Murder on the Abortion Express: Amy Littlefield on Who Killed Roe

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the Daily Interview Show about the United States.

Hello everybody. You don't need me to tell you that true crime is an increasingly popular genre on the internet when it comes to podcasts. We don't always cover it. Uh, sometimes it seems a little facile, but today we have a very interesting true crime story from my guest, Amy Littlefield. She is the abortion access correspondent at the nation, one of, uh, America's leading experts on.

The politics of abortion, and she has a new True crime book out, uh, it's called Killers of Roe. And Amy is joining us from New York City at a publisher's office. The book is out this week. Uh, she normally resides in Boston. Um, Amy, congratulations on the new book, killers of Roe. Am I right? Is it a in the genre?

Is it a a true crime book? It is, it's a true, true crime book. Everything in it is absolutely true. It's a non-fiction book. Um, but it is the story of a real life crime. The, the story of the murder of a constitutional right, supported by the majority of Americans, and the 50 year, um, legacy of how we lost.

Uh, Roe v. Wade, and it also tells the stories of the preventable deaths of women who died as a result of anti-abortion policies, even while Roe v Wade was the law of the land starting in the 1970s and 1980s. And then, um, obviously today, you know, the stories that have been in the news, um, around, you know, women since the Dobbs decision in 2022 dying preventable deaths as a result of abortion bans.

I'm gonna get into the politics, the nitty gritty, the bloody politics in some ways of it, but I wonder if there's a more, say serious, but a bigger issue behind the book Killers of Roe, which you're presenting as a true crime book. Um. The left progressives haven't always done a great job when it comes to public relations battles is one of the things you're trying to do in this new book is suggest that, um, marketing strategy, so to speak, needs to be really carefully thought out in defending something like abortion rights.

Do you mean marketing strategy as far as how the book is marketed? Not how the book is marketed, but how the message is marketed? Well, here's what I can tell you. When I realized that I was gonna need to write a book about the 50 year history of abortion rights, I knew it was gonna be a heavy topic. I knew that was gonna be a tough, um, issue to address.

I knew it was gonna be tough to sit through interviews with some of the people that I needed to sit with and listen to. And at the time when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and when it became clear that, you know, the incremental loss of abortion rights that I'd been covering for years as a journalist was now gonna culminate in the reversal.

Of a constitutional right. Um, the only thing that I could consume at the time were murder mysteries. I'm a, I'm an Agatha Christie fanatic, and I was a new mom. I was exhausted, I was angry. I was sad. Is there, are you a, a Poro person or a, a map Miss Maple. Thank you for asking that. I, I don't believe that you have to choose.

I love Poro. I'm a very exacting, tedious, obsessive person, and so I do love Poro, but um, but for the purposes of this book, Ms. Marble felt right, like the right fit. She's this. Yeah. Well there are behind the scenes, unassuming white lady and, um. And so, yeah, so I could really only tolerate murder mysteries.

And so this started out as a way to kind of entice myself to tell a really challenging story. And I hope that in this moment where I think people of conscience are exhausted with the, you know, violence and authoritarianism we are witnessing every single day. I hope that this is a serious story that tells a difficult history with moments of levity and escapism that help make it go down a little easier.

Yeah, and that's exactly my point. I know you're excited by your book deal. You even put it up on your ex account. Um, is this your first book? This is my first book, yeah. It is originally called American Crusaders. So you changed the name to Killers of Ro. Yeah. Do you know what happened? As I realized that Pete Hegseth had a book called American State.

Oh my God. And there's a picture of him on the title I I, I don't know if he's actually shirtless or this is just in my imagination right, of how I've hiked my mind. It's hard to, it's hard to imagine, Pete. Heg said either with or without a shirt. Exactly right. Exactly right. It's a total double bind there.

Um, but I had to make a decision about whether I could stand to have a book title that was the same as Pete Hegseth. So whether it would come across as ironic or, um, whether people might get confused and buy one instead of the other. And, um, so we did wind up changing. Well, it's a wise move, so given that this is a true crime story killers of row, we probably should begin with.

Ro what or who is ro? Yeah, great question. So Roe is not a perfect victim in this murder mystery, right? Roe is a very flawed victim indeed. Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to abortion nationwide in 1973. Before that, it was legal in a few states, but not across the country. And, um, everybody thought, great, now there's gonna be access to abortion.

Well. People who supported abortion thought that people who don't support abortion were not happy about it. And, um, and people thought, great, you know, people will be able to access abortion easily. Um, and the, you know, tidal wave of women dying preventable deaths in hospitals from infections that resulted from botched abortions.

You know, that's finally gonna stop. Um. Yet. What happened is that pretty shortly after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, opponents of abortion led by the Catholic church started to chip away at it. Um, and they went after poor women first. So they went after people who were on Medicaid by passing the Hyde Amendment, which is a ban on federal.

Okay. So, I mean, we're gonna get to the killers, but let's just Yeah. Go back to, to Roe. Establish what Roe is. Okay. So this, the victim is, at least in your narrative. The dead victim on the, the corpse is Roe. Mm-hmm. Um, what did or didn't Roe enable when it came to women's abortion rights? I've always been a bit confused.

The law is always so complicated on these things. Right. So I mean, from a legal point of view, Roe had this trimester framework, right? So the three trimesters of pregnancy. So abortion was legal and fully protected in the first trimester of pregnancy. In the second trimester states could make some reasonable regulations around it, and then in the third trimester they could ban it outright.

Um. And so this was never a perfect framework. Of course, the details of exactly, you know, it didn't fully mesh with the medical definitions and realities of pregnancy. Um, but this was the, the framework that the Supreme Court came up with. Was it, uh, Amy, you are a historian of this. We've done shows in the past or they're not for a while.

Was it a compromise? I mean, were there people on the left? Were there. Abortion activists, feminists who thought that Roe versus Wade didn't go far enough? I think so, yeah. I think there have always been people who understood that Roe v. Wade did not go far enough, especially because over time it became clear that having a legal right to abortion was not the same as guaranteeing access and practice, especially for people who were young and people, um, who didn't have money to pay for an abortion out of pocket.

And, and in historical terms, was it. Viewed as, you know, by, by the middle. There's such a thing as the middle in American politics. Uh, was it viewed as a great victory? Was it big news when Roe versus Wade went down? It was, it certainly was big news, um, for people who cared about and were paying attention to this issue on both sides.

And it was a big national story as well. I mean, transformative and, and over time would be clear, transform the lives of millions of people, um, in this country, women and men alike. And of course goes without saying. And this is the real narrative in your book, um, when. RO went down when it was passed. Uh, a lot of people were very, very unhappy.

Is that fair? Uh, yes. Yes. A lot of devout Catholics, for example, who followed the teachings of their church, and that was really the basis of the anti-abortion movement in that time. Um, were devastated and there, there certainly were activists who cared about this issue, who became, you know, catalyzed by the ruling and, and got involved in trying to reverse it.

You've done this forensic event, um, investigation of the Killers of Roe. So you've looked at their motives, the kind of people, and we're gonna get to some of the characters involved who killed Roe or seem to have killed Roe. Um, you are clearly an abortion rights. Supporter, you're the abortion access correspondent of the nation, which reveals I think, your politics and the nation's politics.

There's no mystery there. No, not a secret. Yeah. And uh, I, I think most of our listeners and viewers, including myself, are probably on your side, but in your view, you've looked at. The characters who killed Roe, and, and we'll come to some of them later, who has the best, not the best motive, but the best arguments for being really profoundly disturbed by Roe Who, who do you maybe not quite respect, but not despised a little less than some of the others?

I mean, do the Catholics have a good argument? Um, I personally can't relate to the Catholic argument. You know, maybe it's 'cause I was raised in a secular family and I think when you present people with religion late in life, it's a little hard to swallow. Not that it doesn't ever happen, but, um, I. I find it hard to go along with the Catholic proposition that life begins at conception, right?

Because so many pregnancies, there's, you know, the sperm and egg meat and it never implants, or, you know, um, for one reason or another, there's an early miscarriage and the person never even knows they're pregnant. You know, these things can happen after conception and, and, um, Catholic teaching would, would say that all of those, um, you know, microscopic.

Fertilized eggs are human beings. Um, I think I can to some degree, understand and sympathize with the people who see the fetus as a, um, potential life that is worth defending. I don't agree with that. You know, I think that women's autonomy and the ability of a pregnant person to make a decision about their body and their pregnancy outweighs, um, the potential life that they're carrying.

Um, but I, I, as I listened to some of the, the characters in the book, I think it became clear to me that some of them. Really see themselves as social justice activists who are defending the unborn, and that that becomes even more compelling to them when they're talking about, um. You know, marginalized people, low income people, for example.

And so when I listened to the True Believers, um, and, and heard those arguments, and there was something that resonated to me as someone whose politics tend to be on the left, it can start to sound like social justice, you know, rhetoric, which I is of course by design, right. They copied, copied that playbook.

Right. It's interesting that you, you make that argument in the book Killers of World. Mm-hmm. That, um, the much of the language. Of the anti RO movement was taken from the Civil Rights Movement. Mm-hmm. Um, but was this, uh, an appropriation? I mean, did they consciously and cynically take. Sixties language of civil rights or might some of that language have actually resonated with them and might it have been in some ways genuine for better or worse?

Right. I mean, I think it's really, that's a really interesting question and I think it depends on which actors in this. Story you're talking about, right? Like, I think there are true believers at the grassroots of this movement who genuinely see themselves as participating in the great civil rights struggle of their time, right?

They genuinely believe that in their hearts, and some of them have dedicated themselves so, um, intensely to that struggle that they have no personal lives, right? Like I did meet those people. I also met people like, you know, do we feel sorry for these people or, or, or respect them? You know what I, I think when you look at the damage that they've done and the people who have, um, died because of anti-abortion bans, you know, the women whose children now trace after women who look like them on the street yelling, mommy, um, the, um, children who have been left without their moms in states like Georgia and Texas.

It is hard for me to feel a lot of. Sympathy for these people, even though I do feel like I have a much deeper understanding of why they did what they did. So we're gonna get to some of these characters. You give them interesting names, like the racist, the little brother, the devout bureaucrat. But before we do that, give us some numbers, Amy, because, uh, this whole issue, the, the row issue for and against it brings out so much anger and passion and.

Devotion of one kind or another. There's sometimes the numbers are missing. You talked about these kids running after women on the street. What are the numbers? What are the consequences of all this in terms of numbers of births or absence of births? Mm-hmm. Well, the caveat here is that after Roe v. Wade was overturned the abortion rights movement, you know, true believers within the abortion rights movement, um, really stepped forward and started mailing medication abortion into states where it was banned.

Operating under laws in blue states like New York that protect people who, who do so. And so the huge increase in unwanted bursts that many expected to happen after ROE was killed, didn't come about. However, um, the data does show that there have been about 22,000 additional births. Close to 500, um, additional infant deaths, which is probably a result of people, um, giving birth to babies that have catastrophic fetal anomalies and die shortly after birth.

Well, these are real deaths. I mean, the killers of RO of course is, is metaphorical. That's correct, yes. Well, and one more, one more number I wanna add that's very important is 59 excess pregnancy. Associated deaths 59, so we can assume 59, um, women, um, according to the research who have died since the overturn of Roe v.

Wade. And, and so, you know, of course, every, every so often a high profile story will make the news, but I think that's not the full picture. When you look into the intensive amount of reporting and research it takes to verify. One single story. You know, those are the, the human stories that we hear, but it scratches the surface of, of what the numbers tell us as the reality in terms of people who are dying.

And the politics of course of this, in terms of this true crime story that you tell are, are really important. Particularly I think in 2026 when progressives are trying to figure out how to respond to. The MAGA movement and the increasing political success, at least up, up until perhaps the midterms of the Republicans.

What, what does the success quote unquote, of the challenge to roe? What does that teach, uh, progressives about? The effectiveness of political alliances. I know you talk a little lot of in the book about this, this arrangement, shall we say, between social and fiscal conservatives. The role of the Catholic Church, obviously the maga, right?

How does it all play out? I think that in the 1970s, basically fiscal conservatives saw an opportunity to advance their deeply unpopular economic strategies, um, by forming an alliance. With opponents of abortion, with Catholics, with social conservatives, and some of the architects of this movement talk about it as a three-legged stool, right?

Social issues changed the game. Um, before that, the other two legs were foreign policy and then fiscal conservatism, right? Hawkish foreign policy and fiscal conservatism and the social issues brought single issue voters. Catholics into the fold divided the Democrats on this issue and really helped form this alliance that would, um, help elect Ronald Reagan, um, and help elect, you know, many subsequent Republican presidents.

Um, and, you know, and so for the people who were figuring this out, it was very much strategic and opportunistic. Um, rather so knew, so what they were doing, did they know that they're economic? Message wasn't particularly popular, so they had to. Embrace a, a, a social message which had more emotional resonance?

I think so. And they also had a pretty, you know, racist agenda, right? They were advancing the interests of white, um, well off men. And that's. You know, a winning proposition for that particular demographic. But I think when you're looking after people at the top of the income, you know, that helps with the donor class.

It helps with, um, a certain subset of America, but it's not the majority of people. And so I think, um, those economic policies we're never gonna win on their own. What, what, what's the ra? I, I've never been entirely clear on this. What's the racial element here, Amy? Is it because more women of color? Black and brown women have abortions or don't have abortions.

Is it because more white families are looking to adopt? You know, I actually found a really interesting answer to that question in my research. Um, a historian named Jennifer Holland, who was the one who first dug this up, the anti-abortion movement was really a reaction both to the feminist movement, but also to the civil rights movement, right?

In the 1960s and seventies when black Americans were rising up and saying, Hey, white people, you need to start thinking about the harms of white supremacy. For white conservatives who didn't wanna talk about the harms of white supremacy, the anti-abortion movement offered them a way to escape from having to think too hard about race because instead they could join their own civil rights movement.

It looked a lot like the other civil rights movement in terms of the rhetoric, but not in terms of the makeup. And so they were using language of social justice and language of, you know, protecting the vulnerable, but they were talking about the fetus. And in the imagery and imagination around it, it was almost always a white fetus.

And so I think it was sort of an escape valve a way for, um. White conservatives not to have to think too hard about race. And you know, we see that language being used from the presidential pulpit by Ronald Reagan who talked about abortion and the right to life as being the right without which no other rights have any meaning.

Well, if you're gonna be, you know, a Republican fiscal fiscal conservative who slashes taxes and cuts social programs. And rolls back the rights of people of color and women, it's pretty convenient if you can focus on the one right that matters the most. So much more that you can, you know, subsume everything else and, and roll back everything else in the process of defending that one thing.

And so I think that's how I understand the way that, um, reactionary politics and racism, um, were part of the foundation of the modern day anti-abortion movement. Do you think that logic would convince a Miss Marple or a, uh, a pro, a poot? I mean, they're, they're very analytical, especially Poot. He might think, well, Amy has set of values and she's incorporating those values into trying to figure out a, a crime, and it's a one way street in terms of her logic.

But Poirot and Ms. Marble understand the value of confession and of firsthand evidence, right? They, they conduct their process through interviews and when the killer tells you what their motive was and why they did what they did, um, and you know, I didn't get any. Big dramatic confessions or, you know, tearful apologies or, uh, you know, I certainly didn't get to haul anyone off to jail at the end.

Um, and yet I did try to listen very carefully to the people who did it and to understand why they did it right. I think this is a why done and as much as a who done it, and so I, I believe people will tell you their motives. I think, you know, Ms. Marble and Paro are, are very good listeners too. Mm-hmm. Um.

But they also know how to ask tough questions and not take everything they hear at face value. So I did try, sorry. Given that a lot of these supposed killers of ROA Catholics, uh, the confessional element has a degree of irony. So let's get to some of the killers. Um, I know, um, there's a character called Henry Hyde who.

He's certainly one of the, the strongest candidates as a, as a killer. Uh, he is the man behind or the name behind the Hyde Amendment. Tell us about the Hyde Amendment and why this is the first sort of political piece of evidence for you in terms of evaluating the killers of Roe. Right. So in the aftermath of Roe v.

Wade, of course Catholics were trying to think of a way to reverse the constitutional right to abortion and public opinion was tilting in favor of keeping Roe v Wade pretty quickly after the decision. And so it became clear they were not gonna be able to ban abortion outright, which is what they wanted to do.

And so, um, Catholic strategists began looking at a way that they could, um, chip away at abortion access. And the first major victory was taking that access away for poor people. So they passed this policy called the Hyde Amendment. That's a ban on federal funding of abortion. Um, except in narrow circumstances, um, abortion would not be covered under Medicaid policies used by millions of low income.

Yeah, it could affect in, at least according to Wikipedia. Took effect in 1980. No, so, well, so it was first passed in 1976, right? Took effect the following year, and then there was a court battle, and it was upheld in 1980, um, by the Supreme Court, which basically said if you're poor, that's a problem of your own making.

You might have a constitutional right to abortion, but it does not mean that you have a quote unquote, entitlement to the funds that you would need to pay for it. And in terms of, uh, analysts of true crime, did some people begin to understand when the Hyde Amendment was passed that this crime was already happening, perhaps happened?

Yes, absolutely black women, low income people, people on Medicaid, um, people who are raising money. Um, you know, today, abortion funds that raise money to fill the gap left by the Hyde Amendment, raise millions a year to try to fill that gap. And it's never been enough to pay for everyone's abortions who needs it.

Um, I think those folks at the grassroots level always understood. The significance of the Hyde Amendment. I think it's another question whether Democrats and mainstream pro-choice groups always understood and took it as seriously. And of course, the man behind the Hyde Amendment is, uh, Illinois representative, a man called Henry Hyde.

He looks a bit as you would imagine. Henry Hyde to look. Tell us about Hi. Yeah, he was six foot three. He was this big bear of a man, had this helmet of white hair, um, and was a former basketball player, um, had gone to, you know, parochial school, um, Catholic from Illinois. Um, first comes across the abortion issue when he's in the state legislature in Illinois.

And a colleague asked. Him to try to help pass a policy to liberalize the state's abortion ban. Um, because, you know, legions of women were dying and being maimed by unsafe abortions. And, um, Henry Hyde refuses, in fact, he, he helps to defeat the bill. Um, and then when he comes into congress. Um, he meets a man named Bob Bauman, who's a Republican congressman from Illinois.

Um, Bob Bauman contrast, I mean, just judging from the photo that I, that from your piece in Mother Jones, which is adapted from the book, he looks. The ultimate Republican nerd. Yes, he was. And he had all of this training and background in congressional procedure. And so he knew all these minute details and would try to block things and manipulate things based on his knowledge of congressional procedure.

Um, and as a result he was deeply unpopular. And so Democrats were sort of used to voting against anything that had his name on it. Um, and. He was also short and stocky and not the big charming, you know. Oh, not exactly a ladies man. Is he, uh, is he the devout bureaucrat in, in, in, in, no. So he, he was, he's the closeted, um, Congressman.

So Bob Bauman, the reason you probably haven't heard of him is that in 1980, the FBI confronted him because it turned out that he had been cruising around Washington, DC in a car with congressional plates, um, picking up. Men for sex and one of those 16-year-old Bob Bauman and this Poirot with his, his ears would prick up on this one.

He has a secret sexual life. He's a secret life. Yes. Yes. Um, and he actually wrote about it all himself in his own autobiography, the gentleman from Maryland. So, um. So he, you know, his political career basically ends, um, in 1980. Um, but before Amy, I don't wanna go all psychosexual on you because I might get into trouble, but, um, I mean, I always suspect that these fanatics of Bauman, perhaps a hide, I mean, they've all got these weird sexual lives or proclivities or fantasies behind some of this.

I mean, they have no familiarity with what it's like to. Be pregnant. Certainly when it comes to poor women of color, uh, white women for that matter in terms of your. True crime analysis. Um, when it comes to your investigation, is there a psychosexual element here? Are some of these people just weird pervert?

Well, I don't know. I think it depends on if you consider patriarchy to be a psychosocial problem. Which kind? Well, you can, you make that argument. They're more than happy to, you're allowed to make that other, it just to break it down, because I do think the psychosexual backgrounds of these two men are different.

Henry Hyde, it turned out in my research I discovered that he had in fact a proclivity for groping women, um, for grabbing womens asses. Surprise. Not a surprise. Right. Totally consistent actually with his policy making. Right? Of course. If you're gonna be torching women's rights and suggesting they have no control over their bodies, and if you're gonna be going after poor women in particular, then why wouldn't you, you know, treat them as the objects you view them to be and grab their butts.

And one of my favorite stories in the book is that, um, the former president of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, told me that. Once when there was a commercial break on the Phil Donahue show, both she and Henry Hyde were on together that Henry Hyde made a pass of at her, suggested they go off to Hawaii together.

Um, and so, um, right then during the commercial break. Right, right. So, so if, if, you know, patriarchy is a perversion, which, you know, I'm, I'm there. I think some feminist scholars would agree with you then. Absolutely. Henry Hyde was a pervert. Um, when it comes to Bob Bauman, I think there was a lot more going on beneath the surface.

Right. He's a, he's a devout Catholic, and yet he's gay. Um. He gets married, he has four kids. He's trying his best to deny the fact that he's gay. Um, I think he was also a deeply deny to, sorry, to jump in. Deny to himself. Yeah. To others. Absolutely. Yeah. Deny it to himself. Um, he develops alcoholism. He's a profoundly unhappy and lonely person, and he's also adopted.

Um, and so I think he was one of the, like, he had this identification, I think with the unwanted fetus. Because he was adopted and he told me that he said his abortion, anti-abortion politics may have come in apart from the fact that he was adopted and that, you know, he identified with the unwanted fetus because that could have been him, um, who was aborted.

And he told me that, you know, late in his life that it might have been a subconscious thing. And so in terms of your, your investigation, this is an investigation you are. More Miss Mark perhaps than Poirot, does that make you more sympathetic to a Bowman who has this complicated history, this struggle, this, you know, internal strife than a, than a hide who just is a sort of caricature of a white politician?

Yes, absolutely. I think I do have some sympathy for Bob Bauman. You know, I had an interesting conversation with Bob Bauman. I, you know, Henry Hyde is dead, so I couldn't talk to him, um, about his ass grabbing and so forth. But I could talk to Bob Bauman and I did have an interesting, nuanced conversation with him.

I found him very personable. Um, he was. Frank with me. Um, he answered my tough questions, including about the contradictions I saw in his politics. I mean, this was a man who is a fiscal conservative through and through, and yet throughout his life was profligate with money. Um, spent so much that he was often in debt, lived in a house and sent his kids to schools that he really couldn't afford.

Borrowed money from William F. Buckley Jr. Who is like the ultimate, right? Scrooge, like the man who made being stingy an intellectual principle, right? Had to lend the Bauman family money. Um, and yet I think there is something deeply sad and lonely at the core of his story and out the end of his political career.

Like, do I think people's political careers should be ended because they're gay? No. Um. Do I think they should be ended because they eviscerated women's rights and, and sent women to, to preventable deaths. Yep. Perhaps that's something that we, um, should, yeah, and we did a show on Buckley recently. There's a big new that the tannin house biography.

You may have read it or read about it. And of course, Buckley himself, to put it mildly, is he may not be quite, uh. As compromised or as traumatized as Robert Bauman, but he has his own complexities and weirdnesses, doesn't he? Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're all weird when you get into it own. Well, except Reagan. One way, I dunno.

Whoa. I mean, I'm not bla What's, if, if Reagan could be considered one of the, sort of the meta killers of Roe? Yes. What's his role here? Did he, was he just kind of oblivious to the whole thing? No, I don't think he was oblivious. I think that he was sort of one of the opportunists, right? I mean, it maybe not at the top of the chain.

I think the, the ultimate iconic political opportunist in the story is our current president, Donald Trump. Um, but I think that Reagan, who, you know, had signed a liberal ish, you know. Pro-abortion rights policy when he was governor of California later came to regret. It became, you know, so anti-abortion that the, um, anti-abortion movement would claim him as, quote unquote, the first pro-life president.

Um. Although they had their frustrations with him while, while he was in office, I think his role was really to cement the alliance between the Republican party and fiscal conservatism and then the social conservatives and, um, the, the anti-abortion movement, um, which he saw as very strong and influential at that time.

Um, I had a fascinating. Experience in the book where I went to the Reagan library, um, and was toured around by a docent who was a mega fan of Ronald Reagan, and yet turned out to be pro-choice and. Told me that she really thought women were gonna die in states like Texas if, um, abortion wasn't legal. And so, I guess one of the amazing crimes that Ronald Reagan pulled off was to.

Make his anti-abortion politics appealing and yet also sort of invisible, such that there was a woman volunteering her time at a institution dedicated to his memory who was pro-choice and would've disagreed with that part of his politics, such as the sort of the hyper, the hyper reality of American politics.

I don't wanna turn this into another. Boring conversation about Trump, Amy, but you brought up Thet word. You, you suggested that he's the ultimate sort of, I mean, maybe not the killers of Roe, but certainly symbolic of, of the narrative. I, I've always understood, I mean, historically Trump was pro-abortion, wasn't it?

Did he ever make any Absolutely. Comments on Roe. Oh, absolutely. He declared himself to be very pro-choice. I mean, he was supportive of Planned Parenthood, right? This was a man who, who was very much in the pro-choice, you know, camp. I mean, I doubt he thought very deeply about the issue. Um, but, but very much so.

And then of course, you know, he is a killer of ro. He put the final nail in the coffin. He, um. Appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturn this constitutional right. Um, and now what's really interesting, you know, he sort of downplayed his anti-abortion contributions. I think counting on the fact that the anti-abortion movement in the last election was gonna have to support him anyway.

I mean, he had given them the defeat of Roe v Wade and so, you know, he expected their loyalty. Um, and yet he has. Certainly not done as much as they would've hoped to stop. Um, the mailing of medication abortion, which has led to a reality where since the Dobbs decision abortions in this country have risen since we lost the constitutional right to abortion, abortions have gone up because of the widespread availability of medication abortion.

Um, and because there's doctors here, you know, in states like New York where I am sending pills into Texas and Mississippi for a fraction of what they used to cost in a clinic. Um. And so, you know, Trump has not so far attempted to put a stop to that. I think it remains a question whether after the midterms he will, Trump makes Henry Hyde look like a choir boy, doesn't he?

Yeah. If you wanna talk about hard things to do. Speaking again, the sexual perversions. Yes. Yeah. So let's go. So we've talked about Hyde, we've talked about Bauman as the potential. Killers of Roe in your investigation to the mysterious death of abortion rights. Uh, I know as a racist you looked at, and then the little brother, the devout bureaucrat.

Give us some other characters who might be responsible for the death of Roe. Yeah, so the little brother was James Buckley, Senator from New York served one term on the conservative party ticket. William Buckle William's brother, right? William Buckley's little brother. Poor guy, was never as famous as his older brother.

Um, but hey did make it into the Senate and as far as I could tell, his version of the Hyde Amendment was the first one that was introduced in 1973. Um, and that was because the racist, um, who was. Jesse Helms, of course, a much more famous, um, yeah, racist senator, you know, used to call all black men Fred.

'cause he thought that was funny. Um, and he, um, whistled Dixie, you know, Carol mostly bra, the black woman senator in the elevator and told her that he was gonna keep going until she cried. Um, this was the kind of man he was. Um, he had introduced, you know, unable to do what Trump has finally done and abolish U-S-A-I-D entirely.

Um, Helms want wanted to do that, but instead he settled for restricting abortion funding abroad. And so he passed the Helms Amendment, which restricts funding for abortion and has led to many thousands of preventable deaths of women around the world, in countries in usaid. Um, he had small hands, which might suggest other things he did.

He was, he was. So Trumpian that I, you know, studying this history, I thought this is, Trump is not new or an anomaly in US politics at all. I mean, Helms was a man who got famous by being a pundit on, you know, talk radio. Um, he had this. Sort of blistering populism that appealed to white men. Um, he used to call foreign.

He, he used to rail against rat holes, which is what he called, like the places that foreign aid would go in, in, you know, poorer countries of the world. And of course, Trump would, you know, use a similar term. Um, uh, assholes. I don't know if I can say it on your program. No, I can say anything you want on my program.

So we've got, um. So we got Helms, we've got little brother, the brother of, uh, of Buckley. We've got of course, Bowman and Hyde. Um, finally we got. A devout bureaucrat, a man called Paul Herring. Tell us about him. Mm-hmm. So Paul Herring was, um, a great, um, character and, you know, I really enjoyed finding him because he was the ultimate sort of behind the scenes figure, right?

In a murder mystery. You look for the quiet housekeeper, you look for the person hiding in the shadows who played a pivotal role, um, in the crime, and yet who you didn't notice. Um, 'cause they were this sort of quiet, um, unassuming figure. And so Paul Herring, um, grew up in Goliad, Texas. Um, he had did an early stint as a director of Americans United for Life.

Um, took. The job without any pay because the organization was sort of in its infancy. He had a flare for sort of weird long shot lawsuits. Like he filed a lawsuit to try to stop abortions from taking place at an Air Force base in Texas under a federal policy that allowed them under certain circumstances, um, arguing that as a taxpayer, you know, he had the right to stop these abortions, um, that was ultimately unsuccessful and.

The most important thing to know about him is that he is a devout Catholic who follows the teachings of the Catholic church and, um, he pitched the idea for the Hyde Amendment. To the Catholic leadership in 1974, and there's a record of him pitching this idea to them. And what's amazing is that the, the Catholic leaders said, we don't think this is gonna work.

You know, the strategist said, we don't think this is gonna get off the ground. It's probably gonna fail, and then we'll have another loss on our hands. Um, and of course two years later when Henry Hyde introduces the Hyde Amendment, the Catholic Church is fully behind it and in fact, instrumental in its passage.

Um, but it was really fascinating to look at this memo of, of Paul Herring trying to pitch this idea. In 1974, I spent many hours with Paul Herring. I think I spent more time with him than any other character in this book. I met with him in person for hours. I talked to him on the phone, um, for hours I.

Kept coming back to him because he seemed to me like sort of the basic unit of the grassroots of the ac anti-abortion movement, right? Like he was a true believer and, um, he, the whole time kept trying to convert me to Catholicism. I think he really wanted to save my soul for maternal damnation, um, which in a sense was generous of him, right?

I think he genuinely thought. He could convert me and save me from hell. And he kept making this pitch that, you know, if I converted that I could go to heaven. And that the most important thing is we go to heaven. And when I really listened to that and sat with that, I started to see that same phrase, that same pattern echoed through the words of folks from Henry Hyde to Randall Terry from Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion militant.

So many of these men had said some iteration of, I believe that my anti-abortion activism will get me into heaven. Um, and so I really came to see that as sort of the, the hidden motive at the core of this murder mystery. I. Yeah, I wonder, I'm wearing my Miss Marple or Poot cat. Why so many men want to go to heaven anyway, uh, it we've come to that point, Amy, otherwise known as Miss Marple or Poot, probably more like Miss Marle.

Uh, we've come to the point in the show, the narrative where in this true crime story. You are going to identify who is the killer of ro. So Amy Littlefield, author of Killers of Ro. The book is out this week. Who is it? Is it the Little Brother, the devout bureaucrat, the racist Bauman? The, the US Snatcher or Okay.

Or the Wayo, uh, uh, the, the, the sad weirdo, uh, Robert Bauman. Okay. Spoiler alert here, I mean. I that Christie would've hated this, but I will reveal the ending. They all did it. They're all guilty. And by they all, I also mean the Democrats who failed to defend poor women and failed to defend young people. I also mean, um, some of the pro-choice supporters who failed to make a full-throated defense of the most vulnerable.

Um, certainly all of the people that you just listed, you know, and that's why I really see the death of Roe as akin to murder on the orients. Press, right. Agatha Christie fans, right? You stole the, no, you stole Agatha Christie's ending. Amy, I think you're gonna get sued by some of the, the Christie lawyers on this one.

I dunno. I hope that they read the book instead of suing me. Well, they should read the book at least before they sue you. The book is out this week, killers of Roe, my investigation into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights by Amy. Littlefield who writes about this sort of stuff for the nation. It's an important book and an important message and important way of doing it.

I think because it speaks of the way we, we need, we, I guess, opponents of some of these people need to popularize and, and polish our message and, and, and way of doing it. So congratulations, Amy, on doing that very interesting book and thesis. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening or watching the show. Uh, if you enjoyed it, please subscribe. We're on Substack, YouTube, apple, Spotify, all the platforms. Uh, and I'd be very curious as to your comments as well on what you think of the show, how it can be improved, and the kinds of guests that you would enjoy hearing or listening to in future.

Thank you again.