Abortion

Feminist author and activist Jessica Valenti, known for her newsletter Abortion, Every Day, writes from sustained outrage following the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. The book is both a compendium of research and a call to action, exposing the anti-abortion movement's strategies, lies, and long-term goals across 10 thematic chapters. Valenti frames the overturning of Roe not simply as a loss of reproductive rights but as an assault on women's full citizenship, driven by a coalition of extremist organizations seeking a return to forced traditional gender roles and white supremacist patriarchy.

Valenti opens by rejecting decades of apologetic pro-choice messaging, such as the slogan "safe, legal, and rare," arguing that such timidity ceded the moral high ground. She contends that abortion is a proactive moral good because it allows people to control their own bodies, lives, and futures. She supports this claim with her own experience: at 28, she ended a pregnancy that would have prevented her from meeting her husband, Andrew, and having her daughter, Layla. A second abortion was medically necessary because HELLP syndrome, a serious pregnancy complication she experienced during Layla's birth, made another pregnancy life-threatening.

The book provides foundational information about abortion methods, from medication abortion (which accounted for 63 percent of abortions in 2023) to various procedural options, noting that 93 percent of abortions occur before the 13th week. Valenti marshals evidence that abortion is extremely safe, citing a New York Times analysis of over 100 studies that found more than 99 percent of medication abortion patients had no serious complications. She presents findings from the Turnaway Study, led by researcher Diana Greene Foster, which followed 1,000 women for five years and found that those denied abortions were more likely to stay with abusive partners, live in poverty, and experience serious health complications. Additional studies estimate that abortion bans will lead to a 21 percent increase in pregnancy-related deaths, with a 33 percent increase among Black women.

Valenti devotes considerable attention to dismantling the myth that abortion is divisive. Polling data shows 85 percent of voters say abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances, over 80 percent believe the decision should rest between a patient and doctor with no government involvement, and one-third of Republicans want abortion legal for any reason. Valenti argues this myth persists because anti-abortion organizations invest heavily in embedding it in American culture and because mainstream media present abortion as more polarizing than it is. She documents how every time abortion appeared on the ballot after Roe's demise, abortion rights won, even in conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky.

The book's most detailed case study of anti-democratic tactics centers on Ohio. After Roe was overturned, Ohio Republicans passed a six-week ban, and pro-choice groups began collecting signatures for a ballot measure known as Issue 1. Republicans attempted to raise the ballot threshold to 60 percent, sued to double signature requirements, and drafted a false ballot summary in collaboration with anti-abortion groups that changed "fetus" to "unborn child." Anti-abortion organizations launched a disinformation campaign claiming the measure would eliminate parental rights and allow children to have gender-affirming surgery without consent. Days before the vote, Republican leaders purged 26,000 voters from the rolls. Despite these efforts, Ohio voters passed Issue 1 by a wide margin.

A central thread traces how the anti-abortion movement manipulates language to obscure its extremism. Valenti documents how conservatives redefine abortion itself, claiming it applies only to unwanted pregnancies and not to treatment for ectopic pregnancies (pregnancies that implant outside the uterus), miscarriages, or life-threatening conditions. She tracks the erasure of the word "ban" from Republican vocabulary, tracing the shift to Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion organization that after the 2022 midterms replaced "national ban" with "national standard" or "national consensus." This language spread to Republican officials and media outlets, with The Washington Post and ABC News covering proposed bans as "limits." Valenti also examines "maternal-fetal separation," a non-medical term appearing in state legislation that mandates C-sections or induced delivery instead of standard abortion procedures for life-threatening pregnancies.

Valenti argues that Republicans are already effectively banning birth control through two strategies: restricting access by defunding clinics while expanding crisis pregnancy centers (which cannot prescribe, discuss, or refer for contraception), and redefining intrauterine devices (IUDs) and emergency contraception as abortifacients, a term falsely characterizing them as drugs that cause abortion. Post-Dobbs, states dramatically increased crisis pregnancy center funding, with Texas alone raising its allocation from $5 million every two years to $100 million for 2022-2023. Valenti traces the contraception-as-abortion lie from the 2014 Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case through current legislation and documents a cultural campaign against hormonal birth control in which "tradwife" content creators, influencers who promote traditional wife-and-mother roles, urge young women to abandon the Pill.

The book exposes abortion ban "exceptions" as deliberately unusable. Valenti reports that when Mississippi Today reporters searched for a doctor willing to provide a rape survivor an abortion under the state's exception, they found none. She recounts the case of Kate Cox, a Texas woman denied an abortion for a nonviable and dangerous pregnancy who went to court for relief. A sympathetic judge granted Cox's request, but Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to reverse the ruling and sent threatening letters to hospitals. The court sided with Paxton, and Cox left the state for care.

Valenti documents the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes, from pre-Dobbs cases such as Purvi Patel's 20-year Indiana sentence for feticide (a criminal charge for causing a fetus's death) and Marshae Jones's Alabama manslaughter charge after being shot and miscarrying, to post-Dobbs bills classifying abortion as homicide. She details how "anti-trafficking" laws in states like Idaho make it a felony to help a minor obtain an abortion, including lending gas money or texting the URL of an out-of-state clinic.

The book argues that teenagers serve as test subjects for policies that will eventually apply to all Americans. Valenti cites Tennessee House Republicans voting in 2024 to force children 12 and under who have been raped to carry pregnancies to term. She contends that the focus on minors provides political cover through "parental rights" framing and allows Republicans to test radical policies before extending them to adults.

Valenti catalogs post-Dobbs medical horrors and argues that the suffering was anticipated and strategized over decades. She identifies the first reported post-Dobbs death as that of Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, a 29-year-old Texas woman with diabetes and hypertension whose deteriorating condition during pregnancy was never met with the recommendation of an abortion. She presents data on collapsing maternal healthcare infrastructure: Idaho has lost nearly 25 percent of its obstetrician-gynecologists since passing its ban, over 1.7 million women live in counties lacking both abortion and maternity care, and Republican officials are suppressing maternal mortality data, with Idaho disbanding its maternal mortality review committee.

Valenti closes by arguing that abortion is inseparable from democracy, economic justice, and free speech. She documents how bans have triggered restrictions on travel, with Alabama's attorney general arguing in court that the state can restrict pregnant women's movements the same way it restricts those of sex offenders, as well as restrictions on public employees' speech and librarians' ability to discuss abortion. She calls for uncompromising advocacy, rejecting any compromise: Every abortion denied, she contends, is a tragedy, and the pro-choice movement must demand zero government interference in pregnancy. The book includes a resources section with photographs of early pregnancy tissue, key statistics, a glossary of anti-abortion terminology, and a recommended reading list.