You Must Stand Up

Starred review from July 15, 2024
A journalist chronicles the state of reproductive rights in the U.S. in the year following the Supreme Court's decision to overturnRoe v. Wade. When Becker read the news that the Supreme Court was about to overturnRoe v. Wade, the seminal decision legalizing abortion, she knew she had to write a book about the devastating effects. "Recording this moment in our history is a form of bearing witness to that shared trauma," she writes. In this urgent chronicle of the year afterDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization--the case that overturnedRoe--Becker shadows a collection of individuals fighting courageously for reproductive rights. In Maryland, she talked to the founders of a clinic that provides second and third trimester abortions. In Alabama, she interviewed the executive director of the West Alabama Women's Center, who had to excuse herself from an interview on CNN when her lawyer texted her that theDobbs decision meant that she had to stop abortion services at the center immediately. In Arizona, Becker had an eye-opening discussion with a family-planning doctor to try to understand why a state in which 64% of people believe "abortion should be legal in all or most cases" has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. Throughout, Becker provides fascinating historical context, ranging from an account of canvassing in ancient Rome to the origins of abortion regulations passed in the U.S. in the late 1800s. The author masterfully uses individual case studies to delve into specific aspects of the current state of reproductive rights, illustrate broader trends, and make poignant, trenchant connections between them. Her conversational tone and expertise on her subject matter render this an excellent primer on life afterDobbs. A beautifully crafted, thoroughly researched account of the state of reproductive rights after theDobbs decision.

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August 1, 2024
Becker documents the battle for abortion rights in the first year after the Supreme Court delivered their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. A 2023 Nieman fellow and Washington correspondent for The 19th, Becker follows the compelling stories of abortion care providers, activists, politicians, and others as they fight to protect or regain the right to an abortion in states across the country. She provides historical context to abortion rights in America and details the decades-long campaign by the antiabortion movement to reverse Roe v. Wade. Finally accomplished by a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, the decision, Becker writes, "unleashed chaos on the legal and healthcare systems," forcing providers like Robin Marty in Alabama and Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick in Arizona to engage in the "cat-and-mouse game that providing abortion care in the United States has become." Clear, well researched, and timely, You Must Stand Up joins a growing list of books chronicling the tumultuous aftermath of Dobbs and the renewed fight for reproductive rights in the U.S.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 9, 2024
Journalist Becker focuses her striking debut on the creativity and fortitude of medical practitioners in the year following the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of the constitutional right to abortion. She recaps the impact of the Dobbs decision in states like Alabama, where abortion bans became effective immediately, leaving clinic providers scrambling to make arrangements for clients, and Massachusetts, where activists mobilized to fight for shield laws that would protect those traveling from other states for reproductive care. Drawing on extended interviews with providers, Becker makes palpable the challenges caused by constantly shifting state-level abortion laws, and highlights the ingenuity of providers’ tactics and countermoves, which include mail-order medication networks and the new practice of “bifurcated induction abortion”—which begins the abortion process in a state where it is legal and finishes the process in a state where abortion is illegal, but removing a nonviable fetus is not. Writing in lucid prose, Becker covers complex legal battles in multiple states with elegance and efficiency, leaving the providers’ own words ample room to breathe as they offer fascinating insights into what motivates them (“Abortion is one of the only things that consistently fixes a problem... the fact is, when someone comes to you needing an abortion, they leave and that problem is fixed”). It adds up to an inspiring portrait of persistence.