In the second episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, advocates, lawmakers and experts explore the real roots of abortion criminalization throughout U.S. history — and lay out visions for where the fight for reproductive freedom must go next.
In 1847, the American Medical Association formed — and kicked off a period known as “the century of criminalization” of abortion in the United States. It wasn’t coincidental that the all-male AMA, formed explicitly to grab power and authority from female practitioners across the United States, focused their initial efforts so heavily on restricting abortion. Like the laws restricting and banning abortion that have shaped our reproductive lives in the centuries since, the sexism was by design.
“If we tell the story of these lands, which were first occupied by Indigenous peoples who were marched off of their lands … exploited, abused, violence put upon them and coercion, there is a reproductive health rights justice story there, too,” legal scholar and Ms. Studios executive producer Michele Goodwin says.
“When we tell the story of American slavery, most of it is told through the lens of forced labor, and not forced sexual labor. We ignore terminologies that are really important. … It is a part of a story that involves dehumanization of girls and women, the failure to pay attention to the fact that they had lives, that they had purpose, that they had agency, that there were things that they were thinking about, at which time they were kidnapped and forcibly removed from their homes, from their schools, from the things that they cared about, and were put in fortresses and then had to endure a horrific voyage over to these lands, which were already being occupied, taken away, bartered.”
It’s also important that we don’t ignore the racialized dimensions of those stories. Today, laws restricting reproductive freedom continue to impact women and girls of color the most, and disproportionately. That’s no coincidence, either.
“In the history of abortion, every single time there is a wave of criminalization of abortion, it’s at the same time that the people in power, the forces that be, are concerned about losing power,” says Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of the abortion storytelling organization We Testify and co-author of the book Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve. “It is a way to ensure that white people will continue to have babies and behave within this hetero-patriarchal system, but also that Black and brown people, their reproduction is subject to criminalization, and only exists to further capitalism and white supremacy.”
The second episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward traces the history of anti-abortion laws, and their impact on women’s lives — and unearths the way forward in the fight for reproductive freedom. You can listen to the episode in full now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts, and on msmagazine.com.
“Abortion rights and reproductive autonomy rights were never really secured in a comprehensive and coherent way under the federal Constitution,” Susan Frietsche, director of the Women’s Law Project, explains. “Even at the high point of protection under Roe, you were able to have parental consent laws and bans on Medicaid coverage of abortion, and so, the very people who most need constitutional protection, the least powerful people in our society, were not able to enjoy the promise of protection that they should’ve been able to.”
Frietsche and the WLP, in 2024, won a decades-long fight in Pennsylvania to close that gap in promise, and to affirm that abortion rights are tied up in women’s constitutional equality in the state — and protected under the Equal Rights Amendment in its state constitution.
When we tell the story of American slavery, most of it is told through the lens of forced labor and not forced sexual labor. We ignore terminologies that are really important.
Michele Goodwin
“Efforts to subordinate women, and to really shore up a gender hierarchy that had men, and white men in particular, at the top, and women, and specifically women of color, and gender non-conforming folks at the bottom. That’s what underlies abortion restrictions,” Frietsche emphasizes, “and when you see it from that point of view, the passion with which our opponents pursued abortion restrictions kind of makes sense. We got here because we have the gender ruling class desperately holding onto their privilege using any means necessary.”
In other words: What really underlies these attacks on our bodily autonomy isn’t a devotion to “life,” but a desire for dominance.
Every single time there is a wave of criminalization of abortion, it’s at the same time that the people in power, the forces that be, are concerned about losing power.
Renee Bracey Sherman
“We need to be clear about who is doing this, because there’s been the single-minded effort of antiabortion activists for decades,” says Angie Jean-Marie, co-director of Plan C. “They set an agenda. They had a goal. They didn’t care about science. They didn’t care about safety, don’t care about healthcare. They don’t care about agency. They don’t care about autonomy. They have a strategy, and they’ve been able to manipulate local governments and courts. They’ve been able to implement restrictions and regulations that are completely not in keeping with science. They’ve developed and published a very clear strategy that pushes their points of view to the highest level of government and doing this all despite the fact that abortion access is overwhelmingly popular. It is supported. It’s needed. It’s a human right.”
“When we talk about the current political landscape, the chaos is the point,” echoes Plan C co-director Amy Merrill. “Bans are about control. It’s not just controlling the outcomes of people’s lives, but it’s about just control of people, in general, by creating this fear and confusion.”
Plan C combats that fear and confusion by sharing information about options for abortion, and how to self-manage abortion care using abortion pills, online at PlanCPills.org and YouAlwaysHaveOptions.com. “To mitigate the chaos,” Merrill explains, “you can sow evidence-based information on what is real, what is happening, what is available.”
Frietsche hopes to see more state-level work to defend and expand reproductive freedom during the Trump administration, as a critical stopgap against its anti-abortion agenda. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) is heeding a similar call. Because of her leadership on gender equality issues like abortion, she is proud to report that “Massachusetts is ranked the number one state in the country to live if you’re a woman, to have a baby, and to raise a family.”
“Here’s what we’ve done,” she explains. “Passed a law called the Roe Act, which protects the right to an abortion in Massachusetts. … That was something that we did immediately after the Dobbs decision. We passed a really strong shield law. That’s a law that’s in place to protect patients as well as providers, and including providers who are providing services to people out of State. We purchased enough Mifepristone to last us through the administration in the event that Donald Trump looks to take that away. We also gave a million dollars to abortion providers so that they could also purchase and stockpile Mifepristone. And we made over-the-counter contraception free in Massachusetts.”
The opportunities that I have, they come about because people were willing to stand up and fight for those rights, fight for those laws — and it’s my obligation to, and my responsibility to, carry on for this generation and the next generation.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey
The very first issue of Ms. publicly called for the elimination of laws restricting abortion rights. Fifty-three prominent women listed their names under a petition declaring “We have had abortions,” and invited everyday women to do the same.
Over the next 50 years, similar efforts would go as high as the Supreme Court, taking women’s voices into the halls of power to demand reproductive freedom. Today, abortion storytelling remains just as critical. We must smash stigma, claim our rights, and demand the full personhood we deserve. In other words: we must continue telling our abortion stories, and we must continue fighting for our full reproductive freedom.
“There’s always been risks in sharing abortion stories,” Bracey Sherman adds, “but what has shifted is this larger risk where your abortion stories could be a confession, particularly for folks who live in a state where abortion is criminalized, or for folks who self-managed their abortion stories. The way in which they are trying to criminalize free speech overall, but also as part of that abortion storytelling speech, that you sharing your truth, you sharing your abortion story could be used as evidence against you, is terrifying. And it’s a way of silencing us and that shows how powerful it is for us to share our abortion stories and how much we must be able to speak out.”
“I was born in 1971, about the time that Title IX was passed, and for me, what that meant is that I had more opportunities in sports,” Gov. Healey says. “Those experiences certainly formed who I am, and gave me more confidence, and taught me about leadership, and taught me about taking risks — and I probably wouldn’t have ever ended up running for attorney general, or governor, were it not for those things. Everybody has their story about the importance of a law like that. I recognize that the opportunities that I have, they come about because people were willing to stand up and fight for those rights, fight for those laws, and it’s my obligation to, and my responsibility to carry on for this generation and the next generation.”
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