Listen free for 30 days
-
Undue Burden
- Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar Young, Shefali Luthra
- Length: 10 hrs
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Undue Burden
Pre-order Now for $35.09
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
"An absolute must-read; tell your friends; buy it for your family; sit with it on your own. This is storytelling we need."—Rebecca Traister
An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom.
On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives.
Outside of Houston, there’s a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant well before she intends to. A 21-year-old mother barely making ends meet has to travel hundreds of miles in secret for medical treatment in another state. A 42-year-old woman with a life-threatening condition wants nothing more than to safely carry her pregnancy to term, but her home state’s abortion ban fails to provide her with the options she needs to make an informed decision. And a 19-year-old trans man struggles to access care in Florida as abortion bans radiate across the American South.
Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of these patients—who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved—illustrate how fragile the system is, and how devastating the consequences can be.
A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures.
What the critics say
"Shefali Luthra places at the center of this urgent volume the people whose lives, bodies, families, and ability to provide care have been wholly remade by Dobbs, insisting that the stories of human suffering cannot be sidelined as some niche politicized concern. An absolute must-read—tell your friends; buy it for your family; sit with it on your own. This is storytelling we need."—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad and All the Single Ladies
"Undue Burden reveals the deeply human and devastating reality of the post-Roe world—it is the urgent reminder we all need that abortion is a human right."—Anne Helen Petersen, author of Out of Office and Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud
“Shefali Luthra has told the story of post-Roe America in the way it needs to be told—with a compelling, unflinching and deeply human look at the lives it has turned upside down. This gripping portrait is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand how much reproductive rights matter—and what happens to everyday Americans when those rights go away.”—Jonathan Cohn, author of Sick and The Ten Year War