Abortion Pills: US History and Politics
Published December 3, 2024 This is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States. Public intellectual and lawyer Carrie N. Baker shows how courageous activists waged a decades-long campaign to establish, expand, and maintain access to abortion pills. Weaving their voices throughout her book, Baker recounts both dramatic and everyday acts of their resistance. These activists battled anti-abortion forces, overly cautious policymakers, medical gatekeepers, and fearful allies in their four-decade-long fight to free abortion pills. In post-Roe America, abortion pills are currently playing a critically important role in providing safe abortion access to tens of thousands of people living in states that now ban and restrict abortion. Understanding this struggle will help to ensure continued access into the future. “Carrie Baker’s deep and granular knowledge about the politics of abortion in general and abortion pills specifically provides a captivating and moving analysis of what women face in an environment hostile to their human rights. We can all benefit from learning more, even as seasoned activists, and her powerful book about the history of medication abortion compels us to think more deeply about the attacks on abortion rights and access as part of a multi-generational campaign to prevent women from controlling their lives.” —Loretta J. Ross, Co-founder of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective "I appreciate the care Abortion Pills takes in exploring the conflicts about strategy and tactics within the abortion pill movement. Students often think there is only one way—or one right way—to be an activist or to fight for a cause they believe in; so histories like this are vital, as they illustrate that social and legal change is messy and there is more than one way to do it. This book is written with a rare combination of academic rigor and journalistic flair that students will enjoy reading." —Jennifer Nye, professor of History at UMass Amherst, and Chair of the Five College Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice Certificate "As leading advocate and legal scholar Carrie Baker shows us in this brilliant primer on the history and current struggles around the 'abortion pill', there is no more important issue of reproductive freedom than its unfettered access." —Paula J. Giddings, E.A. Woodson Professor Emerita at Smith College Carrie N. Baker is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies and the Chair of the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. She has written four previous books and scores of peer-reviewed scholarly articles on gender, law and social movements for women’s rights. She is a regular writer and contributing editor at Ms. magazine, covering reproductive rights, discrimination in employment and education, sexual harassment, and the Equal Rights Amendment. An auto-narrated audiobook is available via the "Download" button above.
