Three years ago, Nashville journalist Becca Andrews set out to write a book about the slow burn of access to abortion narrowing. She suspected the rights laid out in Roe v. Wade would be rolled back in time, but Roe was overturned in June and Tennessee instituted a near total ban on abortion. Andrews’ book got fast-tracked, and she finished what should have been two months of work in two weeks. No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right was released earlier this month.
Andrews sat down with the Scene to discuss her book. No Choice weaves together oral history accounts and reporting to lay out chronologically the ways those in power have chipped away at access to abortion across the country, and the groups that have come to the aid of vulnerable pregnant people.
The book covers both the pre-Roe and the post-Roe eras. Comparing those two eras, is there anything that’s easier for pregnant people looking to obtain an abortion?
It’s hard to put it in those terms, because I think everything exists on such a spectrum that it changes depending on your race and your income level.
I think the big difference between pre-Roe and post-Roe is now we have access to medication abortion. It’s a safe, effective way to self-manage abortion, so people aren’t driven to the ends of the coat hanger or Lysol or whatever it is. I do think that self-managing abortion should be a choice. I think it should be something that people come to because that’s how they want their abortion experience to be, not because they’re forced to do that.
In the book you discuss how “choice” was proposed as the antonym to life, and how the word “abortion” itself carries stigma. How important is language in talking about abortion?
I’m a huge language nerd — that probably came through in the book.
I think people always look for the snappy political slogan, and that makes a lot of sense. You want something that people can remember really easily and that sticks out in people’s minds. The problem with that — and with Twitter and with trying to encapsulate everything in a few words — is that you lose a lot of nuance. People have complicated feelings about this. And that’s valid, and it doesn’t always fit neatly into a quick hyphenated phrase.
The women who obtained an abortion before Roe v. Wade are now seniors. Did you see it as a historic value to document their stories in your book?
It was very striking talking to women who have access to abortion care before Roe, and then were living to see the ruling overturned in their lifetimes and were really struggling with what that means for our country, for their own families, for their grandchildren. I don’t think you expect to gain a right and lose it in the same lifespan. That’s not a thing that usually happens. I felt like it was important to hear people wrestle with that. I also think it’s important to show historic context and to show people have been getting abortions forever, and when abortion isn’t legal, it means that the barrier to care is a lot higher. As a result, people are actively harmed. There’s historical precedent for that. I felt those stories were important for that reason as well.
Another thing that stuck out in the book is that despite abortion laws changing, there have always been barriers to getting abortion care — especially for women of color, Native Americans, undocumented immigrants, those who have low income.
I’ve been covering abortion for about eight years now, and that’s a disparity that has always existed in the course of my reporting. I did come to the book wanting to expand on that disparity. I think it’s one thing to write about [the fact] that it exists, and that here’s all this research backing up that it exists. It’s quite another to be able to take the time to step back and show what that looks like in the lives of individual people. I really wanted to write this book, in part, to be able to do that. To show people it’s not just a one-off barrier. Here’s how this manifests over the course of years, and sometimes over the course of a lifetime.
Being from rural West Tennessee, how do you see the state’s role when talking about abortion rights?
I think the South has always been at the forefront of abortion activism for a lot of reasons, mostly for the fact that abortion has been curbed here the most drastically over the past couple of decades. I take a lot of comfort in that activism that’s being done here in the South. I think there are groups in Tennessee that are really doing the work that I think a lot of other groups want to be doing, or talk about doing.
It’s also really frustrating. It’s been strange dealing with this as a person with reproductive capabilities and being like, “OK I live in Tennessee. If I get pregnant, well, what happens? What if there’s something wrong? What if I don’t want a kid?” It’s been very strange to be reporting on this, but also thinking about this from a personal, private level. This really has a direct impact on me and my community.
