Carrie Baker in Person

Join us on Wednesday, February 12 at 7 PM as Carrie Baker talks about her new book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics. She is joined in conversation by Jallicia Jolly.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States. Public intellectual and lawyer Carrie N. Baker shows how courageous activists waged a decades-long campaign to establish, expand, and maintain access to abortion pills. Weaving their voices throughout her book, Baker recounts both dramatic and everyday acts of their resistance. These activists battled anti-abortion forces, overly cautious policymakers, medical gatekeepers, and fearful allies in their four-decade-long fight to free abortion pills. In post-Roe America, abortion pills are currently playing a critically important role in providing safe abortion access to tens of thousands of people living in states that now ban and restrict abortion. Understanding this struggle will help to ensure continued access into the future.

Carrie N. Baker, J.D., Ph.D., is the Bauman professor of American Studies and Chair of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Smith College. She has written five books and dozens of scholarly articles on women’s rights and feminist activism. She is a regular writer and contributing editor at magazine, has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette and hosts a monthly radio program, Feminist Futures, on WHMP 101.5 FM in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Dr. Jallicia Jolly is an Assistant Professor in American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College. Dr. Jolly researches and teaches on Black women’s health, grassroots activism, and reproductive justice; the transnational politics of gender, structural racism, sexuality, class, and health; intersectionality and HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and Caribbean; Black feminist health science, Black motherhood, obstetric violence, and health equity.

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