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In the Review’s Election Issue, Christine Henneberg writes about the effects that the 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has already had on women and abortion providers in the United States:
Under the current patchwork of state laws following Dobbs, some women are crossing state lines to obtain abortions while others are forced to carry pregnancies that they do not want and that may well endanger their lives—owing to medical conditions or merely to the fact that their partner owns a gun.
In states with abortion restrictions or all-out bans, opportunities to teach hands-on skills—never mind the kind of compassionate training I was fortunate to receive—have all but disappeared. Some residents are lucky if they learn to perform D&Cs for miscarriage management, as these procedures, too, are dwindling in states where doctors fear criminal prosecution. Meanwhile, California has passed a bill allowing out-of-state medical residents to train in abortion care as “guests” in California residency programs, as well as a “shield” law to protect physicians from abortion-related lawsuits originating in “hostile” states. So the map is inconsistent and arbitrary, but the consequences are pervasive: to practice as though women’s lives were as valuable as men’s has become, once again, a subversive act.
Below, alongside Henneberg’s essay, we have collected five essays from Review’s archives about abortion in the US.
Christine Henneberg
Calculated Risks
Since the overturning of Roe, it has once again become a subversive act to provide medical care for women as though their lives are as valuable as men’s.
Christine Henneberg
‘I Still Would Have Had That Abortion’
Well-meaning supporters of abortion tend to tell stories that focus on decisions rather than experiences. This is the rhetorical legacy of a reproductive rights movement that has for too long focused on “choice” rather than “rights.”
—June 20, 2024
Sue Halpern
How Republicans Became Anti-Choice
These days, the litmus test for Republican politicians and judges is opposition to abortion. This was not always the case.
—November 8, 2018
Marcia Angell
The Abortion Battlefield
“In the late 1970s, there was an ideological shift. Instead of emphasizing only the protection of the fetus, the focus changed to include the protection of pregnant women. In essence, they were seen as potential victims of heartless abortionists, as much at risk as their fetuses. A new psychological illness, called the postabortion syndrome, was invented, marked by lifelong guilt and remorse after an abortion.”
—June 22, 2017
Jonathan Glover
Matters of Life and Death
“The distinctively modern voice in the abortion argument is the feminist one. For too many centuries the discussion, conducted by male theologians and philosophers, centered entirely on the fetus….
One benefit of the change in consciousness brought about by the current wave of feminism is that it is now unthinkable to ignore the issue of women’s choice. And most of us now see that if men could get pregnant the right to choose would have had a central place in the debate long ago.”
—May 30, 1985
Mario M. Cuomo
Religious Belief and Public Morality
While we argue over abortion, the United States’ infant mortality rate places us sixteenth among the nations of the world. Thousands of infants die each year because of inadequate medical care. Some are born with birth defects that, with proper treatment, could be prevented. Some are stunted in their physical and mental growth because of improper nutrition. If we want to prove our regard for life in the womb, for the helpless infant—if we care about women having real choices in their lives and not being driven to abortions by a sense of helplessness and despair about the future of their child—then there is work enough for all of us. Lifetimes of it.
—October 25, 1984
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