Image by Jordan Uhl via Flickr, under CC BY 2.0.
The Journal of American History compiled the following index for readers who would like to learn more about the history of abortion, reproductive rights, and Roe v. Wade. Updated in 2022, this index consists of more than two dozen book and film reviews printed in the JAH. Collectively, these reviews offer a sweeping survey of the field as it has evolved over the last four decades.
| Author |
Title |
Reviewer |
Year Released |
| Jennifer L. Holland |
Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement |
Richard Hughes |
2020 |
| Hannah Dudley-Shotwell |
Revolutionizing Women’s Healthcare: The Feminist Self-Help Movement in America |
Amy Hay |
2020 |
| Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Amma Asante, Laura de Clermont-Tonnerre, and Janicza Bravo, directors. |
Mrs. America |
Jane Kamensky |
2020 |
| Brianna Theobald |
Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century |
Mary Jane Logan McCallum |
2019 |
| Hilde Løvdal Stephens |
Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home |
John W. Compton |
2019 |
| Mary Ziegler |
Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade and the Battle for Privacy |
Nancy Maveety |
2018 |
| Karissa Haugeberg |
Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century |
Catherine E. Rymph |
2017 |
| Lisa Riggin |
San Francisco’s Queen of Vice: The Strange Career of Abortionist Inez Brown Burns |
Rebecca Kluchin |
2017 |
| Daniel K. Williams |
Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade |
Keith Cassidy |
2016 |
| Johanna Schoen |
Abortion after Roe |
Rebecca M. Kluchin |
2015 |
| Jennifer Nelson |
More Than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement |
Sharra Vostral |
2015 |
| Karen Weingarten |
Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880–1940 |
Simone Caron |
2014 |
| Justin Buckley Dyer |
Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning |
Rebecca E. Zietlow |
2013 |
| Sara Dubow |
Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America |
Leslie J. Reagan |
2011 |
| Jamie Q. Tallman |
The Notorious Dr. Flippin: Abortion and Consequence in the Early Twentieth Century |
Simone Caron |
2011 |
| Leslie J. Reagan |
Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America |
Margaret Marsh |
2010 |
| Simone Caron |
Who Chooses? American Reproductive History since 1830 |
Margaret Marsh |
2008 |
| Burns Gene |
The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States |
Keith Cassidy |
2006 |
| Johanna Schoen |
Choice & Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare |
Jennifer Nelson |
2005 |
| Rickie Solinger |
Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America |
Janet Golden |
2005 |
| William Saletan |
Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War |
Leslie J. Reagan |
2003 |
| Jennifer Nelson |
Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement |
Amy Kesselman |
2003 |
| Nathan Stormer |
Articulating Life’s Memory: U.S. Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century |
Keith Cassidy |
2002 |
| Rickie Solinger |
Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States |
Janet Farrell Brodie |
2001 |
| Leslie J. Reagan |
When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1975 |
David J. Garrow |
1997 |
| Dorothy Fadiman, Daniel Meyers, and Beth Seltzer, producers |
From Danger to Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion |
Amy Kesselman |
1996 |
| Janet Farrell Brodie |
Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth–Century America |
Leslie J. Reagan |
1994 |
| F.L. Morton |
Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life: Abortion and the Courts in Canada |
Suzanne Staggenborg |
1994 |
| Eva R. Rubin, editor |
The Abortion Controversy: A Documentary History |
Sally G. McMillen |
1994 |
| David J. Garrow |
Liberty and Sexuality. The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade |
Donald T. Critchlow |
1994 |
| Suzanne Staggenborg |
The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict |
Alice Echols |
1991 |
| James C. Mohr |
Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800–1900 |
James Harvey Young |
1978 |
For a 2019 essay on the history of abortion in the United States, check out this piece by historian Jennifer L. Holland. For other insights into the contents of the Journal of American History, click here.
