Carter Sherman

Yeah, I mean, I can say as...

someone who covered abortion rights for 10 years, I was really struck by how in the last year, I think it was about a dozen states introduced laws that would have criminalized, that would have treated abortion as homicide, which is to say women who got abortions would be treated as murderers and faced criminal consequences accordingly.

And the thing is, you know, these proposals get introduced every year and,

But they usually, I feel like, draw more outrage and controversy.

And then in the last year, it was just sort of like, oh, this is maybe an increasingly normal thing to propose.

Maybe it's not something that people need to get eyes up and arms about.

And I was really struck by, it seems like, the normalization of this idea, which is incredibly politically unpopular, even among most of the anti-abortion movement.

I think some people might hear Dr. Foster talk about the idea that the anti-abortion movement is going to criminalize women and think that that is a Looney Tunes take.

I think it's a terrifying thing.

I think that that is also a valid response.

And I think that a lot of people are taking comfort in the fact that within the mainstream pro-life movement, quote unquote, that this is not a politically popular position.

This is not what most people in the mainstream want to see happen.

But I can say, as someone who has covered this issue for many, many years, the idea that we would criminalize women for abortions has slowly but surely started to creep into mainstream thought.

Do I think that this is something we're going to see anti-abortion activists embrace in the next year?

No.

Do I think we might start to see it in the next 10 years?

Very possibly.

Right.

And if they're floating up ideas today, then within the next five to 10 years, we're going to start to see those things take the shape of laws.

Well, I think there are four major threats to abortion access that are imminent and that I am watching very closely.