Needs No Introduction

In our season nine premiere, we welcome Martha Paynter, nurse, scholar and author of Lawless: Abortion Under Complete Decriminalization. We discuss Canada’s complete decriminalization of abortion (the only country to do so), the fascinating and often fraught history that brought us to this point, abortion as a public good, the influence of the anti-choice lobby here and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the US, and what it takes to make abortion truly equitable when decriminalization is not enough.  Reflecting on the need to understand abortion as a public good, Paynter says: “We have these major cultural forces that just reiterate this idea that abortion is rare and hard. And it's not, it's very normal. It's very common and it takes seven minutes. And actually it will allow you to follow your dreams. Whether that dream is to escape a violent relationship or to finish your graduate degree or whatever. So we do need to have this shift in the way we talk about abortion. And we need to understand abortion, not