The Takeaway

Conservatives have long invoked the specter of the 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford in their fight against abortion rights, likening embryos and fetuses to slaves with no due process. Progressives now, too, are drawing parallels between the stripping of rights from people who may get pregnant and the infamous majority opinion penned by then-Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote, "a Black man has no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Missing from this historic analogy, however, are the experiences of Black women, whose enslavement and forced reproduction was fundamental to America's rise. We speak with Dr. Deborah Gray White, Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, about this not-so-distant history and the possibilities it holds for all American women.   

Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming writer and performer who grew up in Texas to Indian immigrant parents. They use their creativity and platform to explore themes of gender, race, trauma and belonging, advocating and bringing visibility to the trans community. We speak with Alok about their work and advocacy, and what they learned from their aunt, Urvashi Vaid, the beloved LGBTQ rights activist who spent more than a decade working for equality at the National LGBTQ Task Force.

We speak with comedian Jenny Slate about bringing back her viral character “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” for a feature length film.

During his first days in office, President Biden suspended the Migrant Protection Protocols, or the ‘remain in Mexico’ program, which required migrants to wait in Mexico instead of crossing the border into the United States while the United States government adjudicated their cases. Republicans in Texas and Missouri sued the Biden administration, and a federal judge in Texas ruled that MPP be reinstated with approval from Mexico. Now, SCOTUS will decide whether the Biden Department of Homeland Security can, in fact, legally suspend the program. We discuss immigration policy under Biden and the upcoming SCOTUS decision with CBS News immigration reporter, Camilo Montoya-Galvez.

On Monday, an abandoned truck on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, was found on the side of a desolate road.  Responders discovered a tragedy: dozens of migrants, trapped in the back of the truck in deadly heat.  The death toll is now over 50 people, with several survivors still in hospitals fighting for their lives. We speak with Jason De León, professor of anthropology at UCLA and director of the Undocumented Migration Project, who studies clandestine border crossings, about how and why tragedies like this happen.

The Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and ending the constitutional right to abortion, could have meaningful repercussions on assisted reproductive technology, including in vitro fertilization, also known as IVF. IVF is one of the most widely known forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART). Assisted reproduction plays a role in 2 percent of all births in the United States. Some fertility experts worry that the existing language in state laws could complicate or even limit the choices of would-be parents. Guests:Dr. Kim Thornton, Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a reproductive endocrinologist at Boston IVF. Dr. Thornton, thanks for being with us. Dr. Louise King, an ethicist and surgeon who serves as Director of Reproductive Bioethics at the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics,  and Vice Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Researchers at the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington have recently a population of polar bears in Southeast Greenland that appear to be adapting their hunting habits to climate change induced impacts on their environment.  Polar bears typically hunt seals from the edge of sea ice, however due to climate change the sea ice is breaking up earlier and earlier in the spring, shortening the hunting season for polar bears. According to the new research paper titled "Glacial ice supports a distinct and undocumented polar bear subpopulation persisting in late 21st-century sea-ice conditions" published in Science, a particular population of polar bears in Southeast Greenland has begun supplementing their hunting from the sea ice environment to freshwater ice melt environments, from calving glaciers. We speak with Kristin Laidre, principal researcher for the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, to hear what this finding means for polar bears' ability to survive through the climate crisis.  

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been using abortion as a wedge issue to generate votes for decades, but with the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe vs. Wade, many Democratic voters are questioning whether the party did enough to prevent the loss of the constitutional right to abortion. We speak with Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York Magazine's The Cut and the author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.  

Cases of the monkeypox virus have been spreading in several countries, including the U.S.. Many of those contracting the virus are gay and bisexual men, although the virus is believed to be spreading through close physical contact but not sexual transmission. New York City recently made monkeypox vaccines available to men who have sex with men, but the city has not had enough supply to meet demand among those seeking to get vaccinated. We speak with epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves about monkeypox and then get an update from him on where we’re at in this point in the Covid pandemic.

In a week of monumental developments in gun rights, both houses of Congress passed bi-partisan gun control regulation that President Biden signed into law over the weekend. It comes in the wake of the tragic mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and marks the first time Congress has made significant progress on gun control since 1994. But it wasn’t all good news for gun control advocates: in a 6-3 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court found that New York’s concealed carry law was unconstitutional. That law required individuals to show a “proper cause” and a special need to defend themselves in order to carry a handgun in public. We speak with a constitutional law professor and gun law expert Jacob Charles, the executive director of Duke University’s Center for Firearms Law, about what these developments will mean for gun laws and guns on the street.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, we check in with Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, an OB-GYN, abortion provider in Texas and founder Pegasus Health Justice Center.  Even before the ruling, thirteen states had “trigger” laws that enacted bans contingent on Roe being overturned and nine states had pre-existing bans which presumably go back in effect now that Roe has been overturned. Texas has both, and Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman’s Health, along with other providers, stopped providing abortions as of Friday, based upon Attorney General Ken Paxton’s statement that “abortion providers could be criminally liable for providing abortions starting today.” We spoke with Dr. Moayedi about where things go from here.  

Musician Bartees Strange broke out in the fall of 2020, when he released the album Live Forever to critical acclaim. This month, he’s out with a new album, Farm to Table, which finds Strange celebrating everything he’s achieved, while taking his music in new sonic directions.  The Takeaway spoke with Strange about his journey from a childhood in western Oklahoma to a career playing stages across the world.

The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in the much anticipated case Dobbs. V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision has two parts. All of the court’s conservative justice ruled in a 6 to 3 decision to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In a second portion of the decision explicitly overturning Roe v. Wade, the court decision was 5 to 4, as chief Justice John Roberts joined with the more liberal members of the court.  The outcome overrules Roe v. Wade and ends federal recognition of a constitutional right to an abortion after nearly 50 years.  We speak with Kenji Yoshino, the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law, and Melissa Murray, Law Professor at NYU, faculty director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and co-host of the legal podcast called “Strict Scrutiny.”   

We speak with Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill-Johnson about the ramifications of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and what reproductive healthcare organizations will be doing in the wake of the decision.

"We were born this way" was the unofficial mantra of the movement for LGBTQ rights in the 1970s and 1980s—a counter to the idea that people "choose" to be lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender. But the message raises as many questions as it answers. We speak with Dr. Lisa Diamond, Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, about how this language took root in our culture and what the science actually says about it. Then, Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU, explains how "born this way" language became entrenched in our legal system's treatment of constitutional rights, and how we might strive for a world with more nuance.