Roe The history of a national obsession

If the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which declared abortion a protected constitutional right, is not the most famous case in recent US Supreme Court history, then Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned it, is. The path from Roe to Dobbs is the subject of this brief but thoughtful book. Ziegler (law, Univ. of California, Davis) describes the original Roe decision and the 50-year path to defend, modify, and overturn it. Ziegler's book is the story of how technology, politics, and ideology framed the Roe decision and what it meant--or at least what many thought it meant. In a lucid and cogent style, Ziegler describes how the concepts of choice, science, race, and religion and the role of the courts in American society became central in framing issues for thinking about reproductive rights. The strength of the book is its descriptions of the multiple meanings of Roe in American society and how the decision became a microcosm of political polarization and debates in the US for the last half-century. Excellent for collections on American law, politics, civil rights, and culture. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. --David Schultz, Hamline University

UC Davis law professor Ziegler (Dollars for Life) analyzes in this expert study how the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion captured the nation's imagination as "a meta-symbol of our many political and cultural disagreements and a shorthand for their inherent contradictions." In the 1960s, a series of legal cases carved out exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest, and fetal defects; Ziegler notes opposition from both anti-abortion activists (who believed in fetal personhood) and the women's liberation movement (which believed abortion should be a constitutional right). In the 1970s, the Hyde Amendment, which blocked Medicaid funding for abortion, led abortion rights activists to elevate the message that Roe was about women's freedom of choice, while right-to-lifers increasingly sought to upend the Republican establishment. Among other themes, the decades after Roe saw the intertwining of anti-abortion groups and evangelical Christianity; the politicization of science and expertise, especially around the concept of "partial birth abortion"; and the foregrounding of racial issues, with anti-abortion activists highlighting Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's belief in eugenics and abortion rights organizations shifting from a white-centered choice message to a reproductive justice framework. Ziegler sets a brisk pace but delivers substantial depth as she reveals just how much the terms of this debate have shifted in the 50 years between Roe and its recent overturning. It's a must-read for those seeking to understand what comes next. (Jan.)

An accessible account of the legal issues surrounding Roe v. Wade and the many layers of controversy surrounding them. The author of Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment and other books about abortion and the law in America, Ziegler opens with the observation that Roe is the only Supreme Court--adjudicated law concerning abortion. For example, part of the decision was overruled in the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision. Still, "Roe has become the repository for the contradictions of the American abortion war," which extend well beyond abortion: Does a woman have the right to control her own body? Does life begin at conception? Does the federal government have the right to make laws that should be the purview of individual states? Ziegler digs deep to look at novel approaches to litigation, with some anti-abortion groups, for instance, using the 14th Amendment to equate the unborn with the enslaved, with "their humanity denied by others who perpetrated acts of unspeakable violence against them." Other interpretations have centered on science, with both pro-choice and anti-abortion activists insisting that the scientific evidence is on their side. Interestingly, Ziegler writes, the religious liberty aspect of Roe came to the fore relatively recently, when "conservative Christian groups…framed legal abortion and LGBTIQ rights as forcing Christians to forsake their own beliefs." Interestingly, too, Roe was from the outset criticized as poorly framed. "Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who would become the Supreme Court's most vocal defender of abortion rights, often argued that Roe went too far too fast and undermined the pro-choice movement's earlier progress," writes Ziegler. Following Roe's overturning by a Supreme Court that has been revealed as a partisan rather than impartial body, a newly "robust popular constitutionalism" may arise by which states guarantee the right of choice through citizen action. As always, Ziegler is a clear explainer of a complex, gray-shaded body of law. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.