Body & State

Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, a Democrat from Texas, explains why she believes the right to contraception is at risk in the United States and what she views as a growing effort by Republicans to limit access to birth control. Fletcher is a co-author of the “Right to Contraception Act” that would prohibit the federal government, states and localities from restricting access to birth control. Watch...

In this episode of Body & State, Sarah sits down with John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, a Christian anti-abortion advocacy group that has advanced sweeping anti-abortion laws in Texas. Texas is widely viewed as a laboratory for other states, enacting an abortion ban before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and a new law that allows private citizens to sue anyone who “manufac...

In this episode of Body & State, Sarah sits down with political scientist and Texas A&M professor Valerie Hudson to discuss how the treatment of women in a society shapes the success of a nation. Hudson says a light bulb went on when she was having lunch with one of Afghanistan’s first female members of parliament. Hudson remarked how much progress women had made in Afghanistan. But the fe...

During last year’s presidential campaign, President Trump said he did not support a ban on birth control. But since taking office, his administration has signaled a willingness to curtail information about and access to certain forms of contraception, purging birth control guidelines from government websites, freezing funds for some family planning clinics, and making plans to incinerate $9.7 mill...

Legal scholar Mary Ziegler explains the anti-abortion movement’s efforts to re-classify common forms of contraception as abortifacients, and whether these plans could succeed in states with abortion bans like Texas. We also dig into how pronatalists like Elon Musk share similar goals with some in the anti-abortion movement, including the authors of Project 2025, and what’s next for pardoned anti-a...