You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America

Journalist Becker focuses her striking debut on the creativity and fortitude of medical practitioners in the year following the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of the constitutional right to abortion. She recaps the impact of the Dobbs decision in states like Alabama, where abortion bans became effective immediately, leaving clinic providers scrambling to make arrangements for clients, and Massachusetts, where activists mobilized to fight for shield laws that would protect those traveling from other states for reproductive care. Drawing on extended interviews with providers, Becker makes palpable the challenges caused by constantly shifting state-level abortion laws, and highlights the ingenuity of providers’ tactics and countermoves, which include mail-order medication networks and the new practice of “bifurcated induction abortion”—which begins the abortion process in a state where it is legal and finishes the process in a state where abortion is illegal, but removing a nonviable fetus is not. Writing in lucid prose, Becker covers complex legal battles in multiple states with elegance and efficiency, leaving the providers’ own words ample room to breathe as they offer fascinating insights into what motivates them (“Abortion is one of the only things that consistently fixes a problem... the fact is, when someone comes to you needing an abortion, they leave and that problem is fixed”). It adds up to an inspiring portrait of persistence. (Sept.)