FT Weekend: Why US abortion rights are under attack
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2022
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s about to become much harder to find safe abortion care in America, in a country where some states already make it almost impossible. This week, we make sense of what’s happening and how we got here. Lilah speaks with Rhiannon Hamam, a Texas public defender and host of the popular show 5-4 (“a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks”) to make sense of Roe vs Wade, the seminal law that is expected to be overturned. Then, we pass the mic to three people providing abortion services in three states that will face some of the biggest changes: Wisconsin, Alabama and Illinois. They tell us what they’re seeing, and how they’re preparing for a post-Roe world.
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Links and mentions from the episode:
– You heard this week from Rhiannon Hamam, co-host of the podcast 5-4. Listen everywhere, or here: https://www.fivefourpod.com. Rhiannon is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AywaRhiannon
– Dr. Kristin Lyerly is an obstetrician and gynaecologist in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She's on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kristinlyerly?lang=en
– Robin Marty is author of ‘The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America’ and operation director of the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa. She recently wrote an op-ed for the FT: https://on.ft.com/3wr0HZK. You can find her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/robinmarty
– Marie Khan is director of programs for the Midwest Access Coalition, a practical abortion fund. You can learn more about them at https://midwestaccesscoalition.org/
– Key coverage of the war in Ukraine is free to read: https://www.ft.com/freetoread
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Want to say hi? We love hearing from you. Email us at ftweekendpodcast@ft.com. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.
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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner.
Archival clip courtesy of CBS.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinole, the UK's energy partner. |
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| 0:33.0 | A few weeks ago, an unnamed source of the US Supreme Court leaked a bombshell document. |
| 0:39.0 | You may have seen it. It was all over the news. The document was a draft decision in a case called Dobbs vs Mississippi. |
| 0:46.0 | It was written by Samuel Alito, one of the court's conservative judges. |
| 0:50.0 | What the draft said is that the judges planned to uphold a state ban in Mississippi that made it illegal to have an abortion |
| 0:56.0 | 15 weeks into a pregnancy. But more importantly, it also said that the court planned to end the federal protection of abortion altogether. |
| 1:05.0 | It was going to overturn Roe vs Wade, the 1970s law that protects abortion access across the United States. |
| 1:13.0 | People were shocked. For one thing, leaks of opinions are extremely rare. |
| 1:19.0 | But more to the point, Americans don't want Roe overturned. |
| 1:23.0 | About 65% of Americans have said they support it. |
| 1:27.0 | I think that the leak is in no uncertain terms a good thing. |
| 1:33.0 | I think more transparency about what the Supreme Court is doing when it's making its decisions is important. |
| 1:40.0 | And I think things like nationwide protests and demonstrations happening just in reaction to the draft leaking, right? |
| 1:51.0 | Show conservatives at least that this is a right that most people in the United States want to protect. |
| 1:59.0 | That's Rianne and Hamam. Rianne is a lawyer, a public defender in Texas. |
| 2:04.0 | She's also one of three hosts on the popular podcast Five to Four. |
| 2:08.0 | The tagline is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. |
| 2:13.0 | Rianne has been watching abortion law for a long time. |
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