Abortion Wars: The Fight for Reproductive Rights

As Roe v. Wade comes under renewed scrutiny in the United States, 2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of another landmark shift in abortion policy: Britain’s 1967 Abortion Act. But in the United Kingdom as in the United States, the struggle for abortion rights is far from over. In this hard-hitting, urgent book, socialist writer and leading UK pro-choice campaigner Judith Orr argues that the time has come for women to control their fertility without the practical, legal, and ideological barriers they have faced for generations.

Combining analysis of media coverage, statistics, popular culture, and social attitudes with powerful firsthand accounts of women’s experiences, Orr measures the Act’s true impact both in the United Kingdom and abroad—and shows that full reproductive rights are yet to be won. In the United Kingdom, anti-abortion campaigners attack women’s rights under existing law. Elsewhere women must cross borders or buy pills online, while in the United States—as well as in Ireland, Poland, and nations across Latin America—harsh restrictions on abortion are provoking increased resistance. Highlighting ongoing debates over decriminalization, Orr calls for an abortion provision fit for the twenty-first century.