suede joshua prager. you've spent 12 years working on a book about the row case. did it lead you to being able to explain or understand better why this has been as in your words the most enduringly divisive case ever decided by the supreme court. well, i think that there is something unique about america and abortion that has sort of left us vulnerable to this problem. and then there were also sort of enormous forces at work that it that then worked hard to sort of exploit that vulnerability and so it was a combination of things that were sort of uniquely american i think our puritanical roots have something to do with it the sort of seeming a reconcile ability of sex and religion and then again forces on both sides of the issue that then benefited in a sense from having this become such an enormous problem and they worked hard to politicize it etc the heart of your book of course is norma mccorvey aka jane rose life story. what are the aspects of norma mccorvey's life and personality that are essential for us to know as we start this conversation. well, i mention

and jesus is joshua prager, were you able to understand her turnaround?eah, i'm smiling only also because what's so fascinating is little by little she's learning. she learns the language of both sides. so at one point she said abortion is up covenant of death, and she did the exact same thing on the pro-choice side. well, what was really fascinating about norma? look she was very much. comfortable pledging herself to ideologies that were not her own and there was an enormous cost to her becoming pro-life. which was that she was also made to renounce her homosexuality, but she did have an opinion that was genuine and that was her own even though she didn't make it public. days after roe v wade in 1973. she was interviewed by a tiny baptist newsletter and in that newsletter. she says, you know what it's her first ever interview. i believe i'm thankful that my case has helped to legalize abortion, but i don't know if a person should ever have an abortion after the first trimester after that point. she says to this reporter, it strikes me that it is the taki