Undue Burden
Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST • A TIME BEST BOOK OF 2024 • An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom • “Indispensable… Whatever your gender, race, religious background or political preferences, Luthra’s Undue Burden should be on your required reading list.”—San Francisco Chronicle
On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives.
Outside of Houston, there’s a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant well before she intends to. A 21-year-old mother barely making ends meet has to travel hundreds of miles in secret for medical treatment in another state. A 42-year-old woman with a life-threatening condition wants nothing more than to safely carry her pregnancy to term, but her home state’s abortion ban fails to provide her with the options she needs to make an informed decision. And a 19-year-old trans man struggles to access care in Florida as abortion bans radiate across the American South.
Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of these patients—who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved—illustrate how fragile the system is, and how devastating the consequences can be.
A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Luthra debuts with an eye-opening and chilling look at the strain the U.S. reproductive healthcare system is undergoing in a "post-Roe" world. Tracking the circuitous, costly, and legally jeopardizing paths that patients seeking abortions who live in states that have imposed restrictions must take to access care across state lines, Luthra reveals that these cross-country journeys are having a "bottleneck" effect that is limiting healthcare access across America. The story of Angela, a 21-year-old San Antonio mother who can't afford another child and makes an expensive trip to New Mexico for a dose of the abortifacient mifepristone, is juxtaposed with the plight of Jasper, a trans man who struggles to access abortion care because his local clinic in Orlando, Fla., has been overwhelmed by out-of-state patients. The healthcare providers themselves paint a dire portrait of a system in crisis ("It's an unfolding national disaster," says one). Luthra depicts them triaging patients (the staff at a Jacksonville, Fla., clinic routinely stays until midnight to help out-of-staters, but still has to limit services for locals), strategizing new ways of providing care (which include illegal mail-order mifepristone networks), and dealing with patients in mortal terror of jail time (one San Diego clinician describes patients anxiously discussing how best to hide where they've been from people back home). Luthra's vivid and compassionate storytelling unveils an interconnected web of desperate individuals and heroic helpers who are only just barely within reach. It's an urgent wake-up call. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that Jasper's local clinic is in Jacksonville, Fla. The review has also been updated with changes made prior to the book's publication.
