Reagan presents an excellent and thorough study of the medical, social, and legal aspects of abortion. Her study portrays the widespread practice and acceptance of abortion in a time where it was criminalized in the United States. She addresses an era of abortion that few historians do, the time between the criminalization of abortion in the nineteenth century to its legalization in 1973. Arguably the greatest strength of her work is how she integrated her national analysis of abortion law with local regulation and stories of individual practitioners. It links the life of everyday people and local practices to national public policy. She cites the case files and evidence gathered during investigations of abortionists, primarily in Chicago,
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She dismisses the opinions of some that considered the legalization of abortion as solely a result of the politics of the court or the changes in medicine as an oversimplification of the diverse roots of social and political change. She herself seems to view the legalization of abortion as the result of several factors: women making the abortion debate public, the political organizing of various movements and the collective action they took in unifying their forces, as wells as other social and political factors of the time. In her epilogue, she summarizes the status of abortion post Roe. While the Supreme Court has yet to overturn Roe, they have allowed its power to be gutted. Doe v Bolton, the sister case to Roe, has been all but overturned. States have been allowed to enact strict regulations in an attempt to bar women from getting abortions. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act prevented doctors from using a safe and effective method of abortion. The Court upheld the Hyde Amendment and Reagan’s gag rule. Legislation has been enacted that requires waiting periods and some states require that a woman be forced to listen to the heartbeat and breathing of a fetus before she aborts; others require women to receive informed consent booklets or counseling against abortion in an attempt to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies. Reagan surveys these restrictions and concludes that abortion rights have been gutted by SCOTUS rulings and legislation. She ends by discussing how growing activism and movements committed to defending women’s’ reproductive rights are a positive sign and, in some ways, mirror the movements that sparked this in the first
She dismisses the opinions of some that considered the legalization of abortion as solely a result of the politics of the court or the changes in medicine as an oversimplification of the diverse roots of social and political change. She herself seems to view the legalization of abortion as the result of several factors: women making the abortion debate public, the political organizing of various movements and the collective action they took in unifying their forces, as wells as other social and political factors of the time. In her epilogue, she summarizes the status of abortion post Roe. While the Supreme Court has yet to overturn Roe, they have allowed its power to be gutted. Doe v Bolton, the sister case to Roe, has been all but overturned. States have been allowed to enact strict regulations in an attempt to bar women from getting abortions. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act prevented doctors from using a safe and effective method of abortion. The Court upheld the Hyde Amendment and Reagan’s gag rule. Legislation has been enacted that requires waiting periods and some states require that a woman be forced to listen to the heartbeat and breathing of a fetus before she aborts; others require women to receive informed consent booklets or counseling against abortion in an attempt to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies. Reagan surveys these restrictions and concludes that abortion rights have been gutted by SCOTUS rulings and legislation. She ends by discussing how growing activism and movements committed to defending women’s’ reproductive rights are a positive sign and, in some ways, mirror the movements that sparked this in the first