Roe-ing away: Abortion rights in America

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist from London. I'm your host Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm John Fassman. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Around 85% of the world's population lives in countries where press freedom has declined over the past five years. On World Press Freedom Day, we hear from some of those brave journalists persisting in the face of threats from governments, oligarchs, trolls and thugs.

And you probably know the name Oskar Schindler, whose list spared the lives of more than 1,000 Jews during the Second World War. Our obituary's editor reflects on the story of Mimi Reinhart, the secretary who typed out Schindler's list.

But first, Barricades went up around the Supreme Court building in Washington last night. They were erected after Politico, a news outlet, published a leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a 50 year old Supreme Court ruling that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The opinion was written by Samuel Alito, one of the court's most conservative justices, whom George W. Bush appointed in 2005. Soon afterward, near midnight, pro choice and anti abortion protesters gathered outside the court. Abortion has long riven American politics. Donald Trump campaigned on nominating justices who would overturn Roe.

We are preserving faith based adoption and to uphold our founding documents, we have confirmed 187 federal judges who apply the Constitution as written, including two phenomenal Supreme Court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

He appointed three during his presidency and appears as good as his word. If this draft opinion or something like it becomes law, it would put abortion out of the reach of millions of American women.

Justice Alito says in this draft opinion that Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. So not much hedging there around language.

John Priddo hosts Checks and Balance, our weekly podcast on American politics He said.

The original reasoning by Justice Blackmun was exceptionally weak, had damaging consequences. And that, quote, the inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's history and traditions. It's very unusual for the Supreme Court to overturn one of its own opinions on a matter that's as high profile as this. The Court does sometimes go back and say, actually, we got that one wrong. But. But there's a general principle, stare decisis, which says that settled law stands more or less. It would be a break with precedent to overturn the 1973 ruling, but the language in this draft majority opinion strongly suggests that a majority of the Justices are up for doing so.

Can you delve a bit further into the consequences? You note this is a draft opinion. It doesn't yet have force of law, but it does appear to have majority support, at least in some form. If this opinion does in fact become settled law, if this is what the Court does, what are the consequences for women in America?

The consequences, John, would be that abortion essentially becomes a matter for states. So There are already 22 states in America which have trigger laws which are poised and ready to go as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Court. The state legislatures in those states have been assuming that this was coming, hoping that this was coming in states where Republicans have majorities. So immediately in 22 states, abortion would effectively become illegal. We reckon that actually in over half of states in America, abortion would become illegal quite quickly. So abortion, which since 1973 has been a fundamental right for women in America, albeit a right that has often been very hard to exercise in practice, abortion would be illegal in over half of states. We think essentially the federal government would have no opinion on whether this very important matter should be illegal or not.

John, how likely is it, do you think, that this draft or something like it represents the Court's final opinion?

Well, I'm going to begin with some caveats, John, because as you know, Supreme Court draft majority opinions change, right? They're drafts, they get revised. And the other thing that happens is that Justices change their minds. They swap votes, sometimes until the last moment. Sometimes there's an element of bargaining that goes on there. And so this is not necessarily the final opinion that we'll get from the Court on this. That said, we've been reporting for some time now that the Court is likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, and in a sense, it would be strange if it didn't. Right? This has been a long held goal at the conservative legal movement since the 1980s. There's a conservative majority now on the Supreme Court. Three justices there, famously appointed by Donald Trump, who ran very clearly saying, vote for me, I'll pick justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade. So if it's not overturned in June or July or sometime this year, it looks like Roe v. Wade will be overturned fairly soon, I think.

What does this say about the court as a political body? It has wanted to propound of itself that it's above politics. As John Roberts says, there are no Trump judges, there are no Obama judges, there are just judges. Is that view now dead?

I think that view of the court has been getting harder and harder to hold for a while, and that's because on so many big questions, on environmental regulation, on abortion, on guns, the most contentious questions in American life, gay marriage, those have been settled by the court and not by the legislature. And that's because the legislature struggles to produce majorities on some of these difficult decisions. And I think the result is if you keep asking the court to decide on these most contentious issues, eventually the public in America will decide that the court is just a political body. And that's particularly the case when the fights over Supreme Court nominations have become as nakedly political as they have. They're just arm wrestles these days. So, yeah, I think the view of the Court as being above politics has been hard to sustain for a while, and it's getting harder and harder now.

Of course, there are going to be a lot of Republican voters who are happy with this result. What about more broadly conventional wisdom is that this helps Democrats? Do you think that's true?

I think that conventional wisdom is probably more true than not true. I think this probably would help Democrats a bit, but I think only a bit. I mean, I don't think it's helped Democrats that much politically to have been the pro choice party for the past few decades. The countervailing pressures on Democrats at the moment, Joe Biden's low approval ratings, the high inflation numbers probably count for more than this. I think the value to Democrats really would be to give them something else to talk about going into the midterms. But I don't think that's enough to protect their majorities.

And what about what it means for the Court itself? I've covered or observed American politics closely for quite a while. I can't ever remember seeing something like this.

No, nor can I. You're completely right, John. The court does leak from time to time, but it rarely does and rarely has in the modern era. And also to leak on a subject of quite such importance. The most politically contentious ruling that comes before the Court is pretty extraordinary. It's corrosive to the Court's culture. The justices are meant to operate entirely behind closed doors. It's going to make the Court quite hard for Justice Roberts to manage the Court, which is already viewed by many Americans as increasingly a political institution, but not an elected one. I think that will increase and you can see further on down the line the revenge leakings, perhaps when an opinion might be going the other way. So it's pretty corrosive to court culture. But it's also important, say John, there would be no uncontroversial way of the Court undoing Roe v. Wade. The division in the Court over this question reflects a wider division in America and a long running division that puts America at odds with most other Western democracies and where the debate about abortion and abortion law is pretty much settled.

Right.

It's legal in most places with some restrictions and some term limits. America just hasn't been able to solve this question politically. And as a result of that, what is a fundamental right in most Western democracies may not be a right in America for very long.

John, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks, John.

You can hear more on the fallout from this story with John on Checks and Balance, available this Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, about 20 reporters have been killed in the country. Just last week, Vera Hiric of Radio Free Europe was killed when a missile struck her apartment building in Kyiv. Today is World Press Freedom Day, sadly not a time to celebrate it, but rather to reflect on how little there is. In some places in Ukraine, international conventions have been thrown out. Russian forces are targeting journalists who drive in marked cars and wear press vests. It's a daily worry for Olga Rudenko, the chief editor of the Kyiv Independent, and her staff.

You know, we are being attacked by the army of a country where their ruling regime has been very hostile to journalists for decades. People who hate journalism hate the west. And there is no press freedom in Russia. There is no.

But the problem isn't just in Ukraine, and it's not just in war zones and it's not always bullets and missiles that journalists must fear. The ways to limit press freedom take many forms, all of which come at a cost.

So the freedom of the press is incredibly important for societies. There's lots of research that shows that where you have a free press, you have less corruption.

Avantika Chilcotti is an international correspondent for the Economist.

When anything goes wrong, there's someone there to ring the bell. And there's also evidence that shows that people with access to proper journalism, they're more engaged with politics, they're more engaged in their communities. So it's bad not just for the industry when journalists are muzzled, but it's actually bad for all of society.

And that muzzling is going on more and more so.

Exactly. There's a bunch of data that shows the free press is under attack in a way that we have not seen since the Cold War. It's part of the same trend we've seen with attacks on democracy, on a wave of populist authoritarianism. And especially since Russia invaded Ukraine, you see more and more how this causes problems. Viktoria Arafieva is a photojournalist with Sotavision. It's one of the last independent news outlets reporting from inside Russia. Because so many journalists have had to flee Russia. Now, she feels a heightened responsibility, but also increased risk. If everyone leaves now, she asks, who will write except for us? She says she was detained covering an anti war rally. Despite following all of the rules, wearing a press vest, carrying a press card, she believes that many journalists have become just too afraid to do their jobs.

It's sort of easy to understand why this would be a big problem in the theatre of war. Is that a general trend, that the most muzzling happens where the most conflict happens?

No, not at all. The latest Data from the UN suggests that 85% of people in the world live in countries where press freedom has deteriorated over the last five years. If you look at where journalists are being killed and where they're being, you know, thrown behind bars, this is often happening in countries at peace and it's often happening in democracies. It's not just governments that try to stamp out independent reporting. There's lots of people who don't want nosy journalists getting involved in their business. Corrupt oligarchs, drug traffickers, Islamists, just powerful people with stuff to hide. Only 3 of the journalists killed last year were actually reporting outside of their home country.

And why do you think it is that things are getting worse now?

So it's part of that big wave of populism, of anti democratic fervor we're seeing around the world. The COVID pandemic that's also provided an excuse to crack down on the press. So the Philippines, for example, punished the spread of false information on the virus with jail time. Brazil's been restricting access to government data. At the same time, reporters having to work at home during Lockdowns, especially on their own personal devices. They've been targeted by cyber attacks. And there was one paper I looked at which said pandemic policies are being used to justify curbs on the press's freedom in 96 out of 144 countries that they surveyed. The move to online journalism has made it easier for governments to do this. So if you're speaking to a source on the phone or email, it's much easier to snoop on their conversations. If you're on social media, that's a platform for reporters to share their work and to collect information. But it's also a platform for online hate campaigns. Women, in particular are at risk.

I think the authorities are trying to silence me because they find my truth unpalatable. It's not a popular truth that reveals them, exposes them. They believe that I am trying.

One woman I spoke to, Rana Ayyub, is a Muslim reporter, an investigative journalist in India who's really become the poster child for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's battle against free press.

I get burnt copies of my book at my residence. The other day, I was in a new studio in Bombay and I got a message on my phone that, we are standing downstairs. We know where you are. My image was morphed on a porn video and circulated all over the country.

So Ron has been trolled in a way that I didn't think was possible. Of course, some of that is happening from individuals, but at the same time, you're seeing more and more explicit attacks from the government. She's been investigated for all kinds of financial stuff. She's had threats. She's basically faced attacks from all sides. And at this point, she's often cooped up at home. She's incredibly anxious. It's sort of a nightmare scenario.

So it's not just a matter of throwing journalists behind bars. Quite a lot of what's going on here is hounding and harassment.

Then the way in which governments are going after the press nowadays and more broadly, trying to stamp out freedom of expression, it's much more subtle. So it's physical attacks that the broader public gets interested in. You know, Jamal Khashoggi, who was chopped up into pieces at a consulate in Istanbul a few years ago. People get fixated on examples like that. But there's actually a lot more pernicious, quiet stuff that governments are doing to threaten independent journalism. For example, financial bullying, as Viktor Orban's government has in Hungary. Some regimes are just controlling media ownership. Wealthy pals of politicians will buy up a media outlet and make it a mouthpiece for the state and hoping for political favours, big public contracts in return. Also very pernicious are strategic lawsuits against public participation. Bogus court cases brought against journalists not to win justice, but just to exhaust their time and resources. What happens is that if you can't meet the legal costs, you're forced to take down the content. Often the journalist who is being targeted will just stop reporting on the individual suing them. And others don't really fancy getting themselves put in the same situation either.

So as the kinds of attacks that journalists are suffering increase and diversify, are their defenses diversifying too?

Despite all of this harassment, reporters keep finding new ways to continue doing their work. Finding ways to finance your work as a reporter is incredibly important. So crowdfunding in particular keeps coming up. Where you're having tech used against you, where there's surveillance and snooping, you're seeing lots of new innovations being used by journalists, be it doing interviews on encrypted apps like Telegram, or using these clever new file sharing tools online, which erase a file as soon as the transfer is complete. That lets you get information from whistleblowers without putting them at risk. But when it gets too much, sometimes reporters just have to flee the country. And in those cases, technology is useful in letting people report on a situation from afar. Take Lucy Kassa. She's an Ethiopian journalist and she has been doing incredible work documenting deliberate mass starvation, mass murder, gang rape by federal forces in the Tigray region.

People were dying from starvation. The Ethiopian government has made it almost impossible for me and other journalists. Communications were blocked and journalists were not allowed to go to the region and report from the ground. I took the initiative to dig out about what was happening. That angered the government. Government agents raided my house, threatened to kill me if I continued my investigations.

So after our men turned up at her door last year warning her to stop her investigations, she had to leave Addis. And the work she's doing is incredible. So she is conducting interviews by phone. She gets fixes to take people in the Tigray who face some sort of persecution to a few spots where they have connection. There's a complete communications blackout there. Fuel is very expensive, so people aren't getting in and out. It's the only way to hear people's voices. She gets these fixes to send her what she calls physical evidence, photographs, videos, health records. And then on top of that, she has to verify all of this testimony using satellite imagery, say, to find mass graves, or calling in consultants who can Check if a photograph or video is doctored. When you speak to Lucy, you really get a sense that as an Ethiopian journalist, she feels like her work is so valuable she really must go on.

Atrocities are on another level. They are very horrendous. I have an obligation and duty to shed light on the truth. I have a strong belief that the truth will find ways to reveal itself, will fight for itself. And I consider myself as an instrument of that.

So on World Press Freedom Day, it's worth remembering that quite a few people have it a lot harder than we do. Avantika, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Jason.

In 1993, Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List told the world the story of how Oskar Schindler had saved hundreds of Jews by making a list of people that could be transferred from the labor camp where they were to his own factory.

Ann Roe is the Economist's obituaries editor.

There was an unseen and unsung heroine in this story, and that was Mimi Reinhardt, who was the typist who actually typed up Schindler's List. Mimi Reinhardt was not actually Mimi Reinhardt then. She was called Carmen Whiteman. That was her proper name. And when she started her job as compiler of the lists or typist of them, she was in the Plasov labor camp in Krakow. It was a very difficult place to work. Obviously, there were many horrors there, including the shooting of a child for refusing to take his clothes off and the digging of a mass grave, which she later realized was meant to be for her. And amid all these things, she had been given a relatively sheltered job as a secretary. But she had known such a carefree life before. She was brought up in Vienna. Her parents were running a dry goods store. She went to university, University of Vienna. She studied languages and literature. She met someone she fell in love with. They moved to Krakow in 1936, and they had a baby, Sasha. And then suddenly everything fell apart with the beginning of the war. She and her husband smuggled Sasha to Hungary. She had lost sight of her child. And then in the ghetto, her husband tried to escape and was shot dead by the Nazis at the gate. So she had lost her husband and she had lost sight of her child by her 20s. And her job was just to be a typist in a labor camp with awful things going on all around her. The list that she was typing up, which she didn't think a very important thing at the time, eventually ran to 1,200 names. It had been getting longer and longer. It began by listing all the Jews who worked for Oskar Schindler. In his German enamel factory in Krakow. She was not the only secretary working for Schindler. There were many pretty women who were employed to do the same thing. For he was a great womanizer as well as a drunkard. Quite a difficult man to get on with. But also charming and outgoing. And he didn't treat Jews as inferiors, and that was appreciated. He was trying to get good conditions for them in Plaszow. So for those reasons, she was inclined to trust him. And inclined to think that this list. If it really was going to save everyone on it. Might be worth signing up to. But she knew quite a few people who refused to be put on it. Because they simply didn't trust Schindler. And at the beginning, there was almost a disaster. When she and 300 other women and girls who were on the list. Were transferred by mistake to Auschwitz. And they were there for a fortnight. And it took all Schindler's ingenuity. And bribes and threats to get them out. But in the end, he succeeded. And the rest of his evacuations from Plaszow also succeeded. So that everyone on the list was saved. Once the war was over, Mimi was able to restart her life. And she moved first to Morocco, where she met her second husband, Albert Reinhardt. Then she moved to New York City, which she loved. And then to Israel in her 90s. And all through those years, she didn't talk at her role in typing up the list. Or about the camps.

By law, I have to tell you, sir, I'm a Jew.

Well, I'm a jury.

So there we are. But then, of course, when Steven Spielberg's film came out. She felt she did have to say something. She was invited with all the other Jews who were surviving. Who Schindler had saved. To go to the premiere in New York. But she found she simply couldn't watch the film. So she left before the screening. It took her a few years to feel able to watch it. And then she found the casting very good. She thought both Schindler and Amon Goetz were excellently cast. But she couldn't identify with the prisoners she saw. They were much too well dressed, she felt. And they hadn't been decently dressed like that in the camps. Schindler, she heard, died in 1974 without a penny to his soul. He had spent all his fortune trying to rescue the Jews. And the compensation, or perhaps the reimbursement that he'd hoped to get. Was very small. He claimed about a million dollars for what he had done and ended up with 15,000. In about 1960, she was visiting Vienna, and suddenly a man called out, come and Weightman. She realized that it was Schindler. He was there, drinking with other Jews he had saved. She hadn't really been that close to Schindler, and she had had plenty of doubts about him. But from now on, their lives were inextricably linked together. He was a womanizer. He was a drink, a heavy drinker. I mean, he was no angel, but he had a heart of gold.

ANN RO ON Mimi Reinhard, who's died aged 107.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastseconomist.com and you.

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