Patrick Curry

Prof. LeAnna Willison

Abortion After Roe Book Review

Johanna Schoen. Abortion after Roe. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
xv+334 pp. III. $35.00 (978-1-4696-2118-0).

Abortion after Roe in written in a time after the most conversional case Roe vs Wade in 1973

when the Supreme Court decided to legalize abortion, and the events that followed after the

world turning decision. Abortion after Roe in written in six chapters traces the different accounts

of abortion through the eyes of six different people. The book discusses how people are trying to

deal with the most increasing political and stigma of abortion in an explanation that hits on

gender, race, health issues, power, violence, and money.

What happened after the historical Roe decision? The first instantaneous mission is to make

abortions available in a world when it was previously against the law. Abortion clinics opened

against the United States. Schoen discusses the two different models of clinics: medical model

and the feminist model. The medical model strives to present professionalism and safety of the

patient in a high quality medical environment which being compared to back door botched

abortion services that sent many women to hospital emergency rooms before abortions were

legal. The feminist model emphasizes on education the patient and providing them with the

necessary information to make the correct choice when deciding on having an abortion. The

National Abortion Federation was established in the mid-1970s to help bridge the discussions of

both feminists and physicians influenced each other’s practices. When the Roe vs Wade decision
was handed down on January 22, 1973 it sparked several controversial issues across the nations,

such as medical research on aborted fetuses, abortion time limits, fetus’s development, and

proper disposal of aborted fetuses. The number of abortions grew rapidly changing the lives for

women forever. Legalization of abortion made it the safest and most wide performed surgical

procedure in the United States. Abortions received a bad representation from the illegal

abortions being performed on women who went unground to get abortions performed in the

1950s and 1960s. The memories from botched abortions were humiliating and sometimes deadly

for women.

Abortion rates went from 744, 610 in 1973 to more than one million in 1975, eventually leveling

out the abortion rates to 1.5 million per year in the 1980s. The legalization of abortion introduced

the vacuum aspiration, a procedure that became safe, quick, and inexpensive almost overnight.

The introduction in Scheon’s book Abortion after Roe, introduces an eighteen-year-old student

named Heather at the University of North Carolina speaks about her attempt to obtain birth

control at the student infirmary. The doctor at the student infirmary who seen Heather explained

to her that he does not give out contraceptives and the student infirmary does not give out

contraceptives to unmarried people either. Heather eventually gave up her pursuit of obtaining

birth control and went several months of having unprotected sex and eventually became

pregnant.

Chapter One discusses the establishment of abortion services. A twenty-four year old social

worker named Susan Hill in Miami, Florida was called minutes after the Roe vs Wade decision

came in from a physician named Sam Barr. Dr. Sam Barr called Hill to ask if she wanted to join

him in an opening abortion clinic. Two weeks later, a new abortion clinic was formed and

opened its door to hundreds of women seeking legal abortions. Renee Chelian, twenty-one-year-
old office assistant in Highland Park, Michigan began to schedule abortions patients for Dr.

Gilbert Higuera. Prior to the Roe v. Wade, abortions were legal in New York, so Chelian and

Higuera would fly out to New York every week and they would provide abortion services from a

small office they were leasing out. When the Roe v. Wade decision came in Higuera decided to

close his Buffalo office and move everything from that office into his regular ob-gyn office

outside of Detroit.

Chapter Two discusses abortion and fetal research. Kenneth Edelin a Boston ob-gyn was

convicted of manslaughter for performing a hysterotomy, a second trimester abortion procedure

akin to a cesarean section. In October 1973, when abortions in Massachusetts were legal and

restricted to only the physicians who were willing to perform them, Edelin performed the

procedure in BCH.

Chapter Three discusses the formation of National Abortion Federation and the standards debate.

A psychotherapy group approached Warren Hern, a physician and epidemiologist to open an

abortion clinic in Boulder Colorado. Hern had been practicing abortions in Peru, Panama, and

Brazil for several years before returning to the United States to earn his master’s degree in public

health. He worked at the Family Planning Program for two years in Washington, D.C., before he

returned to his hometown in Boulder. While in Washington, DC, Hern also visited Preterm and

learned how to perform abortions. Hern decided to accept the offer from the psychotherapy’s

offer and open up an abortion clinic. Hern and the psychotherapy leased and remodeled a house,

Hern ordered the equipment and developed a program plan and charts. The Boulder Valley

Clinic opened in November 1973 with Hern as the medical director and sole abortion provider.

Tuesdays through Saturdays is when the clinic offered abortions. The number of patients rose
quickly in a week’s timeframe. Hern became frustrated with the casual atmosphere in the clinic

and he would later describe the clinic as unprofessional.

My reaction to the different chapters of the book makes me see the author’s main point of view

of pro-life. The argument does not change my view point on what I believe, but I can clearly see

both sides with an objective mindset. Schoen describes each procedure in each chapter as a

gruesome and terrifying experience that has went wrong. Schoen describes the memories and

individual accounts of people to show what abortions rights were in the 1970s compared to now.

How has abortions evolved from in the 1970s to now? Individuals still stand in front of the

abortion clinics protesting for pro-life. Individuals still use violence as a means to get their

opinion across about abortions. Even in this present moment we are battling the pro-life or pro-

choice decision. The Supreme Court just overturned Roe v. Wade, did they set the country back

to what the country overcame in 1970? Overturning Roe v Wade will not stop abortions it will

not force women to seek illegal abortions that women were once seeking before cause them to be

put their life in dangerous situations. Abortions are not all wrong or evil, but with everything in

life there are pros and cons to anything we decide. I believe a woman has the right to decide at

the end of the day. I think the audience would enjoy the book because if you are closed minded

about the issues it will open your mind, not necessarily change it, but open your mind and see

both sides objectively. While reading the book, I did have to separate my personal feelings about

the subject matter and read as if I knew nothing about abortions to make an objective opinion on

the subject matter. Abortion rights will and can divide a nation, it is a very heated topic.

Schoen, J. (2015). Abortion after Roe (Studies in Social Medicine) (Reprint). The University of

North Carolina Press.