From Publishers Weekly
During the 1960s, "a conversation about the legitimate grounds for abortion" turned into "an argument about the legitimacy of government control over abortion," while support for decriminalizing the procedure continued to increase. The Pulitzer-Prize winning Greenhouse (Becoming Justice Blackmun) has covered the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years; together with Yale Law professor Siegel (Processes of Constitutional Decision Making) she has compiled a compelling review of the societal changes, incidents, and cases that led to the Supreme Court's historic decision. Readers today will likely be shocked by the conditions that women experienced before 1973: trips to Japan for abortions; the need to lie at every step; even the possibility of forced sterilization. The authors provide commentary and context on an impressive collection of documents, moving chronologically through every stage of abortion reform to create a compilation that will engage anyone with an interest in women's rights or judicial history.
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About the Author
Linda Greenhouse began covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times in 1978. With the exception of two years during the mid-1980's, during which she covered Congress, she served as the paper's regular Supreme Court correspondent until 2008. Previously, she covered local and state government and politics for the Times in New York, and was chief of the newspaper's legislative bureau in Albany. She has appeared as a Washington Week panelist since 1980.
She is a graduate of Radcliffe College, where she currently serves on the advisory committee to the Schlesinger Library on the History of American Women. She earned a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, and has several honorary degrees.
For her coverage of the Court, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism (beat reporting) in 1998. In 2004, she received the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Reva Siegel is the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale University. Her publications include The Constitution in 2020 (edited with Jack Balkin, 2009); Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (with Brest, Levinson, Balkin & Amar, 2006) and Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon, 2004). Professor Siegel received her B.A., M.Phil, and J.D. from Yale University, clerked for Judge Spottswood Robinson on the D.C. Circuit, and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is active in the American Society for Legal History, the American Association of Law Schools, the American Constitution Society, in the national organization and as faculty advisor of Yale’s chapter.
