"Mary Ziegler's latest book offers an impressively detailed, even-handed history of the policy debates and legal developments that continue to shape abortion policy. This is the essential one-volume guide to the history behind current headlines. No matter what happens with Roe, Ziegler's perceptive analysis, based on extensive primary source evidence, explains why the nation's polarizing debate over abortion policy will likely remain far more complicated and intractable than partisans on either side imagine."Daniel K. Williams, author of Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade
"Mary Ziegler's Abortion and the Law in America makes a dramatic call for less reliance on the Supreme Court to resolve the abortion debate. Instead, politicians, grassroots, activists, attorneys, and ordinary voters must assume responsibility for the intense political and cultural polarization that has occurred over abortion. She sets the context for any resolution of this issue in a magnificent legal history of abortion that should be required reading for everyonenot just legal scholarsconcerned about our future as a unified democracy."Donald T. Critchlow, Katzin Family Professor, Arizona State University, and author of Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government
"Mary Ziegler's Abortion and the Law in America offers a fascinating analysis of the often shattering divisions in our nation over a woman's right to choose. Ziegler shows that national debates over this issue have focused not only on what the Constitution means, but also on often bitter policy disagreements over the rights of the poor, the right to health care, the rights of teenagers, the right to religious liberty, and the rights of women. In a world in which Roe may soon be overturned, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where we are headed."Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Chicago, and author of Sex and the Constitution
"Ziegler is one of the foremost historians of abortion law in America, and this book will prove indispensable for anyone interested in the subject."I. Glenn Cohen, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard University
"This is an exhaustiveand fascinatingaccount of how we got to where we are today. A 'must have' for anyone wanting to know how and why abortion has polarized America."Kristin Luker, University of California, Berkeley