Abortion Pills: US History and Politics

Baker, Carrie

doi:doi:10.3998/mpub.14469549

Abortion Pills: US History and Politics

Carrie Baker

Open Access

Overview
Contents

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States. Public intellectual and lawyer Carrie N. Baker shows how courageous activists waged a decades-long campaign to establish, expand, and maintain access to abortion pills. Weaving their voices throughout her book, Baker recounts both dramatic and everyday acts of their resistance. These activists battled anti-abortion forces, overly cautious policymakers, medical gatekeepers, and fearful allies in their four-decade-long fight to free abortion pills. In post-Roe America, abortion pills are currently playing a critically important role in providing safe abortion access to tens of thousands of people living in states that now ban and restrict abortion. Understanding this struggle will help to ensure continued access into the future.

“Carrie Baker’s deep and granular knowledge about the politics of abortion in general and abortion pills specifically provides a captivating and moving analysis of what women face in an environment hostile to their human rights. We can all benefit from learning more, even as seasoned activists, and her powerful book about the history of medication abortion compels us to think more deeply about the attacks on abortion rights and access as part of a multi-generational campaign to prevent women from controlling their lives.”
—Loretta J. Ross, Co-founder of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

"I appreciate the care Abortion Pills takes in exploring the conflicts about strategy and tactics within the abortion pill movement. Students often think there is only one way—or one right way—to be an activist or to fight for a cause they believe in; so histories like this are vital, as they illustrate that social and legal change is messy and there is more than one way to do it. This book is written with a rare combination of academic rigor and journalistic flair that students will enjoy reading."
—Jennifer Nye, professor of History at UMass Amherst, and Chair of the Five College Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice Certificate

"As leading advocate and legal scholar Carrie Baker shows us in this brilliant primer on the history and current struggles around the 'abortion pill', there is no more important issue of reproductive freedom than its unfettered access."
—Paula J. Giddings, E.A. Woodson Professor Emerita at Smith College

Carrie N. Baker is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor of American Studies and the Chair of the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. She has written four previous books and scores of peer-reviewed scholarly articles on gender, law and social movements for women’s rights. She is a regular writer and contributing editor at Ms. magazine, covering reproductive rights, discrimination in employment and education, sexual harassment, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

An auto-narrated audiobook is available via the "Download" button above.

Citable Link

Published: 2024

Publisher: Amherst College Press

License:

ISBN(s)

978-1-943208-87-6 (hardcover)
978-1-943208-85-2 (paperback)
978-1-943208-86-9 (open access)

Subject

Resources

People standing behind a table covered with boxes.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1: FMF delegation visits Roussel Uclaf in Paris, France, in 1991 to deliver thousands of petitions asking the company to release RU 486 to the US market. Those pictured from left to right include Dr. Catherine Euvrard (Roussel Uclaf), Dr. Myron Allukian (President, American Public Health Association), Dr. Judith Resnick, Peg Yorkin (FMF), Patricia Ireland (NOW), Dr. Eduoard Sakiz (Roussel Uclaf), Eleanor Smeal (FMF), Ariel Mouttet (Roussel Uclaf), Allan Rosenfield (Dean, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health), Dr. Carl Djerrasi (Stanford University), who has been credited with developing the birth control pill, and Dr. Diane Robins (photo credit: Jennifer Jackman).

Six women sitting around a table covered with documents.

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.2: During the 1992 trip to Frankfurt, Germany to meet with Hoechst, Smeal, Yorkin, and Jackman (on the right) meet with German Medical Women’s Association Vice President Gertrude Zickgras, Medical Women’s International Association General Secretary Carolyn Motzel, and State of Hessen Minister of Health Iris Blaul to discuss the RU 486 campaign (photo credit: Jennifer Jackman).

Protesters standing on a roadside hold signs in support of RU 486.

Figure 1.3

Figure 1.3: As a part of the Web of Influence Campaign to bring RU 486 to the United States, FMF held a demonstration in April 1992 at the Trevira Twosome Race in New York City, which was sponsored by Hoechst Celanese and Nike. Protesters held signs saying, “Fight Breast Cancer” and “Say No to Brain Tumors, Say Yes to RU 486,” referring to research suggesting other uses for RU 486 (photo credit: Jennifer Jackman).

A collage of newspaper articles with photographs showing Lenore Benten speaking in front of a bank of microphones and crying.

Figure 1.4

Figure 1.4: A July 1, 1992 press conference held by Lenore Benten and Lawrence Lader at John F. Kennedy airport was widely covered in the press (photo credit: Carrie N. Baker).

A close-up photograph of a woman’s face with two fingers holding a white mifepristone tablet in front of her left eye.

Figure 1.5

Figure 1.5: Time magazine cover in June 1993 (courtesy of Time).

Chart showing media references to RU 486 between 1980 and 2000.

Figure 1.6

Figure 1.6: Media references to RU 486 spiked in 2000. Based on Access World News database.

Close-up photo of an open mouth with a white pill on the tongue.

Figure 1.7

Figure 1.7: In anticipation of FDA approval of mifepristone, The New York Times Magazine published a cover story in July of 1999 with the headline, “This Pill Will Change Everything About Abortion.”

A chart showing the number of abortion restrictions passed in the United States between 1973 and 2022.

Figure 2.1

Figure 2.1: US states passed an accelerating number of abortion restrictions after the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 (courtesy of Guttmacher).230

A chart showing an increase in the percentage of abortions that were done with medications between 2000 and 2020.

Figure 2.2

Figure 2.2: The percentage of medication abortions of all abortions in the United States between 2000 and 2020 (courtesy of Guttmacher).231

Photograph of three people holding a banner in front of the FDA offices.

Figure 3.1

Figure 3.1: Sarah Christopherson, NWHN Policy Advocacy Director; Gabriela Salas, Policy Fellow; and Julia Kagan, Interim Communications Associate, holding a banner with the names of people signing the petition, in front of the FDA offices in Washington DC (courtesy of NWHN).