On this podcast, we explore fantastical thinking, moral panics, conspiracy theories, and urban legends,

examine the forces that shape our culture, and tell the stories that create the realities we share, and sometimes the realities

we don't.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American Hysteria.

Upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.

Well, it's made up of special herbs,

and the formula has been carefully guarded and handed down from one generation to another.

Two days ago, a baby, delivered by a midwife, died.

If you're not feeling well, go see Dr. Evans. He's a licensed MD.

You can trust you.

When we think of the battle over abortion rights, it's easy to picture a fiery feud between feminists and Christians.

One side cruel and inhumane, the other heroic and righteous.

Whose who depends on who you ask.

But the thing about history, the thing I love about history, is that it easily defies

all our simple stories and inherited assumptions,

and gives us instead an impossible tangle of complicated forces,

influential individuals, muddled mass movements,

sinister vested interests, and covert agendas. And it inevitably shows us an America

as complicated as the one we know today. For this series, we're going back in time to before the

historic Roe v. Wade case made abortions federally legal and protected the autonomy of people who can get pregnant.

Up until recently, that is.

We're going to investigate the evolution of the conversation around abortion and how and why the legal perspective changed throughout the last

...