When Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse ended her 30-year career covering the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts, a Harvard graduate, wished her well in her new job at "one of the best law schools in New Haven."
Now, on the 40th anniversary of the high court’s history-making abortion decision, Greenhouse and Yale Law School co-author Reva Siegel have produced Before Roe v. Wade. This collection of historic materials and commentary takes the reader back to the political, religious and popular thinking of the time. Greenhouse found that the issue then wasn’t seen in 1973 as it is now as a womens’ rights issue, or a fetal life matter but more of a decision about professionalism and progress. The judges didn’t see why their medical counterparts had to face criminal charges for undertaking some of that profession’s most difficult treatment decisions.
