List of contents
Foreword by Rebecca Traister
Introduction: A Short History of Abortion and Its Representations Before Roe by Karen Weingarten
A Note on the Text
ABORTION STORIES
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian (1705), translated by Wijnie de Groot for this collection
“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt: A Sequel to ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
WPA Oral Histories by Formerly Enslaved People (reminiscences of life during the mid-nineteenth century)
“The Great ‘Trunk Mystery’ of New York City” by Anonymous (1871)
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (1896)
Abortion by Eugene O’Neill (1914)
Summer by Edith Wharton (1917)
“Motherhood” by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922)
“Engaged” by Genevieve Taggard (1922)
“Mr. Durant” by Dorothy Parker (1924)
Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley (1929)
“Missis Flinders” by Tess Slesinger (1932)
“Cora Unashamed” by Langston Hughes (1934)
“A Cold Front” by William Carlos Williams (1939)
“the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious (1956)
The Abortionist by Dr. X as told to Lucy Freeman (1962)
“One Woman’s Abortion” by Mrs. X (1965)
“Facing the Abortion Question” by Shirley Chisholm (1969)
They Weep on My Doorstep by Ruth Barnett (1969)
The Abortees’ Songbook by Patricia Maginnis (1969)
“the lost baby poem” by Lucille Clifton (1972)
Afterword by Renee Bracey Sherman
Acknowledgments
Suggestions for Further Reading
Credits
About the author
Karen Weingarten (Editor) is Professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York. Her previous books are Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice and Pregnancy Test. Rebecca Traister (Foreword) is writer at large for New York magazine. She is the author of Good and Mad, All the Single Ladies, and the award-winning Big Girls Don’t Cry. Renee Bracey Sherman (Afterword) is an abortion activist, writer, and founder and co-executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions.
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
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.
