Part 1 (55 minutes):

The hosts take on one of the Supreme Court’s most famous decisions, Roe v. Wade. In this first episode of a two-part series, they look at the legal and factual origins of Roe v. Wade. They also discuss how Roe was weaponized by the conservative legal movement to rally against an interpretation of the Constitution that allows for flexibility in favor of a far more rigid approach.

• Apple Podcasts

• Stitcher

• Spotify

Part 2 (61 minutes):

In the second part of a two-episode series on abortion rights, the hosts discuss Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 case in which the Supreme Court made it easier for states to restrict abortion access so long as abortion regulations don’t create an “undue burden.” The vague standard set lawmakers on a new path of attacking abortion access and fueled anti-abortion groups’ efforts to spread stigma and misinformation, setting up Roe v. Wade for a death by a thousand cuts.

• Apple Podcasts

• Stitcher

• Spotify

(it's impossible to link to podcasts in a simple or easy way...if anyone has a better way of doing this I'm all ears...)

5-4 (pronounced "five to four", as in the vote total of a closely-divided court case from 9 justices) is one of my favorite podcasts. It's lawyers dissecting Supreme Court cases in a way that is very understandable to non-lawyers, from an explicitly and unabashedly left-wing perspective.

This is an extremely informative primer on the entire arc of abortion rights in the US, from the actual case everyone has heard of (Roe v Wade in the 1970s) to the case in the 1990s that actually superseded Roe and a case from last year that was seen as a victory because it upheld a previous case but it also contained a poison pill that significantly weakened that precedent.

Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are certified) to legislate matters of abortion directly. This seems likely to lead to a substantially less restrictive stance toward abortion in one of the most restrictive member nations of the EU. It would still likely end up being slightly more restrictive law than in the United States.

Ireland's history regarding abortion's legality is explicitly tied as a counter-reaction to Roe V. Wade, the American supreme court case that found abortion legal until the third trimester under a rights-balancing test under the 9th and 14th amendments (which--implicitly--enshrines a right to privacy and--explicitly--expands that right to the state level, respectively). While this balancing test was later changed to a standard requiring "fetal viability," states and activists through the United States organized against the Supreme Court's decision to create new limitations on abortion.

So today, I'm seeking to sidestep some of that history to wrestle with the core underlying balancing test Roe v Wade and other similar legal frameworks have tried to answer: when is a pregnant woman's rights more or less important than the life of the living being growing inside of her? In what circumstances (if any) should a woman be allowed to choose to end her pregnancy?