abortion 
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SOURCE: WBEZ
1/31/2023
The Story of one of the Few Black Members of Chicago's Secret Abortion Rights Underground
Recent attention to the Jane Collective's pre-Roe activities to help women obtain abortions has passed over the work of a small number of Black women like Marie Leaner within the group, and the struggle to connect reproductive and racial justice politics.
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SOURCE: TIME
1/21/2023
What My Mother's Activism Before Roe Shows Us about the Upcoming Fights after Dobbs
by Felicia Kornbluh
"The first thing we’ve missed about Roe is that it was merely the final scene in a drama whose origins lay far from the U.S. Supreme Court... a movement that resembled the movement for abortion rights today, centered on policy change in individual states and localities."
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: NPR
1/17/2023
Mary Ziegler: Prepare for Legal Chaos Around Abortion
Roe author Mary Ziegler has chronicled the legal, political and cultural battles around abortion, and says the debate is far from over: "We're at the very beginning of something very confusing."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/24/2022
2005 Diary Entry Shows Justice Alito Told Ted Kennedy He Respected Roe Precedent
In his pre-confirmation interview with the Senator, Alito claimed he wrote antiabortion legal memos because he wanted to please his bosses in the Reagan administration. This failed to reassure Kennedy, who voted against his nomination and wrote skeptically of the judge's integrity in his diary.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
10/18/2022
Will Court's Abortion Overreach Galvanize Religious Americans Who Prefer Secular Society?
by Jacques Berlinerblau
Not all religious Americans loathe a secular society; many see it as the best protection of their own personal freedom of worship and conscience. Challenges to Florida's new abortion restrictions show they could be a powerful political force.
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SOURCE: Iowa Public Radio
10/10/2022
Lina-Maria Murillo: Abortion in Iowa has Always Been Political
Although abortion has always been tied up with the political controversies of the day, its entanglement with specifically religious views is relatively new.
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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?
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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.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
9/26/2022
U of Idaho Advises Faculty of Legal Jeopardy for Discussing Abortion in Classrooms
The university's general counsel warned that the vagueness of the state's abortion restrictions means faculty are at risk of prosecution for how they discuss the issue in their classrooms.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
9/20/2022
The Underground Network of Ministers and Rabbis Aiding Abortion Access Before Roe
Part of journalist Becca Andrews's new book looks at the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, which, before the religious right, offered a faith-based endorsement of abortion rights.
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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.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
9/8/2022
Why Medical Exceptions to Abortion Bans Won't Protect Women
by Evan Hart
Under new restrictive state laws, judges and lawyers, not doctors or patients, will decide who can get a medically necessary abortion.
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