A Street-Level View of the History of Abortion

Real People, Real Feelings

There is plenty of scholarship looking into the political history of abortion in America or the legal history, but we wanted to take a different angle. We wanted to look not at what the common law was in early America or just what the politics of abortion has been like over the years. We wanted to look at what people actually felt and thought about abortion. We wanted to give that street-level perspective, you could say, as opposed to suite-level—the level of ideas and concepts.

The Story of Abortion in America

Marvin Olasky, Leah Savas

Authors Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas detail the long history of abortion and its impact on American culture through vivid personal stories that humanize people on both sides of the debate.

We wanted to see what everyday people did and how what they believed affected what they did with a really detailed look at abortion in individuals’ lives and how it affected their lives. With this, we get to better understand the reality of abortion. What does it do? How does it affect individual men and women? What does it actually do to the unborn child in the womb? We wanted to make it very detailed and at the level of reality—and of everyday people—as opposed to just concepts and ideas.

Leah Savas is coauthor with Marvin Olasky of The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652–2022.



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