From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions in the United States actually went up.

In part, that's because of a novel legal strategy

that ended up pitting blue states against red states.

Today, my colleague Pam Bellick explains the strategy

and the two cases that could take it apart.

Music It's Tuesday, May 27.

So, Pam, we haven't talked about abortion on the show for a while.

And in the years since Roe v. Wade fell, the country has kind of splintered into states where abortion is banned and states where abortion is not banned.

And that's just sort of been the state of play, that everybody has their own state laws that they have to abide by.

But in reality, as you have been paying

attention to and covering, there's actually been this showdown brewing that now looks poised

to upend that whole order that we've maybe grown a bit accustomed to in the last few years.

Yeah, a lot has been happening during this time beyond the different

ballot measures that we've been hearing and different state laws and things like that.

One of the major developments has been these new legal protections called Shield Laws.

And they have become both one of the biggest legal developments in the abortion access

space and also a major reason why women in states with abortion bans are still able to get

access to abortion. Okay, so let's talk about shield laws. First of all, what are they?

So almost immediately after Roe was overturned,

you have conservative states, red states, putting into place abortion bans that were and are

very strict. So they make abortion illegal in almost all cases. There are a few exceptions.

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