Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade

Editor Weingarten gathers an anthology of fiction, memoir, poetry and testimony surrounding abortion, highlighting in her introduction how both anti-abortion laws and eugenics have been employed to uphold sexist, racist, classist, and xenophobic orders. First-person accounts dating to 1699 document the use of abortifacient herbs by enslaved women as a tool of resistance, for reasons echoed in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s 1922 poem “Motherhood”: “Don’t knock on my door, little child, / I cannot let you in; / You know not what a world this is.” Early literary passages require reading between the lines, but later entries evoke moods ranging from the cold rage beneath Dorothy Parker’s “Mr. Durant” and the fierce defiance of Agnes Smedley’s Daughter of the Earth to the devastating resignation of Genevieve Taggard’s “Engaged” and the welter of emotions aroused by Tess Slesinger’s “Missis Flinders.” Other contributors include Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, William Carlos Williams, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucille Clifton. Shirley Chisholm’s stirring 1969 speech before Congress shines a bright light on the harsh exigencies of anti-abortion laws, while Renee Bracey’s afterword steers readers toward the next generation of abortion stories.