You are listening to True Stories, a new podcast from Siouxland Public Media. Each week, True Stories features non-fiction authors who take on the major issues of our world yesterday, today and tomorrow.
This week we mark the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that gave women the legal right an abortion in the United States.
But we also deal with the decision of the Supreme Court last summer in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. That landmark decision held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. And, because of Dobbs, abortion laws have been changing state-by-state.
Author Felicia Kornbluh takes on the history of reproductive rights in American in her new book, A WOMAN'S LIFE IS A HUMAN LIFE: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice.
The University of Vermont professor of history and gender, sexuality and women’s studies has a family legacy of work on women’s reproductive rights. Her mother helped write the law that decriminalized abortion in the state of New York.
Kornbluh says the Dobbs decision is a replay of the battle over reproductive rights in the 1960s and 1970s. We talked about abortion rights, reproductive justice and the connection between laws that restrain women's rights to choose.
Dr. Felicia Kornbluh (she/her) is a writer, activist, and professor who specializes in the histories of feminism, gender, social welfare, and reproductive politics. She is Professor of History at the University of Vermont, with appointments in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and Jewish Studies. She is the author or coauthor of three books, including A WOMAN’S LIFE IS A HUMAN LIFE: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice (Grove Press, 2023).
Kornbluh writes regularly for the scholarly and popular press, including for The American Prospect, Washington Post, and The Forward, and is a former member of the Vermont Commission on Women and the Board of Trustees of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. She serves at present as vice president of the board of Planned Parenthood of Vermont Action Fund.
In the Summer of 2023, Felicia Kornbluh will be a Guest Professor in the History Department of the University of Teubingen in Germany, as a recipient of the Organization of American Historians Germany Residence Award
