Abortion Restrictionists Go Bold
No more baseball fight-style standoffs in the abortion wars. Plus: so-called constitutional crises, Bernie's credit paternalism, and GoT redux on the Reason Podcast.
The political/culture wars are once again at full throttle as Georgia becomes the latest in a series of states to enact serious abortion restrictions, in this case a ban on the procedure when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Is the longstanding legal/cultural consensus (or political standoff) about abortion—that it should be legally available during the first trimester—giving way to a more extreme agenda by polarized advocates on each side? That's the thorny question underlying this week's Editors' Roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast, featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman and Matt Welch.
Other items up for discussion include our latest "constitutional crisis," the most recent installment of that television show, and also this tweet:
In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for people who charged usurious interest rates. Today we don't need the hellfire, but we do need a national usury law that caps interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent. pic.twitter.com/i4vnZOwFB2
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 13, 2019
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Audio production by Ian Keyser.
Relevant links from the show:
"'Heartbeat Bills' Banning Almost All Abortions Are Back," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
"Let Midwives and Nurse Practitioners Provide First-Trimester Abortions, Says Federal Court," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
"The Abortion Divide Shows a Fight Growing Ever More Bitter," by Glenn Garvin
"'Record Low Are 'Pro-choice,' Yet 75 Percent Support Abortion Rights," by Nick Gillespie
"Abortion & Libertarianism: Nick Gillespie, Ronald Bailey, Mollie Hemingway, and Katherine Mangu-Ward," by Nick Gillespie and Joshua Swain
"Debate: Libertarians Should Support Abortion Rights," by Tibor Machan and Karl Pflock
"Wishing for a Constitutional Crisis," by Keith Whittington
"The Real Constitutional Crisis Is Congress' Unwillingness to Do Its Job," by Matt Welch
"Forget Robert Mueller. Trump's Attacks On Syria Are a Reminder We're Already in a Constitutional Crisis," by Peter Suderman
"Firing the FBI Director Is Not a 'Constitutional Crisis,'" by Jacob Sullum
"Bernie Sanders' New Plan Will Make It Tougher for Poor People To Get Credit Cards," by Peter Suderman
"Three Cheers for Usury," by Katherine Mangu-Ward
"Payday of Reckoning," by Katherine Mangu-Ward
"In Defense of Payday Loans," by Nick Gillespie and Jim Epstein
"On Game of Thrones, Absolute Power Corrupts Daenerys Targaryen Absolutely," by Robby Soave
What are we consuming this week?
Matt Welch
- NBA Conference Semi-Finals
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Katherine Mangu-Ward
Nick Gillespie
