As the United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of its founding, there are many threads about how Americans of previous eras fought for bodily autonomy.Rewire News Group has been covering the ongoing fight for reproductive justice since our founding, offering a comprehensive historical perspective on these recent battles. This Fourth of July, we’re highlighting our coverage of the people, the places, and the movements that have historically—and contemporarily—moved the reproductive justice fight forward.

A retrospective on the abortion access fight

Before Roe v. Wade federally protected abortion rights in 1973, plenty of people were able to get abortions. According to a 1961 estimate by the Saturday Evening Post, between 750,000 and 2 million abortions were performed in the U.S. each year. At the time, pregnant people were approved for abortion care based on “medical or psychological necessity,” such as a miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, or the pregnancy threatening “their sanity.”As journalist Cody McDevitt wrote in a May 2026 piece for RNG, the need to prove “medical necessity” to access abortion care has been resurging since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022. Before Roe, women had to jump through hoops to “justify their need for abortion care to doctors or legal professionals.” 

Physicians had to “present formal cases, secure supporting opinions, and submit them to review” before a pregnant person could be granted permission to have an........

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