You Must Stand Up is journalist Amanda Becker’s almost real-time account of the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. It begins with the Court’s release of its decision and follows several leaders who fought back and figured out ways to offer women healthcare in the aftermath of the decision.

This is Becker’s first book. Currently a journalist with The 19th, she has “been on the beat” for almost 20 years working for Reuters and other news groups covering presidential and congressional elections, Congress and the Supreme Court. She writes in the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book that as she scanned the draft decision for Dobbs (that had been leaked in May) she knew that the seismic change the pending decision would unleash would be “the most important story I’d ever cover as a journalist”.

Over the course of the next year her book takes us across the country as she relates stories from Colorado, Alabama, Maryland, Arizona, Louisiana, Kentucky and elsewhere. Her stories show people fighting to protect their rights, how they learned to adapt, and the hardships they faced because of Dobbs. There are setbacks and quiet victories.

On the one-year anniversary of Roe, Becker takes us to a rally of antiabortion groups at the nation’s capital. The rally headliner was Republican former Vice President Mike Pence. He told the group that “we’ve not come to the end of this cause”, but rather “the end of the beginning”. These groups were trying to work out where to go and what to do next, and “fetal personhood” was a goal they all shared.

Fetal personhood is the idea that a fetus, from the moment of conception, is a person with full legal rights. This idea also applies to fertilized eggs that are a result of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), some proportion of which remain frozen in storage at fertility clinics and may or may not ever be called for.

Mary Ziegler, abortion law historian, is quoted in the book as telling the Guardian newspaper that fetal personhood “has the potential to establish that abortion is always illegal and potentially to expose women to punishment…” The potential for criminalizing bad pregnancy outcomes like miscarriages and still births would be very real in a world where fetal personhood was the standard at law.

At the end of the first year of Dobbs Becker concludes that the way forward in the fight for abortion and reproductive rights will be long and hard. We could well be in for a multiyear fight that may require amending the Constitution. At the least, Dobbs will become a litmus test for future Supreme Court nomination hearings, just as Roe was for close to 50 years.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book and this is my honest review.
This was an incredibly interesting read about the history of abortion rights happening all over America after Roe fell. However, I was hoping for more call-to-action and how-to to help continue the fight. This read more like a history book, which is important, but would've been much better had the author included a section at the end for what's next! Hoping the "Winter 2024" section that wasn't covered in the ARC will include that.

Becker describes the true dystopian world that exists after the Dobbs decision. The author's focus is on doctors and abortion clinics in states with draconian abortion laws. She describes the continuing fight by antiabortion groups to bring forth fetus personhood laws and the long journey to bring back a pre-Roe America. The author uses the term "abortion rights" to signify those who support Roe. This language limits the argument to abortion only, when these laws have applied to women needing other reproductive care and to people seeking such medication for reasons outside of abortion. Using the term reproductive rights is more inclusive of the issues women face post Dobbs.

I have been fighting for abortion rights since before I got my first period. It has always been about medical options, and minding my own business. People have forgotten history. This book is from the perspective of the actual health care providers and the people with their boots on the ground fighting for these rights.
I had successful fetal surgery in 2015. The other options were just fetal demise or selective abortion. I think a lot of people who support these laws do not understand why abortion is so important from a medical standpoint. I was able to afford fetal surgery, get to it (over 1000 miles away), and stop working to be on bedrest for six months. I was incredibly sick. If things progressed naturally I would have had stillborn babies, or if one survived she would have been severely brain damaged. The best option, if I wasn't able to get the surgery, was abortion.
Yes this is sad but I wanted to be alive. Babies don't get to be born when the mother dies.
Here we are in a world where pregnancy is deadly again, or more deadly than it was a few years ago.
This book gave me hope and I cannot pinpoint why. Maybe it was because it talks about all the people fighting for these rights.
Amazing work.

This would be a necessary book for any public affairs grad student, but also approachable enough that laypeople can digest it pretty well. I would recommend this to my professional peers and friends who I know to be interested in current affairs.

You Must Stand Up by Amanda Becker is an excellent account of the period immediately after the Dobbs decision while also showing how we got there and how we feel about it.

I want to start by commenting on another review I saw and clarify what I am afraid some people may take from it. The reviewer loved the book largely because it is an excellent example of data journalism. And I agree. She also mentioned the book's focus on statistics, which is also a valid point but, I'm afraid, could be misinterpreted. I am worried that some may read that and think this is a book of statistics. It isn't. This is data journalism, which means using data but, as journalism must do to be effective, telling a story (or stories). The strength of this book is how the data, the statistics both medical and demographic, serve to enhance the stories of those trying to provide valuable healthcare while resisting the faction of the population, and government, that cares more about asserting their personal ideology on everyone else rather than letting medical professionals make medical decisions. So if the idea of a book full of statistics sounds dull to you, don't worry, this book isn't like that. It offers the data to support the journalism and the journalism to personalize the data.

While this is about those fighting the battles for reproductive freedom and body autonomy, this is also about the country as a whole and where the people largely stand on the issues. And this is not, within the larger picture, a single monolithic issue. For many of us who have protested and done what we could (for me, dating all the way back to the time of Roe) it is several issues that together make up a larger issue, but for many it is strictly some specific aspect, some specific issue. Maybe someone who mostly just believes in more exceptions to a softer ban can't abide by the draconian measures currently being employed is side-by-side with those who believe every potential childbearing individual should have the right to decide for themselves whether to carry or not. Then there are those who believe, against science, that a human life has begun when conception occurs, even against a long history within their own so-called religion (life used to start, for them, when "life was breathed into them").

You can read this as a current affairs book to better understand where we are and why we're here. You can read it more like a history book even though a lot is very recent history. Or you can read it as a call to action using the information given to better prepare counter movements and an informed activism.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This is dense and detailed, but I loved it and am so grateful to have had the chance to read an ARC on netgalley via the publisher (though, I do think per the book’s outline, we were missing the final chapter?). As someone who is pro-abortion, I am so glad this book exists and outlines what some of the specific states who have had abortion rights impacted post-dobbs have gone through/are going through. As someone who lives in Mass (the section on what this state is doing to protect our rights made me so proud), I didn’t know the realities of so many states’ unique laws and limitations. I also DEEPLY appreciated the chapter about what can/should/needs to happen to reverse the impact of Dobbs.

Heading into a presidential election, this book is an important one and I’m so grateful to have read it.

I haven't bookmarked and annotated a book this much since grad school. This is a timely, readable book chock full with statistics, stories, and an explanation for how we got where we are now (it's been a long time coming). Highly recommended.
Thank you very much to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for the ARC!

Note: I received a free unpublished proof of this book, for a limited time, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.

Another day, another more modern book in my “history book” space. That said, it’s about stuff that has technically happened and I am really not reviewing enough books on modern politics to make them their own space.

You Must Stand Up is a book that focuses on the very recent past of abortion rights in the US, beginning with the court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the court claimed that the Constitution of the US does not confer a right to abortion.

In this book, Becker takes a largely data-driven look at the politics of the abortion issue in the US, including the numbers of political figures supporting each side and where voters stand on these figures and the issues. If you are interested in data journalism like I am, it is very interesting to see a book that is focused on the statistics of the issue, and possible interpretations and explanations for them, that allows the reader to see the differences in attitudes and voting behavior in different parts of the US. Given how big the US is, it is impossible to generalize the population as being more for or against abortion across the board.

The book also looks at different states’ laws and regulations surrounding abortion, and how abortion care providers have been working within this system in some places and forced to shut down in others. On a bigger scale, this information also gives some useful insights into how the medical system in the US works in general, which is very interesting to me since I am looking to work in medicinal chemistry.

Becker, like myself, is pro-abortion rights in the US, and makes compelling arguments for her position based on biology and science. For instance, she mentions that many abortions take place because the pregnant person’s life is at risk from the pregnancy or because the fetus has no heartbeat and will not grow into a living infant, and in other cases it is still a decision largely due to the pregnant person’s health issues or inability to take care of a child. While I realize that this is a controversial issue and not everyone will agree with Becker’s views, I think that one main takeaway that people should understand is that abortion is, in the vast majority of cases, not a decision made lightly as it is sometimes portrayed in media. I understand people may still be against it despite understanding this, but I also think that some people’s viewpoints have been manipulated by false information about why people seek abortions.

Overall, I think this is a very interesting and well-written book about how the Dobbs ruling has impacted abortion care in the US, as well as how the public has shaped and responded to the state of affairs around abortion in the US in the past few years.

Amanda Becker's book, You Must Stand Up, starts off with a bang by illustrating the aftershocks in a remade landscape after Roe was overturned. Becker focuses on key states such as Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Ohio where some state laws reverted to abortion laws implemented in the 1800s. The confusion it causes for women seeking abortions, abortion providers, lawmakers, and citizens is dizzying.

The wording on legislation, amendments, and ballots was purposefully confusing. In many instances, voters were unsure what the proposed legislation meant. Becker describes the importance of canvassing efforts for helping citizens understand proposed legislation. These canvassing efforts don't necessarily help change peoples' minds, but it is effective in increasing voter turnout.

Becker mentions that independent bookstores have taken on the renewed roles as hubs of progressive civil resistance. She highlights the New Orleans Blue Cypress bookstore and its slogan, Bad Bitches Read Good Books.

For me, the book dragged a little in the middle with many state-by-state details compared to the strong opening.

An insightful and chilling recollection of America, post-Roe V. Wade. Everyone needs to read this book. Right now. We can’t let this piece of history be forgotten. “You Must Stand Up” is as inspiring as it is terrifying. Two years have passed since the overturning of RvW and, having grieved in my own way, I found the author’s call to action igniting! This was an easy read and the facts were so well presented alongside personal anecdotes. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book!

Impact of the reversal of Roe Vs Wade has had a huge impact on women and medical professions. Everchanging laws have made it more difficult in providing care, regardless of the impact on the women's health. The distance some need to travel to get care adds to delays and the cost of treatment. It is unfortunate that the mother' s health is not a main concern, only the birth of the child, no matter how short the child's life is or any medical issues the child may suffer. Why are politicians making decisions that are best left to the doctors and patients? Stories from
women who have had their lives/health put at risk to the new laws are horrifying.
#YouMustStandUp #BloomsburyUSA #NetGalley