Shefali Luthra on Texas’ Role in the Undue Burden Unleashed by Abortion Restrictions

The Supreme Court first scaled back Roe v. Wade, which protected the right to an abortion until the third trimester, with 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the constitutional right to abortion but allowed states to limit access to abortion before viability – the point at which a fetus can live independently outside the womb – as long as those restrictions didn’t impose an “undue burden” on the patient.

Two years after the earth-shattering SCOTUS decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe, Shefali Luthra uncovers what, exactly, that undue burden looks like. Filled with brutally intimate vignettes about specific abortion seekers and providers – especially those across the South, where states have outlawed the procedure outright – Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America humanizes an issue hijacked by political extremists and religious zealots.

“People didn’t get abortions as a form of political protest. They did it because it was health care they needed,” says Luthra, a national health policy reporter for gender-focused nonprofit newsroom the 19th. “But,” she says of her sources, “they wanted to put a human face to the story as well, so that people who make policy and people who vote would understand just what our current laws have done.”

Undue Burden starts and ends in Texas, which passed Senate Bill 8 – banning abortion at six weeks – in 2021, before Dobbs. Luthra’s stories of women and girls who developed unwanted pregnancies in its wake preview the tales she tells later, in other parts of the country.

“[That] really planted the seeds for writing this book,” Luthra says of the bill. “It starts with people in Texas who figured out what it meant to try and get an abortion after a six-week ban was in effect.”

Luthra’s sources emphasize abortion as a common, sometimes lifesaving medical procedure. Like patients, restrictions forced providers – many of whom moved their practices across the country or commuted long distances to meet demand – into a political battlefield.

“There are so many doctors who said to me, 'I didn’t want to be a political actor. I don’t see myself as a political actor. I simply want to provide the medical care that I have been taught and that I know is best, but in order to do my job and to fulfill my oath as a physician, I have to become political,’” she recalls.

Luthra speaks at the Texas Book Festival Nov. 17 alongside Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias, authors of The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America. Complementing her post-Dobbs story, The Fall of Roe investigates the decades-long political campaign to unravel federal abortion protections.

“It feels like they are two sides of the same coin, because you can’t understand the politics without looking at the people whose lives are affected, but you also can’t understand how people’s lives got to where they were without looking at the politics,” Luthra says of the pairing. “It’s such a rich and robust story, and I think it feels so complete to have them together.”

Land of the Free? The Fight for Reproductive Rights in a Divided Nation

Sunday, Nov. 17, 11:15am, BookTV on C-Span2 Tent

More Panels on These Dystopian Times

---

Mateo Askaripour (This Great Hemisphere) and Cebo Campbell (Sky Full of Elephants) explore racial inequality in works of speculative fiction. (The Quest for Power, Connection & Belonging in Dystopian Worlds, Saturday, Nov. 16, 11am, Kirkus Tent)

Journalist Isaac Arnsdorf investigates the grassroots activists driving the MAGA movement, while Paola Ramos examines the shift of Latino voters toward the right. (Unpacking Extremism: The MAGA Movement and the Rise of the Latino Far Right, Saturday, Nov. 16, 11:15am, BookTV on C-Span2 Tent)

Brandon Rottinghaus plots Rick Perry’s shift from rural Democrat to Texas’ überconservative and longest-serving governor. (Rick Perry and the Transformation of Texas Politics, Sunday, Nov. 17, 12:15pm, Texas Tent)