America Almost Took a Different Path Toward Abortion Rights

Roe v. Wade was never expected to be the case that made history.

By Emily Bazelon
May 20, 2022

For three days in January 1970, they filled the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, women of all ages crowded into a conference room, sitting on the floor, spilling into the hallway. Some brought friends or husbands. One nursed a baby. Another was a painter who also taught elementary school. A third had gone to Catholic school. They’d come to give testimony in the case of Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, the first in the country to challenge a state’s strict abortion law on behalf of women.

The witnesses in the courthouse were among 314 people, primarily women, brought together by a small team of lawyers, led by Florynce Kennedy and Nancy Stearns, to set up a legal argument no one had made before: that a woman’s right to an abortion was rooted in the Constitution’s promises of liberty and equal protection. New York permitted abortion only to save a woman’s life. Kennedy and Stearns wanted the court to understand how risking an illegal procedure or carrying a forced pregnancy could constrict women’s lives in ways that men did not experience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/magazine/roe-v-wade-abortion-rights.html


USA – Remembering an Era Before Roe, When New York Had the ‘Most Liberal’ Abortion Law

Remembering an Era Before Roe, When New York Had the ‘Most Liberal’ Abortion Law

By Julia Jacobs
July 19, 2018

In 1971, Pamela Mason was a college freshman living in Ohio when she got pregnant. She knew immediately that she wanted an abortion, but the procedure was heavily restricted in her state.

Still, she wanted to find a way. The clinic near her university’s campus referred her to an abortion clinic in Manhattan, and when she was about 10 weeks along, Ms. Mason and her boyfriend scraped together enough money to drive to New York City.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/us/politics/new-york-abortion-roe-wade-nyt.html