Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement

My first book, Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, was published in March 2013 by Seven Stories Press. Generation Roe first began as an idea while I was working at the National Abortion Federation’s hotline in 2008, surrounded by passionate and intelligent activists. Being able to tell not just their stories but those of medical students determined to become abortion providers; young attorneys working to protect reproductive rights through the courts and legislation; and clinic directors, experienced providers, and other reproductive justice heroes remains one of the pinnacles of my career, and all these years later I am still honored that so many people were willing to talk to an unproven, unpublished writer.

Generation Roe received a strong critical response, including a mention in Vanity Fair and blurbs from Gloria Steinem and Katha Pollitt, among others. My work in the reproductive rights field have led Newsweek to call me a leading pro-choice advocate, the Women’s Media Center to list me as one of their Reproductive Justice experts, and to my being featured on C-Span and be interviewed on numerous NPR affiliates, among other appearances and mentions.

Selected for the Amelia Bloomer Book List, which honors “well-written … books with significant feminist content,” Generation Roe also received strong reviews from Kirkus Reviews, which called it “an honest probing of law, public perception and conscience in the abortion debate,” and Publishers Weekly, which praised the book as “a passionate study of the past, current, and future state of the pro-choice movement in America … [a] thoughtful and comprehensive treatment.” Ms. magazine included Generation Roe on its list of “Great Reads for Winter 2013,” and even six years after its release, Bustle included it on its 2019 roundup of “15 Nonfiction Books About Reproductive Rights You Should Be Reading Right Now.”

I never imagined that less than a decade after its publication, Generation Roe would already seem like a historical document. While many of the experts that I interviewed were pessimistic about the state of abortion access and reproductive justice in the U.S., very few thought that Roe would ever be overturned. And neither did I. But as the current landscape of reproductive rights continues to change on what sometimes feels like an hourly basis, the work of the activists, providers, and attorneys fighting for this very basic health care right is more urgent and important than ever. For information on how to help, please see the Resources page.