There Are Only People: Lessons from the Movement to Repeal Abortion Laws, 1963–1970

This article traces the history of American abortion activism in the 1960s to recover the little-discussed history of the movement to repeal all abortion laws. By focusing on five figures in this movement—Patricia Maginnis, Lana Clarke Phelan, Lawrence Lader, Caroline Myers, and Florynce Kennedy—I aim to show how the arguments legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade were not inevitable, and that there might have been another way forward to overturn anti-abortion laws. The abortion activists discussed in this article emphasized women’s bodily autonomy and their rights to legal, safe, and accessible abortions. They believed that until all abortion laws were overturned, women would never have reproductive freedom and the ability to be mothers on their own terms. The article returns to this history to show how their arguments led to the first national abortion rights organization—NARAL—and the first legal and legislative cases that attempted to repeal abortion laws to consider how returning to their positions might help us find a way forward in this post-Dobbs era.