Abortion

Introduction


I’ll be honest, I resent having to write this book. I’m livid that of all the things I could be doing right now, I am defending my humanity. It feels, as a friend of mine once put it, humiliating. Women should not have to convince the world that we are full people worthy of rights, protections, and the ability to control our own bodies. Yet here we are.

And here I am, twenty years after I started writing about feminism, and thirty-two years since I went to my first pro-choice march with my mother as a surly eighth grader. Today I am even more surly. Because now I have a thirteen-year-old daughter—young enough to sleep with a teddy bear, but old enough to be forced to carry a pregnancy against her will.

It was her I cried for the night the Dobbs decision was leaked. I remember crawling into bed with my husband and sobbing. Wailing, really. I kept saying, “My daughter, my daughter.” A mother’s job is to protect her children. How could I possibly do that now?

A few weeks later the Supreme Court made it official: its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and decades of protection for abortion rights.

The prevailing justices, two of whom are accused sexual predators, ruled that in order for a right to be valid, if it isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, it must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Abortion, they said, was neither.* Feminists, called hysterical for warning that the end of Roe was near, knew this was coming and spent years strategizing on what to do when it finally happened. That prescience didn’t make the decision feel any less like a punch to the gut. Can you ever really be prepared for your country to tell you that you’re less than human?

Because let’s be clear, that’s what this decision was—the decimation not just of reproductive rights but of women’s citizenship. Overturning Roe was just a means to that end. The powerful coalition of extremist organizations† that spent decades working toward this moment weren’t really interested in abortion, but in what ending abortion meant for their broader goals: a return to forced traditional gender roles, a forced gender binary, a culture and politics ruled by white supremacist patriarchy where women had no power, and the punishment of anyone who deviates from it all.

In short: They want to go backwards. It is not a coincidence that the abortion ban upheld in Arizona in 2024, for example, was a law adopted in 1864—a time before women had the right to vote, and when the legislature was led by a man who liked to marry twelveand fourteen-year-old girls.

The lawmakers and activists forcing us into pregnancy and childbirth are launching a full-scale assault on our rights and freedom that they had fifty years to plan for. They know what they’re doing, and they’re depending on us not catching it.

That’s why I started my newsletter, Abortion, Every Day. At first, I wasn’t planning on creating a publication. I was just so angry and intent on not missing a thing.

So I tracked every ban, court case, and anti-abortion strategy I could. I read anything and everything on abortion—whether it was an article in The New York Times, a letter to the editor in a student newspaper, or tweets from a crisis pregnancy center. I didn’t want anti-abortion legislators and groups to get away with attacking us under the cover of national overwhelm.

Most of all, I wanted to ensure that people understood what these attacks were really about, and how they were all connected. I noticed, for example, how lawmakers were undermining democracy to keep abortion banned. Because Americans overwhelmingly want abortion to be legal, these Republican leaders couldn’t risk voters having a choice. So in state after state, they worked to keep abortion off the ballot.

I saw how lawmakers are eroding birth control access, running ob-gyns out of town, and enabling abusers. I uncovered antiabortion organizations’ plans to open a network of religious “maternity homes” across the country, and a secret campaign to force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term.

I found bills that would charge women with murder if they “caused” their miscarriages, and spoke to activists defending women of color being arrested for stillbirths and miscarriages.

Again, once you understand that banning abortion is just a means to a bigger misogynist end, stories like this make a lot more sense.

Not long after I launched Abortion, Every Day as an official newsletter, I realized that the other common denominator for all these attacks was their sheer volume. At first I had naïvely worried that once the post-Roe dust settled, I wouldn’t have enough news to write about daily. That never happened. It became clear, and it still is, that the overwhelm is very much the point.

The anti-abortion movement is hitting Americans with everything all at once in the hopes that those of us who want our rights back will be too exhausted and crushed to fight back. If pro-choice groups are busy trying to repeal a ban and care for desperate patients on the ground, for example, they have that much less time to keep an eye on other, seemingly less urgent issues—like the over-funding of crisis pregnancy centers* or how their local newspapers are publishing biased abortion coverage.

The same is true for everyday Americans who care about this issue. It’s hard for any single person to keep track of all the antiabortion attacks and tactics happening in different states around the country. But it’s vital that we do.

Consider someone living in Arizona who decides to collect signatures for a pro-choice ballot measure. They may not know that when activists did the same in Ohio, Republican leaders worked with anti-abortion organizations to draft a biased ballot summary designed to trick voters. If they had that information, they could be on the lookout for a similar move from their own government.

Similarly, if a Utah ob-gyn knows that a bill introduced in her state contains the same sneaky language that makes it impossible for Idaho doctors to give their patients health- and life-saving abortions, she’ll be that much more prepared to lobby against it. And if a New York college student knows that California campuses provide cost-free abortion medication, it could inspire her to fight for the same in her school.

But the rapidly moving stories and details that change from day to day aren’t all that matter; it’s also the broader understanding of what these issues mean, what anti-abortion forces want, and how to do something about it.

There has never been a more important time to be aware and informed—whether you do abortion rights work every day or are just furious about the attacks on our rights. We can’t win unless we know exactly what we’re fighting against, and fighting for.

Most of all, though, those fighting to keep abortion banned are relying on Americans’ fear of speaking up. Since Roe was overturned, I’ve spoken to countless people, young women especially, who care deeply about abortion rights but don’t know what to say or how to say it. They worry that they sound stupid, or that they’re going to be talked over or diminished. Told to calm down. Laughed at.

That’s why I publish Abortion, Every Day, and why I’ve written this book.

Abortion will give you the information, language, and context you need to feel confident talking about the attacks on our bodies and freedom. It cuts through the misinformation you’re likely hearing every day from the news, social media, or even your own friends and family—providing order to the chaos, and facts to back up your beliefs. I want to make sure that you don’t feel overwhelmed into inaction or too unsure to speak up.

My hope is that the lessons I’ve learned by obsessively tracking abortion rights since Roe was overturned will give you everything you need to fight back—whether you’re too nervous to talk about abortion or have been an activist your whole life.

Most important, in a moment when you’re likely fed up with being talked over and diminished, Abortion is as angry as you are. Sometimes people ask me if I feel like I’m “preaching to the choir.” What I tell them, and what is true about this book, is that I’m arming the choir. With facts, and with fury.

No matter why you’re reading this book, remember: it wasn’t so long ago that political experts and pundits called feminists “hysterical” for warning that Roe could be overturned. They said it would never happen and that we were overreacting. Now we’re watching as doctors are forced to deny dying women care, children are made to give birth, and miscarriage patients are arrested.

We’re living through one of the most important moments in history for American women, and what we do now will determine what our granddaughters’ lives—and the lives of their children—will look like. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment.

We can’t afford to be overwhelmed or confused. We can’t watch as women’s experiences, their very lives, are written off as post-Roe statistics. The stakes are just too high.