logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2025
40m 10s

Embedded: The Network

NPR
About this episode
In the mid-1980s, an OBGYN in Brazil noticed that far fewer pregnant women at his hospital were dying from abortion complications. It wasn't a coincidence. Brazilian women had made a discovery that allowed them to safely have abortions at home, despite the country's abortion restrictions. That discovery eventually spread across the globe.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy
Up next
Nov 20
Democracy Dies in a Day
How quickly can a government fall? Chile was once one of Latin America's oldest democracies, but that all changed in a matter of hours after a military coup on September 11, 1973. Some supported the coup; many did not. But for the next 17 years, all Chileans lived in the grip of ... Show More
51m 51s
Nov 13
The Creeping Coup
On the surface, the story of Sudan’s war is about two generals vying for power. But it’s also about a vast web of international interests involving the U.S., China, Russia, and the UAE. Today on the show, the story of how things in Sudan got to this point, and the effects of the ... Show More
50m 39s
Nov 6
Winter is Coming
Late last month, President Trump announced that the United States would be restarting nuclear weapons tests after a break of over 30 years. We’ve since learned that they won’t be the explosive kind of tests, but this sent us down a rabbit hole — where we found a story about dinos ... Show More
52m 18s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2025
How Brazilians have safe abortions (regardless of the law)
In our 'Your Body, Whose Choice' series, we've focused a lot on the present and the future of reproductive health in this country. And now we'd like to share a look at the past from our sister show, NPR's Embedded. Their new 3–part series, The Network, follows a Brazilian women w ... Show More
23m 7s
Jul 2025
"The Network" from NPR's Embedded
New from NPR's Embedded: Hosts Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez travel across Latin America and within the U.S. to understand how women in Brazil discovered one of the medications that's used for self-managed abortions, the spread of this method across the world, and how this ... Show More
42m 6s
Mar 2024
Inside a Hospital’s Abortion Committee
Sarah Osmundson knows how to talk about abortion. She’s learned over the course of her career as a maternal-fetal medicine doctor that some patients are comfortable with the option, and others would never consider it. Osmundson is a physician in Tennessee, a state with one of the ... Show More
24m 29s
Aug 6
Are abortion numbers rising in the US?
In June 2022 the United States Supreme Court passed what became known as ‘the Dobbs decision’. In doing so they overturned the long standing constitutional right for women to access abortion in the US. Since then a number of states have banned abortion completely with many others ... Show More
8m 58s
May 2023
Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, "From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
In From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (U Nebraska Press, 2020), Alicia Gutierrez-Romine examines the history of criminal abortion in California and the role abortion providers played in exposing and exploiting the faults in California’s anti ... Show More
55m 12s
Nov 2024
Cool Rerun Part One: The Jane Collective: Direct Action Abortion Access Works
It's a Cool People Cool Rerun! Margaret talks with Samantha McVey about the more than a hundred women who provided safe, affordable abortion in pre- Roe v Wade Chicago.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
1h 16m
Jul 2023
Expanding access to abortion pills seems like a no-brainer, but is it?
<p>It’s becoming much easier to access the abortion pill MS-2 Step (RU486 overseas.) All doctors and some senior nurses will be able to prescribe it, and from today, all pharmacies will be able to stock it. But gynaecologists and obstetricians are sounding the alarm, saying there ... Show More
20 m
Dec 2024
E175: He Went Undercover And Exposed Planned Parenthood w/David Daleiden
<p>Join me for a conversation with my longtime friend and former investigative journalism colleague, David Daleiden. David is the mastermind behind the campaign that exposed Planned Parenthood’s illegal trafficking of baby body parts. Posing as a biotech vendor, he captured explo ... Show More
1h 38m
Nov 2024
Cool Rerun Part Two: The Jane Collective: Direct Action Abortion Access Works
It's another Cool People Cool Rerun! Margaret finishes talking with Samantha McVey about the more than a hundred women who provided safe, affordable abortion in pre- Roe v Wade Chicago.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
1 h