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Amy Littlefield’s new book Killers of Roe is presented as a murder mystery that examines the movement to criminalize abortion in the years and decades before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“Killers of Roe is a new book by the reproductive rights journalist Amy Littlefield on what she describes as the death of abortion rights in the United States”

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Littlefield, The Nation magazine’s abortion access correspondent and a former Democracy Now! producer, says she framed the history as a murder mystery to tell a difficult story about women dying preventable deaths as a result of anti-abortion policy.

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She invokes Agatha Christie and a “twisted alliance of believers and opportunists” as she traces the hidden figures and contradictions that produced the loss of the national right to abortion.

Littlefield describes the current abortion landscape as defined by contradiction: half of states have some form of restriction on abortion before 24 weeks and more than a dozen states ban abortion outright, yet the number of abortions in this country has gone up every year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

She reports that most abortions today are by medication, that eight states allow providers within them to ship abortion pills anywhere in the country, and that community activists are circulating pills under the radar.

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Littlefield argues that mailing of pills has expanded access in practice for people in banned states but narrowed choice overall because clinics have closed, legal risk and fear have grown, and options beyond pills are often unavailable.

Littlefield places key policies and personalities at the center of how abortion rights were eroded, noting that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Hyde Amendment, which banned federal funding for abortion and disproportionately impacted the poor and women of color.

“Killers of Roe is a new book by the reproductive rights journalist Amy Littlefield on what she describes as the death of abortion rights in the United States”

Democracy Now!

She profiles complicated figures who helped shape policy, including former Oregon Senator Bob Packwood, whom she found both a staunch public ally of abortion rights and the subject of sexual misconduct allegations from 48 women and degrading diary entries, and former Maryland Congressmember Bob Bauman, who prompted the Hyde Amendment and whose political career ended after an FBI investigation in 1980 that found he had been cruising and paying men for sex, including one alleged boy of 16.

Littlefield also notes that Faye Wattleton, as Planned Parenthood president, prioritized repeal of the Hyde Amendment and faced backlash, including within her own organization.

Littlefield chronicles preventable deaths she links to restrictive policies, including the 17-year-old Becky Bell, who died on September 16th, 1988 after seeking an unsafe abortion because a parental consent law in Indiana made her afraid to tell her parents; Becky’s mother Karen Bell testified about the death and its consequences.

Littlefield emphasizes that parental involvement laws were widespread when Roe was overturned, reporting that all but 14 states had some form of parental involvement law on the books at that time.

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The interview also references another case, Tierra Walker, but the transcript cuts off after noting her son JJ found her slumped over her bed, dead, so details about that case are unclear in this source.