On Friday, June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This landmark decision determined that abortion would no longer be protected as a right in the United States. In the fallout of the decision, many conservative states immediately enacted abortion bans that affected the lives of countless women and families. 

In the wake of the ban, you likely had a deeply complicated emotional response, perhaps triggered by your experiences in a pre-Roe v. Wade world. Amid the chaos, however, there’s a chance you may have never nailed down the exact details of how the decision was made. To get to the bottom of things, we produced special episodes of Next Question, in which Katie speaks with journalist Jodi Kantor, who co-wrote a seminal New York Times report about the decision. Kantor explains the mechanics of the court, the dashed potential for compromise, and the potential reasoning for the infamous leak. 

To help you understand the impact of this decision, Katie also speaks to several women who’ve been affected by the bans. Idaho resident Jennifer Adkins tells the traumatic story of being forced to travel out of state to terminate a much-wanted pregnancy. Samantha Casiano explains how Texas’ ban forced her to make the devastating decision to give birth despite her daughter’s fatal diagnosis. 

Alongside Adkins and Casiano, Tennessee resident Allie Phillips shares the excruciating story of visiting her doctor for an anatomy scan only to learn the worst: “My daughter was deemed incompatible with life. My doctor said that she would likely not survive outside of the womb and could pass in utero.”

Termination was the only solution that would spare Phillips’ fertility, and, potentially, her life. Katie and Phillips have an in-depth conversation about the haunting experience of discovering that an abortion would require a costly trip out of state that their small family couldn’t afford: “At first, I didn’t want to start a GoFundMe because it wasn’t anybody else’s problem but mine. I didn’t want anyone to think I was taking money from people. But it got to the point that I thought, If I don’t get to New York, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.”

Phillips also describes the feeling of getting an ultrasound in the abortion clinic that revealed her daughter had died in utero: “It immediately hit me and I just cried. I cried out loud like a mom does when she finds out that she just lost her child. The technician helped me. She cried with me.”

Plus, Phillips lays out exactly how this scarring series of events has inspired her own run for office: “I started to accept that what our state is doing to women, families, and children is so far beyond unacceptable that I can’t just sit here and complain on TikTok anymore. I can’t just sit here and vote for the blue guy anymore. I’ve got to be in one of those seats making decisions.”

Hear Phillips’s full story below: