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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and life.

My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of the spectator.

I'm very pleased to be joined today again by Innes Stepman, who we had on last month, to talk about

the leaked draft majority opinion of Samuel Justice Alito that looked as though it was going

to overturn Roe v Wade. And sure enough, today, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, which is a very momentous event in American history, I think, however you look at the issue of abortion.

There was a lot of shock in America last time we talked.

There seems to be, look at my social media feeds, there seems to be

a lot of expressions of horror on the left, the political left and center left. Do you think people

are still surprised and shocked even though it's been so widely expected? No, I definitely think the leak

to some extent has prepared the country for this. We already have been yelling at each other about this issue.

So this is just the confirmation, although I will note something very important, which is

that it means that the court was not intimidated by the political melee into changing its opinion.

In fact, the change here is rather that Roberts has joined the majority opinion.

And there's a couple important differences in this opinion from what was leaked and probably

because Roberts joined it. But ultimately, the conclusion is the same, right? We have the

overturning of Roe and Casey precedents completely. So, you know, at the end of the day,

this is a court that was not intimidated by

just the sort of protests in the street, but attempted assassination and other things that go far

beyond the normal political debate or discussion. So threats of violence and so forth. So that's,

it's a good thing that the court was not intimidated by that. And you mentioned the differences.

...