Roundup

Adoption System Serves People Who Want Babies, Not Women Who Birth Them

by Gretchen Sisson

Despite Samuel Alito's rhetoric, adoption as practiced in the US does not resolve the basic conflicts inherent in unwanted pregnancy, which overlap historically with racial and class inequalities in the nation. 

Anti-Trespassing Laws a Vestige of Racist "Black Codes" of Postbellum South

by Brian Sawers

Trespassing laws were ostensibly "color blind," but worked in practice to restrict the mobility of Freedmen and women in the South and to empower white landowners to control Black social life. 

Ending the Illusion that Smoking is a Choice

by Sarah Milov

Tobacco companies still promote the convenient fiction that users addicted to the nicotine in their products are making a free choice to consume them. 

The Roundup Top Ten for July 1, 2022

The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

If the Court Can Reverse Roe, it Can Reverse Anything

by Mary Ziegler

The court majority's assurances that abortion rights are a special case, and that other liberties are not in jeopardy, is hollow. 

Dangerous as the Plague: The History of Moral Panics over Queer "Seduction"

by Samuel Huneke

From the perspective of the post-Obergefell US, this year's politicized attacks on LGBTQ people—particularly as threats to the nation's youth—seem like a sudden reversal. But such attacks have a long and miserable history that has shadowed movements for queer freedom at every turn. 

The Classic Model of Education and Democracy Can't Address Today's School Politics

by Steven Mintz

The idea of education serving democracy by producing informed citizens is tested by the lack of agreement about what that goal means. Can the competing claims on the education system be reconciled? 

Black Women Activists Have Long Connected Abortion Rights to Broader Issues of Freedom and Justice

by SaraEllen Strongman

Black women activists have been more likely than their white counterparts to place abortion rights in the broader context of reproductive justice: the freedom to have or not have children on one's own terms without the coercive pressure of political or economic power. 

Dark Money Fuels Anti-Choice Assault in State Houses

by Julia Peck, Evan Vorpahl & Alyssa Bowen

Dark money groups are ready to flood state legislative, judicial and attorney general races with cash and supply their allies with model legislation to take immediate advantage of the opening created by the Dobbs decision. The state-level war over abortion rights is on. 

Libs Baffled Why Trump Supporters Aren't Swayed by Bombshells? Look to Iran-Contra

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

One group—Evangelicals—stood strong behind Oliver North long after his public profile faded. For them, his willingness to break the law in service of his idea of the greater good was the essence of his heroism. 

Trump's Incitement Against Shaye Moss over the Georgia Vote Count Carries on a Dark American Tradition

by Tera W. Hunter

Whether for casting ballots or counting them, Trump was quick to blame Black Americans for his defeat, carrying on an ignominious tradition of casting Black political participation as illegitimate and dangerous. 

Our Gruesome Politics are Destroying the Cultural Ideal of Childhood

by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

The romantic ideal of children as innocents deserving of the protection of adults has long been a rallying cry for politicians. After two pandemic years and more school shootings, are they even pretending to care anymore? 

Seeing Through America's "Crisis Industrial Complex"

by Nikhil Pal Singh

While the elite media class indulges in lurid fantasies of an armed breakup of the nation, those who live precarious or impoverished lives find themselves already enmeshed in a civil war; the real red/blue conflict is about who will control the infrastructure of repression built up over the last half century.

A Guide from the Past for Travelers Seeking an Abortion

by Sarah Elvins

"Women traveling to procure abortions is nothing new. Before the 1973 Roe ruling, state-to-state travel existed, as did highly organized transnational networks to guide women across borders."

Shirley Wheeler was Jailed for Her Abortion in 1970 – Will it Happen Again?

by Katherine Parkin

The Dobbs decision portends a future where women's rights and liberty will depend on the political currents of the state where they happen to reside, and their own ability to afford legal counsel.

Thomas's Guns Opinion is Ahistorical and Anti-Originalist

by Saul Cornell

"Ultimately, the majority opinion in NYSRPA v. Bruen is one of the most intellectually dishonest and poorly argued decisions in American judicial history."

What the 1960s Tell Us about the Path to Secure Reproductive Freedom

by Felicia Kornbluh

Those who wish to protect abortion rights and other reproductive freedoms after the Dobbs decision must consider combining any and all strategies available, from lobbying to civil disobedience and mass action. 

The Court's Abortion Decision is Based in White Nationalist Myth

by Samira K. Mehta and Lauren MacIvor Thompson

The durable image of "motherhood and apple pie" is central to the myth of white Christian nationalism and part of the ideological impulse to strip away reproductive freedom. 

Who Will Now Bear Costs of Crisis Pregnancies?

by Daniel K. Williams

"Perhaps neither Roe nor Dobbs represents a fully Christian way to distribute the human costs associated with crisis pregnancies.  And therein lies a dilemma for Christians who want to preserve human life and are unhappy with the results of Roe as well as the likely results of Dobbs."

Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker?

by Olivia Snow

A moral panic over sex trafficking has justified the development of an extensive electronic infrastructure of surveillance and punishment of sex workers. These are the tools other women can expect to have used against them if they seek (or seek to learn about) abortions or associate online with others who do.