Two Journalists Investigated the Decade-Long Campaign to Criminalize Abortion. Here’s What They Found Out.
A new book takes a deep dive into the right-wing Christian campaign that overturned Roe v Wade. Ahead of this year’s presidential election, its authors uncover an America that is as divided on the issue as ever.
Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer were on opposite coasts of the U.S. at the time that Roe vs. Wade—the landmark 1973 case that guaranteed the federal constitutional right to an abortion—was overturned.
It was a moment that sent shockwaves across the U.S. and for Dias, a reporter covering religion and politics at The New York Times, and Lerer, a national political correspondent, also at The New York Times, it very much felt like their moment.
“It deserved a really serious journalistic treatment, looking at the facts about how this happened,” Lerer said. After all, five decades of abortion rights were coming to an end, thanks to a campaign that had been meticulously laid, brick by brick, by religious lawyers, anti-choice activists and conservative politicians.
The result of that treatment is their book The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America, a painstakingly detailed insider account which focuses on the decade leading up to Roe’s collapse in June 2022. Dias and Lerer interviewed more than 350 people—from the pro-life activists who secretly coached Republican politicians on their rhetoric, to the lawyer defending the young illegal immigrant whose fight to get an abortion made her a pawn in a much larger battle.
The book couldn’t come at a more important time: As the U.S. presidential election approaches, abortion is increasingly becoming an albatross for Donald Trump. A recent Gallup poll indicated that a record high number of voters—32 percent—will only elect a candidate who shares their views on abortion. It puts Trump in the tricky position of now walking a very fine line on the issue.
We asked Dias and Lerer how the fall of Roe will affect November’s election—and what the future looks like for those fighting to restore universal abortion in the U.S.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
