On Wednesday Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, signed into law the strictest abortion ban in the United States, rendering it illegal in all cases—even after rape or incest—except to save the mother’s life.
The Alabama Human Life Protection Act follows a recent wave of “fetal heartbeat” legislation restricting abortion in Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, and Georgia. All the laws are poised for challenges to be brought to the Supreme Court, where a new conservative majority may reject the rights recognized in 1973 under Roe v. Wade.
These pieces from our archive reflect on abortion’s troubled past and increasingly uncertain future—dissecting the morality and the medicine, comparing the U.S. context to that of other nations, and exposing its role in the broader politics of reproduction, gender, and inequality.
—Matt Lord
The idea that a fetus has rights cannot be bypassed as nonsense. We have to take the idea seriously.
- October 16, 1995
- June 1, 1996
She is the first major politician to support abortion without qualification. And she has never polled better with millennials.
- November 1, 2016
Islamic jurisprudence does not encourage abortion, but unlike the Catholic Church, it does not absolutely forbid it.
- November 6, 2014
The family is changing. Will the social contract catch up?
- May 2, 2016
What the Indian constitutional tradition can teach about sex equality.
- April 1, 2000
- July 11, 2016
- August 10, 2018
