It was over the Thanksgiving holiday, catching up with old high school friends, that Frances Beal heard that Cordelia had died. Just like the now 82-year-old Black feminist and activist, her friend had gone to college, but she didn’t make it through her first year because, like anybody who wanted to terminate a pregnancy in the US in 1958, she had to undergo a backstreet abortion.
“She was dead because she’d had an illegal abortion. And it had gone bad. And if you take a look at the statistics, the number of women that died from illegal abortions was tremendous,” Beal, who later joined the movement to legalise abortion, said.
Now, more than 60 years after Cordelia’s death and nearly half a century since Roe v Wade legalised abortion, she fears many more women could die after a leaked draft document appears to show the supreme court is preparing to overturn the landmark ruling.
“The overthrow of Roe v Wade equals the murder and assassination of women and that’s something that I feel in my heart will happen again,” said the author of the pioneering 1969 pamphlet Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.
Denne historien er fra May 13, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra May 13, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
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I see you
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Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
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Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
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Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
