December 30, 2024 • 37 mins
In overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that had protected women’s bodily autonomy for a half-century, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito claimed that abortion rights were not “deeply rooted in this nation’s history.” In fact, Americans had accepted a woman’s right to an abortion, with limitations, dating back to the Puritan era, even in supposedly solidly anti-choice Texas where the Roe case originated. This episode explores the often-surprising history of abortion in the United States and the connections between anti-abortion politics, racism, and xenophobia.
Sources:
Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Roe-Rise-New-America-ebook/dp/B0CK72ZGL1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LT8GCBOTWABV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JQimtOEGy3PsNcHVXC_RzHb4-nla_0uFg_mcpTX1ogL7AlrpV8uIf5LJfxCuazgOHruVfjQvhOd-B27Yyr-vsv6Jz5Rw2iecYpzZ8X1fODwGfubBl94YbczW4lNK_68iuBj2ipBDR9JsmUFKduu54NOSAjT_zA0v4iBiASNqit03Aix2od9liGMi5jliDW7hqtT59N7-A-bQTtkL38pZeRP_lNIji1bosnq7UeWXmNM.NrfQX0Mt4qMsvR3L2hDj0RFB_7GXrOGbbHNFxP_dxm0&dib_tag=se&keywords=Fall+of+Roe&qid=1732370376&s=books&sprefix=fall+of+roe%2Cstripbooks%2C124&sr=1-1
James Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy https://www.amazon.com/Abortion-America-Origins-Evolution-National/dp/0195026160/ref=sr_1_1?crid=TR1W25IRTLDR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ZBOxRJsGiXDvGWbf9K1MRx7h7sn4m4_IDKwbohsbDD0.w_NHhzr7kEEWE8yR4B1rh1cuOGR8of66ZlXAvTHzxgM&dib_tag=se&keywords=James+Mohr+Abortion&qid=1732370158&s=books&sprefix=james+mohr+abortion%2Cstripbooks%2C116&sr=1-1
Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867- 1973 https://www.amazon.com/When-Abortion-Was-Crime-1867-1973-ebook/dp/B0B8TNX2MW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2S9JMDTGAJQRN&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GVgbRixhq1FpPKRp5yMnMOkGBck7LhL6KpbcZwznkVsd7LzGl_DPfKYBmem066YyaLnnRv1PlQP8Ysr75l695zDs8EZVD-oM42iCfuISV0g.1k8qK_S9Vp5KaliYGNYObwpmoQUvVOmVmxULkBK2JtM&dib_tag=se&keywords=When+Abortion+Was+Illegal&qid=1732370269&s=books&sprefix=when+abortion+was+illegal%2Cstripbooks%2C102&sr=1-1-catcorr
James Risen, Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War https://www.amazon.com/Wrath-Angels-American-Abortion-War/dp/046509273X
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is Michael Phillips, an historian in Texas. I'm the
author of the history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis,
an upcoming book on the history of eugenics in Texas
called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
And I'm Stephen Monticelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in
Texas who covers extremism and fire right movements, as well
as dark money and other fun things.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
In twenty twenty two, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito authored
the Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. Alito's majority
opinion reversed the landmark nineteen seventy three Roe v. Wade
outcome that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion
through the first trimester, permitted states to impose limits to
(00:50):
protect the health of the mother in the second trimester,
and gave states leeway to ban abortions and the final trimester.
The Road decision they in a Texas case, had survived
with modification for almost half century. In Dobbs, however, the
Supreme Court denied that women held a constitutional right to
an abortion and gave the individual states the power to
(01:13):
determine whether such procedures were legal at any point during
a pregnancy. In the Dobbs case, Alito seemed to suggest
that the concept of abortion rights was a modern aberration.
MSNBC pundit Lawrence O'Donnell zeroed in on one key phrase
in Alito's opinion.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Samuel Alito says that a right to abortion services is
not quote deeply rooted in this nation's history. Whatever one
might think about Alito as a jurist, he fails as
an historian. In fact, for much of American history, abortion
was quite accepted. When men first formed the American Medical
Association in the eighteen forties, they had to wage a
(01:55):
campaign against abortion, in part to eliminate competition for patients
from midwives, who were the primary provider of such services.
The nineteenth century anti abortion laws focused on the health
and safety of women primarily, and not the life of
the fetus, as the modern laws tend to do, and
the anti abortion campaign at the time itself had to
(02:16):
do not just with limiting women's autonomy, but also with
racism and anxiety over immigration.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Through it all, Texas became a central battlefront in the
culture wars surrounding women's bodily autonomy. One group of Texans
won women the right to an abortion in the Road case,
while another worked almost immediately to reverse Row and to
recriminalize choice. Meanwhile, a Dallas District attorney, Henry Wade, played
(02:44):
an under appreciated and under explored role in the battle.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The often dower Puritans who established the British Colony of
Massachusetts in the sixteen twenties may have created an oppressive theocracy,
but they proved surprisingly indifferent when it came to women's
decisions when and if to have children. Based on British
common law, the colonies in New England allowed abortion up
to the quickening, which is when women can first feel
(03:09):
fetal movement. In that era, it was the first clear
sign of impregnation. This moment varies widely for women, but
it generally happens during the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Women typically endured seven to eight live births, and the
experience was often grueling and life threatening, particularly as they
got older. Seeking relief and physical safety, women frequently terminated
their pregnancy in a variety of ways. From Native Americans.
White women learned which local herbs were considered a border Facians.
(03:43):
White and black women also sought advice from midwives who
provided wisdom on how to relieve mentional cramps, get pregnant,
and breastfeed. Midwives provided abortion services as well. Women attempted
to end pregnancy with varying degrees of success by consuming
penny royalty or savin juniper, or a combination of iron
(04:05):
and quinine. They took hot baths or rode horses bareback
in order to cause a miscarriage.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Before the eighteen forties, such actions provoked little or no controversy.
Even the Catholic Church adhered to the quickening standard until
after the American Civil War. By the eighteen forties, abortion
had become so deeply rooted in American history and culture
that abortionists advertise their services, albeit in euphemistic but widely
(04:31):
understood terms. These advertisements were carried in popular newspapers such
as The New York Sun and the Boston Daily Times.
Abortionists told patients they could provide quote French cures for
what was referred to as quote menstrual blockage.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
A dramatic shift happened after the eighteen forty seven founding
of the American Medical Association, established by men. The organization
began lobbing states to ban abortions In an attempt to
discredit midwives, who represented major competition for female patients, medical
journalists began to dismiss midwives and male doctors who provided
(05:08):
abortion services as dangerous, ill informed quacks. AMA members were
still unaware that germs existed, and they didn't clean their
hands or equipment when examining wounds or during surgeries, thus
causing many of their patients to die of sepsis. So
called regular doctors often used dangerous treatments, such as bleeding
(05:30):
to treat illnesses. Yet, in spite of their high body count,
AMA members persuaded major press outlets such as The New
York Times to sensationally covered cases in which women died
during abortions performed by midwives. This created momentum for the
enactment by eighteen eighty of laws banning and criminalizing abortion
(05:51):
in every single state except Kentucky, where stake courts had
already rendered such procedures illegal.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The drive against abortion wasn't all that it seemed. Abortion
opponents were worried that the wrong women, or in other words,
white wealthy women, were choosing to limit how many children
they had. The fertility rate for white women fell by
almost fifty five percent. Between eighteen fifty and nineteen thirty,
Horatio Storer, the leading anti abortion crusader at the time,
(06:21):
railed against non infanto mania among upper class white women,
a trend that the sociologist Edward A. Ross would call
quote race suicide. President Theodore Roosevelt later argued that white
women had a patriotic duty to bear at least four
children if biologically fit. Anglo Saxons quote have only one
(06:41):
child or no child at all, while the Irish, Italians
and Jews have quote eight or nine or ten. Theodore
Roosevelt warned, it is simply a question of the multiplication table.
He wrote The Future of American Civilization, Roosevelt believed depended
on reprisductive math. White women could not be allowed to
(07:02):
become voluntary non combatants in a racial demographic war.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
In the eighteen eighties, Texas was still seen by much
of the country as an unsophisticated frontier, but was home
to a highly influential doctor with a national following, Ferdinand
Eugene Daniel, who became editor of the Texas Medical Journal,
a eugenesis with a national audience. The surgeon Hats served
(07:27):
in the Confederate Army and argued that masturbation and homosexuality
were dangerous indications that individual came from a family line
that not fully evolved or was biologically regressing. Fully evolved individuals,
he believed, had less of a sex strive and kept
their minds on intellectual pursuits. Daniel argued that before the
(07:49):
Civil War, Americans had endangered their future by bringing Africans
into the country as slaves, and were compounding the error
by allowing what he called quote the dregs of yourthurope, Jews, Greeks, Italians,
and others to immigrate to the United States. The only
way to say America's biological future, he said, was by
cash strating not just gay men and masturbators who would
(08:13):
cause the evolution of white America to swing in reverse,
but also the sterilized, as sexually promiscuous, the mentally ill,
those with disabilities, and the criminal element as well.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Daniel could be surprisingly supportive of abortion rights under limited circumstances, however,
if it ensured that well off white women had long
and fruitful careers as mothers. Daniel wrote approvingly of how
electric currents might be used to end ectopic pregnancies cases
in which fertilize eggs attached to the fallopian tubes or
(08:45):
elsewhere outside the uterus, which can be dangerous and can
kill or leave a woman infertile. Both outcomes undesirable for
a eugenicist like Daniel, who cared for fit white patients.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
In eighteen eighty seven issue, he published account of a
debate among doctors held by the Medical Society and Terrell Texas.
The topic was whether saving the life of a mother
was the only acceptable reason to allow an abortion. Some
doctors in the debate argued that abortion was morally acceptable
for quote an intelligent and chaste woman who had gotten
(09:20):
pregnant after being deceived by a scoundrel into participating in
pre marital sex.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Because of sexual double standards. Several of these Texas doctors
argued that such women would no longer be considered a
socially acceptable mate by a high status man, and thus
should be denied the chance to become an quote, ornament
and useful member of society. Regardless of Texas's abortion law,
a surprising number of doctors in the state performed abortions
(09:47):
not only to save women's lives, but to save the
reputations and to relieve them of the financial and physical
hardships of unwanted pregnancies.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
In eighteen ninety nine, in Waco, Texas, Mary Wheat discovered
she was pregnant and sought an abortion. The procedure had
been illegal in Texas since eighteen fifty six, a year
before the recently formed American Medical Association began a campaign
to prohibit abortion in every state. By eighteen eighty, the
(10:15):
AMA achieved its goal. In spite of the ubiquitous spans,
abortions were frequent and there were a large number of
doctors willing to provide the prohibited medical procedure. Wheat, called
Maddie by friends and family, found such a physician, doctor S. M. Jenkins.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Texas law at the time had not eliminated abortion, but
instead had driven the practice underground. Because of this, doctors
received little or no training in how to perform such procedures.
That proved fatal for Matty Wheat. Doctor Jenkins performed the
abortion in the home of woman identified by the local
press only as Missus Smith, and he made a mistake.
(10:53):
She got increasingly and dangerously ill, and then after ten
days of this ordeal, Jenkins rushed Wheat into Waco's city hospital,
he claimed she was suffering a severe attack of dysentery.
She then died, and an autopsy revealed a bowel perforation
which had been left during the botched abortion. Law enforcement
arrested Jenkins on November first for the operation, charging him
(11:15):
with murder.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Jenkins's trial did not go as prosecutor's planned. Jenkins testified
that the fetus Wheat was caring had died and that
the abortion was an attempt to save her life. According
to a reporter for the Euston Post, Jenkinson's attorney were
pleased with how the trial was unfolding.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
The defense seemed to be well satisfied with their showing
so far, and public opinion had changed considerably in favor
of the defendant, the newspaper told its readers. But then
the trial came to an abrupt and shocking end.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
While the court was in session, Hugh Wheat, the brother
of the deceased woman, stood aimed at gun at doctor
Jenkins and pulled the trigger. A bullet fatally struck the
physician just underneath the ribs. As the assassin fled, Jenkins's
brother in law, John Halligan, shot back, but missed that
A murder trial ended in another homicide is not surprising
(12:11):
in a place as violent as nineteenth century Texas, but
because of the modern image of Texas as reliably and
even harshly anti abortion, it might be startling that the
public one hundred and twenty five years ago actually sympathized
with a doctor who faced prison after his patient died
as a result of an incompetently performed abortion.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Abortion politics were far more unpredictable in the American past
than Samuel Alito had asserted. In eighteen seventy three, anti
vice activist Anthony Comstock of Connecticut successfully lobbied the Congress
the past legislation known as the Compstack Act that made
distribution to the US mail or common carriers of birth
control devices or any information about birth control or how
(12:55):
to obtain an abortion, a federal crime.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Social reformers noted that bearing multi children often shorted women's
lives and drove their families into poverty, and they battled
for women to gain control over the reproductive choices. One
such reformer was Margaret Sanger of New York, the daughter
of a radical Irish father and mother, who died at
fifty after burying eleven children. Sanger coined the term birth
(13:19):
control in nineteen fifteen, and, just before World War One,
launched a movement that promoted contraception as sexual and political
reform aimed to reduce human misery. She had to flee
the country in nineteen fourteen because her publication The Woman
Rebel intentionally defied the Comstock Law and promoted the distribution
of information about contraception through the United States Postal Service.
(13:42):
When she returned to this country, she was an international
celebrity for women's rights and free speech, and she opened
a family planning clinic, which faced continual police harassment. Lack
of access to birth control, sang Her complained led to abortion.
As she has said in a nighteth Seen fifty seven
interview with reporter Mike Wallace on CBS News.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
Why did you do it? I realized that you had
an intellectual conviction that birth control was a boon demand kind.
But I'm sure that others have that conviction too, And
so what I'd like to know is this, what events,
what emotions in your life made Margaret Sanger a crusader
for birth control.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Well, mister Wallace, it is hard to say that any
one thing has made one do this or that I
think from the very beginning.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I came of a large family. My mother died young,
eleven children made depression on me. As a child. I
was a trained nurse, went among the people. I saw
women who asked to have some means whereby they wouldn't
have to have another pregnancy too early after the last child,
the last abortion, which many of them had. So there's
(14:58):
a number of things that are one after the other.
It really made you feel that you had to do something.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
It may surprise many today that the woman who founded
the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into Planned
Parenthood of America, actually opposed abortion and advocated easing access
to birth control as a means of making advantage. Meanwhile,
around the time of Sanger's interview with Mike Wallace, Texas
doctors became friendlier to abortion rights. But before we get
(15:25):
into that, a quick ad break.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
In nineteen sixty three, the Houston Chronicles survey doctors about
their views of abortion. About eighteen thousand abortions took place
in Texas every year, the newspaper reported, and that quote,
an increasing number of doctors believed abortions should be legal
for reasons beyond saving the life of the Mother Texas
(15:59):
women fought fiercely for the right to control their bodies.
In North Texas, the Women's Alliance, the first Unitarian Universalist
church in Dallas, launched an education campaign about the need
for the state to reform its abortion laws. Meanwhile, doctor
U Savage of Fort Worth, the president of State Association
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, lobbied the Texas Medical Association to
(16:22):
draft a statement supporting abortion rights. The state's abortion ban was,
he said, in conflict with actual practice of reputable hospitals
across the state. Doctors regularly provided abortion care when a
woman's life was in danger, and they interpreted that mandate broadly.
In nineteen sixty nine, members of the Texas Medical Association
(16:45):
who were surveyed approved liberalization of abortion laws by an
overwhelming vote of four thousand, four hundred and thirty five
to five hundred and thirty six.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
The Texas legislature even considered loosening abortion restrictions in its
nineteen sixty seven and ninety teen sixty eight sessions, although
neither effort was successful in spite of support from conservative
state Senator George park House and a growing number of
churches and physicians. In the end, activists carried the day.
Two Texas lawyers, Linda Confe and Sarah Weddington, took up
(17:17):
the cause of Norma McCovey, who had sought an abortion
in Dallas. Almost a century earlier, Texas doctors had argued
whether to allow an abortion for unmarried upper class women
so they could contribute to the gene pool by bearing
children with comparably privileged men. Those Victorian doctors did not
have someone like McCovey in mind.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Largely Neglected by her parents, McCovey had suffered abuse at
the hands of men throughout her life and was a
frequent drug user. After giving up one child for adoption
and having another taken by her mother, in nineteen sixty nine,
she was pregnant for a third time while she was
living in Dallas. McCovey tried to end the pregnancy herself
(17:58):
with a home remedy, a peanut and cast royal, but
she only succeeded in making herself nauseous. She's eventually told
about an illegal clinic, but when she got there, Dallas
police had already shut down the clinic quote nobody was there,
she said later. It was an old dentist office. Then
I saw dry blood everywhere and smell this awful smell.
(18:20):
She believed that she falsely claimed that she had been
gang raped by African American men. A doctor might be
willing to provide her an abortion. She was unsuccessful, but
a doctor referred her to an attorney who connected her
with a pair of lawyers who were seeking to challenge
the Texas anti abortion law. These attorneys, Linda Coffee and
(18:40):
Sarah Weddington, filed a class action suit against Dallas District
Attorney Henry Wade, claiming that the Texas anti abortion law,
which allowed the procedure only to save the patient's life,
violated the constitutional right of privacy.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Before his name would forever be linked with the history
of American abortion law. By the time of Norman mccovey's suit,
Henry Wade enjoyed a reputation as one of the most
successful district attorneys in the country. His reputation in Dallas
was built on ruthlessness, racism, and the advantages a brutally
unfair criminal justice system in Texas gave him. Wade would
(19:17):
claim a ninety percent conviction rate, but in many of
those cases he faced off against poor defendants that were bullied,
lied to, and coerced into confessions by Dallas police officers.
In one infamous murder case, Tommy Lee Walker, an African
American man with several alibi witnesses, was threatened with a
beating if he didn't sign a confession. He was misled
(19:39):
about the consequences of signing admission of guilt and later
died in the electric chair. In nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Wade reportedly joked, quote, any prosecutor could convict a guilty man.
That takes a real pro to convict an innocent man.
Emmanuel Wade provided to prosecutors after the Civil Rights Era
provided tips for excluding African Americans and Mexican Americans from juries.
Wade left the District Attorney's office in January nineteen eighty eight,
(20:09):
and as of twenty eight, nineteen criminal defendants convicted by
his team had been exonerated through DNA evidence.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
During his time as District attorney, Wade directed police to
raid gay bars and vigorously prosecuted violators of the state
sodomy laws that banned oral and anal sex, including a
straight couple arrested in Dallas in nineteen sixty one, while
Wade may have racked up wins against badly outmatched targets
before Row he bungled. His most famous case, a murder
(20:39):
covered by Dallas radio reporter Gary Delon of klif Am and.
Speaker 7 (20:44):
Ury comes laswag who accused assassin Captain rifles lading Madad,
then scrator Dry from Elice officers Riff shot right up,
shot has long out and ri Osra pas.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Leet Osrad has shot him.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
A shot has long out.
Speaker 7 (21:11):
He shouts believed in place, Shawn has long out. Undress
sends emment Lee Osra, Lee Osra has less been shot.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
On November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty three, Dallas nightclub owner
Jack Ruby had murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin
of John Kennedy, as he was being escorted by police
in front of a nationwide TV audience. The case should
have been open and shut. Wade's staff won a conviction
in March nineteen sixty four, but the verdict and death
(21:47):
sentence Ruby received was unanimously overturned by the Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals on October fifth, nineteen sixty six, in
part because the judge should have granted a change of venue,
but also because Wade's team at Introduce improperly obtained evidence
at the trial, Ruby was awaiting a new trial, where
he died of pneumonia cancer in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
The Wade team apparently did similarly sloppy work in the
Roe v.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Wade case.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
In abortion cases, Wade's office had generally prosecuted amateur abortion
providers who had killed or badly injured their clients, and
the Dallas DA's office in the City Police had not
focused on enforcement of abortion laws on the books. Legal
experts would later characterize the Dallas DA's office filings and
the Row case as perfunctory, especially compared to the exhaustive
(22:35):
constitutional research done by Weddington and Coffee. Texas Assistant General j.
Floyd won no allies on the Supreme Court when he
opened his argument with comments considered sexist and condescending even
by the standards of nineteen seventy three. When the Supreme
Court rendered its verdict, Wade reportedly never bothered to read.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Its case justice by a pleased court.
Speaker 8 (23:00):
It's an old joe for a man argues against two
beautiful ladies like this, They're going to.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
Have the last word.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
No one laughed and a Texas legal team would win
a landmark legal victory. On January twenty second, nineteen seventy three,
news anchor Walter Cronkite made the earthshaking Roe v. Wade
decision the lead story on the CBS Evening News Good Evening.
Speaker 9 (23:25):
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.
The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that
the decision to end the pregnancy during the first three
months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government.
Thus the anti abortion laws of forty six states were
rendered unconstitutional.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Stay with us through this ad break to learn more
took a while for the country, and particularly tech seems
to absorb the news about the road decision. Supreme Court
ruling was announced on the same day as another big
(24:05):
news story that, over the next few days, absorbed attention
south of the Red River. Cronkite was on the air
when the press secretary of a former giant of Texas
politics called the newsman to tell him a former president
had died.
Speaker 8 (24:18):
Thank you very much, Tom, I'm on the right at
the moment. Can you hold the line just a second.
I'm talking to Tom Johnston, a press secretary for Lyndon Johnson,
who was reported that the thirty sixth President of the
United States died this afternoon in an ambulance plane on
the way to San Antonio, where he was taken after
being stricken at his ranch, the LBJ Wrench in Johnson City, Texas.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
News of the road decision had to compete not only
with coverage of Johnson's death in the planning for his funeral,
but also the recently negotiated American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
No one could have guessed how deeply this one decision
would reshape the makeup of the Democratic and Republican parties
over the the next half century. Americans divided almost evenly.
(25:03):
Soon after the Supreme Court announcement, a Gallop survey indicated
that forty six percent supported a woman's right to choose
and forty five percent opposed granting women access to the
abortion care. In the days following the Roe decision, reactions
were often surprising. W. A. Chriswell, the arch conservative pastor
(25:24):
of First Baptist Church in Dallas, the largest Southern Baptist
congregation in the nation, initially applauded the court. Perhaps the
pastor who had repeatedly warned thirteen years earlier that the
election of a Catholic John Kennedy as president would mark
the end of religious liberty. Was relieved that the Supreme
Court was not controlled by the Vatican. By the late
(25:45):
nineteen seventies, Chriswell would emerge as a national leader of
the religious right and would help make opposition to abortion
gay rights a centerpiece of Republican politics. Shortly after Rowe, however,
he struck a very different tune. Quote I've always felt
that it was only after the child was born and
had a life separate from its mother that became an
(26:08):
individual person, Chriswell said, And it always therefore seemed to
me that's what's best for the mother and the future
should be allowed.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Opposition to the legalization of abortion quickly formed and would
build to homicidal intensity over the decades. In nineteen seventy,
three years before the Road Decision, when abortion was still
illegal in Texas, Michael Schwartz, a student at the conservative
private University of Dallas in the suburb of Irving, staged
what might have been the first anti abortion protest in
(26:38):
American history. He held a sit in at the Planned
Parenthood headquarters not far from downtown Dallas, because the organization
provided assistance to pregnant women planning on traveling to states
where abortion was already legal, not unlike situations that Texans
faced today.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
The movement soon came to be dominated by right wing Republicans,
and the occupation of clinics soon became violent. Abortion ponents
pouring noxious chemicals into clinic ventilation systems. Anti choice extremists
set fire to clinics, bombed them, and even murdered doctors
and clinic staff providing abortion care. One set of Texans
(27:16):
may have won the decisive battle for abortion rights in
the past half century, but a different set of Texans
would lead the charge to reverse those gains.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Strangely enough, the backlash to abortion rights included Norma McCovey.
One day, Flip Benham, a leader of the extremist anti
abortion group Operation Rescue, approached her while she was autographing
copies of a book she had authored called I Am Row.
They became friends, and she later claimed that she changed
her mind about abortion when she saw photos of fetuses
(27:47):
at different stages of pregnancy. After being baptized in a
swimming pool by evangelicals in nineteen ninety five, an event
filmed and widely disseminated in the anti abortion movement. McCovey
became a popular fixture at anti broak A protests. At first,
McCovey embraced Evangelical Protestantism, and by nineteen ninety eight she
converted to Catholicism, but towards the end of her life,
(28:10):
while being interviewed for a twenty twenty documentary called Aka
Jane Rowe, McCovey confessed that her religious conversion had been
a scam and that she had been financially benefiting from
her transition into a star of the evangelical anti abortion circuit.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
Did they use you as a trophy?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Of course, I was the big fish.
Speaker 8 (28:33):
Do you think they would say they used them?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Well, I think it was a mutual thin. You know.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I checked their money and they put me out in
front of the cameras and tell me what to say.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
That's what I'm saying. McCovey died in twenty seventeen at
her home in Katie, Texas. By that point, anti abortion
politics had become orthodoxy in the Republican Party. In two
thousand and eight, the state passed the Misleadingly named Women's
Right to No Act, which mandated the physicians share misinformation
(29:05):
about alleged fetal pain during abortion with women who sought
the procedure. In twenty thirteen, a state Senator, Wendy Davis
of Fort Worth, stage of dramatic thirteen hour filibuster Senate
Bill five, legislation that banned abortion after twenty weeks, required
clinics to meet the same demanding standards as hospitals and
(29:25):
surgical centers, and required doctors performing the procedure to hold
admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Davis's filibuster stopped the bill
from being voted on before midnight June twenty fifth, the
mandated end of the legislative session. She killed the legislation
for the time being, and the pink tennis shoes she
(29:45):
wore became a symbol of abortion rights activism around the world. However,
Rick Perry called a special session of the legislature the
next day and Senate Bill five passed. Her efforts propelled
her into the twenty fourteen GUBERNATORI race, but she was
crushed by Greg Abbott by twenty one point margin.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
In recent years, Abbot has led the charge to erase
many of the gains women have won in the fight
to control their bodies.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
We will promote policies that limit the growth of government,
not the size of your dreams.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Under Abbot, Texas has passed some of the most intrusive
and extreme anti abortion laws that tightly regulate women's bodies.
In twenty twenty one, Texas passed Senate Bill eight, which
banned abortions after the six week of pregnancy. It made
performing an abortion a first or second degree felony unless
the mother's life is in danger or there is risk
of substantial impairment of a major bodily function. The vagueness
(30:44):
of that latter provision has terrified Texas doctors into not
providing care to several women who have shown up in
emergency rooms at death's door. Texas physicians have become less
willing to perform emergency abortions than they were in the
days before the Road decision, even as far as the
nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
In twenty twenty three, the Texas Supreme Court denied Kate
Cox of Dallas the right to end a pregnancy even
though our fetus suffered from full trisomy eighteen, the severe
genetic anomaly that guaranteed that the child, if it survived pregnancy,
would only live minutes. If the pregnancy continued, Cox may
have lost the ability to have children in the future.
(31:23):
She fled this state in order to obtain an abortion
where the procedure remained legal. In twenty twenty three, Amanda
Zirwaski almost died waiting for a life saving abortion when
doctors hesitated to provide care because they feared criminal prosecution.
For years, abortion right activists had chanted pro life, that's
a lie, you don't care if women die. In fact,
(31:46):
the state legislature and Governor Greg Abbott did nothing as
the deaths of pregnant women in Texas swored fifty six percent.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
In twenty twenty one. Johnston Lee Barnika, a mother of one,
was joyful when she realized she was pregnant. She hoped
to deliver a sibling for her daughter. But on September
twenty first, seventeen weeks into her pregnancy, she was miscarrying,
with the fetus pressing against her cervix and about to
exit the womb. Barnica's life was in danger, but doctors
(32:15):
at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest told her and her husband
that because of Texas' law, they could do nothing until
the fetus' heartbeat had stopped. Fearing criminal charges, doctors refused
to medically accelerate the delivery of the dying fetus and
let forty hours pass. Barnica writhed in agony, begged to
be allowed to see her daughter, and a fatal bacterial
(32:37):
infection ravaged her body. She would die three days later,
leaving her young child without a mother.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
On October twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, eighteen year old
Neva Crane was six months pregnant. She began vomiting and
she became soaked in sweat during a baby's shower at
her home in Beaumont. She too was miscaring. Her boyfriend
drove her to nearby Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, where
(33:05):
they waited for five hours in a waiting room before
doctors diagnosed her with strapped throat and gave her a
prescription for antibiotics. Sent home or conditionally worsened, Crane was
driven to another hospital in town Christa's Southeast Texas, Saint Elizabeth.
Her fever soared to one hundred and two and she
was bleeding, but her doctors continue to do nothing but
(33:26):
administer antibotics. Eventually, she was wheeled into a third emergency room.
Doctors gave her two ultrasounds, two, in their words, confirm
fetal demise. Crane's mother, who had long been opposed to abortions,
screamed at the medical staff to help her dying child.
Crane suffered for twenty hours before her heart failed.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Bernica and Crane's stories were revealed by the investigative news
outlet pro Publica just days before the twenty twenty four
presidential election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris made abortion rights a
central part of her doomed campaign. When in an anticipated
red wave expected to bring a Republican majority in the
twenty twenty two congressional elections fizzled and a number of
(34:10):
abortion rights initiatives passed even in traditional Republican strongholds like
Kansas and Ohio, Many pundits believed that a Dobbs effect
had heralded a permanent political realignment, or at least the
upcoming presidential election results. This phenomenon clearly failed to materialize
for Harris. Abortion rights referenda passed in seven states, including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada,
(34:36):
and New York in November twenty twenty four, but they
founded in Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Florida
because the support of fifty seven percent of voters fell
short of the required sixty percent supermajority. In Texas, Trump,
once a pro choice person, but now the proud instigator
of the Dobbs decision, carried fifty six percent of the vote.
(34:57):
One of the most prominent Trump supporters, University of ten
Exis PhD. Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, might soon
be in a position to see his dreams of a
national ban on the so called abortion pill mifipristone, and
even the reversal of the nineteen sixty five Griswold v.
Connecticut Supreme Court decision that overturned state laws banning control
(35:18):
pills and devices.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
When Harris lost, anti abortion extremists exuberantly celebrated Trump's triumph.
Neo Nazi Nick Fuentes, who if right wing rap artists
Kanye West got to go to dinner in twenty twenty
two of Trump saw the Republican victory as an opportunity
to reduce swomen to the status of property.
Speaker 6 (35:39):
Hey, we control your bodies. Guess what. Guys win again. Okay,
men win again, and yes, we control your bodies. Hi,
I'm your Republican congressman. Hi, I'm your Republican congressman. It's
your body, my choice.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Texas government has become big enough to regulate women's bodies
and small enough to fit inside of its citizens' bedrooms.
Even though abortion rights have always enjoyed far greater support
than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has suggested the right
of women to control their own bodies and get the
vital medical care they need to prevent bodily harm or
their premature deaths seems on the precipice of vanishing. This
(36:24):
grim reality is not deeply rooted in America's history or traditions,
but unfortunately, it is the current status quo, and Texas
has played a major role in bringing us to this place.
I'm Stephen Manchelli, I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out from the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you use them to podcasts, can
now find sources for it. Could happen. You are listed
directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is Michael Phillips, an historian in Texas. I'm the
author of the history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis,
an upcoming book on the history of eugenics in Texas
called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
And I'm Stephen Monticelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in
Texas who covers extremism and fire right movements, as well
as dark money and other fun things.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
In twenty twenty two, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito authored
the Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. Alito's majority
opinion reversed the landmark nineteen seventy three Roe v. Wade
outcome that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion
through the first trimester, permitted states to impose limits to
(00:50):
protect the health of the mother in the second trimester,
and gave states leeway to ban abortions and the final trimester.
The Road decision they in a Texas case, had survived
with modification for almost half century. In Dobbs, however, the
Supreme Court denied that women held a constitutional right to
an abortion and gave the individual states the power to
(01:13):
determine whether such procedures were legal at any point during
a pregnancy. In the Dobbs case, Alito seemed to suggest
that the concept of abortion rights was a modern aberration.
MSNBC pundit Lawrence O'Donnell zeroed in on one key phrase
in Alito's opinion.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Samuel Alito says that a right to abortion services is
not quote deeply rooted in this nation's history. Whatever one
might think about Alito as a jurist, he fails as
an historian. In fact, for much of American history, abortion
was quite accepted. When men first formed the American Medical
Association in the eighteen forties, they had to wage a
(01:55):
campaign against abortion, in part to eliminate competition for patients
from midwives, who were the primary provider of such services.
The nineteenth century anti abortion laws focused on the health
and safety of women primarily, and not the life of
the fetus, as the modern laws tend to do, and
the anti abortion campaign at the time itself had to
(02:16):
do not just with limiting women's autonomy, but also with
racism and anxiety over immigration.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Through it all, Texas became a central battlefront in the
culture wars surrounding women's bodily autonomy. One group of Texans
won women the right to an abortion in the Road case,
while another worked almost immediately to reverse Row and to
recriminalize choice. Meanwhile, a Dallas District attorney, Henry Wade, played
(02:44):
an under appreciated and under explored role in the battle.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The often dower Puritans who established the British Colony of
Massachusetts in the sixteen twenties may have created an oppressive theocracy,
but they proved surprisingly indifferent when it came to women's
decisions when and if to have children. Based on British
common law, the colonies in New England allowed abortion up
to the quickening, which is when women can first feel
(03:09):
fetal movement. In that era, it was the first clear
sign of impregnation. This moment varies widely for women, but
it generally happens during the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Women typically endured seven to eight live births, and the
experience was often grueling and life threatening, particularly as they
got older. Seeking relief and physical safety, women frequently terminated
their pregnancy in a variety of ways. From Native Americans.
White women learned which local herbs were considered a border Facians.
(03:43):
White and black women also sought advice from midwives who
provided wisdom on how to relieve mentional cramps, get pregnant,
and breastfeed. Midwives provided abortion services as well. Women attempted
to end pregnancy with varying degrees of success by consuming
penny royalty or savin juniper, or a combination of iron
(04:05):
and quinine. They took hot baths or rode horses bareback
in order to cause a miscarriage.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Before the eighteen forties, such actions provoked little or no controversy.
Even the Catholic Church adhered to the quickening standard until
after the American Civil War. By the eighteen forties, abortion
had become so deeply rooted in American history and culture
that abortionists advertise their services, albeit in euphemistic but widely
(04:31):
understood terms. These advertisements were carried in popular newspapers such
as The New York Sun and the Boston Daily Times.
Abortionists told patients they could provide quote French cures for
what was referred to as quote menstrual blockage.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
A dramatic shift happened after the eighteen forty seven founding
of the American Medical Association, established by men. The organization
began lobbing states to ban abortions In an attempt to
discredit midwives, who represented major competition for female patients, medical
journalists began to dismiss midwives and male doctors who provided
(05:08):
abortion services as dangerous, ill informed quacks. AMA members were
still unaware that germs existed, and they didn't clean their
hands or equipment when examining wounds or during surgeries, thus
causing many of their patients to die of sepsis. So
called regular doctors often used dangerous treatments, such as bleeding
(05:30):
to treat illnesses. Yet, in spite of their high body count,
AMA members persuaded major press outlets such as The New
York Times to sensationally covered cases in which women died
during abortions performed by midwives. This created momentum for the
enactment by eighteen eighty of laws banning and criminalizing abortion
(05:51):
in every single state except Kentucky, where stake courts had
already rendered such procedures illegal.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The drive against abortion wasn't all that it seemed. Abortion
opponents were worried that the wrong women, or in other words,
white wealthy women, were choosing to limit how many children
they had. The fertility rate for white women fell by
almost fifty five percent. Between eighteen fifty and nineteen thirty,
Horatio Storer, the leading anti abortion crusader at the time,
(06:21):
railed against non infanto mania among upper class white women,
a trend that the sociologist Edward A. Ross would call
quote race suicide. President Theodore Roosevelt later argued that white
women had a patriotic duty to bear at least four
children if biologically fit. Anglo Saxons quote have only one
(06:41):
child or no child at all, while the Irish, Italians
and Jews have quote eight or nine or ten. Theodore
Roosevelt warned, it is simply a question of the multiplication table.
He wrote The Future of American Civilization, Roosevelt believed depended
on reprisductive math. White women could not be allowed to
(07:02):
become voluntary non combatants in a racial demographic war.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
In the eighteen eighties, Texas was still seen by much
of the country as an unsophisticated frontier, but was home
to a highly influential doctor with a national following, Ferdinand
Eugene Daniel, who became editor of the Texas Medical Journal,
a eugenesis with a national audience. The surgeon Hats served
(07:27):
in the Confederate Army and argued that masturbation and homosexuality
were dangerous indications that individual came from a family line
that not fully evolved or was biologically regressing. Fully evolved individuals,
he believed, had less of a sex strive and kept
their minds on intellectual pursuits. Daniel argued that before the
(07:49):
Civil War, Americans had endangered their future by bringing Africans
into the country as slaves, and were compounding the error
by allowing what he called quote the dregs of yourthurope, Jews, Greeks, Italians,
and others to immigrate to the United States. The only
way to say America's biological future, he said, was by
cash strating not just gay men and masturbators who would
(08:13):
cause the evolution of white America to swing in reverse,
but also the sterilized, as sexually promiscuous, the mentally ill,
those with disabilities, and the criminal element as well.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Daniel could be surprisingly supportive of abortion rights under limited circumstances, however,
if it ensured that well off white women had long
and fruitful careers as mothers. Daniel wrote approvingly of how
electric currents might be used to end ectopic pregnancies cases
in which fertilize eggs attached to the fallopian tubes or
(08:45):
elsewhere outside the uterus, which can be dangerous and can
kill or leave a woman infertile. Both outcomes undesirable for
a eugenicist like Daniel, who cared for fit white patients.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
In eighteen eighty seven issue, he published account of a
debate among doctors held by the Medical Society and Terrell Texas.
The topic was whether saving the life of a mother
was the only acceptable reason to allow an abortion. Some
doctors in the debate argued that abortion was morally acceptable
for quote an intelligent and chaste woman who had gotten
(09:20):
pregnant after being deceived by a scoundrel into participating in
pre marital sex.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Because of sexual double standards. Several of these Texas doctors
argued that such women would no longer be considered a
socially acceptable mate by a high status man, and thus
should be denied the chance to become an quote, ornament
and useful member of society. Regardless of Texas's abortion law,
a surprising number of doctors in the state performed abortions
(09:47):
not only to save women's lives, but to save the
reputations and to relieve them of the financial and physical
hardships of unwanted pregnancies.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
In eighteen ninety nine, in Waco, Texas, Mary Wheat discovered
she was pregnant and sought an abortion. The procedure had
been illegal in Texas since eighteen fifty six, a year
before the recently formed American Medical Association began a campaign
to prohibit abortion in every state. By eighteen eighty, the
(10:15):
AMA achieved its goal. In spite of the ubiquitous spans,
abortions were frequent and there were a large number of
doctors willing to provide the prohibited medical procedure. Wheat, called
Maddie by friends and family, found such a physician, doctor S. M. Jenkins.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Texas law at the time had not eliminated abortion, but
instead had driven the practice underground. Because of this, doctors
received little or no training in how to perform such procedures.
That proved fatal for Matty Wheat. Doctor Jenkins performed the
abortion in the home of woman identified by the local
press only as Missus Smith, and he made a mistake.
(10:53):
She got increasingly and dangerously ill, and then after ten
days of this ordeal, Jenkins rushed Wheat into Waco's city hospital,
he claimed she was suffering a severe attack of dysentery.
She then died, and an autopsy revealed a bowel perforation
which had been left during the botched abortion. Law enforcement
arrested Jenkins on November first for the operation, charging him
(11:15):
with murder.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Jenkins's trial did not go as prosecutor's planned. Jenkins testified
that the fetus Wheat was caring had died and that
the abortion was an attempt to save her life. According
to a reporter for the Euston Post, Jenkinson's attorney were
pleased with how the trial was unfolding.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
The defense seemed to be well satisfied with their showing
so far, and public opinion had changed considerably in favor
of the defendant, the newspaper told its readers. But then
the trial came to an abrupt and shocking end.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
While the court was in session, Hugh Wheat, the brother
of the deceased woman, stood aimed at gun at doctor
Jenkins and pulled the trigger. A bullet fatally struck the
physician just underneath the ribs. As the assassin fled, Jenkins's
brother in law, John Halligan, shot back, but missed that
A murder trial ended in another homicide is not surprising
(12:11):
in a place as violent as nineteenth century Texas, but
because of the modern image of Texas as reliably and
even harshly anti abortion, it might be startling that the
public one hundred and twenty five years ago actually sympathized
with a doctor who faced prison after his patient died
as a result of an incompetently performed abortion.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Abortion politics were far more unpredictable in the American past
than Samuel Alito had asserted. In eighteen seventy three, anti
vice activist Anthony Comstock of Connecticut successfully lobbied the Congress
the past legislation known as the Compstack Act that made
distribution to the US mail or common carriers of birth
control devices or any information about birth control or how
(12:55):
to obtain an abortion, a federal crime.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Social reformers noted that bearing multi children often shorted women's
lives and drove their families into poverty, and they battled
for women to gain control over the reproductive choices. One
such reformer was Margaret Sanger of New York, the daughter
of a radical Irish father and mother, who died at
fifty after burying eleven children. Sanger coined the term birth
(13:19):
control in nineteen fifteen, and, just before World War One,
launched a movement that promoted contraception as sexual and political
reform aimed to reduce human misery. She had to flee
the country in nineteen fourteen because her publication The Woman
Rebel intentionally defied the Comstock Law and promoted the distribution
of information about contraception through the United States Postal Service.
(13:42):
When she returned to this country, she was an international
celebrity for women's rights and free speech, and she opened
a family planning clinic, which faced continual police harassment. Lack
of access to birth control, sang Her complained led to abortion.
As she has said in a nighteth Seen fifty seven
interview with reporter Mike Wallace on CBS News.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
Why did you do it? I realized that you had
an intellectual conviction that birth control was a boon demand kind.
But I'm sure that others have that conviction too, And
so what I'd like to know is this, what events,
what emotions in your life made Margaret Sanger a crusader
for birth control.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Well, mister Wallace, it is hard to say that any
one thing has made one do this or that I
think from the very beginning.
Speaker 6 (14:33):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I came of a large family. My mother died young,
eleven children made depression on me. As a child. I
was a trained nurse, went among the people. I saw
women who asked to have some means whereby they wouldn't
have to have another pregnancy too early after the last child,
the last abortion, which many of them had. So there's
(14:58):
a number of things that are one after the other.
It really made you feel that you had to do something.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
It may surprise many today that the woman who founded
the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into Planned
Parenthood of America, actually opposed abortion and advocated easing access
to birth control as a means of making advantage. Meanwhile,
around the time of Sanger's interview with Mike Wallace, Texas
doctors became friendlier to abortion rights. But before we get
(15:25):
into that, a quick ad break.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
In nineteen sixty three, the Houston Chronicles survey doctors about
their views of abortion. About eighteen thousand abortions took place
in Texas every year, the newspaper reported, and that quote,
an increasing number of doctors believed abortions should be legal
for reasons beyond saving the life of the Mother Texas
(15:59):
women fought fiercely for the right to control their bodies.
In North Texas, the Women's Alliance, the first Unitarian Universalist
church in Dallas, launched an education campaign about the need
for the state to reform its abortion laws. Meanwhile, doctor
U Savage of Fort Worth, the president of State Association
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, lobbied the Texas Medical Association to
(16:22):
draft a statement supporting abortion rights. The state's abortion ban was,
he said, in conflict with actual practice of reputable hospitals
across the state. Doctors regularly provided abortion care when a
woman's life was in danger, and they interpreted that mandate broadly.
In nineteen sixty nine, members of the Texas Medical Association
(16:45):
who were surveyed approved liberalization of abortion laws by an
overwhelming vote of four thousand, four hundred and thirty five
to five hundred and thirty six.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
The Texas legislature even considered loosening abortion restrictions in its
nineteen sixty seven and ninety teen sixty eight sessions, although
neither effort was successful in spite of support from conservative
state Senator George park House and a growing number of
churches and physicians. In the end, activists carried the day.
Two Texas lawyers, Linda Confe and Sarah Weddington, took up
(17:17):
the cause of Norma McCovey, who had sought an abortion
in Dallas. Almost a century earlier, Texas doctors had argued
whether to allow an abortion for unmarried upper class women
so they could contribute to the gene pool by bearing
children with comparably privileged men. Those Victorian doctors did not
have someone like McCovey in mind.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Largely Neglected by her parents, McCovey had suffered abuse at
the hands of men throughout her life and was a
frequent drug user. After giving up one child for adoption
and having another taken by her mother, in nineteen sixty nine,
she was pregnant for a third time while she was
living in Dallas. McCovey tried to end the pregnancy herself
(17:58):
with a home remedy, a peanut and cast royal, but
she only succeeded in making herself nauseous. She's eventually told
about an illegal clinic, but when she got there, Dallas
police had already shut down the clinic quote nobody was there,
she said later. It was an old dentist office. Then
I saw dry blood everywhere and smell this awful smell.
(18:20):
She believed that she falsely claimed that she had been
gang raped by African American men. A doctor might be
willing to provide her an abortion. She was unsuccessful, but
a doctor referred her to an attorney who connected her
with a pair of lawyers who were seeking to challenge
the Texas anti abortion law. These attorneys, Linda Coffee and
(18:40):
Sarah Weddington, filed a class action suit against Dallas District
Attorney Henry Wade, claiming that the Texas anti abortion law,
which allowed the procedure only to save the patient's life,
violated the constitutional right of privacy.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Before his name would forever be linked with the history
of American abortion law. By the time of Norman mccovey's suit,
Henry Wade enjoyed a reputation as one of the most
successful district attorneys in the country. His reputation in Dallas
was built on ruthlessness, racism, and the advantages a brutally
unfair criminal justice system in Texas gave him. Wade would
(19:17):
claim a ninety percent conviction rate, but in many of
those cases he faced off against poor defendants that were bullied,
lied to, and coerced into confessions by Dallas police officers.
In one infamous murder case, Tommy Lee Walker, an African
American man with several alibi witnesses, was threatened with a
beating if he didn't sign a confession. He was misled
(19:39):
about the consequences of signing admission of guilt and later
died in the electric chair. In nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Wade reportedly joked, quote, any prosecutor could convict a guilty man.
That takes a real pro to convict an innocent man.
Emmanuel Wade provided to prosecutors after the Civil Rights Era
provided tips for excluding African Americans and Mexican Americans from juries.
Wade left the District Attorney's office in January nineteen eighty eight,
(20:09):
and as of twenty eight, nineteen criminal defendants convicted by
his team had been exonerated through DNA evidence.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
During his time as District attorney, Wade directed police to
raid gay bars and vigorously prosecuted violators of the state
sodomy laws that banned oral and anal sex, including a
straight couple arrested in Dallas in nineteen sixty one, while
Wade may have racked up wins against badly outmatched targets
before Row he bungled. His most famous case, a murder
(20:39):
covered by Dallas radio reporter Gary Delon of klif Am and.
Speaker 7 (20:44):
Ury comes laswag who accused assassin Captain rifles lading Madad,
then scrator Dry from Elice officers Riff shot right up,
shot has long out and ri Osra pas.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Leet Osrad has shot him.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
A shot has long out.
Speaker 7 (21:11):
He shouts believed in place, Shawn has long out. Undress
sends emment Lee Osra, Lee Osra has less been shot.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
On November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty three, Dallas nightclub owner
Jack Ruby had murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin
of John Kennedy, as he was being escorted by police
in front of a nationwide TV audience. The case should
have been open and shut. Wade's staff won a conviction
in March nineteen sixty four, but the verdict and death
(21:47):
sentence Ruby received was unanimously overturned by the Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals on October fifth, nineteen sixty six, in
part because the judge should have granted a change of venue,
but also because Wade's team at Introduce improperly obtained evidence
at the trial, Ruby was awaiting a new trial, where
he died of pneumonia cancer in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
The Wade team apparently did similarly sloppy work in the
Roe v.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Wade case.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
In abortion cases, Wade's office had generally prosecuted amateur abortion
providers who had killed or badly injured their clients, and
the Dallas DA's office in the City Police had not
focused on enforcement of abortion laws on the books. Legal
experts would later characterize the Dallas DA's office filings and
the Row case as perfunctory, especially compared to the exhaustive
(22:35):
constitutional research done by Weddington and Coffee. Texas Assistant General j.
Floyd won no allies on the Supreme Court when he
opened his argument with comments considered sexist and condescending even
by the standards of nineteen seventy three. When the Supreme
Court rendered its verdict, Wade reportedly never bothered to read.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Its case justice by a pleased court.
Speaker 8 (23:00):
It's an old joe for a man argues against two
beautiful ladies like this, They're going to.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
Have the last word.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
No one laughed and a Texas legal team would win
a landmark legal victory. On January twenty second, nineteen seventy three,
news anchor Walter Cronkite made the earthshaking Roe v. Wade
decision the lead story on the CBS Evening News Good Evening.
Speaker 9 (23:25):
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.
The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that
the decision to end the pregnancy during the first three
months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government.
Thus the anti abortion laws of forty six states were
rendered unconstitutional.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Stay with us through this ad break to learn more
took a while for the country, and particularly tech seems
to absorb the news about the road decision. Supreme Court
ruling was announced on the same day as another big
(24:05):
news story that, over the next few days, absorbed attention
south of the Red River. Cronkite was on the air
when the press secretary of a former giant of Texas
politics called the newsman to tell him a former president
had died.
Speaker 8 (24:18):
Thank you very much, Tom, I'm on the right at
the moment. Can you hold the line just a second.
I'm talking to Tom Johnston, a press secretary for Lyndon Johnson,
who was reported that the thirty sixth President of the
United States died this afternoon in an ambulance plane on
the way to San Antonio, where he was taken after
being stricken at his ranch, the LBJ Wrench in Johnson City, Texas.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
News of the road decision had to compete not only
with coverage of Johnson's death in the planning for his funeral,
but also the recently negotiated American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
No one could have guessed how deeply this one decision
would reshape the makeup of the Democratic and Republican parties
over the the next half century. Americans divided almost evenly.
(25:03):
Soon after the Supreme Court announcement, a Gallop survey indicated
that forty six percent supported a woman's right to choose
and forty five percent opposed granting women access to the
abortion care. In the days following the Roe decision, reactions
were often surprising. W. A. Chriswell, the arch conservative pastor
(25:24):
of First Baptist Church in Dallas, the largest Southern Baptist
congregation in the nation, initially applauded the court. Perhaps the
pastor who had repeatedly warned thirteen years earlier that the
election of a Catholic John Kennedy as president would mark
the end of religious liberty. Was relieved that the Supreme
Court was not controlled by the Vatican. By the late
(25:45):
nineteen seventies, Chriswell would emerge as a national leader of
the religious right and would help make opposition to abortion
gay rights a centerpiece of Republican politics. Shortly after Rowe, however,
he struck a very different tune. Quote I've always felt
that it was only after the child was born and
had a life separate from its mother that became an
(26:08):
individual person, Chriswell said, And it always therefore seemed to
me that's what's best for the mother and the future
should be allowed.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Opposition to the legalization of abortion quickly formed and would
build to homicidal intensity over the decades. In nineteen seventy,
three years before the Road Decision, when abortion was still
illegal in Texas, Michael Schwartz, a student at the conservative
private University of Dallas in the suburb of Irving, staged
what might have been the first anti abortion protest in
(26:38):
American history. He held a sit in at the Planned
Parenthood headquarters not far from downtown Dallas, because the organization
provided assistance to pregnant women planning on traveling to states
where abortion was already legal, not unlike situations that Texans
faced today.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
The movement soon came to be dominated by right wing Republicans,
and the occupation of clinics soon became violent. Abortion ponents
pouring noxious chemicals into clinic ventilation systems. Anti choice extremists
set fire to clinics, bombed them, and even murdered doctors
and clinic staff providing abortion care. One set of Texans
(27:16):
may have won the decisive battle for abortion rights in
the past half century, but a different set of Texans
would lead the charge to reverse those gains.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Strangely enough, the backlash to abortion rights included Norma McCovey.
One day, Flip Benham, a leader of the extremist anti
abortion group Operation Rescue, approached her while she was autographing
copies of a book she had authored called I Am Row.
They became friends, and she later claimed that she changed
her mind about abortion when she saw photos of fetuses
(27:47):
at different stages of pregnancy. After being baptized in a
swimming pool by evangelicals in nineteen ninety five, an event
filmed and widely disseminated in the anti abortion movement. McCovey
became a popular fixture at anti broak A protests. At first,
McCovey embraced Evangelical Protestantism, and by nineteen ninety eight she
converted to Catholicism, but towards the end of her life,
(28:10):
while being interviewed for a twenty twenty documentary called Aka
Jane Rowe, McCovey confessed that her religious conversion had been
a scam and that she had been financially benefiting from
her transition into a star of the evangelical anti abortion circuit.
Speaker 6 (28:28):
Did they use you as a trophy?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Of course, I was the big fish.
Speaker 8 (28:33):
Do you think they would say they used them?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Well, I think it was a mutual thin. You know.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I checked their money and they put me out in
front of the cameras and tell me what to say.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
That's what I'm saying. McCovey died in twenty seventeen at
her home in Katie, Texas. By that point, anti abortion
politics had become orthodoxy in the Republican Party. In two
thousand and eight, the state passed the Misleadingly named Women's
Right to No Act, which mandated the physicians share misinformation
(29:05):
about alleged fetal pain during abortion with women who sought
the procedure. In twenty thirteen, a state Senator, Wendy Davis
of Fort Worth, stage of dramatic thirteen hour filibuster Senate
Bill five, legislation that banned abortion after twenty weeks, required
clinics to meet the same demanding standards as hospitals and
(29:25):
surgical centers, and required doctors performing the procedure to hold
admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Davis's filibuster stopped the bill
from being voted on before midnight June twenty fifth, the
mandated end of the legislative session. She killed the legislation
for the time being, and the pink tennis shoes she
(29:45):
wore became a symbol of abortion rights activism around the world. However,
Rick Perry called a special session of the legislature the
next day and Senate Bill five passed. Her efforts propelled
her into the twenty fourteen GUBERNATORI race, but she was
crushed by Greg Abbott by twenty one point margin.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
In recent years, Abbot has led the charge to erase
many of the gains women have won in the fight
to control their bodies.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
We will promote policies that limit the growth of government,
not the size of your dreams.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Under Abbot, Texas has passed some of the most intrusive
and extreme anti abortion laws that tightly regulate women's bodies.
In twenty twenty one, Texas passed Senate Bill eight, which
banned abortions after the six week of pregnancy. It made
performing an abortion a first or second degree felony unless
the mother's life is in danger or there is risk
of substantial impairment of a major bodily function. The vagueness
(30:44):
of that latter provision has terrified Texas doctors into not
providing care to several women who have shown up in
emergency rooms at death's door. Texas physicians have become less
willing to perform emergency abortions than they were in the
days before the Road decision, even as far as the
nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
In twenty twenty three, the Texas Supreme Court denied Kate
Cox of Dallas the right to end a pregnancy even
though our fetus suffered from full trisomy eighteen, the severe
genetic anomaly that guaranteed that the child, if it survived pregnancy,
would only live minutes. If the pregnancy continued, Cox may
have lost the ability to have children in the future.
(31:23):
She fled this state in order to obtain an abortion
where the procedure remained legal. In twenty twenty three, Amanda
Zirwaski almost died waiting for a life saving abortion when
doctors hesitated to provide care because they feared criminal prosecution.
For years, abortion right activists had chanted pro life, that's
a lie, you don't care if women die. In fact,
(31:46):
the state legislature and Governor Greg Abbott did nothing as
the deaths of pregnant women in Texas swored fifty six percent.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
In twenty twenty one. Johnston Lee Barnika, a mother of one,
was joyful when she realized she was pregnant. She hoped
to deliver a sibling for her daughter. But on September
twenty first, seventeen weeks into her pregnancy, she was miscarrying,
with the fetus pressing against her cervix and about to
exit the womb. Barnica's life was in danger, but doctors
(32:15):
at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest told her and her husband
that because of Texas' law, they could do nothing until
the fetus' heartbeat had stopped. Fearing criminal charges, doctors refused
to medically accelerate the delivery of the dying fetus and
let forty hours pass. Barnica writhed in agony, begged to
be allowed to see her daughter, and a fatal bacterial
(32:37):
infection ravaged her body. She would die three days later,
leaving her young child without a mother.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
On October twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, eighteen year old
Neva Crane was six months pregnant. She began vomiting and
she became soaked in sweat during a baby's shower at
her home in Beaumont. She too was miscaring. Her boyfriend
drove her to nearby Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, where
(33:05):
they waited for five hours in a waiting room before
doctors diagnosed her with strapped throat and gave her a
prescription for antibiotics. Sent home or conditionally worsened, Crane was
driven to another hospital in town Christa's Southeast Texas, Saint Elizabeth.
Her fever soared to one hundred and two and she
was bleeding, but her doctors continue to do nothing but
(33:26):
administer antibotics. Eventually, she was wheeled into a third emergency room.
Doctors gave her two ultrasounds, two, in their words, confirm
fetal demise. Crane's mother, who had long been opposed to abortions,
screamed at the medical staff to help her dying child.
Crane suffered for twenty hours before her heart failed.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Bernica and Crane's stories were revealed by the investigative news
outlet pro Publica just days before the twenty twenty four
presidential election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris made abortion rights a
central part of her doomed campaign. When in an anticipated
red wave expected to bring a Republican majority in the
twenty twenty two congressional elections fizzled and a number of
(34:10):
abortion rights initiatives passed even in traditional Republican strongholds like
Kansas and Ohio, Many pundits believed that a Dobbs effect
had heralded a permanent political realignment, or at least the
upcoming presidential election results. This phenomenon clearly failed to materialize
for Harris. Abortion rights referenda passed in seven states, including Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada,
(34:36):
and New York in November twenty twenty four, but they
founded in Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Florida
because the support of fifty seven percent of voters fell
short of the required sixty percent supermajority. In Texas, Trump,
once a pro choice person, but now the proud instigator
of the Dobbs decision, carried fifty six percent of the vote.
(34:57):
One of the most prominent Trump supporters, University of ten
Exis PhD. Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, might soon
be in a position to see his dreams of a
national ban on the so called abortion pill mifipristone, and
even the reversal of the nineteen sixty five Griswold v.
Connecticut Supreme Court decision that overturned state laws banning control
(35:18):
pills and devices.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
When Harris lost, anti abortion extremists exuberantly celebrated Trump's triumph.
Neo Nazi Nick Fuentes, who if right wing rap artists
Kanye West got to go to dinner in twenty twenty
two of Trump saw the Republican victory as an opportunity
to reduce swomen to the status of property.
Speaker 6 (35:39):
Hey, we control your bodies. Guess what. Guys win again. Okay,
men win again, and yes, we control your bodies. Hi,
I'm your Republican congressman. Hi, I'm your Republican congressman. It's
your body, my choice.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Texas government has become big enough to regulate women's bodies
and small enough to fit inside of its citizens' bedrooms.
Even though abortion rights have always enjoyed far greater support
than Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has suggested the right
of women to control their own bodies and get the
vital medical care they need to prevent bodily harm or
their premature deaths seems on the precipice of vanishing. This
(36:24):
grim reality is not deeply rooted in America's history or traditions,
but unfortunately, it is the current status quo, and Texas
has played a major role in bringing us to this place.
I'm Stephen Manchelli, I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
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