical so for a month we went back and forth and they tried to give me all these other titles and i hated all of them in one day my amazing fabulous editor called me, she had been on a flight and she read something and inflight magazine about a study that had been done by scientist in the midwest and it was about the moment that a worm fertilizes an egg under a highpowered microscope you can see a flash of light, it is the zinc in the side of the egg giving way to the sperm which causes the spark, what is great about it they have ascertained the bigger the spark the more healthy the embryo and you can imagine how that will have unbelievable ramification for people who do in vitro because you only have a certain number of embryos and who knows which ones going to stick, the healthiest ones are the biggest part of life, i was thinking about that and thinking about my fictional doctor who is modeled after in a devout christia chrin the universe of the beginning with life and light in reading this biological essay about the spark of light that happens at the fertilization moment between the sperm and an egg and i thought i can make this work, i can absolutely make this work. Are you taking a seller with you 25226 bestselling books that you can determine the title and what your cover looks like. I get cover input and they say when you think of it now tell them if i like it or dont like it, that was not the original cover, the original one looked like small great things and i love the cover of small great things but i did not want people confusing the two, our amazing art director came back with that and i say, my eye. Speaking of small great things, thats the next book we will talk about. What does that cover represents. When i look at that cover, i think of the color chips the artist to use and if you look at the cover there are spots where color is missing. Where there is something not quite right about the color, there is definitely an absence, small great things about racism in america and metaphorically to me, that was a beatable illustration of what i was trained to talk about. Again are you kidding . I think any white person is kennedy. That book is based off a reallife incident that happened in flint, michigan, an africanamerican nurse with 25 years of experience in a labor and delivery ward help deliver a baby