Undue Burden

Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America

By: Shefali Luthra

Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar Young, Shefali Luthra

Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom • “Indispensable… An impeccably researched, clearheaded and frankly terrifying assessment of just how grave the situation in post-Roe America is… Whatever your gender, race, religious background or political preferences, Luthra’s Undue Burden should be on your required reading list.”—San Francisco Chronicle

On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives.

Outside of Houston, there’s a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant well before she intends to. A 21-year-old mother barely making ends meet has to travel hundreds of miles in secret for medical treatment in another state. A 42-year-old woman with a life-threatening condition wants nothing more than to safely carry her pregnancy to term, but her home state’s abortion ban fails to provide her with the options she needs to make an informed decision. And a 19-year-old trans man struggles to access care in Florida as abortion bans radiate across the American South.

Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of these patients—who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved—illustrate how fragile the system is, and how devastating the consequences can be.

A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures.

©2024 Shefali Luthra (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Shefali Luthra places at the center of this urgent volume the people whose lives, bodies, families, and ability to provide care have been wholly remade by Dobbs, insisting that the stories of human suffering cannot be sidelined as some niche politicized concern. An absolute must-read—tell your friends; buy it for your family; sit with it on your own. This is storytelling we need."—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad and All the Single Ladies

“Moving and deeply informative in highlighting the ways in which access to abortion is a basic human right, Undue Burden focuses on the consequences of limiting access to reproductive justice. The fall of Roe is a public health crisis with an impact we are still struggling to grasp. Shefali Luthra humanizes those burdened by the changes in the law while making excellent points about the shortsightedness of lawmakers pandering to the mob who want to control instead of serve their constituents who actually need access to reproductive care. As an indictment of our societal failure to protect the lives and liberty of those with uteruses, Undue Burden does the heavy lifting of research so that even the most apolitical reader can understand the risks to us all.”—Mikki Kendall, New York Times bestselling author of Hood Feminism

"Undue Burden reframes the battle over abortion to a national human rights crisis that threatens everyone’s welfare and freedom instead of a niche cultural issue. By telling the gripping stories of pregnant people desperately seeking abortions across the country and the advocates who courageously fight for expanded access to care, Shefali Luthra makes plain Dobbs’s devastating repercussions for our health, autonomy, and equality—and highlights the potential for change. Undue Burden is a compelling, urgent call for reproductive justice."—Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body