This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

The signal accomplishment of Donald Trump's term as president in his terms

may be the end of Roe versus Wade.

He promised conservative voters that he'd appoint anti-abortion justices,

and he delivered, all with the help of Mitch McConnell,

who secured Trump a bonus judicial appointment.

But the rollback of abortion rights after more than half a century came at a steep political

cost inside the party.

Recently, a Republican state legislator in Texas made news by pleading with her colleagues

to stop talking about abortion.

She said, it's putting gas in the tank of Democrats.

And at the Republican National Convention, a longstanding plank supporting a national

abortion ban was removed right when such a ban had actually become legally possible.

Our Washington correspondent Susan Glasser has been looking at this emerging tension in the Republican Party.

What's really obvious now, Susan, it seems to me, is that even Donald Trump,

he's now out to tone down his rhetoric around abortion saying, well, this will be a state

matter and everybody will be happy.

And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court and they happen to vote in favor of

killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states. This is something that

everybody wanted. Is that effort gaining any traction? It's not about principle for

him. It's about politics. It's about votes. And what's fascinating to me is the extent to which his own party hasn't

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