At the Republican National Convention in July, a platform plank in place for decades that called for a national abortion ban was removed—right at the moment that such a ban has actually become legally possible, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from hard-line pro-life positions, saying that abortion rights sitting with the states “is something that everybody wanted.” The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent Susan B. Glasser explores the tension within the Republican Party and speaks with David Remnick about her reporting, including an interview with Representative Matt Rosendale, of Montana. A hard-liner dismissive of pragmatic compromise, Rosendale believes that life begins at conception, and he is challenging his House Republican colleagues to vote their convictions and ban in-vitro fertilization.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.