Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Pushkin Industries, this is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind

the stories in the news. I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's episode.

We're going to talk about abortion rights, one of the most contentious and difficult topics in American public life.

Since Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, we've witnessed a radically new trend in states passing anti-abortion laws.

Time was that states wanted to urge the Supreme Court to chip away at the abortion right.

To do that, they passed laws that didn't outlaw abortion altogether, but rather it made it harder to get access to an abortion, like the law passed a couple of years ago by Texas,

ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court, which raised the restrictions and limitations on abortion

clinics and doctors to try to make it harder for women to get an abortion. The theory of those laws was

that the best strategy for the pro-life movement was to get the Supreme Court to say,

we're not overturning Rovi-Wade,

we're going to chip away at the abortion right

until there's not much left of it at all.

Since Kavanaugh was confirmed,

the strategy is 180 degrees the other way.

States like Alabama, most recently,

have passed laws that just say no abortion at all, typically in the

first handful of weeks of life, typically with no exceptions for rape or incest.

I call these Kavanaugh laws because they're aimed at the idea that the addition of Justice

...