Abortion Pills Are a Game Changer, Plus Our Next Big Culture War

Plain English with Derek Thompson

The Ringer

News, News Commentary

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In last week's instant reaction pod, Derek said he thought abortion pills were one of the most fascinating and important aspects of the end of the era of Roe. In this episode, he goes deeper into how this new technology could change the abortion debate and national politics. Abortion pills that weren't in use 50 years ago are popular, common, safe, hard to track, and legal in more than half the country. Dozens of conservative states are moving to outlaw most abortions, including medication abortions, but banning pills is going to be very tricky. After all, it’s one thing to shut down a clinic with one address. Banning a pill that you can order online? Banning a pill that goes in the mail? That is much harder. And the lengths to which states might have to go to surveil packages—or to spy on women’s digital activities in order to track down pill buyers—will be invasions of privacy that make a lot of Americans uncomfortable, even those who want to reduce legal abortions. This is the next battleground of the abortion culture war: the pills war. Today’s return guest is Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times. Margot explains the basics of abortion pills, and how they’ll change the abortion debate forever. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Margot Sanger-Katz Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the hosts that brought you to coding Westworld and Westworld the recapables comes the
0:07.5	ringer prestige TV podcast on Westworld I'm Julian Robinson I'm Danny Heifetz and
0:13.9	I'm David Schumaker welcome to Westworld season four in the prestige TV podcast
0:17.8	feed where we're going to break down every episode of Westworld season four. Every
0:21.5	Monday the day after the show comes out on the prestige TV podcast feed.
0:26.9	For every get your podcast but get them on Spotify.
0:31.0	Today why the next phase of the culture war will be over abortion pills. I want to start
0:37.4	this episode with a reading this is from a recent piece in the Atlantic by my colleague David
0:42.4	from quote the culture war raged most hotly from the 70s to the next century's 20s it
0:50.5	polarized American society dividing men from women rural from urban religious from
0:56.7	secular Anglo-Americans from more recent immigrant groups after a titanic constitutional struggle
1:03.6	the rural and religious side of the culture imposed its will on the urban and secular side
1:09.9	a decisive victory had been won end quote the culture war he's talking about is not abortion
1:21.2	it's alcohol prohibition the 70s are the 1870s the 20s are the 1920s I have been
1:29.8	thinking about this passage all week as I've mulled over the dobs decision that
1:34.6	overturned row I'm not interested in the moral equivalence here I'm interested in
1:39.6	the broader dynamic what happens when broadly popular rights the right to drink the
1:45.0	right to obtain a first trimester abortion are overcome by a successful and motivated minority
1:51.3	well prohibition is famous today not just for banning alcohol not just for ultimately failing
1:57.6	but also and this is what interests me the most the difficulty of enforcing the law the
2:03.4	way that Americans got around the law the bootleggers the speakeasies these two are the long
2:09.6	term legacy of prohibition so what does that have to do with dobs what does that have
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