Nevertheless, she persisted: the futility of restricting abortion

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing.

You a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day. Yeah. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent.

To $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow. 135 gigabytes of network busy taxes and fees extra. Cmintmobile.com.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. The scientists and engineers behind the spectacular successes of America's early space program have often gone overlooked. We reflect on the life and work of Katherine Johnson, who faced more challenges than most. And every year, the Economist compiles its Glass Ceiling Index, putting some numbers to the challenges that women face in the workplace. Ranked on pay education, childcare representation in the C Suite. Which countries fared best and worst? First up, though, America's 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that women should be allowed access to legal abortions didn't end controversy about that right. If anything, it fanned flames that still burn today. Angry protests, fierce political arguments, court cases designed to test the ruling's limits, and politicians who hint at rolling the decision back. Every human being is entitled to lie.

Schizophrenic paradox Roe vs. Wade has subjected.

This country to, for now, more than 40 years.

Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.

A new case before the Supreme Court has may yield that kind of opportunity. This week, justices heard arguments about a Louisiana law that could end up closing two of the state's three abortion clinics.

In the courtroom today, it's clear that the stakes in this case are both the rights of women and the rule of law.

The law requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges, the ability to transfer patients to a nearby hospital. The stated aim is to ensure continuous treatment for women who develop complications.

These doctors and these clinics have no idea what their complication rates are.

In practice, the law would make it more difficult for clinics to provide abortions, limiting access for women.

It has nothing to do with the health and safety of women. All it will do is delay care for women, put abortion care out of reach for many women.

Kathleen Pittman is the director of the Louisiana Clinic. That's at the heart of the case.

If the admitting privileges requirement guidelines goes into effect, it would be devastating, chipping away at Roe v. Wade. Once it is successful in one area, it's going to spread throughout the United States.

In America, abortion rights seem to be constantly under threat. Internationally, the picture looks very different.

Cases like Louisiana can give the impression that abortion rights are regressing around the world, and that's not the case.

Sasha Nauta is the Economist's public policy editor.

The bigger picture around the world is actually a surprisingly positive one. Very recently, just last month, Thailand's court said that banning abortion is against the Constitution. Last year, we saw South Korea's Constitutional Court make very much the same conclusion. And even in Latin America, which is where abortion rights are most of the under threat, it looks like Argentina will very soon legalize abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, which is a pro choice research group, estimate that between 2000 and 2017, 27 countries made it easier for women to get abortions, whereas only one made it harder. So the abortion rights around the world are actually moving in the right direction, partly in laws and partly in the types of abortion that are available to women.

Well, what do you mean by that? What's the distinction between types as far as the law might be concerned?

One of the most interesting shifts is from surgical abortion to so called medical abortion. Most abortion used to be done surgically. That is now changing rapidly to doing it essentially by taking pills. And that opens up all sorts of possibilities. I mean, for women in rich world countries that have access to abortion, it simply means that they can take, you know, the pills in the comfort of their own home or, you know, in a more private way. But also in countries where abortion is completely illegal, it opens up all sorts of possibilities, such as getting hold of the pills on the black market or through the Internet and having access to abortion.

So what does that scenario look like then for women who essentially take it upon Themselves.

Well, to get a better idea of that, I went to the border between America and Mexico. I visited a border city called Reynosa, which is favored by American women as well as Mexican women, to get pills in a pharmacy. Right? So essentially you walk into a pharmacy, you say, I'd like the pill that makes my period come back and then they sell it to you for 990 pesos, so about $50. That medication was initially designed for treating stomach ulcers. So in parts of the world, particularly in Latin America, it is very easy to get hold. In America, for example, it is heavily regulated. So what you see is American women who struggle to get access to abortion, going over the border to buy this relatively affordable drug. On the back of that, a number of NGOs are seeing the opportunity here as well, essentially prescribing pills online and getting the pills sent from, for example, a pharmacy in India straight to people's doors. The leading organization, really a non profit called Women on Web, which operates from Austria, says it gets around 150,000 requests for help each year of women, particularly in countries like Brazil, Poland and Thailand, asking for abortion pills. So the possibilities that this opens up for women really are very substantial. Whether you live in Britain or in Brazil, anyone really with access to the Internet and a post box could theory get access to abortion.

A lot of the discussion about abortion and clinics in the past has been about the relative safety rather than the sort of the back alley operations and so on. In the case of the sort of Google searches and the DIY abortions that we're talking about now, what are the safety concerns?

The main safety concerns are around are you taking legit pills and are you taking them in both the right manner and in the proper cocktail? There is a black market which also includes fake pills which obviously aren't going to work or worse might do damage. And the second thing is that, you know, of course, ideally you want some medical supervision, if nothing else, to understand at what term of your pregnancy you are at and whether you have any reason why you may not respond well to these pills. That said, we now know that these pills have been around for long enough to say that if taken in the right way, well over 95%, I think 97% of pregnancies before 10 weeks are terminated without any complications. Even if an abortion like this fails that is half complete, you know, the complications are much, much, much less severe than the old way. In the days of horrible coat hangers, etc. One of the most common injuries were things like perforated uteruses and serious, serious, life threatening haemorrhages. Because of this shift to pills, the types of complications that you're seeing are infinitely less serious and life threatening. And thanks to that, since 1990, we've seen the number of women dying as a result of botched abortions, most of which are obviously illegal, dropping by 42%, which is a huge jump, in my opinion.

So the idea here is that you can make abortions illegal, but that won't stop women from getting them.

What we've seen around the world, and doctors have said this for ages, is that a woman who needs an abortion will find a way to get an abortion. And the stats underline this in countries where abortion is mostly illegal, just as many women have abortions as in countries where it is mostly widely available. So 37 in 1000 women have an abortion each year in countries where it's mostly legal, compared to 34 in countries where it's widely available. So my message to lawmakers would be, you can make lives of women more difficult and indeed, you can endanger their health, and you do by making abortion harder to get, but you're not actually going to reduce the abortion rate.

Sasha, thank you very much for joining us.

Pleasure.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but.

Because they are hard.

Because that goal will serve to organize.

And measure the best of our energies and skills.

At the start of the 1960s, America began a dramatic expansion of its space program. It would require the finest minds solving the thorniest problems in physics, computing and engineering. Among those bright sparks were a few that were already having to overcome challenges of a different kind.

Almost as soon as she got to NASA, Katherine Johnson made an impression on it.

Ann Rowe is our obituary's editor.

She'd only been two weeks in the job when an engineer came up to her with a sheaf of papers and asked her to check his calculations. And she realized that there was an error involving a square root. And she also realized that it was going to be incredibly difficult to tell him about this. There were two reasons. First, she was a woman. The other reason was that she was a colored woman, as she thought of herself. So if she was going to correct this man, she had to dress it up extremely carefully. And so she asked him, is it just perhaps possible that you might have made a mistake? He didn't answer her directly. He didn't admit that he had. But she could see from the way he blushed to the roots of his hair that he had agreed with her. He was in the wrong and she was in the right. She was always an extremely talented child. She was interested in numbers from the very beginning. And she would count everything around the house that could be counted. If she was doing the dishes, she would count the plate, she would count the silverware, she would count the number of steps going to church. And when she went to school, it was obvious that she was so bright that very few people could teach her. When she was still in high school, she was attending a class in analytic geometry, which had to be laid on especially for her. And she was the only pupil at it. So there was something that had to be done with such a wonderful brain. She had joined the outfit at NASA because, exceptionally, they were taking on black mathematicians. But normally it was extremely difficult as a black to get into professional work. And so she was a rarity. Increasingly, she was given all the equations and calculations that the men had to make. Check them over. She was still working, though, in an extremely segregated and misogynistic environment. It was segregated because she couldn't eat in the cafe. And then increasingly, the flight engineers were having closed door meetings where they were discussing the aeronautics of spacecraft. And she was not allowed in there. And she asked why. They said, the girls don't usually go. She said, why not? Is there a law against it? They said, no, and they had to let her in. So she became the first woman who attended those meetings. Her greatest achievements at NASA were all to do with the early days of America's journeys into space. The first flight she helped a good deal with was Alan Shepard's, which was the first American manned flight.

This is Freedom 7.

The feral is GO1. Cabin at 14 psi.

Oxygen is GO.

She made sure not only that the launch window was in the right place, but also that he could get back safely to Earth. Because that was always the main problem. Once the flights became manned, you had to get your people back safely. The next one was John Glenn. This was in 1962. He was the first American to orbit the Earth. Roger Cape is go and I am go. Our capsule is in good shape. Both systems are go. And he was extremely worried before his flight. Because at that time they had just brought in electronic computers to NASA. It was this electronic computer that was supposed to be calculating all the trajectories of his spacecraft to and from and around the Earth. He didn't trust it. And he said to the people at NASA, unless the girl checks it. And this was Katherine Johnson, I won't go.

Main suit is on green. Shoot is out in reef condition at 10,800ft and beautiful shooting. Chute looks good on O2 emergency and the chute looks very good.

Another expedition she was much involved in was the first landings on the moon. And again she had to work out how they would land on the moon, the trajectory of the spacecraft over the moon, the safe landing sites, the exact time of arriving, taking off and then getting back to Earth. She was never too bothered by being overlooked. What was important was to do the job as far as she was concerned. She was involved in such important work and she so enjoyed it that that was all that mattered to her. On the other hand, the fact that she was overlooked really did bother other people increasingly, especially as, in fact, as we've got into the present century and people have wanted to level the. The field of accolades, if you like, between men and women and between blacks and whites. And it became very clear that not only she, but two dozen or so other black mathematicians working at NASA had been absolutely intrinsic to America's space effort and simply hadn't been recognized.

Katherine G. Johnson.

This acknowledgement can came first to the fore when in 2015, President Barack Obama presented Katherine Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And then the next year, 2016, there was a film made from a book called Hidden Figures.

I have never seen a mind like.

The one your daughter has.

You have to see.

What she becomes, which for the first time really revealed the identities and the hard work of all the women who had been involved in the space program, particularly the black women. And after then she became a most celebrated figure. And there were huge numbers of honorary doctorates. There were invitations to speak everywhere. And she seemed to grow in stature and elegance and dignity as it went on, not only because people were aware of all the women work she'd done, but also because of the simple way she approached it, the lack of acrimony, the lack of bitterness that she'd been overlooked so long, and her insistence that it was always good to enjoy your job, to work hard at it, and most of all, not to be cowed by anyone, not to be afraid ever to ask a question. And when she was a very odd woman, she liked particularly to remind people that it was not dumb to ask a question, it was much more dumb not to ask it.

Anne Rowe on Katherine Johnson, who's died, aged 101. It's beyond doubt that women in the 21st century have something closer to equal rights, to being treated equally than in centuries past. But in many ways, in particular in the workplace, equality can seem far off.

Women across the world are still being held back.

Lizzie Peet writes about data for the economist.

So in 2013, we at the Economist decided to start compiling a rank of women's equality in the workplace. This is our eighth index that we've published. And this is a response to sort of ongoing issues that women were facing at work and the continuing gender inequality they were facing.

And how does the index work? How is it compiled Exactly?

We assign 10 different indicators and measure them on each country. So if you look at direct involvement in the workplace, for example, we've got labor force participation, which is basically the proportion of women in the workforce. And that can range from about a third to sort of 80% in the countries that we're assessing how well women are paid. The gender pay gap, of course, is a big one. Equality in childcare also makes a massive difference. If women are expected to do most of the childcare, it makes it much harder for them to work. So we have a look at that. We have a look at childcare costs, maternity and paternity rights, so how much leave parents are given to look after their newborn babies. Education is also a very important factor. So we're having a look at how many women complete tertiary education. And we also have a look at business school applications. And finally, representation, obviously in public life makes a massive difference. So if there are more women in powerful positions, that means that they can make decisions that will benefit other women. In fact, there are lots of studies that have been done to show the impact of having a more gender balanced parliament on legislation which affects women.

So let's have a look then at this year's index. Which countries are doing well on all of these measures?

Well, it's kind of the usual suspects this year. Iceland is leading the way. If you have a deep dive into the data around Iceland, it's particularly good at helping women in the classroom. So more than half earn a university degree, which is pretty impressive. The country also guarantees access to corporate boards. This came in in 2013, which made a mandatory quota of 40% on the country's board seats. So that's had a massive impact in representation of women at the higher echelons of business. Women also make up 50% of Icelanders who take the GMAT, which is a really important business entrance exam, and obviously therefore has an impact on their sort of advent up the business rankings. They hold 40% of management positions in the country, which is pretty impressive. So Sweden, Finland and Norway aren't much far behind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, half the cabinet posts in government, and nearly half the seats in Parliament are held by women. So new mums are also guaranteed 35 weeks of paid leave, which is very impressive. Finland has a similarly even gender split in Parliament, and both parents will soon enjoy 30 weeks of paid leave. So we think there is probably a clear link between gender representation in business and politics and policies like parental leave, which really make life much easier for working women.

And so what about at the other end of the scale, which are the countries falling behind?

South Korea for the eighth year in a row has come last, which isn't great. Japan also doesn't do very well. So actually only 59% of South Korean women are in the workforce. The OECD average is 65%. And those Korean women who do work earn on average 37% less per year than men, which is the widest wage gap in the group, and pretty staggering when you think about it. And you can kind of see the links between all these different metrics. So women hold just one in seven managers positions and one in 30 board seats and also only make up 17% of the national Assembly. So there's clearly a pattern here that you can see if you look at numbers across all of the metrics. The United States actually also does quite badly, largely due to a total lack of paid parental leave, which is the worst in the group.

But here at the bottom end of the scale, it looks also as if perhaps the representation of women in business and in politics has an effect on the measures in the glass ceiling index.

Yes, that logically does make sense, and the data does seem to show it, with some exceptions, of course. But in general, what you can make the connection is that the more women you have in Parliament, the likelier you are to have policies which benefit women in the workplace.

So having looked at a number of the glass ceiling indices and thought about what contributes to them, do you arrive at any thoughts as to how the workplace could be made more fair in a global sense, in a general sense?

So it's really important to note that our Glass Ceiling index only looks at the richest countries in the world. But if you're looking at a more global perspective, there are two sort of big things that could empower women. One of them is increasing access to birth control, making it cheaper and more accessible. And the other is, of course, improving education, which is a really basic one, but would have a massive impact in women and their access to economic power.

Lizzy, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks very much, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, please give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here on Monday.