0:03

Listen to supported WNYC

0:06

studios.

0:10

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All

0:12

right. Okay. All right.

0:16

You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab.

0:19

From WNYC. See?

0:23

Yeah. Hey,

0:27

this is Radiolab. I'm Luthif Nasser. I'm

0:29

Lulu Miller. And we

0:31

find ourselves, as sometimes

0:33

we do, in a moment where we're thinking

0:36

back to an old episode we did because

0:38

the

0:39

topic we covered is sparking all

0:41

over the news right now. Yeah. And

0:44

that topic is the quote unquote

0:46

abortion pills. Yeah. And on

0:49

April 7th, 2023, which for

0:51

us is also known as last Friday, a federal

0:53

judge in Texas ruled that the FDA's approval

0:56

of one of those drugs, Mifepristone, was invalid.

1:00

According to him,

1:02

it should have never been approved. And

1:04

later that day, an hour or so later,

1:06

in an entirely separate case in Washington

1:09

state, a federal judge ruled seemingly

1:11

the opposite, that the FDA must

1:13

continue to make Mifepristone available

1:15

in certain states, that same drug. And

1:18

then on top of that, there have been

1:20

multiple motions to appeal that

1:23

first Texas ruling we talked about.

1:24

It's very chaotic, a lot going on for

1:26

the time being, Mifepristone is

1:29

still available. But this all means

1:31

that these cases will likely work their way up

1:33

the federal court system. And we will eventually

1:35

see rulings that could have real staying

1:37

power and real consequences.

1:39

And so given that there is suddenly

1:42

so much attention on this pill,

1:44

we wanted to share with you a

1:46

story we did back in the fall

1:49

of 2022, last fall, about these very pills. And

1:53

actually in particular, because this Texas

1:55

judge in his ruling made an explicit argument

1:57

about the safety of this drug and the

2:00

approval process. And actually, that's that's

2:02

exactly what we cover in this episode.

2:04

Yeah,

2:04

you can think of it sort of as a profile

2:08

of these pills. These pills are sort of characters and

2:10

we really go into the science of them, their

2:12

origin story, how they interact with

2:14

the human body, and what their

2:16

real risks are or aren't.

2:19

It came to us originally from our

2:21

senior correspondent Molly Webster and contributing

2:24

editor and ER doctor Avir Mitra. So

2:26

we'll start it off with them. I don't

2:29

know, I was just gonna say, Avir, you start. Okay,

2:32

Avir is going to tell you a story. Yeah, I love

2:34

an Avir story. All right, cool. And we should

2:37

say before we get rolling, this story talks

2:39

about abortion and has some kind of graphic

2:42

descriptions. So if you don't want to hear

2:44

that today, this is a good one to skip. Right.

2:46

So I guess this one started because for

2:49

okay, for me growing up, my mom, she's a

2:51

OB guy. And I just

2:53

remember her telling me about stories of her

2:55

performing abortions back in her day. This

2:58

would have been like the late 70s. Wait,

3:00

wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm just picturing

3:02

like,

3:03

Muppet baby Avir. Like

3:06

even before you were a doctor, your mom would

3:08

tell you doctor stories. Yeah, I just grew

3:11

up around so many medical stories, both

3:13

my parents are doctors that we talk

3:15

about things at the dinner table that a

3:17

normal family would be horrified, they would be actively

3:19

vomiting. And I'm just like, Oh, yeah, pass, you

3:22

know, pass the salt, please.

3:24

So basically, you know, when she would talk

3:26

to me about these procedures, they were pretty invasive.

3:28

Like it was not a small deal, if that makes

3:30

sense. Right.

3:31

And even now, in a hospital or

3:33

clinic, it's pretty safe, but it's still something

3:35

we take seriously. I mean, safe because

3:38

we take it seriously. So for

3:40

the last couple months, ever since the Supreme

3:42

Court decision about abortion,

3:44

I've been thinking about, like, what

3:47

is this going to mean for us in the emergency department,

3:49

now that we're living in this post row world?

3:52

Because, you know, like, regardless of what you think

3:54

about abortion, if people aren't able

3:56

to get them, I'm anticipating a

3:59

lot more patients showing

4:00

up in the ER with complications

4:02

or people who have attempted to do their own abortions

4:05

and hurt themselves in the process. So

4:07

basically, now at

4:09

my job, I have to

4:11

occasionally organize conferences to teach

4:14

ER residents things. And

4:16

so I ended up hosting this OB doctor

4:18

named Laura MacIsaac where I work, who

4:21

for many years has been running the division in

4:23

my hospital that deals with the

4:25

abortions that we do.

4:28

Now, what I was anticipating

4:30

was sort of like this high drama, ER

4:33

type of lecture of like, all right, when

4:35

a patient comes in with a coat hanger abortion,

4:38

these are the things you got to think about. It's

4:40

going to be sepsis. Here's

4:43

how you evacuate or, you know,

4:45

uncontrolled bleeding, where you know, what

4:47

type of blood are you going to do? How are you going

4:49

to match the blood? This is what I was in

4:52

my mind, picturing the lecture would be about.

4:55

But

4:56

it actually wasn't like that at all.

5:00

What she sort of talked about ended up

5:02

kind of blowing my mind in a completely

5:04

different way.

5:06

Oh,

5:08

so I

5:11

emailed Molly and I was like, Laura,

5:14

let's just go talk to her.

5:16

I'm so glad that it was more interesting

5:18

than you expected. Actually

5:21

she told us while we've all

5:23

been arguing about the politics, the

5:25

legality and the morality of abortion,

5:28

the actual practice of it

5:30

has been really on its own trajectory.

5:33

Since I've been doing this work, it's

5:35

changed probably more than any other thing

5:38

I can think of. For the majority

5:40

of abortions happening today, we're not talking

5:42

about surgeries. No, it's

5:44

with the medications to induce

5:47

abortion, pills. And

5:50

while I knew that you can take pills to

5:52

induce an abortion, I hadn't really thought about

5:54

like how much this really

5:56

does change everything about

5:59

what it means to get an abortion. worship and

6:01

how much of that as really just happened

6:03

in the past few years since coven

6:06

and in a weird way

6:09

because of cove it okay

6:13

so this story

6:16

starts back in the eighties

6:18

bro v wade just happen and you have

6:21

greater access to abortions and

6:23

the way that we did abortions was

6:25

surgically right so it was like the woman

6:28

he i was put on a table she's given anesthesia

6:31

someone actually had to go i go

6:33

into a woman into the cervix and

6:36

pull out the growing embryo

6:38

the growing fetus

6:38

and not just sort of the way

6:41

it was yeah until two

6:43

things start happening on opposite sides

6:45

of the world the first one

6:48

is in brazil so in

6:50

brazil abortion was illegal and

6:52

brazilian women you know when they

6:54

would have an unwanted pregnancy right

6:56

they would go into a pharmacy and

6:58

they saw on these ulcer drugs

7:00

that there was like a little sinuses i don't

7:03

take this and pregnancy ah interesting so

7:05

they started taking it and

7:07

surprisingly it

7:09

worked it would cause an abortion

7:11

and how does that work how does it do that world

7:13

so that drug it's called me

7:15

so prost all missile prost all is

7:18

a prostate gland and and prostate

7:20

gland in is something that we make in our body

7:22

and it does a bunch of different things all

7:24

over the body one of them is healing ulcers

7:27

but another one in the uterus it

7:29

causes it to basically contract that's

7:31

it and so if you're pregnant you know that can

7:34

just basically make the uterus flush the embryo

7:36

out

7:36

such as it is basically physically

7:39

a jack that and so it it

7:41

induced abortions but no one really knew

7:43

like how much to take and stuff and it was i

7:45

do i take it in my mouth should i shove it up

7:48

my vagina and my get it near my cervix

7:50

or my uterus no one knows sure

7:53

so really what they were seeing is that

7:55

sometimes it didn't work right

7:57

so

7:57

that's me so prost all

7:59

would works some of the time. OK,

8:02

right. So, meanwhile, while

8:04

all this is happening in France, you have

8:06

a Dr. Etienne-Amille Beaulieu. And

8:09

his whole idea was like, well, in

8:12

the early stages of pregnancy and throughout

8:14

pregnancy, we really need progesterone.

8:16

Right, because progesterone

8:18

helps the uterus build up a thick layer

8:21

of like bloody tissue that

8:23

can support a possible pregnancy. And

8:26

the embryo, you know, needs to implant

8:28

into that tissue.

8:30

And so he was like, well, if

8:32

we know that the body has to amp up progesterone

8:35

in order to

8:36

facilitate a pregnancy, what

8:38

if I did something that like interrupted

8:41

that? And so he and his research

8:43

team develop this drug called

8:46

RU486, otherwise known as Mifepristone.

8:50

So Mifepristone is basically

8:53

a progesterone blocker. And so

8:55

when you take Mifepristone, that layer

8:58

can't grow.

8:59

And essentially that signals the body

9:02

to shed that layer.

9:03

Then essentially you're just saying like you just

9:05

say, nope. No place for you to implant

9:08

here. Yeah. Move

9:10

along. So that's Mifepristone.

9:11

There's one problem,

9:13

though, which is that Mifepristone

9:16

will cause the uterus

9:18

to be an unfriendly place for the embryo,

9:21

but it won't then actually expel

9:23

that embryo. And so you

9:25

need to combine something with Mifepristone to

9:27

make it flush out the uterus. So

9:30

then the doctors in France are like, wait

9:32

a second, we're hearing about this

9:35

ulcer drug in Brazil that's kind of doing

9:37

what we need. And so what if we take

9:39

that and combine the two?

9:41

Because then the mesoprostol would

9:44

get your uterus to like force out

9:46

the stuff that has dropped off the edges of

9:48

your uterus.

9:49

Yep. Oh, that's very vivid and

9:51

clear. Okay.

9:53

Yeah. So when they combine

9:55

these two, what they see is like a 95% success

9:57

rate and it's very very

10:00

safe. Et voila, they

10:02

created the abortion pill. Okay,

10:04

so in 2000, the Miffy

10:06

Miso pill combo comes to the

10:08

market in the United States. Oh,

10:11

wow. So that's like, that's years

10:13

later. Yeah, so basically, like there was

10:16

like scientific testing we had to do in the states, but

10:18

then there was also all this politics because

10:21

it is like an abortion drug.

10:23

But eventually they get approved, though

10:26

even then there were still all these hoops

10:29

that doctors

10:29

were jumping through to get it to patients.

10:32

Yeah, like what? Like for example,

10:34

doctors would run all these tests. You

10:36

had to check blood count. This is

10:38

Laura McIsaac again. So you have to draw blood.

10:41

To make sure, is this person bonymic?

10:43

We used to do a blood type. Check their

10:45

liver function. Do an ultrasound and make

10:48

sure that it was not a neptopic pregnancy.

10:50

Every once in a while, a pregnancy will implant

10:52

somewhere outside of the uterus. It's in a fallopian

10:55

tube

10:55

that as it grows, it will

10:57

rupture the mom's fallopian tube.

11:00

And these pills do work for that or don't work for that?

11:02

No, it wouldn't work for that. It would not. Yeah.

11:05

No, because you know, you are flushing out

11:07

the uterus. But if the embryo

11:09

is not in the uterus, it's just going to keep growing.

11:11

And so that's like a super dangerous situation

11:14

that, you know, that this situation can happen

11:16

in any pregnancy, but it can also happen, you

11:18

know, in this type of scenario. Right. And I

11:20

should say that, you know, you didn't have to

11:23

do all these tests. Doctors sort of just did

11:25

them out of precaution.

11:27

But there were some things that doctors had

11:29

to do. Like the FDA rule was

11:31

that they actually had to give the patient the pills in

11:33

the office, like sit there and watch

11:36

the patients take the pills. Like

11:38

literally watch them ingest the pills

11:40

in their mouth. Yeah, exactly. Is

11:43

this all in one visit or are we

11:45

at multiple visits at this point to get all of that

11:47

done? Yeah, it initially

11:50

could take two visits. Wait, so why all

11:52

the regulations and the testing? Was it

11:54

because of politics or because of science

11:57

safety stuff?

11:58

Well, there was a little bit of some. Some of it was politics,

12:01

but then you also have to remember, like, the

12:03

day before these pills came out, the abortion

12:05

was a surgery. You know, we can't forget

12:08

that reproductive events,

12:10

abortion, miscarriage,

12:12

childbirth, can be fatal, right? I

12:14

mean, Laura was like, don't get me wrong. Most

12:17

of the time, these things go fine. Totally.

12:20

But when it doesn't, it is scary, and

12:22

you have to act fast, and the light bulbs

12:24

have to go on and say,

12:26

something's not right here. Why does she have a fever?

12:29

She might be septic. I'm not going to leave her side

12:31

until I figure this out. So it's

12:34

not like

12:35

bad shit never happens. And

12:37

honestly, even when everything's going right,

12:40

there's like you're heavy

12:42

bleeding. There's uterine contractions.

12:45

There could be vomiting or diarrhea. It's

12:47

a full body experience

12:50

that can feel and be scary,

12:53

even if it ends up being okay.

12:56

But for folks where it's not okay, like, they'd have

12:59

to get themselves to a hospital or a doctor

13:01

or even get a surgical abortion

13:03

to like complete the procedure.

13:05

So I did find myself

13:07

when I was talking to Laura, like, saying,

13:10

you know, as the person who could bleed

13:13

from these pills, like,

13:15

I appreciate the guardrails, because

13:18

I have just a lot, I'm a person has a lot of questions

13:20

all the time. It's why I'm in the job that I'm in.

13:22

If I could just have a little doctor living

13:25

in the corner of my house, I would be

13:27

the happiest person ever.

13:30

How little do they have to be? I'm just

13:32

feeling it.

13:32

I was applying for the job, basically. I know. There's

13:35

an opening. So

13:37

I would be the happiest person, you know, so I

13:40

understand like knowledge

13:42

satiation. Totally, totally. The one thing

13:44

with all these guardrails though, is that guardrails

13:47

do make it hard to get these pills

13:49

to patients, right? They're missing work

13:51

for all of these visits. You know, all these

13:53

tests are expensive.

13:55

Yeah. Yeah. So

13:57

to sort of like advance the story, right? This is the state

13:59

of play.

14:00

2000. And the MIFI-MISO abortion

14:02

is approved for up to seven weeks. Okay.

14:05

Now, over time, like the next couple

14:07

of decades, doctors are starting

14:09

to... And these are OBs specifically, right? They're

14:12

starting to experiment and

14:14

test the boundaries of clinical

14:17

practice. So... Someone

14:17

tries an experiment, meaning a scientist?

14:19

Yeah, like a researcher doing a clinical

14:22

trial. So the initial

14:24

dose of Mifapristone was 600, I think,

14:26

milligrams. They try... Maybe

14:28

we could... This is pretty high. Let's try 400.

14:31

Same efficacy. Then they cut it

14:33

down to 200. Same efficacy.

14:36

So the dose is going down.

14:38

The weeks are going out. Because remember,

14:41

at first, you could only give the pills up to seven

14:43

weeks. And that's not that much time considering,

14:45

you know, it's typically going to be four weeks

14:48

by the time you realize you missed a period. And

14:50

then you have to get all your shit together, get these labs

14:52

done, come back, get the ultrasound.

14:55

It doesn't buy us that much time. So

14:57

it started at seven, then they tried eight.

15:00

Still works. Tried nine.

15:02

Still works. 10. Still works.

15:05

Meanwhile, the labs that are

15:08

being drawn, doctors are starting to think, well,

15:10

do we really need this lab?

15:12

The type and screen where we check the mother's

15:14

blood type, do we really need that? And experimenting

15:17

with taking that out. Nothing bad is happening.

15:19

The CBC, you're looking for anemia. Well, turns

15:22

out you can just ask someone if they have anemia.

15:24

They take the CBC out. And

15:26

I just want to say a lot of

15:28

this experimentation started in

15:31

other countries. So it'd be like, oh, the

15:33

UK is doing it this way now. That's interesting.

15:35

And then, you know, Sweden would do something. And then

15:38

France would try something. Right. So

15:41

basically what you see with these pills is just

15:43

this kind of steady, steady

15:45

step of progress in the science around

15:48

them and the ways that we give them to people.

15:50

And then COVID

15:52

happens and almost overnight,

15:55

everything about the way we use these pills

15:59

changes in a human life.

16:00

huge way.

16:03

When we come back, the abortion pills

16:05

and the pandemic face off. Stick

16:08

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17:35

Lulu. Lutheff. Avere.

17:38

Molly. Radiolab. Okay, so

17:40

now it's the beginning of 2020 and these pills

17:44

are around. They're becoming more and more common.

17:46

Yeah, so nearly half

17:48

of abortions in the United States are happening

17:50

because of these pills. And then

17:53

COVID happens. Everything changes.

17:56

Women still need to have abortions

17:59

and the ACI. The ACLU leads

18:01

a lawsuit against the FDA, basically

18:04

saying that forcing patients to come into

18:06

the office to get these pills poses

18:08

a huge medical risk to both the

18:10

doctor and the patient. Now, because

18:12

of COVID. Because of COVID. Right? And

18:15

they win.

18:16

So now patients don't have to come in

18:18

to the office to get these pills.

18:20

Yeah. And on top of that, doctors

18:22

did away with ultrasounds and testing

18:24

for all but the most high risk patients.

18:26

So now all of a sudden, the majority

18:29

of abortions are happening over video

18:32

chat. They're essentially becoming like,

18:34

quote, no touch. No touch abortion.

18:36

That's Laura McIsaac again. Was that

18:38

like, for people who are doing this,

18:41

was that a huge moment? Huge. When

18:43

telehealth abortions first started. I remember

18:45

my first feeling was, oh, some bad things

18:47

are gonna happen. We're gonna miss some ectopic pregnancies

18:50

or patients are gonna estimate their

18:52

gestational age poorly. I'm

18:54

just used to doing it with the patient in front of me. And

18:57

medicine,

18:57

you know, it's like, we're super conservative.

18:59

We don't wanna rock the boat. One

19:02

mistake makes us all feel terrible. Even

19:05

if 99 of the rest of

19:07

the time it went fine. But it

19:09

turns out

19:10

telehealth abortion and in-person

19:12

abortion have the same outcomes. There's

19:14

absolutely no difference. Oh my

19:16

gosh. Really? Nothing?

19:19

Nothing. So the efficacy rate is the same,

19:21

right? The failure rate is the same. The

19:24

adverse event rate is the

19:25

same. So it's like the worries

19:28

may have been legit, but the worries were in vain.

19:30

Yes. Yes. Wow. I'm

19:33

kind of shocked. Like I feel like especially when COVID first hit, like there were all these

19:35

stories of like, like it's like people

19:37

doing Zoom funerals

19:40

and Zoom weddings and those were all, and then, but like nobody

19:42

was talking about Zoom abortions going on same

19:44

time. Exactly. And I mean, Laura's

19:47

take on it is that like, all of this happened

19:49

precisely because, you

19:51

know, there was so much else going on.

19:54

And neither the pro-abortion movement

19:57

or the anti-abortion movement even got the

19:59

chance.

20:00

the too distracted by cope

20:02

and to be fighting

20:04

these fighting over how doctors

20:06

should be doing these abortions ha

20:09

wow yeah country but there's actually

20:11

one more thing that laura told us zoning

20:13

and on that you something that almost feels

20:15

like a signal of what abortions

20:17

might look like in the future so this

20:20

nonprofit called aid access

20:22

has

20:22

been providing women

20:24

with never priest don't and nice a prost

20:27

all through the mail and

20:28

eight access is the

20:30

u s branch of this abortion provider

20:32

that is literally mailing abortion pills all

20:34

around the world hot and it's run

20:37

by this european doctor who has

20:39

developed a company to practice

20:41

essentially in other countries

20:43

where access to abortion is

20:45

really limited what you do as you go

20:48

online you fill out a questionnaire

20:50

and then a doctor on the other end

20:52

would read it and if they felt

20:55

like you qualified to you have

20:57

a medical abortion

20:58

they would mail you the pills directly

21:00

to your house in the first two years of

21:02

service there were fifty seven thousand

21:05

five hundred and six requests from

21:07

people in the united states and they came

21:09

from

21:09

all fifty states this is abigail

21:12

akin professor at the university of texas

21:14

austin if you abigail and your team looked at

21:16

data from almost three thousand of those

21:18

patients and we found that ninety

21:20

six percent of people were able to

21:22

end their pregnancy without

21:25

any intervention from medical provider

21:27

how does that compare to the

21:29

same statistics for if

21:31

this is done in a clinic setting yeah that's

21:34

a great question so these results in terms

21:36

of effectiveness are really on par

21:38

with what you would see in the com really adding yeah

21:41

again same

21:42

results

21:45

but

21:45

no greater adverse events

21:48

even when a doctor and a patient

21:50

weren't speaking to each other at all

21:52

and can i just say also that there

21:54

was this other result there

21:56

was very interesting they were actually several

21:58

topics not many

22:00

maybe five in one study, three in

22:02

the other, that were diagnosed by the

22:04

service at the time of consultation. So

22:06

the person would share symptoms of some kind and they

22:08

would say, we think that's probably a topic you should go

22:10

get that checked out before you proceed

22:13

with this. And they would actually get into care

22:15

earlier than if they had waited

22:18

until they had

22:18

severe abdominal pain and vomiting. So

22:21

you mean it's like the form that they did sort

22:23

of flag them? Yeah, exactly. Wow.

22:26

Yeah. So it's a crazy study. This

22:28

is the idea that had been

22:30

percolating and aid access is definitely

22:32

the vanguard, but it's this idea

22:35

of the self-managed abortion. And I

22:38

think of it like

22:39

Molly's probably tired of me hearing saying

22:41

the same metaphor. Never, never. But

22:45

Jenga, I just played it the other day. Okay. I

22:48

see this whole thing like a game of Jenga, right? How? When

22:52

the medicines come out, we have a perfect

22:54

block of Jenga, you know, like the whole structure

22:56

is there. And

22:58

as physicians, we're very scared

23:01

to take things out of this structure. But we

23:03

start saying, well, you know, really, I don't know if we

23:05

need this particular lab hepatic

23:07

function, whatever.

23:08

Let's take that out.

23:10

Structure still stands, you know, boom,

23:12

boom. We keep taking out different parts of this

23:15

Jenga tower with COVID. Huge

23:17

chunks of the Jenga tower come out. Structure

23:20

still standing. And so what's incredible is just

23:22

the amount of pieces we've been able to

23:24

take out of this Jenga tower and have it still standing. And

23:27

really what's the last piece that

23:30

is always there is the doctor, you

23:32

know, we put ourselves at the center

23:34

of this whole process,

23:37

partially out of care, but partially

23:39

probably out of some hubris, I would say, you know.

23:42

And so taken to its fullest, the

23:44

self-managed abortion is really saying,

23:47

what if there's no face-to-face contact with the

23:49

doctor at all? What if you fill out a form

23:51

and if you check the right boxes on this form,

23:54

then you're just good to go. You do this completely

23:56

on your own. And so that idea,

23:58

I think, is... is subtle,

24:01

but from my perspective, it's profound.

24:05

There is no doctor directly involved

24:07

in your care. It's like getting a Ikea couch.

24:11

It's just like, here's

24:13

the instructions.

24:15

So what does this mean? That's

24:20

what I keep asking myself is like, so

24:22

what? And right now, 90%

24:25

of abortions are happening in

24:27

the first trimester, where you

24:30

could potentially use these pills. And

24:32

so the so what to me is that like,

24:35

what these pills are telling us is

24:38

that we now have the

24:40

ability to take abortions, a

24:42

good chunk of them, outside

24:45

of clinics, outside of hospitals,

24:47

outside of institutions, and

24:49

put them into the hands of people,

24:52

which I think is just such a cool and

24:55

interesting trajectory.

24:58

That said, one thing I

25:00

think important to note is that

25:02

we're talking about abortions with pills,

25:04

but there are a chunk of people

25:08

for whom that doesn't apply

25:10

at all. They need to

25:12

get the old school surgical

25:14

abortion, and that's fine. But

25:17

the percentage of people getting an abortion

25:19

using pills, it's literally just

25:21

a line graph that just keeps going

25:23

up every year.

25:25

And it's really just happening because

25:28

of the science of these pills.

25:30

Can I just say it's like so funny to hear

25:32

you both tell this story, because

25:35

it's like, we're so used to every

25:38

story about abortion. It's

25:41

all about the politics. It's like so

25:43

politically drenched. It's like every

25:45

single little detail

25:48

about it is like a culture

25:50

war. But what you're telling is

25:52

like the story that it seems like there's no

25:55

politics in it really, or

25:57

very little,

25:58

which is kind of surprising to me. it's

26:00

like making me do a double take kind of that

26:01

that's what i the i think is so incredible like

26:04

science moves

26:06

based

26:06

on science more

26:07

or less i mean you know obviously there's

26:09

politics involved but in this case i'm seeing

26:12

that these pills keep moving and moving

26:14

moving in the same direction

26:16

it's bigger than politics it's bigger

26:18

than the supreme court is

26:20

bigger than all that

26:32

contributing editor of the or me try and

26:35

senior correspondent ali webster so

26:47

that was the peace we played just

26:49

a few months ago ah at

26:52

the time it seemed to us at least like it

26:54

like it really really was mostly a science

26:56

and medicine story but obviously

26:59

now the law

27:02

and the politicians have

27:05

caught up and and now this

27:07

pill is sort of in the in

27:09

the in the cross hairs

27:10

but we should say for the moment this pill

27:12

meth a persona still available at

27:14

pharmacies and it doesn't

27:16

seem to be affecting the work of eight access

27:19

younger we mention that sense patients

27:21

abortion pills the the mouth

27:23

the thanks for listening stay tuned green

27:27

your lab was created by job at a at

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edited by foreign oil at loma

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not guilty at a mcewen

27:54

alex really thin far cari on

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rough coed path thera fan

27:59

back Brianne

28:00

Wack, Pat Walters, and

28:02

Molly

28:02

Webster, with help from Andrew Vignales.

28:05

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily

28:08

Krieger,

28:08

and Natalie Middleton. Hi,

28:12

this is Tamara from Pasadena, California.

28:16

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