Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: This is Michael Phillips, an historian in Texas. I'm the
Speaker 2: author of the history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis,
Speaker 2: an upcoming book on the history of eugenics in Texas
Speaker 2: called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 3: And I'm Stephen Monticelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in
Speaker 3: Texas who covers extremism and fire right movements, as well
Speaker 3: as dark money and other fun things.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito authored
Speaker 2: the Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. Alito's majority
Speaker 2: opinion reversed the landmark nineteen seventy three Roe v. Wade
Speaker 2: outcome that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion
Speaker 2: through the first trimester, permitted states to impose limits to
Speaker 2: protect the health of the mother in the second trimester,
Speaker 2: and gave states leeway to ban abortions and the final trimester.
Speaker 2: The Road decision they in a Texas case, had survived
Speaker 2: with modification for almost half century. In Dobbs, however, the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court denied that women held a constitutional right to
Speaker 2: an abortion and gave the individual states the power to
Speaker 2: determine whether such procedures were legal at any point during
Speaker 2: a pregnancy. In the Dobbs case, Alito seemed to suggest
Speaker 2: that the concept of abortion rights was a modern aberration.
Speaker 2: MSNBC pundit Lawrence O'Donnell zeroed in on one key phrase
Speaker 2: in Alito's opinion.
Speaker 3: Samuel Alito says that a right to abortion services is
Speaker 3: not quote deeply rooted in this nation's history. Whatever one
Speaker 3: might think about Alito as a jurist, he fails as
Speaker 3: an historian. In fact, for much of American history, abortion
Speaker 3: was quite accepted. When men first formed the American Medical
Speaker 3: Association in the eighteen forties, they had to wage a
Speaker 3: campaign against abortion, in part to eliminate competition for patients
Speaker 3: from midwives, who were the primary provider of such services.
Speaker 3: The nineteenth century anti abortion laws focused on the health
Speaker 3: and safety of women primarily, and not the life of
Speaker 3: the fetus, as the modern laws tend to do, and
Speaker 3: the anti abortion campaign at the time itself had to
Speaker 3: do not just with limiting women's autonomy, but also with
Speaker 3: racism and anxiety over immigration.
Speaker 2: Through it all, Texas became a central battlefront in the
Speaker 2: culture wars surrounding women's bodily autonomy. One group of Texans
Speaker 2: won women the right to an abortion in the Road case,
Speaker 2: while another worked almost immediately to reverse Row and to
Speaker 2: recriminalize choice. Meanwhile, a Dallas District attorney, Henry Wade, played
Speaker 2: an under appreciated and under explored role in the battle.
Speaker 3: The often dower Puritans who established the British Colony of
Speaker 3: Massachusetts in the sixteen twenties may have created an oppressive theocracy,
Speaker 3: but they proved surprisingly indifferent when it came to women's
Speaker 3: decisions when and if to have children. Based on British
Speaker 3: common law, the colonies in New England allowed abortion up
Speaker 3: to the quickening, which is when women can first feel
Speaker 3: fetal movement. In that era, it was the first clear
Speaker 3: sign of impregnation. This moment varies widely for women, but
Speaker 3: it generally happens during the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.
Speaker 2: Women typically endured seven to eight live births, and the
Speaker 2: experience was often grueling and life threatening, particularly as they
Speaker 2: got older. Seeking relief and physical safety, women frequently terminated
Speaker 2: their pregnancy in a variety of ways. From Native Americans.
Speaker 2: White women learned which local herbs were considered a border Facians.
Speaker 2: White and black women also sought advice from midwives who
Speaker 2: provided wisdom on how to relieve mentional cramps, get pregnant,
Speaker 2: and breastfeed. Midwives provided abortion services as well. Women attempted
Speaker 2: to end pregnancy with varying degrees of success by consuming
Speaker 2: penny royalty or savin juniper, or a combination of iron
Speaker 2: and quinine. They took hot baths or rode horses bareback
Speaker 2: in order to cause a miscarriage.
Speaker 3: Before the eighteen forties, such actions provoked little or no controversy.
Speaker 3: Even the Catholic Church adhered to the quickening standard until
Speaker 3: after the American Civil War. By the eighteen forties, abortion
Speaker 3: had become so deeply rooted in American history and culture
Speaker 3: that abortionists advertise their services, albeit in euphemistic but widely
Speaker 3: understood terms. These advertisements were carried in popular newspapers such
Speaker 3: as The New York Sun and the Boston Daily Times.
Speaker 3: Abortionists told patients they could provide quote French cures for
Speaker 3: what was referred to as quote menstrual blockage.
Speaker 2: A dramatic shift happened after the eighteen forty seven founding
Speaker 2: of the American Medical Association, established by men. The organization
Speaker 2: began lobbing states to ban abortions In an attempt to
Speaker 2: discredit midwives, who represented major competition for female patients, medical
Speaker 2: journalists began to dismiss midwives and male doctors who provided
Speaker 2: abortion services as dangerous, ill informed quacks. AMA members were
Speaker 2: still unaware that germs existed, and they didn't clean their
Speaker 2: hands or equipment when examining wounds or during surgeries, thus
Speaker 2: causing many of their patients to die of sepsis. So
Speaker 2: called regular doctors often used dangerous treatments, such as bleeding
Speaker 2: to treat illnesses. Yet, in spite of their high body count,
Speaker 2: AMA members persuaded major press outlets such as The New
Speaker 2: York Times to sensationally covered cases in which women died
Speaker 2: during abortions performed by midwives. This created momentum for the
Speaker 2: enactment by eighteen eighty of laws banning and criminalizing abortion
Speaker 2: in every single state except Kentucky, where stake courts had
Speaker 2: already rendered such procedures illegal.
Speaker 3: The drive against abortion wasn't all that it seemed. Abortion
Speaker 3: opponents were worried that the wrong women, or in other words,
Speaker 3: white wealthy women, were choosing to limit how many children
Speaker 3: they had. The fertility rate for white women fell by
Speaker 3: almost fifty five percent. Between eighteen fifty and nineteen thirty,
Speaker 3: Horatio Storer, the leading anti abortion crusader at the time,
Speaker 3: railed against non infanto mania among upper class white women,
Speaker 3: a trend that the sociologist Edward A. Ross would call
Speaker 3: quote race suicide. President Theodore Roosevelt later argued that white
Speaker 3: women had a patriotic duty to bear at least four
Speaker 3: children if biologically fit. Anglo Saxons quote have only one
Speaker 3: child or no child at all, while the Irish, Italians
Speaker 3: and Jews have quote eight or nine or ten. Theodore
Speaker 3: Roosevelt warned, it is simply a question of the multiplication table.
Speaker 3: He wrote The Future of American Civilization, Roosevelt believed depended
Speaker 3: on reprisductive math. White women could not be allowed to
Speaker 3: become voluntary non combatants in a racial demographic war.
Speaker 2: In the eighteen eighties, Texas was still seen by much
Speaker 2: of the country as an unsophisticated frontier, but was home
Speaker 2: to a highly influential doctor with a national following, Ferdinand
Speaker 2: Eugene Daniel, who became editor of the Texas Medical Journal,
Speaker 2: a eugenesis with a national audience. The surgeon Hats served
Speaker 2: in the Confederate Army and argued that masturbation and homosexuality
Speaker 2: were dangerous indications that individual came from a family line
Speaker 2: that not fully evolved or was biologically regressing. Fully evolved individuals,
Speaker 2: he believed, had less of a sex strive and kept
Speaker 2: their minds on intellectual pursuits. Daniel argued that before the
Speaker 2: Civil War, Americans had endangered their future by bringing Africans
Speaker 2: into the country as slaves, and were compounding the error
Speaker 2: by allowing what he called quote the dregs of yourthurope, Jews, Greeks, Italians,
Speaker 2: and others to immigrate to the United States. The only
Speaker 2: way to say America's biological future, he said, was by
Speaker 2: cash strating not just gay men and masturbators who would
Speaker 2: cause the evolution of white America to swing in reverse,
Speaker 2: but also the sterilized, as sexually promiscuous, the mentally ill,
Speaker 2: those with disabilities, and the criminal element as well.
Speaker 3: Daniel could be surprisingly supportive of abortion rights under limited circumstances, however,
Speaker 3: if it ensured that well off white women had long
Speaker 3: and fruitful careers as mothers. Daniel wrote approvingly of how
Speaker 3: electric currents might be used to end ectopic pregnancies cases
Speaker 3: in which fertilize eggs attached to the fallopian tubes or
Speaker 3: elsewhere outside the uterus, which can be dangerous and can
Speaker 3: kill or leave a woman infertile. Both outcomes undesirable for
Speaker 3: a eugenicist like Daniel, who cared for fit white patients.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty seven issue, he published account of a
Speaker 2: debate among doctors held by the Medical Society and Terrell Texas.
Speaker 2: The topic was whether saving the life of a mother
Speaker 2: was the only acceptable reason to allow an abortion. Some
Speaker 2: doctors in the debate argued that abortion was morally acceptable
Speaker 2: for quote an intelligent and chaste woman who had gotten
Speaker 2: pregnant after being deceived by a scoundrel into participating in
Speaker 2: pre marital sex.
Speaker 3: Because of sexual double standards. Several of these Texas doctors
Speaker 3: argued that such women would no longer be considered a
Speaker 3: socially acceptable mate by a high status man, and thus
Speaker 3: should be denied the chance to become an quote, ornament
Speaker 3: and useful member of society. Regardless of Texas's abortion law,
Speaker 3: a surprising number of doctors in the state performed abortions
Speaker 3: not only to save women's lives, but to save the
Speaker 3: reputations and to relieve them of the financial and physical
Speaker 3: hardships of unwanted pregnancies.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety nine, in Waco, Texas, Mary Wheat discovered
Speaker 2: she was pregnant and sought an abortion. The procedure had
Speaker 2: been illegal in Texas since eighteen fifty six, a year
Speaker 2: before the recently formed American Medical Association began a campaign
Speaker 2: to prohibit abortion in every state. By eighteen eighty, the
Speaker 2: AMA achieved its goal. In spite of the ubiquitous spans,
Speaker 2: abortions were frequent and there were a large number of
Speaker 2: doctors willing to provide the prohibited medical procedure. Wheat, called
Speaker 2: Maddie by friends and family, found such a physician, doctor S. M. Jenkins.
Speaker 3: Texas law at the time had not eliminated abortion, but
Speaker 3: instead had driven the practice underground. Because of this, doctors
Speaker 3: received little or no training in how to perform such procedures.
Speaker 3: That proved fatal for Matty Wheat. Doctor Jenkins performed the
Speaker 3: abortion in the home of woman identified by the local
Speaker 3: press only as Missus Smith, and he made a mistake.
Speaker 3: She got increasingly and dangerously ill, and then after ten
Speaker 3: days of this ordeal, Jenkins rushed Wheat into Waco's city hospital,
Speaker 3: he claimed she was suffering a severe attack of dysentery.
Speaker 3: She then died, and an autopsy revealed a bowel perforation
Speaker 3: which had been left during the botched abortion. Law enforcement
Speaker 3: arrested Jenkins on November first for the operation, charging him
Speaker 3: with murder.
Speaker 2: Jenkins's trial did not go as prosecutor's planned. Jenkins testified
Speaker 2: that the fetus Wheat was caring had died and that
Speaker 2: the abortion was an attempt to save her life. According
Speaker 2: to a reporter for the Euston Post, Jenkinson's attorney were
Speaker 2: pleased with how the trial was unfolding.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 2: The defense seemed to be well satisfied with their showing
Speaker 2: so far, and public opinion had changed considerably in favor
Speaker 2: of the defendant, the newspaper told its readers. But then
Speaker 2: the trial came to an abrupt and shocking end.
Speaker 3: While the court was in session, Hugh Wheat, the brother
Speaker 3: of the deceased woman, stood aimed at gun at doctor
Speaker 3: Jenkins and pulled the trigger. A bullet fatally struck the
Speaker 3: physician just underneath the ribs. As the assassin fled, Jenkins's
Speaker 3: brother in law, John Halligan, shot back, but missed that
Speaker 3: A murder trial ended in another homicide is not surprising
Speaker 3: in a place as violent as nineteenth century Texas, but
Speaker 3: because of the modern image of Texas as reliably and
Speaker 3: even harshly anti abortion, it might be startling that the
Speaker 3: public one hundred and twenty five years ago actually sympathized
Speaker 3: with a doctor who faced prison after his patient died
Speaker 3: as a result of an incompetently performed abortion.
Speaker 2: Abortion politics were far more unpredictable in the American past
Speaker 2: than Samuel Alito had asserted. In eighteen seventy three, anti
Speaker 2: vice activist Anthony Comstock of Connecticut successfully lobbied the Congress
Speaker 2: the past legislation known as the Compstack Act that made
Speaker 2: distribution to the US mail or common carriers of birth
Speaker 2: control devices or any information about birth control or how
Speaker 2: to obtain an abortion, a federal crime.
Speaker 3: Social reformers noted that bearing multi children often shorted women's
Speaker 3: lives and drove their families into poverty, and they battled
Speaker 3: for women to gain control over the reproductive choices. One
Speaker 3: such reformer was Margaret Sanger of New York, the daughter
Speaker 3: of a radical Irish father and mother, who died at
Speaker 3: fifty after burying eleven children. Sanger coined the term birth
Speaker 3: control in nineteen fifteen, and, just before World War One,
Speaker 3: launched a movement that promoted contraception as sexual and political
Speaker 3: reform aimed to reduce human misery. She had to flee
Speaker 3: the country in nineteen fourteen because her publication The Woman
Speaker 3: Rebel intentionally defied the Comstock Law and promoted the distribution
Speaker 3: of information about contraception through the United States Postal Service.
Speaker 3: When she returned to this country, she was an international
Speaker 3: celebrity for women's rights and free speech, and she opened
Speaker 3: a family planning clinic, which faced continual police harassment. Lack
Speaker 3: of access to birth control, sang Her complained led to abortion.
Speaker 3: As she has said in a nighteth Seen fifty seven
Speaker 3: interview with reporter Mike Wallace on CBS News.
Speaker 5: Why did you do it? I realized that you had
Speaker 5: an intellectual conviction that birth control was a boon demand kind.
Speaker 5: But I'm sure that others have that conviction too, And
Speaker 5: so what I'd like to know is this, what events,
Speaker 5: what emotions in your life made Margaret Sanger a crusader
Speaker 5: for birth control.
Speaker 1: Well, mister Wallace, it is hard to say that any
Speaker 1: one thing has made one do this or that I
Speaker 1: think from the very beginning.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: I came of a large family. My mother died young,
Speaker 1: eleven children made depression on me. As a child. I
Speaker 1: was a trained nurse, went among the people. I saw
Speaker 1: women who asked to have some means whereby they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to have another pregnancy too early after the last child,
Speaker 1: the last abortion, which many of them had. So there's
Speaker 1: a number of things that are one after the other.
Speaker 1: It really made you feel that you had to do something.
Speaker 3: It may surprise many today that the woman who founded
Speaker 3: the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into Planned
Speaker 3: Parenthood of America, actually opposed abortion and advocated easing access
Speaker 3: to birth control as a means of making advantage. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: around the time of Sanger's interview with Mike Wallace, Texas
Speaker 3: doctors became friendlier to abortion rights. But before we get
Speaker 3: into that, a quick ad break.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty three, the Houston Chronicles survey doctors about
Speaker 2: their views of abortion. About eighteen thousand abortions took place
Speaker 2: in Texas every year, the newspaper reported, and that quote,
Speaker 2: an increasing number of doctors believed abortions should be legal
Speaker 2: for reasons beyond saving the life of the Mother Texas
Speaker 2: women fought fiercely for the right to control their bodies.
Speaker 2: In North Texas, the Women's Alliance, the first Unitarian Universalist
Speaker 2: church in Dallas, launched an education campaign about the need
Speaker 2: for the state to reform its abortion laws. Meanwhile, doctor
Speaker 2: U Savage of Fort Worth, the president of State Association
Speaker 2: of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, lobbied the Texas Medical Association to
Speaker 2: draft a statement supporting abortion rights. The state's abortion ban was,
Speaker 2: he said, in conflict with actual practice of reputable hospitals
Speaker 2: across the state. Doctors regularly provided abortion care when a
Speaker 2: woman's life was in danger, and they interpreted that mandate broadly.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty nine, members of the Texas Medical Association
Speaker 2: who were surveyed approved liberalization of abortion laws by an
Speaker 2: overwhelming vote of four thousand, four hundred and thirty five
Speaker 2: to five hundred and thirty six.
Speaker 3: The Texas legislature even considered loosening abortion restrictions in its
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven and ninety teen sixty eight sessions, although
Speaker 3: neither effort was successful in spite of support from conservative
Speaker 3: state Senator George park House and a growing number of
Speaker 3: churches and physicians. In the end, activists carried the day.
Speaker 3: Two Texas lawyers, Linda Confe and Sarah Weddington, took up
Speaker 3: the cause of Norma McCovey, who had sought an abortion
Speaker 3: in Dallas. Almost a century earlier, Texas doctors had argued
Speaker 3: whether to allow an abortion for unmarried upper class women
Speaker 3: so they could contribute to the gene pool by bearing
Speaker 3: children with comparably privileged men. Those Victorian doctors did not
Speaker 3: have someone like McCovey in mind.
Speaker 2: Largely Neglected by her parents, McCovey had suffered abuse at
Speaker 2: the hands of men throughout her life and was a
Speaker 2: frequent drug user. After giving up one child for adoption
Speaker 2: and having another taken by her mother, in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: she was pregnant for a third time while she was
Speaker 2: living in Dallas. McCovey tried to end the pregnancy herself
Speaker 2: with a home remedy, a peanut and cast royal, but
Speaker 2: she only succeeded in making herself nauseous. She's eventually told
Speaker 2: about an illegal clinic, but when she got there, Dallas
Speaker 2: police had already shut down the clinic quote nobody was there,
Speaker 2: she said later. It was an old dentist office. Then
Speaker 2: I saw dry blood everywhere and smell this awful smell.
Speaker 2: She believed that she falsely claimed that she had been
Speaker 2: gang raped by African American men. A doctor might be
Speaker 2: willing to provide her an abortion. She was unsuccessful, but
Speaker 2: a doctor referred her to an attorney who connected her
Speaker 2: with a pair of lawyers who were seeking to challenge
Speaker 2: the Texas anti abortion law. These attorneys, Linda Coffee and
Speaker 2: Sarah Weddington, filed a class action suit against Dallas District
Speaker 2: Attorney Henry Wade, claiming that the Texas anti abortion law,
Speaker 2: which allowed the procedure only to save the patient's life,
Speaker 2: violated the constitutional right of privacy.
Speaker 3: Before his name would forever be linked with the history
Speaker 3: of American abortion law. By the time of Norman mccovey's suit,
Speaker 3: Henry Wade enjoyed a reputation as one of the most
Speaker 3: successful district attorneys in the country. His reputation in Dallas
Speaker 3: was built on ruthlessness, racism, and the advantages a brutally
Speaker 3: unfair criminal justice system in Texas gave him. Wade would
Speaker 3: claim a ninety percent conviction rate, but in many of
Speaker 3: those cases he faced off against poor defendants that were bullied,
Speaker 3: lied to, and coerced into confessions by Dallas police officers.
Speaker 3: In one infamous murder case, Tommy Lee Walker, an African
Speaker 3: American man with several alibi witnesses, was threatened with a
Speaker 3: beating if he didn't sign a confession. He was misled
Speaker 3: about the consequences of signing admission of guilt and later
Speaker 3: died in the electric chair. In nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2: Wade reportedly joked, quote, any prosecutor could convict a guilty man.
Speaker 2: That takes a real pro to convict an innocent man.
Speaker 2: Emmanuel Wade provided to prosecutors after the Civil Rights Era
Speaker 2: provided tips for excluding African Americans and Mexican Americans from juries.
Speaker 2: Wade left the District Attorney's office in January nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and as of twenty eight, nineteen criminal defendants convicted by
Speaker 2: his team had been exonerated through DNA evidence.
Speaker 3: During his time as District attorney, Wade directed police to
Speaker 3: raid gay bars and vigorously prosecuted violators of the state
Speaker 3: sodomy laws that banned oral and anal sex, including a
Speaker 3: straight couple arrested in Dallas in nineteen sixty one, while
Speaker 3: Wade may have racked up wins against badly outmatched targets
Speaker 3: before Row he bungled. His most famous case, a murder
Speaker 3: covered by Dallas radio reporter Gary Delon of klif Am and.
Speaker 7: Ury comes laswag who accused assassin Captain rifles lading Madad,
Speaker 7: then scrator Dry from Elice officers Riff shot right up,
Speaker 7: shot has long out and ri Osra pas.
Speaker 1: Leet Osrad has shot him.
Speaker 2: A shot has long out.
Speaker 7: He shouts believed in place, Shawn has long out. Undress
Speaker 7: sends emment Lee Osra, Lee Osra has less been shot.
Speaker 2: On November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty three, Dallas nightclub owner
Speaker 2: Jack Ruby had murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin
Speaker 2: of John Kennedy, as he was being escorted by police
Speaker 2: in front of a nationwide TV audience. The case should
Speaker 2: have been open and shut. Wade's staff won a conviction
Speaker 2: in March nineteen sixty four, but the verdict and death
Speaker 2: sentence Ruby received was unanimously overturned by the Texas Court
Speaker 2: of Criminal Appeals on October fifth, nineteen sixty six, in
Speaker 2: part because the judge should have granted a change of venue,
Speaker 2: but also because Wade's team at Introduce improperly obtained evidence
Speaker 2: at the trial, Ruby was awaiting a new trial, where
Speaker 2: he died of pneumonia cancer in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3: The Wade team apparently did similarly sloppy work in the
Speaker 3: Roe v.
Speaker 4: Wade case.
Speaker 3: In abortion cases, Wade's office had generally prosecuted amateur abortion
Speaker 3: providers who had killed or badly injured their clients, and
Speaker 3: the Dallas DA's office in the City Police had not
Speaker 3: focused on enforcement of abortion laws on the books. Legal
Speaker 3: experts would later characterize the Dallas DA's office filings and
Speaker 3: the Row case as perfunctory, especially compared to the exhaustive
Speaker 3: constitutional research done by Weddington and Coffee. Texas Assistant General j.
Speaker 3: Floyd won no allies on the Supreme Court when he
Speaker 3: opened his argument with comments considered sexist and condescending even
Speaker 3: by the standards of nineteen seventy three. When the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court rendered its verdict, Wade reportedly never bothered to read.
Speaker 1: Its case justice by a pleased court.
Speaker 8: It's an old joe for a man argues against two
Speaker 8: beautiful ladies like this, They're going to.
Speaker 7: Have the last word.
Speaker 2: No one laughed and a Texas legal team would win
Speaker 2: a landmark legal victory. On January twenty second, nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: news anchor Walter Cronkite made the earthshaking Roe v. Wade
Speaker 2: decision the lead story on the CBS Evening News Good Evening.
Speaker 9: In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.
Speaker 9: The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that
Speaker 9: the decision to end the pregnancy during the first three
Speaker 9: months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government.
Speaker 9: Thus the anti abortion laws of forty six states were
Speaker 9: rendered unconstitutional.
Speaker 3: Stay with us through this ad break to learn more
Speaker 3: took a while for the country, and particularly tech seems
Speaker 3: to absorb the news about the road decision. Supreme Court
Speaker 3: ruling was announced on the same day as another big
Speaker 3: news story that, over the next few days, absorbed attention
Speaker 3: south of the Red River. Cronkite was on the air
Speaker 3: when the press secretary of a former giant of Texas
Speaker 3: politics called the newsman to tell him a former president
Speaker 3: had died.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much, Tom, I'm on the right at
Speaker 8: the moment. Can you hold the line just a second.
Speaker 8: I'm talking to Tom Johnston, a press secretary for Lyndon Johnson,
Speaker 8: who was reported that the thirty sixth President of the
Speaker 8: United States died this afternoon in an ambulance plane on
Speaker 8: the way to San Antonio, where he was taken after
Speaker 8: being stricken at his ranch, the LBJ Wrench in Johnson City, Texas.
Speaker 2: News of the road decision had to compete not only
Speaker 2: with coverage of Johnson's death in the planning for his funeral,
Speaker 2: but also the recently negotiated American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: No one could have guessed how deeply this one decision
Speaker 2: would reshape the makeup of the Democratic and Republican parties
Speaker 2: over the the next half century. Americans divided almost evenly.
Speaker 2: Soon after the Supreme Court announcement, a Gallop survey indicated
Speaker 2: that forty six percent supported a woman's right to choose
Speaker 2: and forty five percent opposed granting women access to the
Speaker 2: abortion care. In the days following the Roe decision, reactions
Speaker 2: were often surprising. W. A. Chriswell, the arch conservative pastor
Speaker 2: of First Baptist Church in Dallas, the largest Southern Baptist
Speaker 2: congregation in the nation, initially applauded the court. Perhaps the
Speaker 2: pastor who had repeatedly warned thirteen years earlier that the
Speaker 2: election of a Catholic John Kennedy as president would mark
Speaker 2: the end of religious liberty. Was relieved that the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court was not controlled by the Vatican. By the late
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, Chriswell would emerge as a national leader of
Speaker 2: the religious right and would help make opposition to abortion
Speaker 2: gay rights a centerpiece of Republican politics. Shortly after Rowe, however,
Speaker 2: he struck a very different tune. Quote I've always felt
Speaker 2: that it was only after the child was born and
Speaker 2: had a life separate from its mother that became an
Speaker 2: individual person, Chriswell said, And it always therefore seemed to
Speaker 2: me that's what's best for the mother and the future
Speaker 2: should be allowed.
Speaker 3: Opposition to the legalization of abortion quickly formed and would
Speaker 3: build to homicidal intensity over the decades. In nineteen seventy,
Speaker 3: three years before the Road Decision, when abortion was still
Speaker 3: illegal in Texas, Michael Schwartz, a student at the conservative
Speaker 3: private University of Dallas in the suburb of Irving, staged
Speaker 3: what might have been the first anti abortion protest in
Speaker 3: American history. He held a sit in at the Planned
Speaker 3: Parenthood headquarters not far from downtown Dallas, because the organization
Speaker 3: provided assistance to pregnant women planning on traveling to states
Speaker 3: where abortion was already legal, not unlike situations that Texans
Speaker 3: faced today.
Speaker 2: The movement soon came to be dominated by right wing Republicans,
Speaker 2: and the occupation of clinics soon became violent. Abortion ponents
Speaker 2: pouring noxious chemicals into clinic ventilation systems. Anti choice extremists
Speaker 2: set fire to clinics, bombed them, and even murdered doctors
Speaker 2: and clinic staff providing abortion care. One set of Texans
Speaker 2: may have won the decisive battle for abortion rights in
Speaker 2: the past half century, but a different set of Texans
Speaker 2: would lead the charge to reverse those gains.
Speaker 3: Strangely enough, the backlash to abortion rights included Norma McCovey.
Speaker 3: One day, Flip Benham, a leader of the extremist anti
Speaker 3: abortion group Operation Rescue, approached her while she was autographing
Speaker 3: copies of a book she had authored called I Am Row.
Speaker 3: They became friends, and she later claimed that she changed
Speaker 3: her mind about abortion when she saw photos of fetuses
Speaker 3: at different stages of pregnancy. After being baptized in a
Speaker 3: swimming pool by evangelicals in nineteen ninety five, an event
Speaker 3: filmed and widely disseminated in the anti abortion movement. McCovey
Speaker 3: became a popular fixture at anti broak A protests. At first,
Speaker 3: McCovey embraced Evangelical Protestantism, and by nineteen ninety eight she
Speaker 3: converted to Catholicism, but towards the end of her life,
Speaker 3: while being interviewed for a twenty twenty documentary called Aka
Speaker 3: Jane Rowe, McCovey confessed that her religious conversion had been
Speaker 3: a scam and that she had been financially benefiting from
Speaker 3: her transition into a star of the evangelical anti abortion circuit.
Speaker 6: Did they use you as a trophy?
Speaker 2: Of course, I was the big fish.
Speaker 8: Do you think they would say they used them?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was a mutual thin. You know.
Speaker 1: I checked their money and they put me out in
Speaker 1: front of the cameras and tell me what to say.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. McCovey died in twenty seventeen at
Speaker 2: her home in Katie, Texas. By that point, anti abortion
Speaker 2: politics had become orthodoxy in the Republican Party. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, the state passed the Misleadingly named Women's
Speaker 2: Right to No Act, which mandated the physicians share misinformation
Speaker 2: about alleged fetal pain during abortion with women who sought
Speaker 2: the procedure. In twenty thirteen, a state Senator, Wendy Davis
Speaker 2: of Fort Worth, stage of dramatic thirteen hour filibuster Senate
Speaker 2: Bill five, legislation that banned abortion after twenty weeks, required
Speaker 2: clinics to meet the same demanding standards as hospitals and
Speaker 2: surgical centers, and required doctors performing the procedure to hold
Speaker 2: admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Davis's filibuster stopped the bill
Speaker 2: from being voted on before midnight June twenty fifth, the
Speaker 2: mandated end of the legislative session. She killed the legislation
Speaker 2: for the time being, and the pink tennis shoes she
Speaker 2: wore became a symbol of abortion rights activism around the world. However,
Speaker 2: Rick Perry called a special session of the legislature the
Speaker 2: next day and Senate Bill five passed. Her efforts propelled
Speaker 2: her into the twenty fourteen GUBERNATORI race, but she was
Speaker 2: crushed by Greg Abbott by twenty one point margin.
Speaker 3: In recent years, Abbot has led the charge to erase
Speaker 3: many of the gains women have won in the fight
Speaker 3: to control their bodies.
Speaker 5: We will promote policies that limit the growth of government,
Speaker 5: not the size of your dreams.
Speaker 3: Under Abbot, Texas has passed some of the most intrusive
Speaker 3: and extreme anti abortion laws that tightly regulate women's bodies.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, Texas passed Senate Bill eight, which
Speaker 3: banned abortions after the six week of pregnancy. It made
Speaker 3: performing an abortion a first or second degree felony unless
Speaker 3: the mother's life is in danger or there is risk
Speaker 3: of substantial impairment of a major bodily function. The vagueness
Speaker 3: of that latter provision has terrified Texas doctors into not
Speaker 3: providing care to several women who have shown up in
Speaker 3: emergency rooms at death's door. Texas physicians have become less
Speaker 3: willing to perform emergency abortions than they were in the
Speaker 3: days before the Road decision, even as far as the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three, the Texas Supreme Court denied Kate
Speaker 2: Cox of Dallas the right to end a pregnancy even
Speaker 2: though our fetus suffered from full trisomy eighteen, the severe
Speaker 2: genetic anomaly that guaranteed that the child, if it survived pregnancy,
Speaker 2: would only live minutes. If the pregnancy continued, Cox may
Speaker 2: have lost the ability to have children in the future.
Speaker 2: She fled this state in order to obtain an abortion
Speaker 2: where the procedure remained legal. In twenty twenty three, Amanda
Speaker 2: Zirwaski almost died waiting for a life saving abortion when
Speaker 2: doctors hesitated to provide care because they feared criminal prosecution.
Speaker 2: For years, abortion right activists had chanted pro life, that's
Speaker 2: a lie, you don't care if women die. In fact,
Speaker 2: the state legislature and Governor Greg Abbott did nothing as
Speaker 2: the deaths of pregnant women in Texas swored fifty six percent.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one. Johnston Lee Barnika, a mother of one,
Speaker 3: was joyful when she realized she was pregnant. She hoped
Speaker 3: to deliver a sibling for her daughter. But on September
Speaker 3: twenty first, seventeen weeks into her pregnancy, she was miscarrying,
Speaker 3: with the fetus pressing against her cervix and about to
Speaker 3: exit the womb. Barnica's life was in danger, but doctors
Speaker 3: at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest told her and her husband
Speaker 3: that because of Texas' law, they could do nothing until
Speaker 3: the fetus' heartbeat had stopped. Fearing criminal charges, doctors refused
Speaker 3: to medically accelerate the delivery of the dying fetus and
Speaker 3: let forty hours pass. Barnica writhed in agony, begged to
Speaker 3: be allowed to see her daughter, and a fatal bacterial
Speaker 3: infection ravaged her body. She would die three days later,
Speaker 3: leaving her young child without a mother.
Speaker 2: On October twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, eighteen year old
Speaker 2: Neva Crane was six months pregnant. She began vomiting and
Speaker 2: she became soaked in sweat during a baby's shower at
Speaker 2: her home in Beaumont. She too was miscaring. Her boyfriend
Speaker 2: drove her to nearby Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, where
Speaker 2: they waited for five hours in a waiting room before
Speaker 2: doctors diagnosed her with strapped throat and gave her a
Speaker 2: prescription for antibiotics. Sent home or conditionally worsened, Crane was
Speaker 2: driven to another hospital in town Christa's Southeast Texas, Saint Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Her fever soared to one hundred and two and she
Speaker 2: was bleeding, but her doctors continue to do nothing but
Speaker 2: administer antibotics. Eventually, she was wheeled into a third emergency room.
Speaker 2: Doctors gave her two ultrasounds, two, in their words, confirm
Speaker 2: fetal demise. Crane's mother, who had long been opposed to abortions,
Speaker 2: screamed at the medical staff to help her dying child.
Speaker 2: Crane suffered for twenty hours before her heart failed.
Speaker 3: Bernica and Crane's stories were revealed by the investigative news
Speaker 3: outlet pro Publica just days before the twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: presidential election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris made abortion rights a
Speaker 3: central part of her doomed campaign. When in an anticipated
Speaker 3: red wave expected to bring a Republican majority in the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two congressional elections fizzled and a number of
Speaker 3: abortion rights initiatives passed even in traditional Republican strongholds like
Speaker 3: Kansas and Ohio, Many pundits believed that a Dobbs effect
Speaker 3: had heralded a permanent political realignment, or at least the
Speaker 3: upcoming presidential election results. This phenomenon clearly failed to materialize
Speaker 3: for Harris. Abortion rights referenda passed in seven states, including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada,
Speaker 3: and New York in November twenty twenty four, but they
Speaker 3: founded in Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Florida
Speaker 3: because the support of fifty seven percent of voters fell
Speaker 3: short of the required sixty percent supermajority. In Texas, Trump,
Speaker 3: once a pro choice person, but now the proud instigator
Speaker 3: of the Dobbs decision, carried fifty six percent of the vote.
Speaker 3: One of the most prominent Trump supporters, University of ten
Speaker 3: Exis PhD. Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, might soon
Speaker 3: be in a position to see his dreams of a
Speaker 3: national ban on the so called abortion pill mifipristone, and
Speaker 3: even the reversal of the nineteen sixty five Griswold v.
Speaker 3: Connecticut Supreme Court decision that overturned state laws banning control
Speaker 3: pills and devices.
Speaker 2: When Harris lost, anti abortion extremists exuberantly celebrated Trump's triumph.
Speaker 2: Neo Nazi Nick Fuentes, who if right wing rap artists
Speaker 2: Kanye West got to go to dinner in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two of Trump saw the Republican victory as an opportunity
Speaker 2: to reduce swomen to the status of property.
Speaker 6: Hey, we control your bodies. Guess what. Guys win again. Okay,
Speaker 6: men win again, and yes, we control your bodies. Hi,
Speaker 6: I'm your Republican congressman. Hi, I'm your Republican congressman. It's
Speaker 6: your body, my choice.
Speaker 3: Texas government has become big enough to regulate women's bodies
Speaker 3: and small enough to fit inside of its citizens' bedrooms.
Speaker 3: Even though abortion rights have always enjoyed far greater support
Speaker 3: than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has suggested the right
Speaker 3: of women to control their own bodies and get the
Speaker 3: vital medical care they need to prevent bodily harm or
Speaker 3: their premature deaths seems on the precipice of vanishing. This
Speaker 3: grim reality is not deeply rooted in America's history or traditions,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately, it is the current status quo, and Texas
Speaker 3: has played a major role in bringing us to this place.
Speaker 3: I'm Stephen Manchelli, I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
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