Roe v. Wade

Fifty Years After

Author: Catherine Clinton, Rhae Lynn Barnes, Deirdre Cooper Owens, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Salamishah Tillet, Karin Wulf, Fiona de Londras and Johanna Schoen Series: History in the Headlines

A conversation about the history and significance of the reproductive rights movement in America

On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was shockingly reversed by the Supreme Court. What happened? What transpired socially, politically, legally, in religious institutions and in popular culture in the half-century when ""the right to choose"" led to this stunning transformation in American society?

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Summary

A conversation about the history and significance of the reproductive rights movement in America

Description

Just over fifty years ago on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade assured millions of women that abortion was a protected constitutional right due to a woman’s right to privacy. In the context of the burgeoning women’s rights movement, it seemed like an inalienable victory: women might become equal to men in their right to determine what would happen to their bodies. This was a hard-won fight that reached back to colonial America and slavery, but on June 24, 2022, the decision was shockingly reversed by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. What happened? What transpired socially, politically, legally, in religious institutions and in popular culture in the half-century when “the right to choose” led to this stunning transformation in American society?

Roe v. Wade: Fifty Years After, coedited by Rhae Lynn Barnes and Catherine Clinton for the History in the Headlines series, brings together a team of world-renowned scholars, prizewinning historians, and Pulitzer Prize-winning public intellectuals who specialize in reproductive history. They assembled at Harvard University in the weeks following the Dobbs decision to talk through the centuries-long history of abortion in what became the United States, how its representation changed in the law and popular culture, and how a wellspring of social movements on both the right and left led to a fifty-year showdown over some of the most outstanding human questions: What is life? When does it begin? Who has the right to end it? Who has the right to determine what happens to someone else’s body? How can the law define and restrict women’s reproductive health? And how have race, class, geography, sexuality, and other factors shaped who gets to be a part of answering these questions? The international impact of the struggles for reproductive freedom for women within the United States comes into sharp focus within this important volume, shedding light on past, present, and future dimensions of reproductive freedom for all Americans.

Critic Reviews

Roe v. Wadeis a significant contribution to the current discussions surrounding the contentious abortion debate. As more Americans seek resources to increase their understanding of the crisis surrounding bodily autonomy, this book provides readers with a better understanding of this history and the contemporary political and social justice movements fighting for reproductive justice.

-- Justina Licata, creator of the podcast Choice or Coercion: The Biography of Norplant

About the Author

CATHERINE CLINTON is the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has served as president of the Southern Historical Association, is an elected member of the Society of American Historians, and a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She is the author and editor of more than two dozen volumes, including Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom; Mrs. Lincoln: A Life; Stepdaughters of History; and Civil War Stories (Georgia). RHAE LYNN BARNES is an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton University and the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. She is public speaker, writer, editor, documentarian, onscreen commenter, and coeditor of three books, including American Contact: Objects of Intercultural Encounters and the Boundaries of Book History. She is the author of the forthcoming books, Darkology: When the American Dream Wore Blackface and Tragic Kingdom. DEIRDRE COOPER OWENS is an associate professor at the University of Connecticut and a former director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia. She is the author of the prize-winning Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology (UGA, 2017). ALICIA GUTIERREZ-ROMINE is Associate Professor of History at California State University, San Bernardino. She is the author of From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969.