Back Rooms Presentation Synopsis

Bruce Moor, M.D. and Ellen Messer’s talk on Back Rooms: Voices from the Illegal Abortion Era explores what life would be like if abortion were again criminalized in this country.  Row v Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision that was supposed to protect the privacy and rights of women to choose is under attack, state by state. All of us have relatives and friends who are women of childbearing years.  The new consequences of restricted access would go beyond clinical procedures.  Obtaining over the counter “emergency contraceptives” and prescription oral abortion medication would be unlawful.  Doctors couldn’t prescribe them, and pharmacies couldn’t stock them. And technology could easily pinpoint attempts to obtain illegal procedures or medications here and abroad, putting anyone at risk of breaking the law.  Once again, our reproductive freedoms would be eroded, but now with a new and more ominous personal cost.  Join us in a discussion of the far-reaching effects of overturning laws that were designed to keep us in charge of our personal reproductive