It's the Brian Larrow Show on WNYC. Let's continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100

Things. In honor of the station's 100th birthday, if you haven't been following

this yet, we decided that there should be more than just cake that to honor what the station

has really been about and what it hopes to be for the next hundred years, that we would celebrate

with 100 years of substance. Okay, maybe with some frosting on top and a candle or two. But it's 100

years of 100 things on the Brian Ler Show for many of our segments these days. Today, it's Thing 33.

We're a third of the way there. And again, today, a deep dive into something very relevant to the

presidential election. It's 100 years of the struggle for

abortion rights. We have probably the perfect guest for this, Mary Ziegler, the renowned historian

of abortion rights, specifically she's UC Davis Law Professor and the author of multiple

books on the subject, including Roe, the History of a National Obsession,

which came out last year, and one that scheduled for release next year, called Personhood,

the New Civil War Over Reproduction.

Professor Zieglo, thanks for coming on with us for this.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Thanks for having me.

Let's actually start 150 years ago.

I've read that until the 1880s, abortion in the United States was more or less legal and unregulated. How accurate is that? It's a little more complicated than that. There were,

there's some evidence that abortion was regulated after quickening. So in other words, when someone could feel movement in pregnancy,

it wasn't very common to regulate early abortion. And that in effect meant that people who

are pregnant themselves had a lot of authority

when it came to when and how pregnancies were regulated because it was sort of up to them to know

...