Lessons from Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?

It is instructive to look back at the choices available—and not available—to women before abortion was made legal nationwide. In this special analysis article, published in the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy in 2003, Rachel Benson Gold looks back at the choices available to women pre-Roe V Wade and the lessons learned. The toll the nation’s abortion laws took on women’s lives and health in the years. She concludes that Roe’s reversal would likely herald the return to a two-tier system in which safe abortion was available to some Americans but out of reach of many in need.