Felicia Kornbluh is Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont. She is the author of The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America and coauthor of Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective.
Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, much of the focus of reproductive rights organizing in the US was done in the states, and nowhere was that more effective than in New York, where leftist feminists in groups like Re…