No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental Right
Becca Andrews (Public Affairs, $37, 267 pages)
In No Choice, Mother Jones journalist Becca Andrews offers accounts of abortion before and during the Roe v. Wade era to argue that the battle for abortion is not merely part of a larger battle for women’s rights, but an actual “war on women.” Personal accounts litter her one-sided history of “reproductive rights” and she insists that misogyny and racism were the primary “motivation for powerful people to frame abortion as an evil comparable to murder” beginning in the 1800s. There is no credence given to moral arguments against abortion or the historical Christian teaching against prenatal homicide. The Marxist interpretation of abortion through the lens of power dynamics allows Andrews to paint organizations that broke the law, such as Jane and the Society for Humane Abortions, as noble freedom fighters against (literally) The Man. The conservative backlash against the liberalizing of abortion in post-Roe America was the pushback of entrenched political power against women’s bodies – especially black women. Claiming that the backlash made it increasingly difficult to obtain an abortion, Andrews ignores the fact that the number of abortions climbed to nearly 1.5 million babies a year after Roe. She argues that the overturning of Roe was inevitable given existing power structures, ignoring the cultural and political forces that celebrate abortion as a good for both women and society. Andrews argues that until the connection between the bogeymen of white supremacy and patriarchy is fully understood by the masses, abortion will face a politically hostile environment. It would be tempting to label No Choice a work of fiction, but it is a useful insight to the way many academics and activist view the abortion debate today.
