Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe V. Wade Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe V. Wade Book

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America. The somewhat shaky scaffold supporting that decision drew together social struggles; the rights of women, physicians, and the state; and a slew of earlier cases on birth control and sexuality that had crafted a right to privacy never written into the Constitution. The vast size of David J. Garrow's gloriously sprawling Liberty and Sexuality allows him to tease out the miniscule fibers that would eventually be woven into Roe. While heavy hitters like Margaret Sanger and Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun are well drawn, it's the bit players who really have a chance to shine here. When James G. Morris, a Roman Catholic father of five, reads in the newspapers about a birth control clinic violating an antiquated Connecticut law in the 1960s, he doggedly calls police, prosecutor, and mayor until a reluctant investigation is kicked off. Marie Wilson Tindall, who had been to the clinic, agrees to have her testimony and contraband contraceptive jelly duly entered into the record to start a landmark court battle that would lay the foundation for Roe. And over the years, a veritable army of legal scholars, law clerks, judges, and regular citizens took part in an increasingly acrimonious debate over reproductive rights and free expression of sexuality. Well-crafted prose and meticulous journalistic footwork make this a definitive book for anyone intrigued by the ponderous mechanisms of legal and social change. --Francesca Coltrera Read More

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  • Product Description

    Liberty and Sexuality is a definitive account of the legal and political struggles that created the right to privacy and won constitutional protection for a woman's right to choose abortion. Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established that right, grew out of not only efforts to legalize abortion but also out of earlier battles against statutes that criminalized birth control. When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, voided such a prohibition as an outrageous intrusion upon marital privacy, it opened a previously unimagined constitutional door: the opportunity to argue that a woman's access to a safe, legal abortion was also a fundamental constitutional right. Garrow's essential history details both the unheralded contributions of the young lawyers who filed America's first abortion rights cases and also the inside-the-Supreme Court deliberations that produced Roe v. Wade. In this updated and expanded paperback edition, Garrow also traces the post-Roe evolution of abortion rights battles and the wider struggle for sexual privacy up through the 25th anniversary of Roe in early 1998.

  • 0520213025
  • 9780520213029
  • DJ Garrow
  • 25 November 1998
  • University of California Press
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 1064
  • 2nd Revised edition
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