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When Portland journalist Rebecca Grant started freelancing full time in 2014, editors were skeptical whether reproductive health could be a viable “beat.” Abortion rights had yet to break into daily (or even weekly) news. By the 2016 election, that completely changed.
As public need for information about abortion access and reproductive rights increased, Grant stepped in, becoming a journalistic force, featuring on This American Life, and reporting for publications such as The Nation, Cosmopolitan and The Guardian. Now Grant is releasing Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 480 pages, $29.99), a new book Grant describes as a “culmination” of her decade of reporting.
“To me, it’s this larger narrative arc, or this paradigm shift, from a rights-based framework to an access-based one,” she says.
Grant will celebrate the book’s release at Literary Arts on July 1, in conversation with another Portland-based journalist, Zoë Carpenter.
Grant was in the midst of writing her first book, Birth: Three Mothers, Nine Months, and Pregnancy in America, about midwifery and maternal health care, when the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision landed. As the effects of the Supreme Court decision unfurled, Grant decided to write a book about abortion, thinking, “I know the story I want to tell,” she says.
Access begins in 1965 in a pre-Roe world and ends in 2025, post-Dobbs. Along the way, Grant covers the activist movements that provide emotional and medical support for safe and accessible abortions. From the Jane Collective, active in the late ’60s and early ’70s, to the 2015 social media campaign Shout Your Abortion, Grant highlights radical, inspiring stories, reminding us of the power of the people when confronting moments of immense fear, heartache and turmoil.
Grant has great admiration for Dutch physician Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, founder of Women on Waves, a literal offshore clinic established in the ’90s that offers nonsurgical abortions and educational resources near countries where abortion has been restricted or is illegal. Operating in international waters allows the clinic more freedom as the laws of the ship’s home country apply to the providers and patients.
“I loved the bad-assery and the defiance of it,” Grant says. Access dives deep into Dr. Gomperts’ work, including Women on Web (founded in 2005), which provides international online access to abortion pills and contraceptives, and Aid Access (founded in 2018), the first organization to provide telemedicine abortion care in the U.S.
Abortion resources need to be shared widely, but protecting the identity of those providing and seeking those resources is crucial. Grant described this as “this constant push-pull between protecting people’s privacy and anonymity while at the same time showing that this is happening.”
Through all her abortion-related reporting, Grant is meticulous in protecting her sources. For Access specifically, she worked with lawyers to be sure she was keeping her sources safe, especially within the current judicial system and presidential administration.
At the book’s end, Grant lists organizations that provide medical, legal and emotional support as well as the protocols for medication abortion. “That felt very important to me,” she says. “Digital censorship of this type of information is very much an active thing.”
Grant plans to host reproductive rights organizations such as Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette and the Northwest Abortion Access Fund at the upcoming Literary Arts event and all other book events related to Access. “The more people at a particular event sharing physical information, the better,” she says.
In reflecting on her relationship to Portland and its influence on the book, Grant discussed how uniquely positioned Oregon is, given our shared border with Idaho, one of the most restrictive states for abortion. People come from all over the country to seek reproductive health care in Oregon, particularly at OHSU in Portland.
“It feels great to be in a place where you can say, ‘I’m writing a book about abortion,’ and people are like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool—that’s what we need,’” she says. “They’re excited and invested.”
GO: Rebecca Grant in conversation with Zoë Carpenter at Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave., literary-arts.org. 7 pm Tuesday, July 1. Free.
