This episode is an edited version of a show we originally aired in October of 2021.
In June of 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion that had been upheld for nearly a half century no longer exists.
Since that decision, state legislatures have become key to the legality, or illegality, of abortion access, with some states banning or severely restricting abortion and others improving and protecting it.
Florida’s Supreme Court recently ruled that the state’s constitution does not protect abortion, allowing the state law passed in 2023 that bans abortion after six weeks to take effect next month. But in a separate decision, the Florida Supreme Court also just ruled that an amendment to guarantee abortion rights in the state’s constitution can go on the November ballot.
Amendment 4’s summary states: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
As all of this unfolds we listen back to a conversation from 2021 when the first modern bill to restrict abortions in Florida was filed, to get a big picture history of the legality, and criminality, of abortion in America.
Guest:
Dr. Karissa Haugeberg, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History at Tulane University; and author of “Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century.”
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