Writers normally thank their partners at the end of their acknowledgments. But I don’t want to wait. Thank you, Shuly.
When we met in 2013, I had been researching this book off and on for three years. But I had not yet begun to write it. And though you’re a person who believes things when she sees them, you believed in this book. You believed in me. You never asked me when I would finish writing. Instead, you made sacrifices so that I would. Thank you. We made it! And we have two kids to boot.
Ella, Eden—to have you in my life, to work with you at my feet, is a dream come true. It’s helped me too. “I used to not be able to work if there were dishes in the sink,” Anne Lamott wrote. “Then I had a child and now I can work if there is a corpse in the sink.”
This book was difficult. Everything about it was fraught: The secret that drew me to it. Norma. Roe. People don’t want to return your calls when you’re calling about abortion.
Still, over eleven years, hundreds did. Their words fill more than five thousand (large blank Moleskine notebook) pages. And I am indebted to them: those who helped me get to know Norma, and those many others—the authors and publicists, genealogists and professors, librarians and civil servants, activists and archivists—who helped me get my arms around abortion in America. David Garrow, Sheree Havlik, Stanley Henshaw, Ronda Mackey, Michael Stoller, Charlotte Taft, Daniel Vinzant, and Rebecca Wind were especially good to me.
So were the people whose lives form the heart of this book. Thank you, Norma, for helping me tell the truth about your life even though you preferred your “version.” Thank you, Curtis Boyd, Linda Coffee, and—though we did not meet—Mildred Jefferson. Thank you, Melissa, Jennifer and Shelley. I did my very best to merit your trust.
THANK YOU TO MY AGENTS, Sarah Chalfant and Rebecca Nagel. I am so lucky to be in your care. Thanks to my editor, Tom Mayer. You wanted this book and helped me realize its potential. And thank you, Karen Blumenthal. I miss our conversations about Roe. I am so sorry for your family.
More thank-yous. To professor Johanna Schoen, who read the manuscript, and Professor Daniel Williams, who read several chapters. To Andy Young and Allegra Huston, who fact-checked and copyedited the book. To Andrew Kent, who answered many, many questions about the law. And to Meir Feder, who answered even more, and read the manuscript, and provided endless direction.
Then there were the Dubler-Furmans. Ilan helped me with endnotes, while Ariela and Jesse explained to me the due process clause and judicial overreach, read the manuscript and saw to it that my family and I had a safe place to live when Covid hit. Thank you, Victoria Moran-Furman, for providing that safe place. We will never forget your kindness.
Thank you to Susannah Brooks, who helped me locate a hundred needles in a hundred haystacks. To my cousins Mark and David Kaminsky, who gave me different sorts of help. To Mara Certic, who did it all—transcription, endnotes, bibliography—with laughter and aplomb. To Cullen Murphy and Paul Steiger, who always know what a journalist should do. To Stuart Karle and David Schulz, for measured advice. To Michael Train and Dassi Zeidel for finishing touches. To 23andMe, for helping a broken family fill the void. And to my wonderful friends and relatives who’ve helped me fill one, too.
Thanks also to Toya Delgado, who nurtured me and my family when the finish line was not in sight. Thank you, Joan Covici and Michael Jewell, for housing me on the night I found Norma’s papers. And a final thank-you to Walther Hetzer and Ellen Lewis, for your home in Provence where, on February 7, 2010, this book began.