is fast approaching.  I’ve been trying to read up on the pro-choice and pro-life movements and the history of abortion in the United States.  I’ve been feeling a need to beef up on some integral cornerstones of American women’s history or subjects I thought I already knew “too” much about in college when I was intellectually snotty and thought I was all that.
I read Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood by Kristin Luker.  I was first assigned to read this book my senior year of college.  But I never got around to it because I was in the midst of writing final papers and couldn’t be bothered to read about a subject I already “knew” about.  Well, I was full of it.  I learned a LOT from this book especially about the motivation behind the founding of the pro-life movement.  The truth is I don’t know that side of the story.  I still am pro-choice but I like to have an understanding of where pro-life women are coming from.  I do felt like the Luker did not really get into analyzing the inspiration behind the pro-choice movement as she did with the pro-life movement. 

The next book I read was When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 by Leslie J. Reagan. Reagan, a historian, is clearly pro-choice between the lines.  Her study provides a deep and moving history of abortion focusing on women in Chicago.  I also learned a lot from this book as well specifically what encouraged the illegality of abortion in certain areas.

Last year, I read How the Pro-choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, And the War on Sex which provided compelling reasons as to why the Roe v. Wade decision benefited women’s lives and health in numerous ways.  

The 24th anniversary occurs on January 22.  Whether your or pro-choice, kinda choice, pro-life, on the fence, it is impossible to deny Roe v. Wade’s undeniably vital place in American history.

BTW HI MOM & DAD!!!!!

(I know you’re reading.)