Roe v. Wade

September 10, 2001
Studies of abortion issues are common, but mostly partisan. With a deliberately (and rather successfully) even hand, law professor Hull and history professor Hoffer (coauthors of Impeachment in America) set out to answer one central question: how did abortion become illegal in America? Before Anthony Comstock's 1870s "anti-vice" campaigns, government was relatively uninvolved with women's pregnancies, which were seen as private. Our modern Congress, on the other hand, tries to legislate what doctors can tell pregnant women and even attempts to micromanage the actual abortion procedure by trying to outlaw certain techniques. By examining the roles of as many players as possible—religious authorities, politicians, judges, doctors, activists, lawyers, etc.—Hull and Hoffer piece together the story and explain the relevant legal workings. In another context, constitutional language might seem too dull, but with the abortion issue at center stage for so many Americans, this very scholarly work is also a page-turner. Legal terms (undue burden, class action suits, injunctions) are cleanly explained in a few concise sentences when they first appear. To orient the uninitiated, the authors interweave brief biographies of key figures (e.g., Thurgood Marshall and Antonin Scalia). No footnotes interrupt the flow: anything readers need to know is worked into the narrative. Important sources are reviewed in an excellent bibliographic essay at the end of the book. The most recent addition to the lively Landmark Law Cases and American Society series, this remarkable volume should be popular with law scholars and lay readers alike.