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

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The leaked opinion from the Supreme Court

on the Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, seems to promise a true transformation

in this country.

Assuming the final opinion by Justice Alito gets majority support, and it, let's face

it, it very likely will.

We'll see the end of federal reproductive choice in America, and that will change the country. In many red states,

abortion bans will take effect immediately, but this would also have very real effects in blue

states from New York to California. In fact, Mitch McConnell has already talked about a complete

nationwide ban. I'm joined now by three New Yorker writers who have been considering where all this is going,

Margaret Talbot, Peter Slevin, and Gia Tolentino. We'll start with Margaret Talbot, who's reported on

the Supreme Court. She's written about justices including Antonin Scalia, Elena Kagan, and most

recently, the appointment of Amy Coney-Barritt.

You know, I think we're so used to these confirmation hearings where people are asked,

and, you know, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski get some sort of promise from Kavanaugh or

Amy Coney-Barrant or wishfully think that they have heard them say, well, this is settled law. So it's, you know, stare decisis, respect for precedents. We're not going to overturn this. But the fact is, you know... Let's stop there. But were they lying in their confirmation hearings? You know, if you look at what they actually say, I don't think they were actually lying. I think they were obfuscating. I think

they were, you know, they say things like, it's settled law. Well, that's just a statement of fact.

It was settled law. They don't say it's settled law in a decision that I believe in. In the case of

Amy Coney-Barritt, though, there was a really, you know, very, very explicit track record of

opinions that she'd expressed outside the court. I mean, she had signed a two-page ad that

appeared in the South Bend newspaper when she was a professor at Notre Dame in 2006,

saying, you know, that abortion was barbaric, that Roe had to be overturned. She was a member of the campus faculty Right to Life group. So, I mean, you know, I think it's one thing for somebody to say, I don't think this was a well-decided legal precedent. It's another thing for them to say abortion is barbaric. Then I think it just beggars, you know, common sense to think that when you're

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