6 Major Post-Roe Books on Abortion and American History

Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion

Sociologist Braine debuts with a striking and lucid survey of the recent struggle for abortion rights across Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, and argues that American abortion activists can learn from these communities’ successful promotion of self-managed abortions. These illegal, at-home abortions were made possible around the world by the growing availability of abortions pills, the use of which has now also become more widespread in the U.S., Braine notes, after increased restrictions on abortion in some states. Braine traces how these pills first came into widespread use in Brazil when abortion was criminalized there in the 1980s and ’90s. Grassroots activist organizations provided information about self-managed abortion medication to pregnant women through illicit abortion hotlines, and eventually established informal medical practices to guide patients through a self-managed abortion over the phone. These organizations, which Braine calls “civil disobedience without a press release,” not only provided abortion services free of charge, but also fostered a sense of solidarity that she demonstrates was crucial to later legal victories securing abortion rights in Argentina, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and other countries. Drawing on three years of travel and interviews, Braine paints an enthralling portrait of a robust, globe-spanning network of feminist activism. It’s a stunning view of a sea change in abortion rights. (Nov.)

The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America

Roe v. Wade was brought down by “an elite strike force of Christian lawyers and power brokers” who, galvanized by the 2012 reelection of Barack Obama, enacted “a transformational decade” of behind-the-scenes change in American politics, according to this sweeping debut account. New York Times journalists Dias and Lerer recap how—in a departure from the “grassroots” tactics used to combat Roe since 1973, which mainly involved attempting to sway voters—this new, smaller coalition “methodically and secretly” worked to enact “a strategic, top-down takeover” that involved getting anti-abortion judges appointed, lobbying state legislatures to pass tighter abortion restrictions, and (in the wake of Missouri congressman Todd Akin’s use of the phrase “legitimate rape,” which lost him his seat in 2012) cleaning up how Republican candidates talk about their anti-abortion views. “They were far more organized than their opponents... ever knew,” Dias and Lerer assert, tracking the group’s tenacious leaders, including Susan B. Anthony List founder Marjorie Dannenfelser, and juxtaposing them with Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards, whom the authors depict as caught playing defense. Dias and Lerer astutely highlight that, once Roe was overthrown, this same coalition moved on to other avenues for litigating the role of women in society, including promoting an anti-trans agenda. It’s a devastating postmortem of a resounding conservative political victory. (June)

Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open

Historian Hume (Interventions for Women) offers a vibrant account of the largely underground history of women’s abortion clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. She focuses on Women’s Choice, an independent abortion clinic that spearheaded the feminist “self-help” movement from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Beginning when abortion was still illegal, the “self-help” movement comprised radical feminists who taught ordinary women how to perform gynecological services (including menstrual extraction, which can be classified as a type of abortion) at home. Hume follows the clinic as the original five founders developed the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit, taught women how to perform cervix exams, established a network of clinics after the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion, started the first sperm bank in the country to serve single women and lesbians, and developed a defense network against anti-abortion crusaders. The operation’s decline began in the mid-1980s as the clinics faced property damage and new laws regulating abortion providers. Hume’s “snowball research” method—interviewing activists who introduced her to more activists—gives her narrative a lively and conversational feel as she coaxes this secretive network, which for decades defied laws restricting abortion and the practice of medicine, to divulge its history. The result is a revelatory new perspective on the fight for women’s bodily autonomy. (Nov.)

Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America

Journalist Luthra debuts with an eye-opening and chilling look at the strain the U.S. reproductive healthcare system is undergoing in a “post-Roe” world. Tracking the circuitous, costly, and legally jeopardizing paths that patients seeking abortions who live in states that have imposed restrictions must take to access care across state lines, Luthra reveals that these cross-country journeys are having a “bottleneck” effect that is limiting healthcare access across America. The story of Angela, a 21-year-old San Antonio mother who can’t afford another child and makes an expensive trip to New Mexico for a dose of the abortifacient mifepristone, is juxtaposed with the plight of Jasper, a trans man who struggles to access abortion care because his local clinic in Orlando, Fla., has been overwhelmed by out-of-state patients. The healthcare providers themselves paint a dire portrait of a system in crisis (“It’s an unfolding national disaster,” says one). Luthra depicts them triaging patients (the staff at a Jacksonville, Fla., clinic routinely stays until midnight to help out-of-staters, but still has to limit services for locals), strategizing new ways of providing care (which include illegal mail-order mifepristone networks), and dealing with patients in mortal terror of jail time (one San Diego clinician describes patients anxiously discussing how best to hide where they’ve been from people back home). Luthra’s vivid and compassionate storytelling unveils an interconnected web of desperate individuals and heroic helpers who are only just barely within reach. It’s an urgent wake-up call. (May)

Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that Jasper’s local clinic is in Jacksonville, Fla. The review has also been updated with changes made prior to the book’s publication.

We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe

Married couple Curtis Boyd and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd (Dancing in Limbo) chronicle their decades-long careers offering abortion care in this fascinating memoir. Boyd was a small-town doctor in 1960s East Texas when he began performing illegal abortions for desperate patients in defiance of his strict Christian upbringing; Halvorson-Boyd, meanwhile, was studying psychology and participating in the budding women’s movement. The pair met shortly after Roe v. Wade, when Halvorson-Boyd worked as a surgical assistant at Boyd’s Dallas clinic, and they quickly bonded over their shared dedication to women’s health (“I am not pro-abortion,” Boyd writes, “I am pro-woman”). In alternating first-person sections, the couple traces key moments in their personal and professional lives, including their 1973 establishment of the first legal abortion facility in the American Southwest and the 2009 murder of their colleague, George Tiller, who pioneered late-term abortions. The most stirring sections focus on the women they’ve treated, including a 14-year-old pressured by her mother into seeking an abortion, which the couple refused to perform. With empathy and urgency to spare—the consequences of Roe v. Wade’s 2022 overturning (“This feels like a death,” Halvorson-Boyd recalls saying when the decision came through) are implicit on every page—this offers an invaluably intimate glimpse at a delicate subject. It’s a must-read. (Sept.)

Abortion Pills Go Global: Reproductive Freedom Across Borders

Calkin (Human Capital in Gender and Development), a lecturer in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London, examines in this eye-opening study recent worldwide changes to abortion access brought about by the production and distribution of mifepristone and misoprostol, pills used for self-managed abortion. Calkin traces these medications from India, where rules allowing copycat drugs have facilitated a substantial pharmaceutical export industry, to places like the U.S., where the rise in abortion restrictions in some states has led to an increase in the illegal acquisition of mifepristone and misoprostol via mail order. Other countries profiled include Poland, where abortion laws have become significantly more restrictive, but self-administered abortion is not criminalized; Ireland, where the rising availability of abortion pills helped force politicians to hold the 2018 public referendum that legalized abortion in the country; and Northern Ireland, where criminalization of pill users made obtaining an abortion more difficult even as the drugs were being transported through the country to other U.K. destinations. Calkin’s meticulous analysis demonstrates how the technological development of these pills has led to substantial changes in the social politics of abortion around the world, due not just to their ease of use but their ease of transport. The result is an incisive look at the deeply intertwined relationship between international supply chains, local politics, underground activism, and women’s rights. (Oct.)