Overview

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, when roughly half of all U.S. states moved to ban or significantly curtail abortion, people across large swaths of the country were already facing enormous obstacles to accessing the procedure. Life-Altering: Abortion Stories from the Midwest examines different aspects of abortion from the perspectives of those who have terminated pregnancies, illustrating how court cases, state legislation, and religious beliefs can shape the lives and reproductive choices of ordinary people. Based on pieces that originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune, each chapter imparts one person’s experience with abortion; in several cases, Leventis Lourgos followed up with her interviewees to find out how their situations and opinions have changed since the first interview and the Dobbs decision. By looking at myriad factors that influence the decision to abort a pregnancy--be they socio-economic, religious, legal, or medical---the accounts collected in this volume challenge the conventional labels of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.”

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9780826222985

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Reviews

"“Angie Leventis Lourgos interweaves the stories of women who sought abortions with the political, moral, and religious contexts of their decisions. Throughout the fifteen chapters, Lourgos explores issues including medication abortions, the realities of traveling across state lines for procedure access, religious trauma, and the heartbreaking decision to terminate wanted pregnancies. Throughout all of the chapters, Lourgos keeps these women’s humanity at the forefront, even as she engages with those who would condemn them for their actions.”—Evan Elizabeth Hart, Missouri Western State University ""Smart reporting. Clear writing. Insight. Compassion. Angie Leventis Lourgos brings all those qualities to this wide variety of stories about women who have sought abortions. Her accounts of these women—and the systems that shape their options and feelings—will endure as an important record of a pivotal moment in American history.""—Mary Schmich, Pulitzer Prize winner, former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and author of Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now: The Best of Mary Schmich"

"""Angie Leventis Lourgos interweaves the stories of women who sought abortions with the political, moral, and religious contexts of their decisions. Throughout the fifteen chapters, Lourgos explores issues including medication abortions, the realities of traveling across state lines for procedure access, religious trauma, and the heartbreaking decision to terminate wanted pregnancies. Throughout all of the chapters, Lourgos keeps these women's humanity at the forefront, even as she engages with those who would condemn them for their actions.""--Evan Elizabeth Hart, Missouri Western State University ""Smart reporting. Clear writing. Insight. Compassion. Angie Leventis Lourgos brings all those qualities to this wide variety of stories about women who have sought abortions. Her accounts of these women--and the systems that shape their options and feelings--will endure as an important record of a pivotal moment in American history.""--Mary Schmich, Pulitzer Prize winner, former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and author of Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now: The Best of Mary Schmich"

Author Information

Angie Leventis Lourgos has been a staff writer at the Chicago Tribune since 2009. A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate, Lourgos was previously a staff writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington. Her writing has won two Peter Lisagor awards from the Chicago Headline Club, one Sarah Brown Boyden award from the Chicago Journalists Association, and several Illinois Press Association awards. Lourgos lives in the Chicago area with her husband and their two children.  

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