Alicia Gutierrez-Romine

Alicia Gutierrez-Romine is a U.S. historian with an emphasis on California and the west and the history of medicine. Dr. Gutierrez-Romine's current research explores the life and activism of Dr. Edna Griffin, the first Black woman physician in Pasadena, and her role in the Civil Rights Movement in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. Her manuscript, From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) traces the history of a medical procedure from the proverbial "back alley" to the U.S.-Mexico border. This innovative work describes in detail what happened in California when medicine became subject to atypical legislation.