Abortion Stories - American Literature Before Roe v. Wade

A one-of-a-kind, intersectional volume of abortion representation in American literature before
A Penguin Classic

About the author

Edited with an Introduction by Karen Weingarten; Foreword by Rebecca Traister; Afterword by Renee Bracey Sherman

Summary

A one-of-a-kind, intersectional volume of abortion representation in American literature before Roe v. Wade that compellingly proclaims: when abortion is illegal, women’s lives are always more precarious and limited

A Penguin Classic

One of Ms. Magazine’s Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2025

One of Library Journal's Best Books of the Year

Abortion Stories is the first volume of its kind to bring together a diverse collection of writings on abortion published before 1973, when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in every American state. These stories, poems, essays, and memoirs reflect a range of representations and responses to abortion during this era, but when read together, they demonstrate how when abortion is illegal, women’s lives are always more precarious and limited. In this volume, you will read stories that will elucidate and enrich a view of abortion as one element of human experience—woven into stories of love and death and medicine and motherhood and enslavement and emancipation. Featuring luminaries like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edgar Allan Poe, Lucile Clifton, Eugene O' Neill, and Shirley Chisholm, as well as rare firsthand accounts of abortion providers and seekers, this reproductive justice-minded collection brings together diverse representations of abortion to show how access to abortion is often race and class dependent, and demonstrates how the repercussions of an illegal abortion also vary depending on such factors. The need and desire to have an abortion goes back centuries, and these literary representations of abortion before Roe compellingly argue for the necessity of legal and accessible abortion. Edited and introduced by Karen Weingarten, Abortion Stories features a foreword by Rebecca Traister and an afterword by Renee Bracey Sherman.

Product details

• Authors: Bracey Sherm, Renee Bracey Sherman, Rebecca Traister, Karen Weingarten
• Assisted by: Weingarten Karen (Editor), Traister Rebecca (Foreword), Weingarten Karen (Introduction), Renee Bracey Sherman (Afterword)
• Publisher: Penguin Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 04.03.2025
• EAN: 9780143138204
• ISBN: 978-0-14-313820-4
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 127 mm x 196 mm x 15 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Abortion & Birth Control, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: general, Ethical issues: abortion & birth control, Anthologies