Abortion Rights and New State Restrictions

Making News

Tea Party Economics as Debt Ceiling Deadline Nears ()

After cutting short its traditional July 4th recess, the Senate returned to Washington today in order to work on a debt-ceiling deal. But with no meetings under way, the big news was the New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks' scathing indictment of Republicans for failing to accept "the logic of compromise," lacking a "sense of moral decency" and risking economic disaster. Megan McArdle is business and economics editor for The Atlantic magazine.

Guests:

• Megan McArdle: The Atlantic

Links:

• Bipartisan Policy Center's debt limit analysis
• Grover Norquist's pledge (Americans for Tax Reform)

Main Topic

Abortion: From State Houses to the Courts, Presidential Campaign ()

Last week, Kansas came close to shutting down all but one of the state's three abortion clinics before a federal court intervened. The injunction will stay in effect until a trial is held. The Kansas legislature joins those of Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Alabama and South Dakota in recently enacting new abortion restrictions in the past year, and anti-abortion supporters also have a litmus test for presidential candidates. The laws are designed to reach the US Supreme Court, more conservative than it was 40 years ago, to modify or even overturn Roe v. Wade. We hear more about new rules, and the argument over when a fetus begins to feel pain.

Guests:

• Erik Eckholm: New York Times, @eckholm
• Mary Kay Culp: Kansans for Life
• Ann Stone: Republicans for Choice, @aews
• Sue Thomas: Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation

Links:

• Griswald v Connecticut, PBS on
• Eckholm on news laws restricting late-term abortions

Reporter's Notebook

French and US Justice Systems Grapple with Strauss-Kahn ()

Last week in New York, former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released without bail and it appeared that sexual assault charges might be dropped. Today in Paris, Tristane Banon, a reporter for the news magazine L'Express, filed suit against DSK, as he is now called, accusing him of attempted rape during an interview in 2003. In the meantime public intellectuals in both countries are arguing about the administration of justice. Philip Golub is a contributing editor of Le Monde diplomatique, a French journal based in Paris.

Guests:

• Philip Golub: Le Monde diplomatique