Michelle Oberman’s intensive research resulted in a fair and even-handed books that looks at the real consequences of laws that make abortion illegal. Her case studies are extremes: El Salvador, where abortion is illegal without exception, and Oklahoma, the “reddest state is America,” where anti-abortion is the value that has united Republicans since 2004. Oberman uses compelling personal stories—of teenage mothers and pregnant women whose lives are threatened by the prospect of carrying a baby to term, of male politicians in the South wracked with guilt over contraception—to demonstrate the depth of feeling around the issue, as well as the real world consequences of opposition to abortion. What she discovers is that the very people most affected by abortion bans, ie. poor and uneducated women, are the women least likely to be able to influence lawmakers. And she makes a compelling case that the laws do not even result in fewer terminations. Mostly male office-holders formulate abortion restrictions out of deeply held beliefs or a desire to secure votes, and the women and their families who are most harmed are not the voters they are concerned with. The author makes a heartfelt case in the conclusion for seeing the humanity in one another, but as long as politicians are more concerned with fetuses than with women and their families, it is difficult to take their claims to humanity seriously.