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Consider This from NPR

Did The Supreme Court Just Overturn Roe v. Wade?

Consider This from NPR

NPR

Society & Culture, Daily News, News, News Commentary

4.26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Supreme Court's conservative majority allowed a Texas law banning most abortions to go into effect. Almost immediately, abortion providers had to begin turning people away.

NPR's Nina Totenberg reports on the court's interpretation of the Texas law and its controversial enforcement provision, which allows any private citizen to sue someone who helps a person get an abortion — with the plaintiff due $10,000 in damages and court costs.

Kathryn Kolbert, co-founder of the Center for Reproductive Rights, explains how abortion rights activists are responding.

Additional reporting in this episode came from stories by NPR's Wade Goodwyn and Ashley Lopez of member station KUT.

In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The court's order is stunning.

0:03.0

That's from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

0:05.0

She wrote that in her dissent to an order by the Supreme Court's conservative majority

0:09.6

this week.

0:10.6

Now, that order allowed a new Texas law to go forward, a law that in effect bans abortion

0:16.8

after about six weeks and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who

0:23.7

helps a person get the procedure.

0:26.5

The devastation is just immeasurable at this point and it continues daily.

0:33.2

Kathy Kleinfeld is an administrator with Houston's Women's Reproductive Services.

0:38.4

Whether it's on the phone or email requests from desperate women trying to seek services,

0:46.1

we're spending a lot of time counseling and trying to guide women on what their options

0:51.6

might be if they're six weeks or beyond.

0:54.9

At Whole Women's Health, another abortion provider in Texas, President Amy Hagstrom Miller

0:59.5

described desperate scenes on Tuesday night in the hours before the law took effect.

1:04.7

Our waiting room is fulfilled with patients and their loved ones in all four of our clinics

1:09.0

yesterday.

1:10.4

We had a physician who has worked with us for decades in tears as he tried to complete

1:16.5

the abortions for all the folks who were waiting.

1:19.1

Six weeks, of course, is earlier than most people know their pregnant.

1:23.5

Kathy Kleinfeld again.

1:24.5

That's the point.

1:25.7

She would literally have just a matter of a few days to make her decision, schedule the

...

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