‘It’s a war:’ Merle Hoffman’s five-decade fight for abortion rights

The US Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Roe v Wade affirmed constitutional protections for abortion access through a right to privacy enumerated in the 14th Amendment’s “due process” clause, written in the Reconstruction-era aftermath of the US Civil War.

Abortion rights advocate Merle Hoffman has argued that the legal defence of abortion care should instead look to the 13th Amendment – which abolished slavery.

“If you’re forcing someone to carry a child against their will, and you are really owning their bodies, which is what it is, I don’t know what else you would call that,” she tells The Independent. “And then look at what happens when somebody lives in Texas, and then they close the doors there, and then they say, ‘Oh, well go to Oklahoma.’”