Departments

;

abortion

  • SOURCE: Nursing Clio
    3/22/2023

    History of Reproductive Law Shows Women in Power aren't the Solution

    by Lara Friedenfelds

    The end of Roe v. Wade makes difficult pregnancies and miscarriages potentially legaly perilous for women. The history of how the law determines fault in a lost pregnancy shows that women are as capable as men of participating in a regime that punishes other women for the ends of their pregnancies. 

  • SOURCE: Slate
    3/14/2023

    Texas's Abortion Ban Can Never be Made Humane

    by Mary Ziegler

    When abortion access depends on establishing that a pregnant woman deserves an exception to a ban, the law will inevitably prevent doctors from serving patients with problem pregnancies. 

  • 3/5/2023

    The Defiant Woman at the Center of New York's First Abortion Battle

    by Alan J. Singer

    Carolyn Ann Trow Lohman, better known as Madame Restell, defied the authority of the medical establishment and moral crusaders to help women obtain abortions. Justice Alito's misuse of history to justify the Dobbs decision shows the need to remember her. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/12/2023

    Margaret Atwood: Go Ahead and Ban My Book

    The novelist responds to the recent banning of "The Handmaid's Tale" by a Virginia county with assurances that forbidden knowledge has never been suppressible. 

  • SOURCE: Mother Jones
    1/24/2023

    How Private Equity Cashed in on Medical Abortion

    The American effort to bring the French RU-486 medication to the domestic market made medical abortion much more widely accessible. But, in true American fashion, the involvement of private investors looking for profit also made it much more expensive—even more so after Dobbs.

  • SOURCE: Yale Law School
    1/23/2023

    Legal Historian Reva Siegel on Dobbs

    Legal historians have argued that the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment offer a more solid rationale for reproductive rights than the now-defunct right to privacy, though the court's majority has expressed skepticism while not directly ruling on the question. 

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    1/11/2023

    Margaret Sanger's Ghost and the Antiabortion Movement

    by Melinda Cooper

    The anti-abortion right's invocation of eugenics in the Dobbs case and in their public rhetoric might seem cynical. But it could be effective, unless the history of Sanger's relationship to eugenics and reproductive freedom is better understood. 

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    1/11/2023

    50 Years at Cook County Hospital Prove Abortion is Healthcare

    by Amy Zanoni

    Abortion rights activists have focused on horror stories of the pre-Roe era as cautionary tales, but the history of public hospitals since Roe shows that real reproductive freedom requires expanded access to care and a robust social safety net. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    12/21/2022

    Was the Civil War Inevitable?

    by David W. Blight

    As a growing number of Americans entertain the idea that dissolving the nation might be better than holding its incompatible parts together, it's worth revisiting the series of decisions that led to the Civil War, and to ask whether the nation has, or will, experience the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    11/11/2022

    Why Direct Democracy is The Best Protection for Abortion Rights

    by Rachel Rebouché and Mary Ziegler

    Given the chance to vote directly on abortion rights, voters have been swayed by personal experience and shared stories to protect reproductive freedom and leave the choice in the hands of women, not politicians. 

  • SOURCE: Wired
    11/1/2022

    Are Americans Ready for their Neighbors to Turn Them In?

    From abortion to classroom teaching, state laws are increasingly incentivizing people to report other members of the community for violating new restrictions. Experts say this has worked in the past to erode trust and enable further authoritarianism. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    10/25/2022

    When Abortion is Criminalized, Can Juries Nullify the Law?

    by Sonali Chakravarti

    Inevitably, a health care provider will be prosecuted under one of the post-Dobbs abortion laws passed by the states. When this happens, will juries be informed by their predecessors who refused to convict defendants charged under the Fugitive Slave Act?