She dismisses the opinions of some that considered the legalization of abortion as solely a result of the politics of the court or the changes in medicine as an oversimplification of the diverse roots of social and political change. She herself seems to view the legalization of abortion as the result of several factors: women making the abortion debate public, the political organizing of various movements and the collective action they took in unifying their forces, as wells as other social and political factors of the time. In her epilogue, she summarizes the status of abortion post Roe. While the Supreme Court has yet to overturn Roe, they have allowed its power to be gutted. Doe v Bolton, the sister case to Roe, has been all but overturned. States have been allowed to enact strict regulations in an attempt to bar women from getting abortions. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act prevented doctors from using a safe and effective method of abortion. The Court upheld the Hyde Amendment and Reagan’s gag rule. Legislation has been enacted that requires waiting periods and some states require that a woman be forced to listen to the heartbeat and breathing of a fetus before she aborts; others require women to receive informed consent booklets or counseling against abortion in an attempt to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies. Reagan surveys these restrictions and concludes that abortion rights have been gutted by SCOTUS rulings and legislation. She ends by discussing how growing activism and movements committed to defending women’s’ reproductive rights are a positive sign and, in some ways, mirror the movements that sparked this in the first
She dismisses the opinions of some that considered the legalization of abortion as solely a result of the politics of the court or the changes in medicine as an oversimplification of the diverse roots of social and political change. She herself seems to view the legalization of abortion as the result of several factors: women making the abortion debate public, the political organizing of various movements and the collective action they took in unifying their forces, as wells as other social and political factors of the time. In her epilogue, she summarizes the status of abortion post Roe. While the Supreme Court has yet to overturn Roe, they have allowed its power to be gutted. Doe v Bolton, the sister case to Roe, has been all but overturned. States have been allowed to enact strict regulations in an attempt to bar women from getting abortions. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act prevented doctors from using a safe and effective method of abortion. The Court upheld the Hyde Amendment and Reagan’s gag rule. Legislation has been enacted that requires waiting periods and some states require that a woman be forced to listen to the heartbeat and breathing of a fetus before she aborts; others require women to receive informed consent booklets or counseling against abortion in an attempt to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies. Reagan surveys these restrictions and concludes that abortion rights have been gutted by SCOTUS rulings and legislation. She ends by discussing how growing activism and movements committed to defending women’s’ reproductive rights are a positive sign and, in some ways, mirror the movements that sparked this in the first