From the very first page of this book, I was learning things I had never known about the fight for reproductive healthcare. There are organizations out there that many of us have never heard of, because for far too long we counted on Roe, as imperfect as it was, to be there. For far too long we believed false promises - made by those who had their own agenda - that it would be codified into law, while elsewhere there were those who were creating unorthodox networks of care that very carefully toed – and sometimes crossed – the lines of legality.

If you can read this book and not find yourself both in awe of and moved by the tenacity and courage of the women who led the fight for the right to unfettered access to reproductive healthcare – a fight that we all know still rages on – well, you’re definitely not me. Access is a marvelous example of reporting, but – and I am reading between the lines a bit here, but I don’t think my guess is an inaccurate one - it’s not unbiased. Author Rebecca Grant is clearly writing on a subject she is passionate about, and while the book abounds with facts it is that passion that pushes it over the edge of ‘good’ into ‘great’ territory.

This is a difficult book to read as a woman, particularly if you believe that we should have a right to bodily autonomy and unfettered access to reproductive healthcare. Grant documents activist efforts spanning the past six decades, and the sheer scale of the callousness towards women revealed in this book is as dismaying as it is unsurprising. In the chapters leading up to the reversal of Roe, dread and sorrow set in. You know how that ends, but you feel the defeat nearly as clearly as the day it happened.

This is the very opposite of a quick read. Highly informative – “well-researched” is an understatement – it is dense with information and nearly all of it weighs heavily, abounding with stories of women fighting desperate battles against a pervasive religious, patriarchal mindset that does not value them as autonomous individuals worthy of respect or even recognition.

I feel certain that I’ll have to revise this review in order to get it past the censors on any of the retail sites, and I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, but for now I will close with this: Access covers decades of history in the fight for reproductive healthcare, and while progress has been made, it’s been incremental and slow, and there are also significant examples of regression (the United States is a glaring one). It’s impossible to know what pivotal event may set the dominoes to falling, or when it might come, but it seems very clear that it will not happen until we remove both religion and the predominance of men from the decision-making process.

At 480 pages, Access comes in pretty hefty. It’s a slow read and it’s likely to leave you staring at the wall for a bit after you finish it. But it’s worth every second of the effort, for a multitude of reasons, and every woman who believes that the battle for reproductive rights is one we must fight – and win – should add it to their TBR.

Disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley and am leaving a voluntary review.

A well-reported an urgent read in a post-Dobbs landscape. The book both illuminates the vibrant underground network of activists who make self-managed abortions possible and situates their work within a longer tradition. I particularly appreciated the book's transnational focus.