Today, Explained - The race to ban abortion

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

The governor of Alabama signed the nation’s strictest anti-abortion bill into law. Vox’s Anna North explains what the legislation means and Sean Rameswaram speaks with Eric Johnston, the man who helped write it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bill Nye has a new podcast out. It's called Science Rules. You might know Bill Nye from Bill Nye the Science Guy or from dropping lots of F-bombs on Last Week Tonight. On Science Rules, Bill Nye takes calls from listeners and answers all their weird, embarrassing, funny, and occasionally more serious questions like, should we stop eating cheeseburgers to combat climate change? Or how do we go about putting colonies on Mars, or how often should I really be washing my pillowcase? The first episode of Science Rules is out now. You can check it out right after you listen to this show, Today Explained. Here we go. For years, anti-abortion groups had been following this more incremental strategy, kind of chipping away, you know, clinic restrictions, restrictions on certain procedures, things like that.

But when Trump came into office, they started to really get more aggressive. Last year, we saw some bills passed that would ban abortion starting at six weeks into pregnancy. And then this year in March, we saw folks in Alabama start to float a bill that would essentially be a total ban on abortion in almost all cases. It was sponsored by Representative Terry Collins, who's a Republican in the Alabama House. This bill is focused on that baby that's in the womb that is a person. That baby, I believe, would choose life. And she's been really clear throughout that her goal with this bill is to challenge Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision from 1973 that guarantees the right to abortion in America.

Roe v. Wade protects women's rights to an abortion up until viability. That's 24-25 weeks. But clearly the Alabama bill by banning all abortions lies in the face of Roe. Terry Collins knows that and that's the point. Hopefully get to the Supreme Court and have them revisit the actual decision which was is the baby in a womb a person? The bill was first sort of floated in late March. It began to be debated in the Alabama House, I think, in April. And the debate was very heated, and it got kind of strange. State Representative John Rogers, a Democrat,

offered a particularly shocking defense of abortion. Some kids are unwarranted. So you kill them now, I kill them later. You're dragging me into a world of unwarranted, unloved. They didn't send me to the next chair. So you kill them now, I kill them later. And he was trying to oppose the bill.

Like, he was trying to say, I don't want to ban abortion. But it was just a very strange comment, and a lot of people found it quite offensive. The bill passed the Alabama House. It went to the Alabama Senate. And debate was equally heated in the Alabama Senate, which is also controlled by Republicans. A big point of debate in the Senate was whether the bill was going to include exceptions for rape and incest. So, you know, a lot of people support those exceptions, even if they are against abortion more generally. So this was a big, big point of contention in the Alabama Senate, even among Republicans.

So actually some Republicans, the House version of the bill did not include the exceptions. And some Senate Republicans actually tried to add them. And some other Senate Republicans wanted to take them out. And when they took them out, they didn't do a sort of full roll call vote. They didn't go through the full formal process. And actually a shouting match broke out on the Senate floor about this. Relating to abortion, committee amendment pending. Senator Chambliss, all those in favor say aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Committee amendment

is tabled. Senator Chambliss. There was no motion. There was no motion. There was a motion. He made a motion. He didn't even make a motion, Mr. President. Hold on. Excuse me. He did not make a motion. He made a motion to table. He did not make a motion. There was no motion. He made a motion. He didn't even make a motion, Mr. President. Hold on. Excuse me. He did not make a motion. He made a motion to table. He did not make a motion. There was no motion for another time. Well, hold on, Senator. You know, I know you all are for this bill, and I know this bill is going to pass. You're going to get your way, but at least treat

us fairly and do it the right way. So that was last week. After the shouting match on the Senate floor, the Senate decided to table the bill for a couple of days and just to wait until Tuesday. You know, so this was not your average state legislative session in Alabama. Lots of people came to watch. Protesters came. There were protesters wearing, you know, their red and white outfits from The Handmaid's Tale. There were rape survivors who came to the Senate. One of the state senators made the point that under this bill, if someone is raped in Alabama, their rapist might get less prison time than a doctor who performs their abortion. You just said to my little girl, my little loving little daughter, that the state of Alabama don't care nothing about you baby, that you can just be raped or one of your uncles or your

cousin or somebody could just rape you and impregnate you and you gotta carry this baby under Alabama law. Because baby baby, if you have this abortion, this doctor going to go to jail for 99 years. So I think the biggest question was, is the Alabama Senate willing to do this almost total ban that's not going to allow rape survivors to get abortions? And ultimately the answer was yes. On Tuesday night, the Alabama Senate did pass the bill, and they did pass it without exception.

So the only way that someone in Alabama can get an abortion under this bill is if their life is at risk. So it is the strictest abortion ban in the country. On Wednesday night, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law. Governor, any concern about the legal fees that could potentially come on with this bill? You certainly cannot deter your efforts to protect the unborn because of costs, even if it means going to the United States Supreme Court. Would you prefer the bill that has exemptions for rape and incest? All human life is precious.

So it's really important to note that this law hasn't taken effect yet in Alabama. It's scheduled to take effect in six months from when the governor signed it, but a number of organizations have said they're going to mount court challenges. So it's unlikely to take effect within six months. And instead, we're likely to see these court battles. And it's especially important to note this because we've had a lot of restrictive anti-abortion laws passed around the country in recent months, and actually none of them have taken effect yet. But the court challenge, when it comes, will be a big deal. Anna North reports on gender for Vox. Eric Johnston helped draft this abortion bill in Alabama. He's an attorney and the president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition. We spoke earlier today. struggled with while debating this legislation, and now much of the country is struggling with

now that it's getting national attention, is the sort of erasure of any exceptions for rape or incest, which we've always sort of seen in these types of laws or restrictions. Do you think a woman who is raped should have to carry that child to birth, even raise that child? Well, I'll answer yes to the first part of your question and note of the second part. She does not have to keep the child. She can put the child up for adoption, which is commonly what people do in those circumstances. Many people, you know, would not have an abortion after they were raped or incest because they believed that it was a child. The distinction of whether a person is a person,

whether they're conceived by consent or conceived accidentally or by rape or incest or even artificial insemination is not there. There are very many difficult situations in life that we have to deal with and we have to work through, but we don't do the wrong thing twice, and I think it would be the wrong thing to abort the child. That would be just a second bad act after the first. And you recognize that a majority of Americans disagree with that. There was a Gallup poll last year that said 57 percent of Americans who are anti-abortion still believe a woman should have a right to an abortion in a case of rape or incest? Popular opinion doesn't determine who's a person and who's not. I mean, that's the simple answer to that.

People may be compassionate on the rape issue particularly, and I'm compassionate on that, and I understand that. But it still does not neutralize or change the fact that the unborn child is a person. And what about a doctor who believes that a woman has experienced the great trauma of rape should not have to have that child? You believe that doctor who maybe performs an abortion for a woman who is asking for it should go to prison for what's up to 99 years? I don't think that he would go to prison. I don't think that he would do it. I mean, there are medical exceptions in the bill, and if it fits within one of those, then he could do the abortion. But because he feels sorry for her because she was raped, it's not one of those exceptions. Did you help draft that particular provision? Yes, that's a Class A felony. If you

see the unborn child as a person, then he has the same protections as you have, as you have, as I have, as, you know, born walking around people. The very first thing that should be done for a woman who's been raped is she be provided proper medical and emotional care through that. And you just don't say, well, because she's raped, you do the abortion. And that's, it's a simple fact of it. That is not the way it is. If a woman wants to get rid of the child after counseling, she no longer has that option in Alabama. Not to mention her doctor will be punished much more severely than her rapist. Well, like I said, the doctor's not going to be doing the abortion if it's a crime. Jaywalking's a crime, but people are still jaywalking every day.

Well, they do, and they get run over sometimes, too. I wonder if we could talk about miscarriages for a moment. If a woman comes in to a hospital who might be experiencing miscarriage, could she be a suspect for an abortion and then be prosecuted? No. Doctors can tell the difference between an attempted abortion and a miscarriage for other reasons. I saw an OB-GYN who writes for the New York Times saying that she cannot tell the difference between the two. Well, I've not seen that article, but I suspect that a doctor, that a trained OB-GYN,

will be able to see the signs of an abortion as opposed to a miscarriage. But you're not sure? No, I have a very high degree of certainty about that. I do have here from the National Women's Health Network, from a medical perspective, there is no physiologically significant difference between a medication abortion, sometimes called an abortion with pills, and a miscarriage. To begin with, those types of medications would be prescribed, not prescribed anymore. So the medications would not be available. That would significantly diminish the ability to

administer those kinds of drugs. It would require a physician to do that. And again, the deterrent of the crime would keep most physicians from doing that. So you're going to have an extremely limited number of cases. Using your jaywalk example, some people are going to break the law and they won't get caught. But, you know, laws are meant to catch most people and to enforce the law against those that are caught. They're not perfect. They just do the best they can, you know, with the laws and the law enforcement in this country to keep us, you know, a civilized society. You seem personally very concerned with life, with personhood. Are you concerned with the lives of these women who might be forced to have a child that they do not want? Yes. And I think it's a multi-step process. If it did go into effect and Roe was reversed, then the next step will be to provide for

care through non-profit organizations and through the government to women who have troubled or problem pregnancies for one reason or another who might otherwise have aborted. And I think it's required of us, you know, as a culture, as a society to step up and take care of those women and take care of those problems and not to ignore them. But you're not concerned about healing a woman before childbirth. You want to make her go through an extra nine months of potential trauma and pain before the healing begins? It's not what I want to do. It's what should be. I mean, the Roe versus Wade court opinion has been opined by many judges. There's no constitutional basis for it. And the idea that the woman has a right over her body to discontinue the life inside her is a total legal unfounded fiction. And I believe that's what the Supreme Court needs to review and will review at some point. I don't know if it'll be now with this bill or with another law at some point in in the future, but I believe that will be done someday and I believe that will ultimately be corrected.

After the break, heartbeat builds and bringing abortion back to the Supreme Court. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Hello? Hey, is this Tim from Brooklyn? It is. Some time ago, I managed to finagle a Quip electric toothbrush and send it to you. I just wanted to check in and see how it's been going. It's been a few months now, yes?

It's been good. I've been saving so much arm energy, I don't happen to move my toothbrush around as much, but I haven't replaced the head yet because I forgot how long you said to replace it, even though I listen to your podcast literally every day. I have great news for you, Tim. There is a website that will provide you all of that information, getquip.com slash explained. Right now, if you go there, the Quip starts at just $25 and your first set of refills is free. Since you didn't initially go there, you haven't gotten that free set of refills, but I'm sure you could go there and sign up so that the refills are automatically sent to you

as 1 million customers have done before you. That website, one more time, getquip.com slash explained. This is great news. You know why? Tell me. I love the internet. I love websites that tell me information. Have you been to this one? I've not. Maybe I love websites that tell me information. Have you been to this one? I've not.

I should be able to go right now. Anna, this bill in Alabama sounds like it might be the most extreme version of an abortion restriction, but there are so many others. An eight-week restriction passed through the Missouri Senate just this morning. A heartbeat bill got one step closer to passing yesterday in Louisiana. Can you walk us through everything going on in the country right now? Yeah, so starting kind of late last year, a number of states started passing what they call heartbeat bills. Those are bills that ban abortion after a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat.

Typically, it can be as early as six weeks in pregnancy. One passed in Iowa, one passed in Ohio, one passed probably most famously in Georgia pretty recently. And we will not back down. We will always continue to fight for life. Through the Life Act, we will allow precious babies to grow up and realize their full God-given potential. But the TV and film industry, they're warning of a potential boycott if it does go into effect. We will do everything in our power to move our industry to a safer state for women if HB 481 becomes the law. So this has been a big trend nationwide. There's been quite a few in the past few months.

Iowa and North Dakota laws were struck down at the state and federal levels. Similar bills enacted this year in Kentucky, Ohio and Mississippi are all facing legal fights. How exactly do these so-called heartbeat laws work? So the idea is that if a patient is seeking an abortion, the doctor is required to perform an ultrasound. And if the doctor can detect a heartbeat on the ultrasound, an abortion is not legal. It's a big deal in part because by the time a doctor can detect a heartbeat as early as

six weeks in pregnancy, and that's important because that's before a lot of women know they're pregnant. We date pregnancy by the person's last menstrual period. So actually, by the time you miss your period, you're already four weeks pregnant. So six weeks pregnant, you know, that's just like a late period for some people. If you're trying to get pregnant, then you might know when you're pregnant by six weeks. You know, if you're taking tests, if you're tracking your ovulation, you're doing all those things that you're doing when you're trying to conceive, like maybe you would be aware. But, you know, I've talked to doctors about these six-week bills, and they say a very small percentage of patients who know their bodies really well, you know, maybe will be able to

recognize that something's different, will take a pregnancy test, then be able to get to a clinic, be able to go through the waiting periods, because some of these states also have waiting periods for an abortion, and actually obtain the abortion. But in reality, a lot of people who provide abortions and a lot of reproductive rights groups say that a six-week ban is pretty much almost a total ban anyway. Pro-choice, pro-life, those are already loaded and contentious terms. I imagine a heartbeat bill must be too? That's actually very contentious,

in part because when, you know, at around six weeks, when a sensitive ultrasound can detect a heartbeat, what it's detecting is fetal cardiac activity, but the fetus doesn't have a developed heart yet. What it has is some tissue called a fetal pole that has some activity that you can detect. And so reproductive rights groups kind of push back against calling these heartbeat bills because they feel that it implies that the fetus has a heart when it doesn't and that it's meant to be sort of emotional language. A lot of reproductive rights groups prefer to just call these six-week bans. So as with anything relating to abortion, there's a lot of debate around terminology, but the term heartbeat bill certainly is not neutral.

There's a lot of argument around it. It feels kind of like we as a country just blinked and then there was a so-called heartbeat bill in every corner. How exactly did that happen? So heartbeat bills started in 2011. The first one was in Ohio. It didn't pass. And at the time, they weren't always

supported even by anti-abortion groups because they were viewed as pretty extreme. That started to change in a big way when President Trump was elected. And there's like a couple reasons for this. One is that I think groups looked at the potential for a friendly Supreme Court. Now, with Brett Kavanaugh on the court, I think a lot of people feel that they've found that court. But also, you know, I've heard some people say that President Trump's rhetoric and his sort of whole strategy encouraged people to be more aggressive.

So I think there's some people who feel that the anti-abortion groups took a cue from his sort of rhetoric and strategy as well. But whatever the case, we started to see more and more restrictive bills cropping up in 2016. And then really in 2018, we saw the heartbeat bills kind of gain steam in a real way where there was this big wave of them passing. Is this kind of like the Medicare for all universal basic income Green New Deal trend that we're seeing on the left? Like, why not just go for it? Is this anti abortion activists just going for it, saying let's challenge Roe v. Wade like we've never done before?

Yeah. And I mean, I should say that this is a trend that's happening on both sides of the abortion debate. So reproductive rights groups are saying we might lose Roe. So we need to do everything we can to shore up abortion access in states where we can shore it up. So we've seen, for instance, in New York, you know, there's a law that loosens some abortion restrictions here. We've seen similar efforts in Vermont, in really a lot of different states. So really, I think on both sides of the abortion debate, we've kind of seen things ramp up a little bit, in part because a lot of people are either worried or excited, depending on their politics, that we might see the overturn of Roe. And do we have any idea how likely the Supreme Court is to take up that case right now?

That's kind of the million-dollar question. There are a lot of cases that are close to the Supreme Court that involve abortion. The Supreme Court could decide to take any of them or none of them. It depends a lot on what the lower courts do, and it depends a lot on what kind of message the Supreme Court wants to send. I mean, I think in part because the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh was so contentious with the sexual assault allegations made by Christine Blasey

Ford and those hearings, and there were so many protests. Some court watchers were feeling like, okay, the court's not going to take up abortion right now because it just doesn't want to wade into that after this really bruising confirmation process. And it's also not clear that, like, if the court decides, okay, we really want to hear the abortion issue, that they would want to weigh in on something extreme like the Alabama bill. Like, they might decide instead to hear about one of the many challenges that has to do with some clinic restrictions or something that's a little bit more incremental. And a lot of people who watch the Supreme Court closely feel that it's less likely that the court will try to overturn Roe whole cloth and more likely that they will

weaken it in some way by broadening the things that states are allowed to do without quite letting states, you know, do whatever they want to ban abortion. You know, people talk about, like, perhaps Roe will die a death of a thousand cuts rather than a, you know, sort of quick overturning. And I think that's distinctly possible, too. Thank you.