Murder At the Supreme Court: Who Really Killed Roe v. Wade?
On September 18, 2020, I was a new mom with a five-month-old, living in pandemic isolation, when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
Amy Littlefield is the abortion access correspondent at The Nation and a freelance investigative reporter who focuses on the intersection of religion and health care. She is the author of Killers of Roe, a real-life whodunit on the death of abortion rights.
Killers of Roe
A reporter and abortion access correspondent investigates the secret killers and hidden motives behind the death of abortion rights.
“Haunting, riveting and built around some of the most complex characters you’ll ever meet…” Rebecca Traister
"A quirky yet hard-hitting inquiry into the overturning of Roe v. Wade. A fan of murder mysteries, the author frames her narrative as a whodunit in search of perpetrators… The result is a dogged pursual of those responsible for women’s deaths." Publishers Weekly
"Important and suspenseful... For anyone who is enraged (like me) over the loss of Roe and who assumed (like me) that the primary people to blame are our current president and Senator Mitch McConnell for placing three anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court, this book is required reading. Littlefield sets the record straight." Washington Monthly
"What the fuck happened to Roe and abortion rights? And when? And how? And whodunnit? This book seeks to explain which people and organizations have had a hand in killing women’s right to abortion." Traci Thomas, The Stacks
"[A] page-turner of a book... Amy Littlefield’s deeply informed reporting mixed with witty observations that elicit chuckles kept me so absorbed that I lost track of time while reading about the demise of the constitutional right to abortion and the rise of Trump." The Indypendent
Book Excerpts
The infuriating history of the law that doomed abortion rights
In 1974, an Internal Revenue Service attorney named Paul Haring pitched an idea to Catholic leaders that would shape the lives of millions of women for the next half-century.
How the Abortion Rights Activists Found Their Radical Imagination
Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, was in San Francisco in early 2010 when she was jolted awake by a call from a Washington, DC, area code.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin Trying to Ban Abortion Nationwide
It was Election Day 2024 and I was trafficking an unborn child across North Texas. That is, I was driving from Dallas to Amarillo while five weeks pregnant, an act that the chinstrap-bearded anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson would deem “abortion trafficking of an unborn child”—if I was on my way to an abortion clinic.
Essays
Murder Mysteries Are the Best Way to Understand the Slow Death of Abortion Rights
In the best murder mystery novels, the killer is always the person you least suspect. It’s never the obvious villains who did it. It’s always someone you failed to notice or forgot about, until the final scene, when the detective reveals that it was the quiet housekeeper all along.
What the Pro-Choice Movement Can Learn From Those Who Overturned “Roe”
In times of full-scale attack like the one now upon us, social movements face two paths. They can run defense through the traditional legal and political channels to protect the remaining scraps of what they’ve fought for. Or they can go on offense and work outside the system, devising risky legal experiments and taking to the streets.
Opinion | Democrats Need to Realize How Much Dobbs Mattered
These women’s stories reflect the transformation of a growing pro-choice majority into a mobilized political force. But it will likely take this movement, with its new and at times uneasy alliances, more than several months to reach its full potential at the ballot box.
How I'll teach my pandemic baby about surviving in an unfamiliar world
There are two ways to tell him this story. One is: We failed you. But another is: We survived.
Features
What Would It Mean to Defend All Abortions?
Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it. But later-abortion care has never been more important.On this episode of The Nation Podcast, abortion access correspondent Amy Littlefield joins D.D. Guttenplan to discuss the reality of later-term abortions—and how, even though Roe v. Wade may have been overturned, the conservative crusade to eliminate abortion access rages on.Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the wr...
The Abortion-Pill Underground
Since Roe was overturned, thousands of people in red states have found a way to get an abortion—often thanks to providers operating at the edge of the law.
Where the Pro-Choice Movement Went Wrong
In interviews with more than 50 advocates, analysts, abortion providers and legal experts, what emerged is a sense of the movement being forced to reckon with its mistakes.
“The Message They’ve Received Is That You Don’t Deserve to Be Cared For”: Life on the Abortion Borderland
One day each week, the Rev. Erika Ferguson puts on leggings and a sweatshirt, pulls her hair back under a baseball cap, and heads to a North Texas airport to meet a group of people who need abortions.
Select Media Appearances
The Abortion Pill Lands in the Courts | The Brian Lehrer Show | WNYC Studios
Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC.
Abortion Rights Movement Shifts to “Plan C” as Court Restricts Mifepristone by Mail
“The biggest attack on abortion since the end of Roe” — that’s what reproductive rights activists are calling Friday’s federal appeals court decision.
“Killers of Roe”: Amy Littlefield Investigates the “Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights” in U.S.
We end today’s show looking at the Killers of Roe. That’s the title of a new book by reproductive rights journalist Amy Littlefield, on what she describes as the death of abortion rights in America.
MS NOW
Amy Littlefield says that while SCOTUS allowing emergency abortions in Idaho for now is a "temporary reprieve" for gravely ill pregnant patients, it's also "a harbinger of a defeat that we're going to have after the 2024 election."