A French doctor’s invention and post-Roe America. At ninety-five, Étienne-Émile Baulieu, who is known as the father of the abortion pill, is still at work. He has led an extraordinary life: he joined the Communist Party as a teen-ager during the Second World War; he became a tenured professor at thirty and spent nights in New York hobnobbing with the artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella; and he made an enemy of the Catholic Church after he created RU-486, the key ingredient in medication abortion—which the Vatican once called “the pill of Cain.” Lauren Collins recently visited the doctor at his research facility, in Paris, where Baulieu said that he has been deeply troubled by the “scandalous” threat to reproductive freedom in the United States. After the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Baulieu’s invention has become more important than ever. Abortion pills are safe and effective, yet their power lies in their ability to reach those who need them. According to one estimate, eighty per cent of American adults don’t even know that medication abortion exists. With the U.S. entering a dangerous and regressive era, medical providers and activists are rushing to devise ways to publicize and distribute abortion drugs, even as they become one of the next battlegrounds for reproductive rights. For now, Collins writes, Baulieu’s creation remains “the most powerful tool available to the estimated thirty-three million Americans whose reproductive autonomy the ruling attempts to negate.” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | | | |
Fiction “Arrivals”“At a stoplight, you idle under a billboard, and what towers above you is a portrait of your boyfriend’s face. You do your best not to stare.” By Bryan Washington | | This Week in Fiction Bryan Washington on Why He Loves HoustonThe author discusses “Arrivals,” his story from this week’s issue of the magazine. By Willing Davidson | | Road Trips Mine Field“We are in a moment when a scenic drive, a little road trip through a purportedly protected landscape, is still theoretically possible.” By Joy Williams | | |
| P.S. “I hate to say this, but I don’t wait for anybody to make decisions. My whole life has been, like, oh, your tooth fell out, you go to the dentist. I just get shit done.” Last year, the actress Edie Falco spoke with Rachel Syme about ambition and sobriety, the legacy of “The Sopranos,” and how she discovered Buddhism. Falco was born on this day in 1963. | | | |
Today’s newsletter was written by Jessie Li. | | | |
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