abortion 
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/5/2022
The Antiabortion Movement's Victory in the War of Language
by Jennifer L. Holland
The antiabortion movement was able to overcome American skepticism of enshrining religious views into law and demands by women for full citizenship by turning the language of rights to apply to fetuses. It remains to be seen if this language will lead to a national ban on abortion in the name of fetal personhood.
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SOURCE: Activist History Review
5/4/2022
For Deliverance: A Letter on Roe
by Riley Clare Valentine
A Catholic scholar and activist concludes "it is an act of love, of caritas, to reject the unjust undoing of Roe and to continue to help our neighbors who need access to abortions."
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SOURCE: NPR
5/4/2022
The Anti-Abortion Movement's Pre-Roe Roots
The professionalization of medicine in the 19th century empowered male doctors to usurp the personal judgment of pregnant women about when "quickening" of a fetus had taken place, and set in motion growing efforts to restrict abortion.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/3/2022
Is Alito's Plan to Repeal the 20th Century?
Alito's invocation of Plessy v. Ferguson as a reason to discard precedent is galling because his opinion would destroy the kind of protection under law that Homer Plessy actually sought.
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SOURCE: Substack
5/3/2022
Republican Right is Forcing the Birth of the Society it Wants (and Most Americans Don't)
by Claire Potter
"Memo to radical conservative activists: despite your wettest fantasies, “libs” don’t cry at moments like this. We get angry, really angry. And we fight."
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SOURCE: The New Republic
5/5/2022
Why the End of Roe Isn't Likely to Energize the Democrats
by Natalie Shure
Until the Democratic Party and its pro-choice supporters decide to take action to fix the fact that abortion restrictions are already harming poor and working-class women, they are unlikely to win elections based on their nominal support for abortion rights.
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SOURCE: The Editorial Board
5/4/2022
Abortion Historian Gillian Frank on Religious Leaders who Once Helped Women End Pregnancies
Faced with the toll of injury and death from their congregants desperately seeking illegal abortions, individual priests, ministers and rabbis in significant numbers were an unlikely but important source of help in obtaining safe abortion before Roe.
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SOURCE: In These Times
5/3/2022
Protest Can – And Should – Influence the Supreme Court
by Eric Stoner
Direct action is the only way to push the court's majority more into line with the will of the majority of the public.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
5/3/2022
What Will Post-Roe Campuses Be Like?
Student life and mental health, gender equity, medical school curricula, and faculty recruitment are just some of the areas of change likely if some states are able to ban abortion.
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SOURCE: The Constitutionalist
3/3/2022
Judicial Leaks, 19th Century Style
by Mark A. Graber
When a Justice leaked a draft of the Dred Scott decision to James Buchanan, hoping the president-elect would cajole a fellow Pennsylvanian on the court to join the opinion as a non-southern vote, it was a non-story. Today the focus should be squarely on the substance of Samuel Alito's ruling.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/3/2022
Leaked Opinion Shows Not Just the End of Roe, but Conservatives' Delight in It
by Mary Ziegler
The court's right-wing majority is clearly emboldened by the belief that the Republican Party and the conservative legal movement have its back.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
5/4/2022
Abortion Isn't in the Constituiton? Neither are Women
by Jill Lepore
"Women are indeed missing from the Constitution. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/3/2022
The Reconstruction Amendments and the Basis of American Abortion Rights
by Peggy Cooper Davis
When the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were debated, concerns about the protection of both public rights of citizenship and private, intimate rights of individuals were front and center. There is, notwithstanding Samuel Alito's opinion, a long tradition of constitutional respect for privacy.
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SOURCE: WBUR
4/26/2022
Women's Rights are a Casualty of Democratic Backsliding
Historian Anne Wingenter and law professor Erica Chenoweth discuss the relationship between fascism and patriarchy and the way that women's rights are a signal of the health of democracy.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/3/2022
Originalists Seriously Misconstrue the Constitution's Silences on Abortion
by Laura Briggs
Samuel Alito would argue that the Constitution's silence on abortion means the founders recognized no right to it. But it's more likely they understood abortion to be a common act that didn't intersect with the business of the government.
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SOURCE: Dissent
4/27/2022
The Fatal Siloing of Abortion Advocacy
by Meaghan Winter
It was a strategic mistake for abortion rights advocates to emphasize the right to individual choice instead of the vast issues of economic justice, workforce quality, educational equity and personal safety that are impacted by whether women can control their own reproduction.
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SOURCE: Atlas Obscura
4/22/2022
The 19th Century Woman's Secret Guides to Birth Control
Women have always tried to share information enabling them to control their reproductive health, and others have always tried to stop them. Secrecy, coded language and misdirection are historical puzzles to untangle, say Andrea Tone, Naomi Rendina, Lauren Thompson and Donna Drucker.
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SOURCE: CNN
4/19/2022
The Republicans are Accelerating the War on Abortion Rights
Although two thirds of Americans favor some abortion rights, legal historian Mary Ziegler says the new composition of the Supreme Court means state legislatures will boldly pursue what they really want: totally outlawing abortion.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/25/2022
Antiabortion Movement Gunning for Contraceptive Rights, Too
by Anya Jabour
A century ago, sex researcher Katharine Bement Davis was silenced because she fought to redefine women's sexuality and contraceptive use as normal and fight for its decriminalization. The right today wants to undo her legacy through the courts.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/24/2022
The Religious History of Caesarean Surgery and the Abortion Debate
by Elizabeth O'Brien
In the 18th century, priests in Spanish colonies in the Americas were required to perform Caesaran operations on pregnant women whose own lives were beyond saving in order to baptize their fetuses, helping to develop the Catholic doctrine that the unborn already had souls.
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