Access

Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom

in English, 480 pages,
Simon and Schuster, June 24, 2025
Order here

In this definitive, eye-opening history, award-winning author Rebecca Grant charts the reproductive freedom movement from the days before Roe through the seismic impact of Dobbs. The stories in Access span four continents, tracing strategies across generations and borders. Grant centers those activists who have been engaged in direct action to help people get the abortions they need. Their efforts involve no small measure of daring-do, spy craft, sea adventures, close calls, undercover operations, smuggling, sequins, legal dramas, victories, defeats, and above all, a deeply held conviction that all the risks are worth it for the cause.

In Access, we meet a cast of brave, bold, and unforgettable women: the founders of the Jane Collective, a group of anonymous providers working clandestinely between Chicago apartments to perform abortions in the pre-Roe years; the originators and leaders of the abortion fund movement; Verónica Cruz Sánchez, a Mexican activist who works to support self-managed abortion with pills and fights to free women targeted by the criminalization of abortion; and Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch doctor who realizes that there is one place abortion bans cannot reach: international waters.