The 12 Books You Need to Read Post the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade Smackdown

This indelible collection of essays—first published in 1983 and repackaged in 2019 with a new introduction by Emma Watson—by the most influential women's right activist of our times showcases her advocacy on a range of topics, among them female genital mutilation and menstruation, as well as more personal musings, such as her mother’s lack of opportunities and what Steinem discovered during a stint as a writer in the early days of New York Magazine. But mainly this is a book of global compassion and humanity celebrating the world's community of women and connection by a feminist who never tires of using her enormous heart and brain to mentor, to listen, to act, to be an engine of change.

Nearly 100 years since the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced into Congress in 1923 and 50 years since it passed both houses, it has still has not been made into law. Kelly traces the history of activists who have fought for women’s rights and their impact on the movement. Kelly also argues that passing the ERA would have secured Roe v. Wade, saying, “We cannot shut up until equality is written into the text of the U.S. Constitution, cementing permanent protection for both groups into our most foundational document.”

For many activists, it’s an honor and a duty to escort women into Planned Parenthood or another abortion clinic, dodging the taunts and abuses of anti-choice protestors in the service of a higher calling. Rankin weaves personal stories with the escort movement’s broader history: how it emerged from the ferment of post-1960s feminism, pushing back against a phalanx of threats, including bombings and shootings, to stand in solidarity with women in their hour of need.

Centering women of color in the reproductive rights discourse, Luna highlights one group, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a national organization focusing on improving policies on reproductive rights in marginalized communities. SisterSong adopted an intersectional approach by including communities of color and showing that women’s rights are human rights.

In this landmark study, a law professor peers into our post-Roe future by retracing the contours surrounding the Supreme Court case: The boundaries were fluid, and activists on both sides sought common ground in medical research and pregnancy discrimination. How did the good-faith sparring harden into trench warfare? Ziegler’s results may surprise. Pro-choice leaders often ignored specific questions regarding race and socioeconomic class, while anti-choice soldiers were not by definition anti-feminist. The eventual binary—does a woman have a Constitutional right to an abortion, yay or nay?—sparked a zero-sum game that will leave political scars for decades.

Reagan here examines four different stages in U.S. history where a push for control of women’s reproductive rights impacted freedom and maternal health of women. From the formation of The American Medical Association in 1857 to the underground abortion clinics in the three decades before Roe, Reagan highlights the effects of the criminalization of abortion on women of color and across economic lines.

Before Jane Roe, there was Norma McCorvey (1947-2017), whose unwanted pregnancy led her, veiled in a pseudonym, to the marbled corridors of the Supreme Court. After Roe v. Wade, as the culture wars accelerated and battle lines were drawn, McCorvey withdrew into the shadows of normie life, recanting her early pro-choice position and giving up three infant daughters for adoption. In this stirring achievement of reportage, a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize, Prager mines scores of interviews with McCorvey and other players in the legal case (including Baby Roe, now a middle-aged woman), his gorgeous prose illuminating the eye of a Category 5 cultural hurricane.

In 1972 the Chicago police raided the Jane Collective, an underground network of activists founded to help women obtain abortions before Roe v. Wade was passed in January 1973. To understand how the United States arrived at that point and, indeed, how in 2022 Roe was overturned, we need to examine the long history of oppression of women and the dangerous disregard for their human rights.

Fiction is often a more alluring vessel of truth than nonfiction, and in her recently lauded novel centered on a Boston abortion clinic in 2015, Haigh depicts lives that intersect publicly as her characters grapple with the most intimate of decisions. From a clinic hotline manager to a gaggle of anti-abortion protestors, Haigh boldly seeks out moral nuance, melding crystalline language to a topical story that twists and turns toward a stunning crescendo.

In this 1998 classic, widely considered the definitive account of the legal strategies behind Roe v. Wade, a preeminent civil rights historian sifts through academic jargon and moral posturing to unearth a right to privacy embedded in the Constitution. Garrow writes with the acumen of a scholar but with the flair of a literary journalist, connecting the disparate dots between Roe and other flash points, such as birth control.

The minister and social ethicist argues that abortion access is limited due to the patriarchal, religious, and racist systems in this nation. Peters asserts that Christianity should review how it approaches the abortion debate: “The problem is our inability to trust women to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents who must weigh the concrete moral question of what to do when they are pregnant or when there are problems during a pregnancy.”

To understand why we've reached this moment vis a vis Roe v. Wade, we must examine the past. From 1776 to the present, women’s reproductive rights have been controlled by oppressive policies. Solinger here takes us through a history of women’s rights in the United States: from slave breeding programs to forced sterilizations to limited abortion access.