Professor Ziegler Provides Expertise on Abortion Debate to Top Media Outlets

Professor Mary Ziegler, one of the leading historians on the abortion debate in the United States, weighed in for top media outlets on the continuing impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

In a Sept. 14 op-ed in the Boston Globe, Ziegler wrote that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, in introducing a bill Sept. 13 that would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy, was “dusting off a playbook that served the anti-abortion movement well for decades: one focused on anti-abortion incrementalism."

Ziegler spoke to PolitiFact for a Sept. 6 piece headlined “When Does Life Begin? As State Laws Define it, Science, Politics and Religion Clash.” In Dobbs, “the court said that when life begins is up to whoever is running your state — whether they are wrong or not, or you agree with them or not," Ziegler told PolitiFact.

Ziegler spoke to  PBS NewsHour on Sept. 15 for a story about how conservative states continue to restrict abortion following the court's reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Ziegler talked to the Los Angeles Times for an Aug. 29 story about how three California Republicans in the House of Representatives – Michelle Steel of Seal Beach, Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita and David Valadao of Hanford – have grown quiet about the issue of abortion in the months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Ziegler is the featured guest on the latest episode of the UC Davis Law podcast Justice Defined: Scholars of King Hall.

Mary Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. Her book Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment (Yale University Press) was released in June 2022.