Abortion in the American Imagination takes us back to the early twentieth century, when American writers first dared to broach the controversial subject of abortion. Putting authors like Wharton and Faulkner into conversation with the era’s films and non-fiction, Karen Weingarten uncovers a vigorous public debate decades before Roe v. Wade. Along the way, she… Read more →
Tag: Abortion
Abortion Care As Moral Work: Ethical Considerations of Maternal and Fetal Bodies, An Interview with Johanna Schoen
The timely anthology from Rutgers University Press, Abortion Care As Moral Work: Ethical Considerations of Maternal and Fetal Bodies, edited by Johanna Schoen, brings together the voices of abortion providers, counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians. The authors describe their motivations for offering or studying abortion care; discuss how anti-abortion regulations have made it… Read more →
No Real Choice: How Culture and Politics Matter For Reproductive Autonomy by Katrina Kimport
In the United States, the “right to choose” an abortion is the law of the land. But what if a woman continues her pregnancy because she didn’t really have a choice? What if state laws, federal policies, stigma, and a host of other obstacles push that choice out of her reach? Based on candid, in-depth… Read more →
“Help, I’m Living in My Research!”: Writing on Abortion in a Post-Roe World
In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, my friend and I were in the midst of writing our honors theses, she on smallpox vaccine hesitancy among the working class and I on female emancipation in Weimar Germany. We would jokingly say “Help, I’m living in my research!” on a regular basis.[1] We drew connections… Read more →
A Return to the Abortion Handbook?
During one of my last visits with abortion activist Patricia Maginnis in 2015, she handed me The Abortion Handbook for Responsible Women. Published in 1969 and coauthored by Maginnis and her friend and fellow activist Lana Clarke Phelan, The Abortion Handbook was a no-holds-barred assessment of the problem facing abortion-seeking women in the years before… Read more →
Abortion in Mexican History: An Interview with Elizabeth O’Brien
Nursing Clio’s third annual best article prize went to Elizabeth O’Brien, an assistant professor of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, for her article, “The Many Meanings of Aborto: Pregnancy Termination and the Instability of a Medical Category Over Time.” I had the pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth about her work on the history… Read more →
Abortion Is a Human Right
We – like you – are horrified and outraged that the Supreme Court of the United States has overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, ending the federally protected right to abortion. As dozens of our writers have shown since Nursing Clio was founded in 2012, pregnant people have… Read more →
Abortion Rights and the Eugenic and Racist Origins of Having It All
As we await the high-stakes decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, state legislatures have been proposing and passing restrictions on access to abortion knowing that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming months. On May 2, a leaked draft of a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito indicated… Read more →
The Family Roe and the Messy Reality of the Abortion “Jane Roe” Didn’t Get
I almost didn’t read The Family Roe: An American Story by Joshua Prager. When I saw the premise – a biography of Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade, and her family – I wasn’t immediately sure why I should care. I study the broad-scale social history of reproductive health and I had… Read more →
Deep in the Heartbeat of Texas
On September 1, 2021, Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, went into effect. A heartbeat, or “cardiac activity,” can be detected with a transvaginal ultrasound as early as six weeks from the date of the pregnant person’s last period. Because few people know they are pregnant… Read more →