reproductive freedom

We Must Not Revive Slavery-Era Jurisprudence to Deal with the Complexities of Reproductive Technology

by Tamika Y. Nunley

The use of antebellum laws about the ownership of human property to resolve a dispute between a divorcing couple over frozen embryos shows the necessity of fully addressing women's reproductive freedom under the law rather than seeking simple abstractions of property. 

How the Comstock Act is Making a Comeback

Lauren MacIvor Thompson and Mary Ziegler discuss the history of the 19th century Comstock Act and its appeal to abortion opponents as a legal tool to ban abortion nationally. 

Medical Drawings of Pregnancy Have Centered Fetuses and Uteruses—While Erasing Women

Early depictions of the fetus in utero—imaginative as much as descriptive—were a boon to obstetric medicine, but also placed the fetus above the mother in terms of the medical system's concern, contends medical historian Rebecca Whiteley

Did Dobbs Return Abortion to the States and the People? LOL

by Leah Litman

The conservative legal movement has no intention of subjecting abortion to democratic processes. 

After Dobbs, Women Have Been Pushed Out of the Legal Debate on Abortion

by Felicia Kornbluh

Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's recent ruling focused on his interpretation of the rights of fetuses and physicians, while ignoring the real-world health and reproductive concerns of women. Reproductive freedom advocates can learn from earlier generations of women who stressed the rights of women before Roe. 

History of Reproductive Law Shows Women in Power aren't the Solution

by Lara Friedenfelds

The end of Roe v. Wade makes difficult pregnancies and miscarriages potentially legaly perilous for women. The history of how the law determines fault in a lost pregnancy shows that women are as capable as men of participating in a regime that punishes other women for the ends of their pregnancies. 

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."

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.

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. 

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. 

The "Stolen Babies" of Fascist Spain Seek the Truth

Some estimate that tens of thousands of babies were taken from poor mothers and secretly sold to elite Catholic families, with compliant government officials providing documentary cover. 

Inuit Greenland Women Demand Answers, Justice in Birth Control Scandal

In the late 1960s and 1970s, up to half of reproductive-aged women in Greenland were implanted with IUDs, often without informed consent. 

The Supreme Court Ignored the 19th Century "Voluntary Motherhood" Movement

by Lauren Thompson

Abortion is, indeed, a deeply rooted right in American history, demonstrated by the extent to which women have worked to control reproduction. 

Black Women's Expansive Vision of Reproductive Freedom

by Ashley Farmer

The history of radical Black women activists offers a model for fighting not just for legal abortion, but to create a world in which women would be truly free to have or not have children without constraint by law, poverty, or lack of access to information. 

The Coming Pregnancy Surveillance State Will Bring "Homeland Security" to Women's Bodies

by Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz

The Dobbs ruling puts longstanding racist and nationalist beliefs that white women's reproductive labor is the price of their citizenship, and punitive controls on women of color, on collision course with the modern capacity of digital surveillance, threatening the criminalization of any miscarried pregnancy. 

Reproductive Rights, Slavery, and the Post-Dobbs World

by Jennifer L. Morgan

Black women's history with reproductive freedom from slavery to today shows that racial and gendered oppression depend on the denial, embraced by Clarence Thomas, of a constitutional protection for bodily autonomy. 

Mary Ziegler: Right Won't Stop at Roe

Law professor Mary Ziegler explains how the anti-abortion movement upended the GOP establishment and helped push the courts to the right. Her new book is Dollars for Life.

Early Pregnancy Testing Required Sacrificing Rabbits

Women have always had an interest in detecting pregancy as soon as possible; the development of tests for pregnancy hormones involved fugitives from the Nazis and unfortunate rodents who were autopsied in early tests. 

Texas Allows Abortion to Save a Woman's Life. Right?

American hospitals by the 1950s formed "therapeutic abortion committees" to rule whether individual women needed abortions to protect their lives. Those committees' decisions reflected religious morality, class and racial prejudice, and other subjective perceptions of a patient's worthiness. 

In a Horrifying History of Forced Sterilizations, Some Fear the US is Beginning a New Chapter

Historians and ethnic studies and legal scholars Natalia Molina, Alexandra Minna Stern, Alan Kraut and Maybell Romero comment on recent whistleblower allegations that ICE detention facilities forced migrant women to have hysterectomies. American racism has long showed itself around questions of who gets to control their own bodies.