In 'You Must Stand Up,' Amanda Becker captures the scramble after Dobbs

WASHINGTON — It was hard to follow everything that happened when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“If you were a doctor in Louisiana trying to keep up, in just over a month, abortion went from legal, to illegal, to legal for now, to illegal for now, to legal again for now, to illegal pending the outcome of [an] underlying lawsuit,” writes Amanda Becker, a journalist with The 19th.

Becker offers an account of that chaotic time in her new book, “You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America.” She shadows doctors, activists and others around the country as they navigate the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

“This is a story that is going to keep going,” Becker said, describing a “major political realignment.”

She joined the Political Theater podcast this month to talk about what she saw on the ground and how abortion is shaping the current election cycle. This transcript has been edited and condensed. For the full conversation, listen here.

Q: How did this book come about?

A: Everyone who writes about abortion rights knew that Dobbs was coming. It was just a matter of time to see which case was going to be the one that overturned Roe.

And so I had started mentally preparing for that, because I not only thought it was going to be a huge story in terms of health care and the court and civil rights, but potentially the biggest political story of my career.

As we head into the first presidential election with no Roe v. Wade in 50 years, we’re seeing that. We just got some polling from New York Times/Siena College showing that abortion is starting to overtake other top issues among voters in swing states. And for women under 45, it’s already the most important issue.

Q: You spent time with an abortion clinic director in Alabama and a doctor in Arizona. What was that like?

A: Living in America right now, you’re living a very different life based on where you are, and your reality can change dramatically in terms of the type of health care you can access. And it’s not just abortion — when there are abortion bans in place, there’s a cascading effect.

I knew that in that first year, clinics and providers were going to be trying to take care of people in a situation where a lot of times they were uncertain even what type of care they could provide. I was just very aware that I didn’t want to be an added stress to them on top of everything else.

I started with the clinic in Tuscaloosa run by Robin Marty, and I had to ask them a few times before she was like, “OK, you can come on down.” And then she said, “You need to talk to Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick,” so I went out to Phoenix. And I consider those two settings and those two people to really be the heart of the book.

Q: Where else did you go?

A: I write about two women from Maryland who were trying to open an all-terms clinic, and there’s also a chapter in Massachusetts, a state where the vast majority of people support abortion rights, even more so than nationally. I wanted to show a place where people on the local and state level were getting really creative about how to protect abortion access.

In Wisconsin, I followed a medical student. How do you train to be an OB-GYN in a state where you’re prohibited from learning key parts of health care? People tend to practice in the areas where they train, and there are already maternal health care deserts in Wisconsin.

And Kentucky is the other one that comes to mind, where I followed everyday voters in a red state who were campaigning against a ballot measure. One of them had never done any sort of door-knocking before, and I wanted to see what that felt like on the ground, and what made them say, “I’ve had enough. I’m taking to the streets.”

Q: Every book has a deadline, but how did you know when to stop reporting?

A: In the afterword, I write about trying to end the book: “How could I leave readers with the most up-to-date information possible as abortion access continued to ebb and flow across the country, and any single court ruling or election could change everything in an instant?”

This is a story that is going to keep going. It’s a story that I think is turning into what could be a major political realignment in this country. You know, realignments are kind of hard to see when you’re at the beginning of them, and it’s only much later that scholars and political scientists look back and are like, “Oh, the great political realignment of whatever.”

I anticipate that the afterword for the paperback next year will be the election results from this year, and how that changed things.

Q: A number of abortion-related measures are on the ballot this year around the country. Beyond those, what else are you watching? What about congressional races?

A: I absolutely am going to Arizona to cover the Senate race between Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake, and I will be spending some time in Michigan.

I could potentially get back to Wisconsin by November. There’s not only the Senate race between Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde, but there’s also an OB-GYN [Kristin Lyerly] who’s running for the House out there in a district that has been red, but getting less red.

There are no women OB-GYNs in Congress right now, and I’d love to talk to her. Why does a doctor put aside their medical career because they feel like they need to run for office based on protecting the type of health care they were trained and have been providing to patients?

“ You Must Stand Up ” (Bloomsbury) is out Tuesday. Hear more from Becker at Politics and Prose on Friday and at People’s Book on Sept. 19.