We’re on the Precipice of a Post-Roe World
About this episode
With Texas's S.B. 8 in effect and Roe v. Wade in jeopardy, historian Leslie Reagan explains what America looked like the last time abortion was broadly illegal — and what a post-Roe future might hold. Drawing on her book 'When Abortion Was a Crime,' Reagan describes a world where abortion was common but clandestine: hospital committees rationing 'therapeutic' abortions, the Jane collective in Chicago, and stark racial and class disparities in who could obtain safe procedures. She and Klein discuss how doctors, clergy, and feminists navigated the old regime, the rise of medication abortion as a game-changer, the legal ingenuity of S.B. 8's bounty-hunter enforcement, and why she believes the history of criminalization offers both warnings and a playbook for the fights ahead.