Description
Book SynopsisExamines the history of illegal abortion in California and the role abortion providers played in exposing and exploiting the faults in California’s anti-abortion statute throughout the twentieth century.
Trade Review"[
From Back Alley to the Border] effectively challenges readers to consider how legal and social frameworks come together to constrict people's reproductive autonomy both in the past and in the present."—Natalie Lira,
California History“In this first history about the underground abortion network in the west, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine explores abortion providers and those who sought them during the anti-abortion statute era in California. Well-researched and accessible, this volume illustrates how the past truly informs the future.”—Karla Strand,
Ms. Magazine“Gutierrez-Romine’s story of the [Pacific Coast Abortion Ring] offers fascinating insight into an elaborate crime syndicate that also provided women with an essential medical procedure.”—Jennifer L. Holland,
Pacific Historical Review"Well-written and accessible to students, this book bears ample witness to the fact that although access to abortion (legal or illegal) can change drastically through time, the desperate need for the service does not."—A. H. Koblitz,
Choice“Gutierrez-Romine’s important book on illegal abortion reminds us that those who have historically been labelled as ‘criminals’ cannot—and should not—be understood outside the context of the society and the circumstances in which they lived.”—Erin N. Bush, assistant professor of U.S. and digital history at the University of North Georgia
“Alicia Gutierrez-Romine skillfully walks the reader through the complicated world of criminal abortion and, in the process, reveals how racialized logics, changing family values, and evolving legal frameworks created the post–
Roe v. Wade world we inherited. This transnational account offers rich historical context while insightfully illuminating dozens of fascinating individual stories of women’s choice—and lack thereof.
From Back Alley to the Border is an urgent and eloquently argued contribution to contemporary debates about the value of life, family, and reproductive freedom.”—Suzanna Krivulskaya, assistant professor of history at California State University, San Marcos
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. From Back Alley: Butchers and the Underworld
2. Regular Physicians, Irregular Circumstances: Loopholes and Scandals
3. Inconceivable Blackness: Race, Medicine, and Contraception
4. “The Mid-Wife Type”: Wicked Women Abortionists
5. The Pacific Coast Abortion Ring: Organized Crime and Criminal Ambitions
6. After PCAR: Surveillance, Repression, and Restriction
7. To the Border: “Tijuana Abortions” and Legal Vagueness
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
