‘The Other Roe’ Film Shines a Light on Forgotten Abortion-Rights Case Doe v. Bolton

Roe v. Wade was only half the story. A new short documentary spotlights the case that made abortion rights real in practice.

4/15/2026
by Ava Slocum

On June 24, 2026, we’ll reach the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. This year, which would have been Roe’s 53rd anniversary, also coincides with the United States’ 250th, reminding us that while the U.S. has been independent since 1776, American women are still far from having full rights and power over our own bodies.

Roe v. Wade, which passed in 1973 and stood for 49 years, gets most of the credit for establishing the national right to abortion. Many people think of Roe as the first big bookend ushering in the right to abortion in the U.S., with Dobbs as the other bookend taking that right away again.

However, Roe wasn’t the only groundbreaking case that paved the way for abortion rights in the U.S.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/04/15/the-other-roe-film-doe-v-bolton-abortion-rights-history-margie-pitts-hames/

‘Lone Star Three’: How Three UT Austin Students Paved the Way for Birth Control Access in 1960s Texas

In the years before Roe v. Wade, three UT Austin students built a quiet network helping women access birth control and abortion care in Texas.

March 5, 2026
by Livia Follet and Ava Slocum

In 1969, Victoria Foe, Judy Smith and Barbara Hines were students at the University of Texas in Austin, when Smith invited Foe and Hines to attend women’s liberation meetings at her house. What began as late-night conversations quickly grew into a campus Birth Control Information Center … and eventually an underground network helping women access abortion at a time when the procedure was illegal in Texas.

Their activism would eventually extend far beyond their university campus, planting the seeds for Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that would legalize abortion in the U.S. Not until 1965 did the Supreme Court recognize a constitutional right for married couples to use birth control; in 1972, it extended that right to unmarried people as well.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2026/03/05/lone-star-three-documentary-roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-birth-control-victoria-foe-judy-smith-barbara-hines/

USA – THE ABORTION ABSOLUTIST

Warren Hern has been performing late abortions for half a century. After Roe, he is as busy with patients as ever.

By Elaine Godfrey
MAY 12, 2023

The sky above Boulder was dark when the abortion doctor picked me up for dinner. I had to squint to recognize Warren Hern in his thick aviator glasses and fur-trapper hat.

At the restaurant—a kitschy Italian spot along a pedestrian mall—Hern ignored the table the waiter offered us, pointed at one in the corner, and clomped over in his heavy hiking boots. He’d like to order right away, he said: the osso buco and a glass of Spanish red. How long will that take?

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warren-hern-abortion-post-roe/674000/

Before Roe, Faith Leaders Helped Texans Get Illegal Abortions. What Will They Do Now?

Progressive religious leaders are mulling their options to help women who seek abortions—and some are willing to risk lawsuits and jail time.

By Ana Marie Cox
October 24, 2022

Most political observers know Texas as a key battleground for conservative Christian victories in banning abortion. But progressive people of faith in the state have a long history of fostering resistance to the assault on abortion access. Texas was a major hub in the Clergy Consultation Service, cofounded in New York City by Dallas native Howard Moody in 1967 to help women find competent and compassionate doctors willing to perform abortions. In 1970, Texas attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee started the road to their Supreme Court triumph in the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights case by garnering support from the Women’s Alliance at First Unitarian Church of Dallas. Today, liberal faith leaders across the state—some of whom began transporting pregnant Texans to New Mexico clinics after the Legislature passed a six-week ban on abortion last year—are assessing the still-hazy legal limits for helping women in a post-Dobbs world.

Continued: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/faith-leaders-helping-texans-get-abortions/

USA – How the first abortion speak-out revolutionized activism

Fifty years ago, under the banner of a group known as Redstockings, women gathered in a West Village basement to share their abortion stories, a radical act that ripples through movements today.

BY JOY PRESS
OCTOBER 19, 2022

“I can tell you the psychological and sociological effect the law has had on me: It’s made me angry!” a woman yelled across the crowded auditorium of the New York City Health Department.

It was February 13, 1969, and a phalanx of female protesters had dramatically interrupted the staid proceedings of New York State’s Joint Legislative Committee on the Problems of Public Health. The issue under discussion was whether or not to liberalize the state’s 86-year-old criminal abortion statute and allow for legal abortion in cases where a woman’s physical or mental health was at risk, or when she was a victim of rape or incest.

Continued: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/abortion-stories-speakout

19.10.2022

Commentary

Featured

Abortion: Tell It Like It Is

Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz

Barbara Kaminsky

Center for Constitutional Rights

Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion

history of abortion activism

National Organization for Women

New York Radical Women

New Yorkers for Abortion Law Repeal

Redstockings

Redstockings abortion stories

The personal is political

Thomas Laverne

women's abortion stories

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

20.05.2022

Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz

Coat Hanger Farewell

Diane Schulder Abrams

Equal Protection Clause

Griswold v. Connecticut

Justice Harry Blackmun

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

United States v. Virginia

women's abortion stories

USA – As a med student, he saw women nearly die from illegal abortions. At 83, he sees no end to his work

BY MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE, HOUSTON BUREAU CHIEF
Photography by GINA FERAZZI
MARCH 10, 2022

BOULDER, Colo. — Dr. Warren Hern doesn’t have to imagine what could befall many women in America if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe vs. Wade.

In 1963, he was a medical student working nights at Colorado General Hospital in Denver. Women would arrive in septic shock, some probably hours from death. “Nobody talked about why they were there,” Hern recalled.

Continued: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-03-10/abortion-doctor-fears-roes-fall

Anticipated abolition of Roe v. Wade after 49 years takes away freedom and health for many American women

Boulder Daily Camera
January 22, 2022
By Warren M. Hern

One of the great legal landmarks in American history, and one of the most important landmarks in the history of women, is one year short of its 50th anniversary. The Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 22, 1973, and it is very doubtful that it will reach that 50th anniversary. With its anticipated abolition by the Court goes freedom and health for many American women.

The Supreme Court is now a partisan tool of the Republican Party and its partner in gaining overwhelming, unassailable political power. We are headed for permanent minority rule by a white supremacist, misogynistic, theocratic minority that opposes basic personal freedom, secular society, freedom of the press, scientific knowledge, social justice, civil rights, voting rights, democracy itself, and thought.

Continued: https://www.dailycamera.com/2022/01/22/warren-m-hern/

Roe lawyer Sarah Weddington helped redefine abortion rights

Fri., December 31, 2021

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Sarah Weddington, who as a young lawyer from Texas won the Roe v. Wade case at the U.S. Supreme Court, is being remembered this week as a champion of feminism whose work impacted the nation's politics as views shifted on abortion. She died Sunday at age 76.

Weddington was 26 when she successfully argued the case that legalized the right to abortion throughout the United States. The Supreme Court's ruling in 1973 cemented her place in history.

Continued: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/roe-lawyer-sarah-weddington-helped-191220542.html

Sarah Weddington through the years: devotion to women’s, abortion rights never faltered

Most of Weddington’s top quotes are about her victory at the Supreme Court in the 1973 landmark Roe vs. Wade decision.

By Emily Caldwell
Dec 27, 2021

When Sarah Weddington, the trailblazing women’s rights activist who argued Roe vs. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court, died on Sunday, reactions poured in from across the country.

Countless celebrated her accomplishments and lauded her as an inspiration, especially now, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the most serious challenge in decades to the 1973 landmark abortion rights decision.

Continued: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/12/27/sarah-weddington-through-the-years-devotion-to-womens-abortion-rights-never-faltered/

27.12.2021