On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the current state of abortion rights in the United States 51 years after Roe v Wade legalized the right to an abortion and 18 months after the Supreme Court overturned that decision.
Abortion is now completely banned with very few exceptions in 15 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nearly one in five patients are now traveling out of state for care.
Since these bans took place, we have heard and read harrowing stories about a 13-year-old from Mississippi who was raped by a stranger and is now a mom, a 10-year-old who was forced to travel from her home in Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped, 20 women who sued Texas, saying state abortion laws delayed their care and put their lives at risk, among others.
How did we get here and what is the Republican Party's end game? How far are they willing to go?
Guests:
Dorothy Fadiman, documentary filmmaker who made the Oscar-nominated short When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories, and founder of Concentric Media
Dr. Michele Bratcher Goodwin, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law School and co-faculty director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, author of several books, including Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood, and host of the Ms. Magazine podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin. In November 2021, Professor Goodwin published a New York Times op-ed called I Was Raped by My Father. An Abortion Saved My Life
Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior vice president and executive editor of the Rewire News Group, author of The End of Roe v. Wade: Inside the Right’s Plan to Destroy Legal Abortion, and co-host of the podcast Boom! Lawyered
Web Resources:
Guttmacher Institute: Interactive Map: US Abortion Policies and Access After Roe
UC San Francisco: Care Post-Roe: Documenting cases of poor-quality care since the Dobbs decision
Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health: A Brief History of Abortion in the U.S.
The Nation: We Have Mounting Proof That Cruel Men Control Women’s Bodies in Red States
Georgia Recorder: Anti-abortion ‘abolitionists’ take slavery rhetoric to the next level
