A Woman's Life Is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice

Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this urgent bookfrom historian Felicia Kornbluh reveals two movement victories in New York that forever changed the politics of reproductive rights nationally

Before there was a "Jane Roe," themost important champions of reproductive rights were ordinary people working intheir local communities. In A Woman's Life Isa Human Life, historian Felicia Kornbluhdelivers the untold story of everyday activists who defined those rights andachieved them, in the years immediately before and after Roev. Wade made abortion legal under federallaw.

A Woman's Life Is a Human Life isthe story of two movements in New York that transformed the politics ofreproductive rights: the fight to decriminalize abortion and the fight againststerilization abuse, which happened disproportionately in communities of colorand was central to an activism that was about the right tobear children, as well as not to. Each initiative won keyvictories that relied on people power and not on the federal courts. Theirhistories cast new light on Roe andconstitutional rights, on the difficulty and importance of achieving a trulyinclusive feminism, and on reproductive politics today.

This is a book full of drama. Fromdissident Democrats who were the first to try reforming abortion laws andmembers of a rising feminist movement who refashioned them, to the nation's largestabortion referral service established by progressive Christian and Jewishclergy, to Puerto Rican activists who demanded community accountability inhealthcare and introduced sterilization abuse to the movement's agenda, andBlack women who took the cause global, A Woman's LifeIs a Human Life documents the diverse ways activistschanged the law and worked to create a world that would support all people'sreproductive choices.

The first in-depth study of awinning campaign against a state's abortion law and the first to chronicle thesterilization abuse fight side-by-side with the one for abortion rights, AWoman's Life Is a Human Life is rich with firsthandaccounts and previously unseen sources--includingthose from Kornbluh's mother, who wrotethe first draft of New York's law decriminalizingabortion, and their across-the-hall neighbor,Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías, a Puerto Ricandoctor who cofounded the movement againststerilization abuse. In this dynamic, surprising,and highly readable history, Felicia Kornbluhcorrects the record to show how grassrootsaction overcame the odds to create policychange--and how it might work today.