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What the Anti-Abortion Movement Learned From Abolitionists

On this week’s podcast, Linda Hirschman discusses the problems of activism in a country divided against itself.

Jeet Heer

May 11, 2022

A reproductive rights demonstration in Pittsburgh in 1974. (Barbara Freeman / Getty Images)

On this week’s episode of the Time of Monsters podcast, author Linda Hirschman joins the show to discuss the problems of activism in a country divided against itself. In the past I’ve described Linda as “the Cassandra of the American left” for her writing on reproductive freedom. She’s warned us of the moment that has now arrived, the end of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

Lincoln said in 1858, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” That was true then, and it’s true now. It makes Linda’s new book on the abolitionist movement all the more relevant. It’s titled The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation.

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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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