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abortion

  • 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? 

  • SOURCE: The Revealer
    10/6/2022

    "For We Were Strangers": Trans Refugees and Moral Panics

    by Gillian Frank

    Trans Americans will be increasingly compelled to flee states where laws repress them. What does this refugee crisis share with the past experiences of queer people migrating in search of safety and sexual freedom or women crossing state lines to access abortion? 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    9/27/2022

    Black Women's Activism Ties Reproductive Rights to Broader Goals of Freedom

    by Kim Gallon

    Black women's reproductive lives have always been complicated by institutional racism, sexism, and the balance of personal autonomy and racial solidarity. Black feminists have struggled to use the African American press as a space to force discussion of the issues. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    9/6/2022

    Criminalizing Abortion Will Tear Families Apart

    There are relatively few Americans living today whose parents were harassed or jailed for performing illegal abortions. Their stories should inform the debate today.