Former Faculty Member Marlene Gerber Fried Publishes Book on Abortion and Reproductive Justice

Hampshire College Professor Emerita of Philosophy and former interim president Marlene Gerber Fried has recently published Abortion and Reproductive Justice: An Essential Guide for Resistance. Co-written with Smith College Associate Professor of Women and Gender Loretta J. Ross, the book is part of the Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century series, from the University of California Press.

Fried and Ross write in the UC Press Blog that they began work on the book in 2018, when “the opposition to reproductive health, rights, and justice was already emboldened, and while political alarm bells had been ringing for a long time, our urgency quotient went through the roof.” In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concluded that the Constitution doesn’t confer the right to an abortion. This overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade and 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, returning the authority to regulate abortion to the states. As of November 24, 2025, per The New York Times, 20 states ban or restrict abortion earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

The lens of reproductive justice as used by Fried and Ross in this book both includes and goes beyond abortion rights. As they write in the blog, “[W]e are deeply committed to abortion rights, but we are also convinced that this pivot to a reproductive justice approach is the only way to secure reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy for all people.” Grounded in Black feminism, reproductive justice centers bodily autonomy and the right to have and raise children in safety and dignity alongside the right not to and makes clear the links between reproductive justice and other social justice movements including Black Lives Matter, immigrant and refugee rights, disability justice, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Abortion and Reproductive Justice contains stories from individuals and organizations both within the United States and internationally who are putting this framework to use practically and inclusively. Per their blog entry, Fried and Ross believe reproductive justice “has the potential to transcend political divisions and to build a more expansive movement. However, neither reproductive justice itself nor this approach to abortion is widely known and accepted, even among many reproductive rights advocates. . . . We want our book to bring greater visibility to this way of thinking and acting.”