It took only eight years for the US Supreme Court to go from legalizing contraception to legalizing abortion nationwide through the Roe vs Wade decision. The court wielded the lever of power, but there were many women pushing on that lever for many years.
One of them was author Felicia Kornbluh's mother, an activist lawyer. The other was Kornbluh's neighbor growing up, a doctor who led the movement against forced sterilization of women. Kornbluh weaves the stories of the two women and their contemporaries together in the book A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice.
There are many surprises in the story, including the recognition that people who had very similar aims often found themselves working against each other. The author visits with details.