‘Age of Roe’ Surveys Activism For And Against Legal Abortion In U.S.

“The Age of Roe: The Past, Present, and Future of Abortion in America” at Harvard Radcliffe Institute Schlesinger Library’s Poorvu Gallery in Cambridge from Oct. 24, 2022, to March 4, 2023, delves into the history of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion and the court’s overturning of that decision in 2022.

Curated by Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, “It tells the story of abortion in the United States, from criminalization to constitutionalization and back again, through the eyes of those who created and defended Roe and those who mourned and unmade it, those at the center of politics and those at the margins. Battles over Roe upended party politics, changed medical practice, and divided faith communities. Roe offered lessons about what it meant to treat abortion as a right or to rely on the courts to achieve change,” according to an exhibition sign.

“The Age of Roe reevaluates the decision’s legacy through the work of those who defined the past five decades of debate about reproduction. Their stories suggest that even after the reversal of the 1973 decision, the age of Roe will continue to cast a long shadow over our ideas of reproduction and justice. By listening to those who experienced the age of Roe, we can see how the past shaped our present moment and begin to find a way beyond it.”

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