A Woman's Life Is a Human Life

September 19, 2022
Kornbluh (The Battle for Welfare Rights), a professor of history and gender studies at the University of Vermont, delivers an eye-opening chronicle of grassroots campaigns by New York State women to change laws regarding abortion access and involuntary sterilization. In 1968, the author’s mother, Beatrice Kornbluh, wrote a law to repeal all state restrictions on abortion. Though her position garnered support from New York Democratic Party activists, feminist organizations, religious leaders, and medical professionals, the final version of the bill, which passed in 1970, set a time limit for “unrestricted abortion access” at 24 weeks of pregnancy. Still, it was the most liberal abortion law in the country and served as a model for 17 other states,helping to pave the way to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Meanwhile, Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías, a neighbor of the Kornbluhs’, led efforts to ban involuntary or coercive sterilization, using an intersectional approach focused on the needs of women of color and others historically subjected to sterilization abuses. The resulting guidelines were adopted by New York hospitals, codified in state law, and made into national policy in 1979. Throughout, Kornbluh makes public policy and legal history come alive by demonstrating the power of women’s collective action. The result is an inspiring study of how progress happens.