Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now, Paperback

An indispensable guide to abortion access in America, and a necessary argument for building a fighting feminist movement to advance reproductive freedom

With an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court, and several states with only one abortion clinic, many reproductive rights activists are on the defensive, hoping to hold on to abortion in a few places and cases. This spirited book shows how we can start winning again.

Jenny Brown uncovers a century of legal abortion in the US--until 1873--the century of illegal abortion that followed, and how the women's liberation movement of the 1960s really won abortion rights. Drawing inspiration and lessons from that radical movement, the successful fight to make the morning-after pill available over the counter, and the recent mass movement to repeal Ireland's abortion ban, Without Apology is an indispensable guide for organizers today.

Brown argues that we need to stop emphasizing rare, tragic cases and deferring to experts and pollsters, and get back to the basic ideas that won us abortion in the first place: Women telling the full truth of their own experience, arguing to change minds, and making abortion and birth control a keystone demand in the movement for women's freedom.

Jenny Brown was a leader in the fight to get the morning-after pill over the counter in the US and a plaintiff in the winning lawsuit. She is co-author of the Redstockings book Women's Liberation and National Health Care: Confronting the Myth of America. While editor at Labor Notes magazine, she coauthored How to Jump-Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers. She writes, teaches, and organizes with the feminist group National Women's Liberation and is the author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women's Work.