ACCESS

A richly detailed account of the long struggle for women’s right to choose.

Health journalist Grant notes that every state in the U.S. had enacted criminal abortion laws by 1880, and “for the next one hundred years, abortion in America remained…underground, secret, stigmatized, and dangerous.” From the moment that Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, anti-abortion activists organized to overturn it, helped along by politicians in gerrymandered districts who used “majorities and supermajorities to pass abortion restrictions at an alarming pace and volume.” On the other side, Grant writes, activist groups have long organized to protect choice. In the wake of Dobbs, the battle for access to abortion has heated up—often illegally, in the case of states such as Texas that have banned the importation of abortion pills or travel to other states to obtain the medical procedure. Grant profiles activists at various stages of the battle, from first-generation feminists who linked access to abortion to the struggle for women’s liberation generally to modern-day advocates who, among other strategies, have internationalized the ability to obtain pills for “self-managed abortion,” creating a sort of “underground for the post-Dobbs world.” The battle is multifaceted and requires the commitment of a range of activists and allies—who, Grant allows, are sometimes given to fighting among themselves—especially as certain states enact more restrictive laws even to the point of bans. On which note, Grant writes, “Abortion bans have never and will never stop people from ending pregnancies; what they do is force people to resort to unsafe methods to end them.” Her narrative makes clear that the battle for access continues apace to advance the cause for choice against “the notion that a government can dictate if, when, or how its citizens manage pregnancy.”

A capable history that foresees a hard fight yet to come in the war for reproductive freedom.