The Waves: Abortion on the Ballot
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2022
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior producer Cheyna Roth is joined by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern to talk about Michigan’s ballot initiative to save abortion rights in the state. They dig into the positives and negatives of going to the ballot, what we can learn from Ireland, and why, at the end of the day, you really need the courts. Mark also explains the one big thing that citizens can and should be doing to help secure abortion access.
In Slate Plus, is Ginny Thomas maintaining a career that directly conflicts with her Supreme Court Justice husband’s work feminist?
Mentioned in the Show:
“The Ironic, Unintended Consequence of SCOTUS’s Plan to Overturn Roe” by Mark Joseph Stern
Recommendations:
Mark: The album Two Ribbons by Let’s Eat Grandma
Cheyna: Everything by the band HAIM.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and Alicia Montgomery .
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism and heading to the polls. |
| 0:19.6 | Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the things we can't get off our |
| 0:22.7 | minds. |
| 0:23.7 | And today you've got me, Shayna Roth, a senior producer for Slate, and I also produce |
| 0:28.1 | the waves. |
| 0:29.1 | And me, Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer for Slate covering courts in the law. |
| 0:36.7 | We are on the brink of a national abortion crisis. |
| 0:40.2 | Access to abortion in the US has been far from perfect. |
| 0:42.9 | I will grant you that. |
| 0:44.2 | But now the Supreme Court is expected to overturn Roe. |
| 0:47.8 | The final opinion may come down sometime this month. |
| 0:50.8 | And 13 states have trigger laws that will outright ban abortions immediately. |
| 0:56.6 | We've heard all of this, whether a pregnant person can get an abortion may well depend |
| 1:00.3 | on how much they can spend to go out of state for the procedure. |
| 1:05.4 | What the country will look like without Roe is bleak. |
| 1:10.0 | But today we're going to focus on one surprising thing that can actually be done about this. |
| 1:16.1 | Ballot initiatives. |
| 1:17.2 | Sexy. |
| 1:18.2 | I know. |
| 1:20.2 | But the power of the ballot of voters deciding laws and policy is ingrained in us as Americans. |
| 1:26.5 | And if we don't always remember to use it. |
| 1:29.3 | Essentially a ballot initiative is those things you see on the ballot that aren't people |
... |
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