From the issue dated November 2, 2001
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The Widening Ripples of 'Roe v. Wade': a Reading ListBy N.E.H. HULL and PETER CHARLES HOFFERAny effort to point students to accessible sources is highly selective.
The briefs arguing the constitutional and statutory points of law appear in Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law, edited by Philip B. Kurland and Gerhard Casper. An audiotape of selections of the oral arguments in Roe, Webster, Casey, and other abortion-related cases appears as a supplement to Stephanie Guitton's and Peter Irons's collection, May It Please the Court: The Most Significant Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court Since 1955 (1993). Among the excellent accounts of the issues involved are David Garrow's Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade (1994), a detailed account of the story from its origins in the birth-control controversy through the arguments in Casey; Cynthia Gorney's Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (1998), a narrative of the struggle over abortion rights in Missouri, where Webster originated; Sarah Weddington's own story in A Question of Choice (1992); Norma McCorvey's and Andy Meisler's I Am Roe: My Life, Roe v. Wade, and Freedom of Choice (1994); and Marian Faux's Roe v. Wade: The Untold Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision that Made Abortion Legal (1988). On the Webster and Casey cases in the Rehnquist court, there are a number of accounts by political scientists and journalists, including David G. Savage's Turning Right: The Making of the Rehnquist Supreme Court (1992), James F. Simon's The Center Holds: The Power Struggle Within the Rehnquist Court (1995), and Tinsley E. Yarbrough's The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution (2000). The participation of a female lawyer as chief counsel in Roe not only helped make the case visible; female lawyers defending privacy and choice made those concepts the centerpiece of a new paradigm for women and the law. Two revealing articles by women who participated in post-Roe litigation on women's issues -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade," 63 North Carolina Law Review 375 (1985), and Sylvia Law's "Rethinking Sex and the Constitution," 132 Pennsylvania Law Review 955 (1984) -- reveal core values of that new thinking. The legal issues discussed by the Supreme Court are the subject of Lawrence Tribe's Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990) and Mark Tushnet's Abortion: Constitutional Issues (1996). Both offer balanced defenses of Roe. Catharine A. MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987) fits abortion into the larger scheme of radical feminism. Arguments against abortion rights appear in the philosopher Peter Kreeft's The Unaborted Socrates (1983) and Mary Ann Glendon's Abortion and Divorce in Western Law: American Failures, European Challenges (1987). The line between politics and law in these cases is hardly clear. An intelligible survey of that subject is Donald T. Critchlow's The Politics of Abortion and Birth Control in Historical Perspective (1996). Other essays and collections of essays that combine legal and political insights appear in Barbara Hinkson Craig's and David M. O'Brien's Abortion and American Politics (1993) and in Perspectives on the Politics of Abortion (1995), edited by Ted G. Jelen. For the relationship between abortion and the so-called Christian Right, see Sara Diamond's Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (1998), Michele McKeegan's Abortion Politics: Mutiny in the Ranks of the Right (1992), and James Risen's and Judy L. Thomas's Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (1998). Susan Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991) documents the many ways in which women found their legal gains under attack in the 1980s. The history of abortion is part of the history of birth control. On the latter, see Janet Farrell Brodie's Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America (1994). Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (1976) is a powerful discussion of the topic, while James C. Mohr's Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy (1978) is a narrative of the legal and medical treatment of abortion and birth control in the 19th century. Leslie J. Reagan's When Abortion Was A Crime: Women, Medicine, and the Law in the United States, 1867-1973 (1997) is a detailed indictment of the anti-abortion forces, and James Reed's The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue, 2nd ed. (1984), is a well-argued biographical approach to birth-control and abortion issues. An account of many of the same events from the anti-abortion side is Marvin Olasky's Abortion Rights: a Social History of Abortion in America (1992). Mid-20th-century surveys about the law and the medical practice of abortion, prepared by Carl Taussig and Alan Guttmacher, physicians and abortion-law activists, appear in Therapeutic Abortion (1954), edited by Harold Rosen. The twists and turns of the policy of the American Medical Association on women and child care are the subject of the final chapter of Richard A. Meckel's Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (1990). Donald Critchlow's Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America (1999) follows the twisted path of federal family-planning policy in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. Laura Kaplan, in The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (1995); Carole Joffe, in Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade (1995); and Rickie Solinger, who edited Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950-2000 (2000), bring the story up to date. One cannot study abortion or birth control in isolation from the rise of the women's-rights movement. A recent general treatment is Ruth Rosen's The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (2000). We are still in the middle of the story of Roe, and no one can predict the ending. To keep up with current events, one might consult three Web sites. A superb source of legal materials, including courts' opinions and briefs of cases submitted to the Supreme Court, is http://www.lexis.com. (A subscription is required.) Lexis also has a news database, Nexis (also subscription only), that covers most major daily newspapers, magazines of opinion, and testimony before Congressional committees. More narrowly focused on abortion matters, the National Abortion Rights Action League's Web site is http://www.naral.org, and the National Right to Life Committee's site is http://www.nrlc.org. The National Organization for Women, Operation Rescue, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and various health-advisory and church groups also have Web sites that focus on abortion. http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Page: B15
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Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education