This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and apparently the end of

abortion rights in America. Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the

thing we can't get off our minds and today you've got me, Susan Matthews, Slates News Director

and the editorial director of this podcast. And I'm joined by Amy Littlefield, who is a

correspondent for the nation, covering abortion access. Amy, welcome to the waves.

Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Today we are here to talk about what's

happening at the Supreme Court with Roe versus Wade. And it's been a really big fall. So the first

thing I'm going to do is just give a little primer to start off and try to explain where we are.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs versus Jackson women's health. And it

explicitly asks the Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus Wade. And what it proposes is that the

new limit at which the state of Mississippi will be able to prevent women from accessing abortion

is 15 weeks. But if Roe is overturned, states could actually implement all kinds of restrictions

that are tighter that happened earlier. And so when Dobbs was argued at the Supreme Court last

week, my takeaway, and I'm curious what your takeaway was, that it felt like the questions and how

it went made it really clear that there are probably five votes on this court to overturn Roe versus

Wade. There is sort of an emerging consensus among a lot of legal experts and court watchers,

that that's what the writing on the wall says. So that was what happened last week. The other

case that I wanted to bring up that maybe we'll talk about a little bit because it's relevant to

a piece that we're going to discuss is what's happening in Texas. Texas is SB 8 law. This law is

a lot more extreme than the one coming out of Mississippi. And it hasn't exactly followed the

clear pattern that the Dobbs case has. But in September, the Texas Legislator allowed this to go

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