ABSTRACT
This chapter urges feminist criminology to employ the tools of public criminology to end the academic silence on abortion. To set up the case for the importance of abortion on the research agenda of feminist scholars, the perspective and work of activists like Emma Goldman are reviewed. Shortcomings of the largely middleclass pro-choice movement are reviewed, as are current political moves across the nation to recriminalize abortion. The key role played by the Trump administration in these efforts, particularly the commitment and implications of naming anti-abortion jurists to the Supreme Court, are reviewed. Finally, the chapter covers facts on abortion, including the fact that nearly a third of all women in the United States have had an abortion by the time they reach 40. The chapter wraps up by suggesting that abortion rights are not about privacy but are rather human rights and that denial of needed reproductive services amounts to government-sponsored torture.
