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Before Roe V. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling
The definitive book on "Roe v. Wade" by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.Perhaps no other court case in history has been discussed as much as "Roe v. Wade." Now, for the first time, "Before Roe v. Wade" presents the most important documents concerning the case, collected in a single volume, in order to shed light on what this infamous case has come to mean in our society.In this ground breaking book, Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the Supreme Court for 30 years for "The New York Times," and Reva Siegel, a Yale law professor, collect the most significant briefs that were presented to the Supreme Court, as well as important documents from the period leading up to the decision, and from the immediate aftermath. The book gives readers a better understanding of the context in which the Court decided the case, who the lawyers were presenting the briefs, and what their arguments focused on. The material collected for this book will reveal that the story of "Roe v. Wade" is more multi-dimensional than is commonly understood today.
256 pages
First published January 1, 2010
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August 31, 2024
Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate before the Supreme Court's Ruling, Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel, 2010, Dewey 342.084, Library-of-Congress KF228 R59 B44 2010 College Library Gender & Women's Studies Collection, 3rd floor, Center Area
The 2012 pdf, 391 pages, ISBN 9780651648217, includes a new, second, afterword, pp. 263-317 of 391 (pdf pp. 278-332 of 406).
The new (second) afterword is the authors' 2011 article, "Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Questions About Backlash."
The new (second) afterword is an excellent summary of the book—and a debunking of the presumption that it was the 1973 Supreme Court decision that /caused/ the abortion controversy. Read it first. 55 pages, much of which is (skippable) footnotes.
Link to pdf of the book (including afterwords) here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...
(There are xv pages of frontmatter. Add 15 to the book's page number to get the pdf page number.)
or among other of Greenhouse's papers here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/A...
The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade 6/24/2022:
Heather Cox Richardson's blog: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog: https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/su...
Heather's "50-years-later" post:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
Most Americans still support abortion rights, as they did 50 years ago. All Republican presidents since Nixon pledged to appoint only justices who would overturn Roe. Biden appointed the first Protestant to the Supreme Court since George H.W. Bush.
The Linda Greenhouse book, /Before Roe v. Wade/:
The politics of abortion.
This is a terrific collection of writings from the years leading up to the Supreme Court decision, showing the experiences of women and physicians, and the venom of their detractors. The Court agreed in 1971 to decide the case; the decision came in 1973, creating a right to abortion that the Roberts court would take away 49 years later, in 2022.
By 1972, the abortion issue had flipped from a question of public health to a weapon in a culture war. p. 224.
The documents here show the abortion debate at a time when the Supreme Court played no significant role. p. xiv.
Although the intense polarization over abortion is often attributed to the Court’s intervention, the documents here show that the escalation of conflict over abortion preceded Roe. As abortion’s liberalization gained in popularity, Catholics mobilized to block reform. Despite Republican support for liberalization, Republican Party strategists saw the abortion debate as an opportunity to court traditionally Democratic-voting, socially-conservative Catholics; these strategists encouraged President Nixon, running for reelection in 1972, to oppose abortion. p. xiv.
A majority of Republicans in Congress began to vote against abortion in 1979, nearly a decade before polls registered similar trends among Republican citizens. p. 313.
The medical profession, which had spurred the criminalization of abortion a century earlier, had come only lately to view the hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions performed every year as an urgent public health problem. pp. ix, 2, 25-29.
For the story of Roe v. Wade in narrative form, see David Garrow’s monumental /Liberty and Sexuality: "The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade/ (2nd edition, 1998) and /Roe v. Wade: "The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History/ by E. H. Hull and Peter Charles Hoffer (2001). Through the documents collected here, our effort is rather to re-create the public conversations from which the case emerged. p. x.
Part I's documents show the early abortion-reform movement and the eventual shift in goals from reform to repeal of the laws that made abortion a crime, and the religious reaction to these developments. There was no single religious view, nor women's view, nor Republican nor Democratic view. p. xi.
Feminists asserted that women had the right to control their own bodies and lives, and claimed the right to child care as well as to abortion so that women, no less than men, would be able to participate fully in education, work, and politics. As abortion arguments came to challenge fundamental features of the social order, the prospect of finding common ground in the debate diminished. pp. xii, 4-5.
The Catholic Church opposed reform ever more energetically the louder cries for reform became. In the years before Roe, the Church planted and nurtured the seeds of the modern right-to-life movement. pp. xii, 4, 283, 308.
Part II examines documents from the conflict over liberalization of abortion laws in the years just before Roe, featuring case studies from New York and Connecticut. p. xiii.
The case that became Roe v. Wade was one ripple in a nationwide tide. p. xiii.
An individual’s position on abortion now conveyed membership in a community with common views on social and political priorities, on the respective roles of men and women, on the appropriate trajectory for women’s lives, on the structure of society. Well before the justices announced the decision in Roe v. Wade, a backlash engendered by the success that the reform movement had already achieved was already building, attracting the attention of alert strategists for the national political parties in the 1972 presidential campaign. p. xiii.
Part III presents excerpts from the briefs that lawyers for “Jane Roe” and for Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade filed in the Supreme Court. pp. xiii-xiv.
Excerpts from briefs filed by amici curiae (“friends of the Court”) for both sides are presented in the fourth section of the book, a separate appendix.
PART I Reform, Repeal, Religion and Reaction. pp. 1-115
REFORM pp. 7-34
"How people can be so unfeeling toward thousands of hungry, needy, homeless babies yet so concerned with the welfare of one obscure mass of tissue amazed me." pp. 15-16.
The American Law Institute in 1962 recommended as a model law: "Justifiable Abortion. A licensed physician is justified in terminating a pregnancy if he believes there is substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother or that the child would be born with grave physical or mental defect, or that the pregnancy resulted from rape, incest, or other felonious intercourse. All illicit intercourse with a girl below the age of 16 shall be deemed felonious for purposes of this subsection." In fairly short order, 12 states relaxed their existing abortion prohibition and adopted all or part of the institute’s recommendation. The twelve were Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. pp. 24-25.
The Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, founded 1967: "The present abortion laws require over a million women in the United States each year to seek illegal abortions which often cause severe mental anguish, physical suffering, and unnecessary death of women. These laws also compel the birth of unwanted, unloved, and often deformed children. … The largest percentage of abortion deaths are found among 35–39-year-old married women who have five or six children. The present abortion law in New York is most oppressive of the poor and minority groups. A 1965 report shows that 94% of abortion deaths in New York City occurred among Negroes and Puerto Ricans. … There is a period during gestation when, although there may be embryo life in the fetus, there is no living child upon whom the crime of murder can be committed. … Believing as clergymen that there are higher laws and moral obligations transcending legal codes, we believe that it is our pastoral responsibility and religious duty to give aid and assistance to all women with problem pregnancies." By 1970, the service was operating in 26 states and counseling as many as 150,000 women a year on whom to go to for a safe abortion. pp. 29-31.
REPEAL pp. 35-67
The National Organization for Women hoped to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. pp. 36-37. It failed. [Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko tells us why it failed: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/10/... ]
What right has any man to say to any woman: you must bear this child? --Betty Friedan, NOW president. p. 39.
The National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) is dedicated to the elimination of all laws and practices that would compel any woman to bear a child against her will. pp. 40-41.
COERCED STERILIZATION
Frances Beal explains why Blacks distrust government population-reduction efforts: "In India, already some 3 million young men and boys in and around New Delhi have been sterilized in make-shift operating rooms set up by the American Peace Corps. On Puerto Rico, 20% of the women between the ages of 15 and 45 have been sterilized. In the U.S., some Black welfare women have been forced to accept sterilization in exchange for a continuation of welfare benefits. Black women in Southern states are often afraid to permit any kind of necessary surgery because they know that they are likely to come out of the hospital without their insides." pp. 50-51. "Many times welfare agencies promise an abortion only if one will submit to sterilization. In my hometown, any welfare recipient expecting her 10th or 11th child is sterilized by court action. Some women do not even have these legal procedures taken against them; they find themselves awakening in the recovery room where they are told, 'You don’t have to worry no more.'" --Bev Cole. pp. 53-54.
Yet Beal and Cole oppose abortion restrictions: "Rich white women somehow manage to obtain abortions. It is the poor Black and Puerto Rican woman who is at the mercy of the local butcher." p. 52. "I want safe, legal abortive practices provided, especially in Black community hospitals run by the Black community to assist Black women and I want all this NOW!" p. 54.
RELIGION pp. 69-79
Reform Jewish, United Methodist, Southern Baptist, and Evangelical leadership advocated legalized abortion for good reason. pp. 69-73. To the Pope, though, "The life of the fetus ought not be sacrificed, not even to save the life of its mother." Not all Catholics agreed. Dissenting priests were removed from their parishes. p. 74-79.
REACTION pp. 81-115
Catholic bishops drummed up the right-to-life movement. pp. 81-112, 283. By 1967, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops created what would become the National Right-to-Life Committee. p. 308
Republican operatives used abortion as a lever to pry Catholic voters to the Republican party. pp. 113-115.
PART II Conflict Constitutionalized: The Years before Roe [1969-1972] pp. 117-220
Reactionaries saw women’s demand for abortion rights as a threat to traditional family values. p. 119.
By 1970, 17 states had relaxed their abortion bans. (Abortion had been illegal in every state.) p. 121.
Court cases also were invalidating abortion restrictions in some jurisdictions.
LEGISLATION: NEW YORK pp. 127-162
Doctors received far more money performing abortions in private hospitals than in the municipal hospitals where poorer women received care; and poor women lacking psychiatric referrals often did not know the magic words that would give doctors confidence to authorize an abortion. Between 1951 and 1962, over 92 percent of women who received hospital abortions in New York City were white, while over three-quarters of those who died from illegal abortions in the city were women of color. p. 127. Those given the authority to testify about abortion reform were the (male) professionals who performed abortions, not the women who sought them. p. 128. “I found two psychiatrists who said that for $60 each they would write a report which said I was mentally unable and ought to have the abortion. I had to prove I was crazy to get a legal abortion—and the abortion was the sanest thing I had ever done in my life.” p. 129.
Legislative efforts had failed. Abortion proponents turned to the courts, asserting a woman's Constitutional right to abortion. p. 131.
Thirty-six states' abortion laws were based on common law from the 1820s, before the era of antiseptic surgery, when about 30 percent of all serious operations, including abortion, resulted in death. The death rate from childbirth was about 2 percent. By 1970, the maternal mortality rate, excluding deaths from abortion, was about 23 per 100,000, making abortion statistically almost 8 times safer than a term pregnancy. p. 137.
LEGISLATION: CONNECTICUT pp. 163-196
In 1972, a federal court found Connecticut's abortion restrictions unconstitutional. p. 177. The Connecticut legislature then re-enacted it, under threat from Catholic voters. pp. 191-192. The same court then re-declared it unconstitutional. p. 192.
CROSSCURRENTS IN THE NATIONAL ARENA, 1972 pp. 197-220
Majorities supported decriminalization of abortion, even among Catholics and Republicans. Nixon opposed abortion to court Catholics. p. 197. The political right began to equate abortion with women's liberation and with George McGovern's presidential candidacy. p 198. "McGovern is for [draft-evader] amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot.” p. 215.
“Most of the legislators in the nation I have met and certainly many members of Congress would prefer the Supreme Court to legalize abortion, thereby taking them off the hook and relieving them of the responsibility for decision-making.”--Senator Packwood, 1970. Abortion opponents became single-issue voters, a minority that legislators lacked the courage to defy. The Catholic Church worked hard to control the state on this issue. pp. 213, 258, 283.
PART III SPEAKING TO THE COURT pp. 221-251
The Court followed what it perceived as the consensus of elite legal and medical opinion, and also of public opinion, including among Republicans and Catholics. pp. 226-228.
(ORIGINAL, FIRST) AFTERWORD pp. 253-262
Attacks on McGovern condemned abortion rights as part of a permissive youth culture that was corrosive of traditional forms of authority. Phyllis Schlafly’s attack on abortion never mentioned murder; she condemned abortion by associating it with the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and child care [by someone other than the mother]. p. 257.
When Roe was handed down, the family-values movement that would mobilize against the decision and ultimately carry Ronald Reagan to national office in 1980 had already begun to take shape, but it had not yet crystallized. That coalition did not form in spontaneous response to Roe but was instead built with the help of strategists for the Republican Party, including many brilliant Catholic conservatives. In the process, opposition to abortion as murder was married to a variety of socially conservative causes, accelerating the process of party realignment that had begun before Roe during the Nixon administration. When conservatives of the New Right began to assemble a pan-Christian coalition against Roe in the late 1970s, the crusade against Roe would proceed under the banner of “pro-life” and “pro-family.” p. 259.
By 1980, the Christian Harvest Times was denouncing abortion in its “Special Report on Secular Humanism vs. Christianity”: “To understand humanism is to understand women’s liberation, the ERA, gay rights, children’s rights, abortion, sex education, the ‘new’ morality, evolution, values clarification, situational ethics, the loss of patriotism, and many of the other problems that are tearing America apart today.” p. 259.
By 1980, conservatives of the New Right—led by Ronald Reagan, who, in the late 1960s, had signed California’s legislation liberalizing abortion—urged fundamentalist Christians to make common cause with Catholics in opposition to abortion and in support of family values. They attacked Roe as a threat to life and family and as a symbol of judicial overreaching. Republican Party platforms began to support “the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.” p. 260.
A NEW AFTERWORD: Before (and after) Roe v. Wade: New Questions about Backlash Reprinted from the Yale Law Journal, June 2011. pp. 263-317
Until 1821, when Connecticut passed a law criminalizing abortion, abortion was legal throughout the United States if performed before quickening [fetal movement]. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, doctors establishing the American Medical Association (AMA) led a campaign to criminalize abortion, except when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life, and by the century’s end, all states banned abortion and subjected contraception to a variety of criminal sanctions. p. 269.
In the three weeks after Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl in 1962, advising unmarried women how to have fulfilling sex lives, the book sold over two million copies. p. 274.
Reverend Jerry Falwell observed in 1979: “The Roman Catholic Church for many years has stood virtually alone against abortion. I think it’s an indictment against the rest of us that we’ve allowed them to stand alone.” p. 297. Strategists for the Republican Party approached Falwell and encouraged him to organize evangelicals as a “Moral Majority” that would promote a “pro-family” politics; this alliance between the Republican Party and Protestant evangelicals publicly focused on abortion but also seems to have been motivated by evangelical opposition to IRS rulings requiring the racial integration of Christian private schools as a condition for preserving their tax-exempt status. A Heritage Foundation operative “proposed that abortion be made the keystone of their organizing strategy, since this was the issue that could divide the Democratic party.”
As governor of California, Ronald Reagan had signed the state’s American Law Institute abortion-decriminalization statute in 1967, but his 1980 campaign for the presidency found him running on a plank in the Republican Party platform that called for the appointment of judges who would respect human life and traditional family values. p. 299.
The partisan polarization on abortion that prevails today developed years after Roe was handed down. In 1979, Republicans in congress started voting against abortion moreso than Democrats. Same year the Heritage Foundation started its pro-life political action committees. p. 300. Republican voters did not become more anti-abortion than Democrats until 1990. p. 301-302. Graph p. 302.
The 2012 pdf, 391 pages, ISBN 9780651648217, includes a new, second, afterword, pp. 263-317 of 391 (pdf pp. 278-332 of 406).
The new (second) afterword is the authors' 2011 article, "Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Questions About Backlash."
The new (second) afterword is an excellent summary of the book—and a debunking of the presumption that it was the 1973 Supreme Court decision that /caused/ the abortion controversy. Read it first. 55 pages, much of which is (skippable) footnotes.
Link to pdf of the book (including afterwords) here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...
(There are xv pages of frontmatter. Add 15 to the book's page number to get the pdf page number.)
or among other of Greenhouse's papers here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/A...
The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade 6/24/2022:
Heather Cox Richardson's blog: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog: https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/su...
Heather's "50-years-later" post:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
Most Americans still support abortion rights, as they did 50 years ago. All Republican presidents since Nixon pledged to appoint only justices who would overturn Roe. Biden appointed the first Protestant to the Supreme Court since George H.W. Bush.
The Linda Greenhouse book, /Before Roe v. Wade/:
The politics of abortion.
This is a terrific collection of writings from the years leading up to the Supreme Court decision, showing the experiences of women and physicians, and the venom of their detractors. The Court agreed in 1971 to decide the case; the decision came in 1973, creating a right to abortion that the Roberts court would take away 49 years later, in 2022.
By 1972, the abortion issue had flipped from a question of public health to a weapon in a culture war. p. 224.
The documents here show the abortion debate at a time when the Supreme Court played no significant role. p. xiv.
Although the intense polarization over abortion is often attributed to the Court’s intervention, the documents here show that the escalation of conflict over abortion preceded Roe. As abortion’s liberalization gained in popularity, Catholics mobilized to block reform. Despite Republican support for liberalization, Republican Party strategists saw the abortion debate as an opportunity to court traditionally Democratic-voting, socially-conservative Catholics; these strategists encouraged President Nixon, running for reelection in 1972, to oppose abortion. p. xiv.
A majority of Republicans in Congress began to vote against abortion in 1979, nearly a decade before polls registered similar trends among Republican citizens. p. 313.
The medical profession, which had spurred the criminalization of abortion a century earlier, had come only lately to view the hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions performed every year as an urgent public health problem. pp. ix, 2, 25-29.
For the story of Roe v. Wade in narrative form, see David Garrow’s monumental /Liberty and Sexuality: "The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade/ (2nd edition, 1998) and /Roe v. Wade: "The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History/ by E. H. Hull and Peter Charles Hoffer (2001). Through the documents collected here, our effort is rather to re-create the public conversations from which the case emerged. p. x.
Part I's documents show the early abortion-reform movement and the eventual shift in goals from reform to repeal of the laws that made abortion a crime, and the religious reaction to these developments. There was no single religious view, nor women's view, nor Republican nor Democratic view. p. xi.
Feminists asserted that women had the right to control their own bodies and lives, and claimed the right to child care as well as to abortion so that women, no less than men, would be able to participate fully in education, work, and politics. As abortion arguments came to challenge fundamental features of the social order, the prospect of finding common ground in the debate diminished. pp. xii, 4-5.
The Catholic Church opposed reform ever more energetically the louder cries for reform became. In the years before Roe, the Church planted and nurtured the seeds of the modern right-to-life movement. pp. xii, 4, 283, 308.
Part II examines documents from the conflict over liberalization of abortion laws in the years just before Roe, featuring case studies from New York and Connecticut. p. xiii.
The case that became Roe v. Wade was one ripple in a nationwide tide. p. xiii.
An individual’s position on abortion now conveyed membership in a community with common views on social and political priorities, on the respective roles of men and women, on the appropriate trajectory for women’s lives, on the structure of society. Well before the justices announced the decision in Roe v. Wade, a backlash engendered by the success that the reform movement had already achieved was already building, attracting the attention of alert strategists for the national political parties in the 1972 presidential campaign. p. xiii.
Part III presents excerpts from the briefs that lawyers for “Jane Roe” and for Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade filed in the Supreme Court. pp. xiii-xiv.
Excerpts from briefs filed by amici curiae (“friends of the Court”) for both sides are presented in the fourth section of the book, a separate appendix.
PART I Reform, Repeal, Religion and Reaction. pp. 1-115
REFORM pp. 7-34
"How people can be so unfeeling toward thousands of hungry, needy, homeless babies yet so concerned with the welfare of one obscure mass of tissue amazed me." pp. 15-16.
The American Law Institute in 1962 recommended as a model law: "Justifiable Abortion. A licensed physician is justified in terminating a pregnancy if he believes there is substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother or that the child would be born with grave physical or mental defect, or that the pregnancy resulted from rape, incest, or other felonious intercourse. All illicit intercourse with a girl below the age of 16 shall be deemed felonious for purposes of this subsection." In fairly short order, 12 states relaxed their existing abortion prohibition and adopted all or part of the institute’s recommendation. The twelve were Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. pp. 24-25.
The Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, founded 1967: "The present abortion laws require over a million women in the United States each year to seek illegal abortions which often cause severe mental anguish, physical suffering, and unnecessary death of women. These laws also compel the birth of unwanted, unloved, and often deformed children. … The largest percentage of abortion deaths are found among 35–39-year-old married women who have five or six children. The present abortion law in New York is most oppressive of the poor and minority groups. A 1965 report shows that 94% of abortion deaths in New York City occurred among Negroes and Puerto Ricans. … There is a period during gestation when, although there may be embryo life in the fetus, there is no living child upon whom the crime of murder can be committed. … Believing as clergymen that there are higher laws and moral obligations transcending legal codes, we believe that it is our pastoral responsibility and religious duty to give aid and assistance to all women with problem pregnancies." By 1970, the service was operating in 26 states and counseling as many as 150,000 women a year on whom to go to for a safe abortion. pp. 29-31.
REPEAL pp. 35-67
The National Organization for Women hoped to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. pp. 36-37. It failed. [Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko tells us why it failed: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/10/... ]
What right has any man to say to any woman: you must bear this child? --Betty Friedan, NOW president. p. 39.
The National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) is dedicated to the elimination of all laws and practices that would compel any woman to bear a child against her will. pp. 40-41.
COERCED STERILIZATION
Frances Beal explains why Blacks distrust government population-reduction efforts: "In India, already some 3 million young men and boys in and around New Delhi have been sterilized in make-shift operating rooms set up by the American Peace Corps. On Puerto Rico, 20% of the women between the ages of 15 and 45 have been sterilized. In the U.S., some Black welfare women have been forced to accept sterilization in exchange for a continuation of welfare benefits. Black women in Southern states are often afraid to permit any kind of necessary surgery because they know that they are likely to come out of the hospital without their insides." pp. 50-51. "Many times welfare agencies promise an abortion only if one will submit to sterilization. In my hometown, any welfare recipient expecting her 10th or 11th child is sterilized by court action. Some women do not even have these legal procedures taken against them; they find themselves awakening in the recovery room where they are told, 'You don’t have to worry no more.'" --Bev Cole. pp. 53-54.
Yet Beal and Cole oppose abortion restrictions: "Rich white women somehow manage to obtain abortions. It is the poor Black and Puerto Rican woman who is at the mercy of the local butcher." p. 52. "I want safe, legal abortive practices provided, especially in Black community hospitals run by the Black community to assist Black women and I want all this NOW!" p. 54.
RELIGION pp. 69-79
Reform Jewish, United Methodist, Southern Baptist, and Evangelical leadership advocated legalized abortion for good reason. pp. 69-73. To the Pope, though, "The life of the fetus ought not be sacrificed, not even to save the life of its mother." Not all Catholics agreed. Dissenting priests were removed from their parishes. p. 74-79.
REACTION pp. 81-115
Catholic bishops drummed up the right-to-life movement. pp. 81-112, 283. By 1967, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops created what would become the National Right-to-Life Committee. p. 308
Republican operatives used abortion as a lever to pry Catholic voters to the Republican party. pp. 113-115.
PART II Conflict Constitutionalized: The Years before Roe [1969-1972] pp. 117-220
Reactionaries saw women’s demand for abortion rights as a threat to traditional family values. p. 119.
By 1970, 17 states had relaxed their abortion bans. (Abortion had been illegal in every state.) p. 121.
Court cases also were invalidating abortion restrictions in some jurisdictions.
LEGISLATION: NEW YORK pp. 127-162
Doctors received far more money performing abortions in private hospitals than in the municipal hospitals where poorer women received care; and poor women lacking psychiatric referrals often did not know the magic words that would give doctors confidence to authorize an abortion. Between 1951 and 1962, over 92 percent of women who received hospital abortions in New York City were white, while over three-quarters of those who died from illegal abortions in the city were women of color. p. 127. Those given the authority to testify about abortion reform were the (male) professionals who performed abortions, not the women who sought them. p. 128. “I found two psychiatrists who said that for $60 each they would write a report which said I was mentally unable and ought to have the abortion. I had to prove I was crazy to get a legal abortion—and the abortion was the sanest thing I had ever done in my life.” p. 129.
Legislative efforts had failed. Abortion proponents turned to the courts, asserting a woman's Constitutional right to abortion. p. 131.
Thirty-six states' abortion laws were based on common law from the 1820s, before the era of antiseptic surgery, when about 30 percent of all serious operations, including abortion, resulted in death. The death rate from childbirth was about 2 percent. By 1970, the maternal mortality rate, excluding deaths from abortion, was about 23 per 100,000, making abortion statistically almost 8 times safer than a term pregnancy. p. 137.
LEGISLATION: CONNECTICUT pp. 163-196
In 1972, a federal court found Connecticut's abortion restrictions unconstitutional. p. 177. The Connecticut legislature then re-enacted it, under threat from Catholic voters. pp. 191-192. The same court then re-declared it unconstitutional. p. 192.
CROSSCURRENTS IN THE NATIONAL ARENA, 1972 pp. 197-220
Majorities supported decriminalization of abortion, even among Catholics and Republicans. Nixon opposed abortion to court Catholics. p. 197. The political right began to equate abortion with women's liberation and with George McGovern's presidential candidacy. p 198. "McGovern is for [draft-evader] amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot.” p. 215.
“Most of the legislators in the nation I have met and certainly many members of Congress would prefer the Supreme Court to legalize abortion, thereby taking them off the hook and relieving them of the responsibility for decision-making.”--Senator Packwood, 1970. Abortion opponents became single-issue voters, a minority that legislators lacked the courage to defy. The Catholic Church worked hard to control the state on this issue. pp. 213, 258, 283.
PART III SPEAKING TO THE COURT pp. 221-251
The Court followed what it perceived as the consensus of elite legal and medical opinion, and also of public opinion, including among Republicans and Catholics. pp. 226-228.
(ORIGINAL, FIRST) AFTERWORD pp. 253-262
Attacks on McGovern condemned abortion rights as part of a permissive youth culture that was corrosive of traditional forms of authority. Phyllis Schlafly’s attack on abortion never mentioned murder; she condemned abortion by associating it with the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and child care [by someone other than the mother]. p. 257.
When Roe was handed down, the family-values movement that would mobilize against the decision and ultimately carry Ronald Reagan to national office in 1980 had already begun to take shape, but it had not yet crystallized. That coalition did not form in spontaneous response to Roe but was instead built with the help of strategists for the Republican Party, including many brilliant Catholic conservatives. In the process, opposition to abortion as murder was married to a variety of socially conservative causes, accelerating the process of party realignment that had begun before Roe during the Nixon administration. When conservatives of the New Right began to assemble a pan-Christian coalition against Roe in the late 1970s, the crusade against Roe would proceed under the banner of “pro-life” and “pro-family.” p. 259.
By 1980, the Christian Harvest Times was denouncing abortion in its “Special Report on Secular Humanism vs. Christianity”: “To understand humanism is to understand women’s liberation, the ERA, gay rights, children’s rights, abortion, sex education, the ‘new’ morality, evolution, values clarification, situational ethics, the loss of patriotism, and many of the other problems that are tearing America apart today.” p. 259.
By 1980, conservatives of the New Right—led by Ronald Reagan, who, in the late 1960s, had signed California’s legislation liberalizing abortion—urged fundamentalist Christians to make common cause with Catholics in opposition to abortion and in support of family values. They attacked Roe as a threat to life and family and as a symbol of judicial overreaching. Republican Party platforms began to support “the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.” p. 260.
A NEW AFTERWORD: Before (and after) Roe v. Wade: New Questions about Backlash Reprinted from the Yale Law Journal, June 2011. pp. 263-317
Until 1821, when Connecticut passed a law criminalizing abortion, abortion was legal throughout the United States if performed before quickening [fetal movement]. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, doctors establishing the American Medical Association (AMA) led a campaign to criminalize abortion, except when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life, and by the century’s end, all states banned abortion and subjected contraception to a variety of criminal sanctions. p. 269.
In the three weeks after Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl in 1962, advising unmarried women how to have fulfilling sex lives, the book sold over two million copies. p. 274.
Reverend Jerry Falwell observed in 1979: “The Roman Catholic Church for many years has stood virtually alone against abortion. I think it’s an indictment against the rest of us that we’ve allowed them to stand alone.” p. 297. Strategists for the Republican Party approached Falwell and encouraged him to organize evangelicals as a “Moral Majority” that would promote a “pro-family” politics; this alliance between the Republican Party and Protestant evangelicals publicly focused on abortion but also seems to have been motivated by evangelical opposition to IRS rulings requiring the racial integration of Christian private schools as a condition for preserving their tax-exempt status. A Heritage Foundation operative “proposed that abortion be made the keystone of their organizing strategy, since this was the issue that could divide the Democratic party.”
As governor of California, Ronald Reagan had signed the state’s American Law Institute abortion-decriminalization statute in 1967, but his 1980 campaign for the presidency found him running on a plank in the Republican Party platform that called for the appointment of judges who would respect human life and traditional family values. p. 299.
The partisan polarization on abortion that prevails today developed years after Roe was handed down. In 1979, Republicans in congress started voting against abortion moreso than Democrats. Same year the Heritage Foundation started its pro-life political action committees. p. 300. Republican voters did not become more anti-abortion than Democrats until 1990. p. 301-302. Graph p. 302.
April 2, 2011
This collection of primary sources from the abortion dialogue in America is not exactly a page turner but it is a compelling and satisfying read for those interested in the topic. I enjoyed the range of sources and appreciated that the authors let the sources speak for themselves, without a lot of analysis. I also liked that the authors explicitly stated their stance on abortion; it’s impossible to claim neutral territory on this issue and being open raised their credibility in my eyes. I am pro-choice and found myself questioning and reinforcing my beliefs on abortion while reading this book. I found the sources that dealt with Catholic opinion to be fascinating. I also enjoyed comparing the arguments that guide the debate today to those that did forty years ago. I was not aware that the early arguments for legalizing abortion were mainly based on physicians’ instead of women’s rights-it was very enlightening to see the debate evolve through time.
However, I was very disappointed in the amount of glaring typos in this volume-I couldn’t believe all the mistakes (“and” instead of “an”, etc.) that clogged up the pages in this book. It needs a thorough copy-editing.
However, I was very disappointed in the amount of glaring typos in this volume-I couldn’t believe all the mistakes (“and” instead of “an”, etc.) that clogged up the pages in this book. It needs a thorough copy-editing.
January 26, 2011
Great background from both sides. Learned some things (the term "abortion on demand" actually originated on the pro-choice side for example) that I didn't know. Balanced presentation, although the authors (compilers really) do state up front they're in favor of women having control over their own bodies. Interesting points to think about, but it won't change anyone's mind. And towards the end, as they discussed what's happened since Roe was decided, I just got the same old angry over men who think they have ANY right to tell a woman what to do with her body.
December 4, 2018
‘Before Roe v. Wade’ is an important book, namely because it challenges the perception that abortion rights were the making of the feminist movement over time. In fact, what it shows is that the lifted restrictions on abortion leading up to the Supreme Court’s ruling was finally pushed by the medical community that had fought fervently to block abortions over the preceding century.
Within the confines of this book, readers will come across key writings, such as by the American Medical Association who had to react quick to the public health crisis jeopardizing women’s health up until the seminal ruling. There was the German Measles epidemic and the sleeping pill that somehow made its way from Europe to the U.S. that left fetuses at risk of being born with severe disabilities. While nations such as Japan, Puerto Rico and Sweden relaxed their laws to help ease the pain of mothers having to make the heart wrenching choice to abort, the U.S. was still debating whether or not women were qualified enough to make that decision alone. This led to opportunities that favored the rich and powerful, who could afford to travel aboard to abort their unhealthy fetuses, and to the disenfranchisement of the colored and the poor, who had no choice but to turn to illegal abortions to terminate their pregnancies.
No doubt the abortion debate has not been an easy one. Since the 1960s, it has toddled between the churches, the medical profession, the self-righteous, and even politics. Take, for example, the Welfare reform attempts of the 1970s, where the federal government relied on bribing colored and poor women with sterilization to qualify for government aid. And after the abortion rules relaxed to the discretion of doctors, the Republican leadership, working with church clergy, started a campaign to lure Democratic Catholics to the party to strengthen their pro-life agenda.
Throughout this time, it is at-risk pregnant women who were marginalized as the United States lagged far behind less-developed nations on the rights of women to choose.
What makes ‘Roe v. Wade’ a five-star prize is its approach to the very contentious abortion debate. The book is divided before the Supreme Court ruling and after, with writings and decisions made for and against the debate. Readers will learn how the abortion issue has divided the Catholic church over time, but managed to unite other denominations. They’ll read an essay from a mother of four who wanted that fifth unborn child but was strongly advised by doctors to terminate it because it would be delivered without limbs, only to be forced to travel to Sweden to have that required abortion. There’s also the letter from the pro-life mother who makes a case for anti-abortion laws as well.
In the end, readers will learn that the women’s lib movement was not entirely behind the abortion debate. That, in fact, the issue caused a huge rift between those who were against and for abortion, but, again, only after the public health crisis, the sterilization campaign, and the struggle to give women, and women alone, the right to choose between work, having children, or both.
Within the confines of this book, readers will come across key writings, such as by the American Medical Association who had to react quick to the public health crisis jeopardizing women’s health up until the seminal ruling. There was the German Measles epidemic and the sleeping pill that somehow made its way from Europe to the U.S. that left fetuses at risk of being born with severe disabilities. While nations such as Japan, Puerto Rico and Sweden relaxed their laws to help ease the pain of mothers having to make the heart wrenching choice to abort, the U.S. was still debating whether or not women were qualified enough to make that decision alone. This led to opportunities that favored the rich and powerful, who could afford to travel aboard to abort their unhealthy fetuses, and to the disenfranchisement of the colored and the poor, who had no choice but to turn to illegal abortions to terminate their pregnancies.
No doubt the abortion debate has not been an easy one. Since the 1960s, it has toddled between the churches, the medical profession, the self-righteous, and even politics. Take, for example, the Welfare reform attempts of the 1970s, where the federal government relied on bribing colored and poor women with sterilization to qualify for government aid. And after the abortion rules relaxed to the discretion of doctors, the Republican leadership, working with church clergy, started a campaign to lure Democratic Catholics to the party to strengthen their pro-life agenda.
Throughout this time, it is at-risk pregnant women who were marginalized as the United States lagged far behind less-developed nations on the rights of women to choose.
What makes ‘Roe v. Wade’ a five-star prize is its approach to the very contentious abortion debate. The book is divided before the Supreme Court ruling and after, with writings and decisions made for and against the debate. Readers will learn how the abortion issue has divided the Catholic church over time, but managed to unite other denominations. They’ll read an essay from a mother of four who wanted that fifth unborn child but was strongly advised by doctors to terminate it because it would be delivered without limbs, only to be forced to travel to Sweden to have that required abortion. There’s also the letter from the pro-life mother who makes a case for anti-abortion laws as well.
In the end, readers will learn that the women’s lib movement was not entirely behind the abortion debate. That, in fact, the issue caused a huge rift between those who were against and for abortion, but, again, only after the public health crisis, the sterilization campaign, and the struggle to give women, and women alone, the right to choose between work, having children, or both.
May 28, 2020
This collection of speeches, articles and friend-of-the-court briefs looks at the arguments of both pro- and anti-abortion forces prior to Roe v. Wade. Legalization arguments in the 1960s started out very differently, emphasizing the rights of doctors to give women honest medical opinion and the need to control population growth; women's right to decide whether to bear a child only gradually became an issue as second-generation feminism got under way. On the "anti" side the tendency was to condemn abortion is part of the "permissive society" and women's fight for equality instead of accepting their job was motherhood; "abortion is murder" didn't become a battle cry until much later.
A new appendix to the edition I have studies the argument that legislatures would have legalized abortion without a fuss, instead of which Roe made abortion hugely controversial by short-circuiting the process. The authors conclude that even without Roe, abortion opponents (mostly Catholic) were fighting any softening of abortion bans and they were successful in blocking reform efforts; conversely, Roe itself didn't attract controversy until it became a politically useful rallying cry.
A new appendix to the edition I have studies the argument that legislatures would have legalized abortion without a fuss, instead of which Roe made abortion hugely controversial by short-circuiting the process. The authors conclude that even without Roe, abortion opponents (mostly Catholic) were fighting any softening of abortion bans and they were successful in blocking reform efforts; conversely, Roe itself didn't attract controversy until it became a politically useful rallying cry.
August 1, 2018
Good introduction to the wide variety of early texts on the abortion issue. It has primarily a 20th century focus so mostly overlooks the vast body of literature from the 19th century.
March 13, 2021
Historical documents about the fight to legalize abortion. Very informative and convenient to have them all in one place.
December 3, 2023
I found this very helpful in framing and better understanding the debate around abortion.
March 27, 2025
definitely not a page turner, but it was super valuable because of all the primary sources it provided. It also provided a comprehensive understanding of the nuances in the abortion debate of the 1960s in the USA.
May 11, 2017
was a wonderfull book
Read
September 4, 2024Thesis reveal..
Read
December 9, 2025school
March 24, 2018
Before Roe v. Wade (Paperback)
by Linda Greenhouse
from the library
pt. I.
Reform, repeal, religion and reaction. Reform : Letter to the society for humane abortion ;
"Rush" procedure for going to Japan ;
The lesser of two evils / by Sherri Chessen Finkbine ;
Abortion: the law and the reality in 1970 / by Jane E. Hodgson ;
Dr. Hodgson's affidavit ; Statement of Dr. Hodgson's patient ; Illegal abortion as a public health problem / by Mary Steichen Calderone ;
American Law Institute abortion policy, 1962 ;
American Medical Association policy statements, 1967 and 1970 ;
Clergy consultation service statement ; Abortion law reform in the United States / by Jimmye Kimmey ;
"Right to choose" memorandum / by Jimmye Kimmey -- Repeal : National Organization for Women, bill of rights ;
Abortion: a woman's civil right / by Betty Friedan ;
NARAL policy statement ;
Call to women's strike for equality / by Betty Friedan ;
"Speak-out-rage" ; Feminist as anti-abortionist / by Sidney Callahan ;
Black women's manifesto / by Frances Beal ;
Black women and the motherhood myth / by Bev Cole ;
Zero population growth ;
A sex counseling service for college students / by Philip M. Sarrel and Lorna J. Sarrel ;
Sex and the Yale student / by the Student Committee on Human Sexuality -- Religion : Union for Reform Judaism, 1967 ;
United Methodist Church, statement of social principles, 1972 ;
Southern Baptist Convention, resolution on abortion 1971 ;
National Association of Evangelicals, statement on abortion, 1971 ;
Catholic Church statement: Humanae vitae, 1968 ; Catholic Church statement: Human life in our day, 1968 -- Reaction : New Jersey Catholic Bishops' letter ;
Abortion in perspective / by Robert M. Byrn ; Abortion and social justice (Americans United for Life)
Similarly, I will not-- cause abortion / by Robert D. Knapp ;
New Jersey Assembly testimony ;
Handbook on abortion / by J.C. Willke and Barbara Willke ;
Abortion makes strange bedfellows: GOP and GOD / by Lawrence T. King --
pt. II.
Conflict constitutionalized: the years before Roe : Abortion law reform and repeal: legislative and judicial developments / by Ruth Roemer -- Legislation: New York : Everywoman's abortions: "the oppressor is man" / by Susan Brownmiller ;
Constitutional question: is there a right to abortion? / by Linda Greenhouse ;
Plaintiff's brief, Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz ;
Memorandum of Assemblywoman Constance E. Cook ;
Plaintiff-appellant's brief, Byrn v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation ;
Letter from President Nixon to Cardinal Cooke ;
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's veto message ;
The city politic: the case of the missing abortion lobbyists / by Hope Spencer -- Litigation: Connecticut : Women vs. Connecticut thoughts on strategy ;
Women vs. Connecticut organizing pamphlet ;
Memorandum of decision, Abele v. Markle I ;
Connecticut legislative hearing testimony ;
Memorandum of decision, Abele v. Markle II -- Crosscurrents in the national arena, 1972 : Plaintiff's brief, Struck v. Secretary of Defense ;
Rockefeller Commission report ;
Abortion seen up to woman, doctor / by George Gallup ;
Statement about the report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future ; Swing to right seen among Catholics, Jews / by Louis Cassels ;
Assault book / by Patrick Buchanan ;
Women's libbers do NOT speak for us / by Phyllis Schlafly --
pt. III. Speaking to the Court : Roe v. Wade in context ;
A changing landscape ;
Argument and decision ;
Brief for appellants Jane Roe et al. ;
Brief for appellee Henry Wade ;
Announcing the decision -- Afterword --
Appendix: Briefs filed by "Friends of the court" (Amici curiae) : For Jane Roe: medical brief ;
For Jane Roe: public health and poverty brief ;
For Jane Roe: "new women lawyers" brief ;
For Jane Roe: Planned Parenthood brief ;
For Jane Roe: liberal religious brief ;
For Jane Roe: California Committee to legalize abortion brief ;
For Henry Wade: Americans united for life brief ;
For Henry Wade: Dissenting obstetricians' brief ;
For Henry Wade: National Right to Life Committee brief ;
For Henry Wade: Women's brief.
by Linda Greenhouse
from the library
pt. I.
Reform, repeal, religion and reaction. Reform : Letter to the society for humane abortion ;
"Rush" procedure for going to Japan ;
The lesser of two evils / by Sherri Chessen Finkbine ;
Abortion: the law and the reality in 1970 / by Jane E. Hodgson ;
Dr. Hodgson's affidavit ; Statement of Dr. Hodgson's patient ; Illegal abortion as a public health problem / by Mary Steichen Calderone ;
American Law Institute abortion policy, 1962 ;
American Medical Association policy statements, 1967 and 1970 ;
Clergy consultation service statement ; Abortion law reform in the United States / by Jimmye Kimmey ;
"Right to choose" memorandum / by Jimmye Kimmey -- Repeal : National Organization for Women, bill of rights ;
Abortion: a woman's civil right / by Betty Friedan ;
NARAL policy statement ;
Call to women's strike for equality / by Betty Friedan ;
"Speak-out-rage" ; Feminist as anti-abortionist / by Sidney Callahan ;
Black women's manifesto / by Frances Beal ;
Black women and the motherhood myth / by Bev Cole ;
Zero population growth ;
A sex counseling service for college students / by Philip M. Sarrel and Lorna J. Sarrel ;
Sex and the Yale student / by the Student Committee on Human Sexuality -- Religion : Union for Reform Judaism, 1967 ;
United Methodist Church, statement of social principles, 1972 ;
Southern Baptist Convention, resolution on abortion 1971 ;
National Association of Evangelicals, statement on abortion, 1971 ;
Catholic Church statement: Humanae vitae, 1968 ; Catholic Church statement: Human life in our day, 1968 -- Reaction : New Jersey Catholic Bishops' letter ;
Abortion in perspective / by Robert M. Byrn ; Abortion and social justice (Americans United for Life)
Similarly, I will not-- cause abortion / by Robert D. Knapp ;
New Jersey Assembly testimony ;
Handbook on abortion / by J.C. Willke and Barbara Willke ;
Abortion makes strange bedfellows: GOP and GOD / by Lawrence T. King --
pt. II.
Conflict constitutionalized: the years before Roe : Abortion law reform and repeal: legislative and judicial developments / by Ruth Roemer -- Legislation: New York : Everywoman's abortions: "the oppressor is man" / by Susan Brownmiller ;
Constitutional question: is there a right to abortion? / by Linda Greenhouse ;
Plaintiff's brief, Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz ;
Memorandum of Assemblywoman Constance E. Cook ;
Plaintiff-appellant's brief, Byrn v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation ;
Letter from President Nixon to Cardinal Cooke ;
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller's veto message ;
The city politic: the case of the missing abortion lobbyists / by Hope Spencer -- Litigation: Connecticut : Women vs. Connecticut thoughts on strategy ;
Women vs. Connecticut organizing pamphlet ;
Memorandum of decision, Abele v. Markle I ;
Connecticut legislative hearing testimony ;
Memorandum of decision, Abele v. Markle II -- Crosscurrents in the national arena, 1972 : Plaintiff's brief, Struck v. Secretary of Defense ;
Rockefeller Commission report ;
Abortion seen up to woman, doctor / by George Gallup ;
Statement about the report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future ; Swing to right seen among Catholics, Jews / by Louis Cassels ;
Assault book / by Patrick Buchanan ;
Women's libbers do NOT speak for us / by Phyllis Schlafly --
pt. III. Speaking to the Court : Roe v. Wade in context ;
A changing landscape ;
Argument and decision ;
Brief for appellants Jane Roe et al. ;
Brief for appellee Henry Wade ;
Announcing the decision -- Afterword --
Appendix: Briefs filed by "Friends of the court" (Amici curiae) : For Jane Roe: medical brief ;
For Jane Roe: public health and poverty brief ;
For Jane Roe: "new women lawyers" brief ;
For Jane Roe: Planned Parenthood brief ;
For Jane Roe: liberal religious brief ;
For Jane Roe: California Committee to legalize abortion brief ;
For Henry Wade: Americans united for life brief ;
For Henry Wade: Dissenting obstetricians' brief ;
For Henry Wade: National Right to Life Committee brief ;
For Henry Wade: Women's brief.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 12, 2010
Excellent resource for a book I am writing about abortion. Linda Greenhouse is one of the clearest, most intelligent of writers. It has a very specific purpose, and fulfills it marvelously, but the scope of limited.
November 13, 2010
WOW - did I learn a lot from this book - the history was fascinating and alarming - women went to Japan (and other places of course) for abortions pre Roe v Wade - really?? What is wrong with this country?? Dear USA - Please mind your own uterus and leave mine alone! Very good book.
Want to Read
July 2, 2010At this time the title of this book on Goodreads is incorrect, as can be determined immediately by looking at the cover image.
ETA: The title is now correct. Thanks!
ETA: The title is now correct. Thanks!
Want to Read
November 16, 2011Reading opinions from the other side . . .
March 15, 2011
Good book chock full of information. A little repetitive in spots but that was the materials fault, not the book. Learned a lot I as I didn't know a whole lot about the facts etc of this case.
August 3, 2012
Edited this manuscript..very interesting information with regard to the 1960's and 70's..what women did to gain access to an abortion..Very controversial
April 24, 2013
Very informative and eye-opening
Read
May 15, 2018This book is reading like a reference guide of various articles and various work before Roe v Wade passed, how the US was a pretty bad place, and people had to travel to Japan or go to back alleys to get abortions.
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