Yesterday was the 40 th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. It passed with very little fanfare, a smattering of articles, a few blog posts, a bunch of tweets, the usual call to give money to Planned Parenthood. Which is odd, when you consider how much a woman’s right to exercise choice has eroded in the past decade or so—87 percent of US counties don’t have an abortion provider, for example, and as more state governments vote to defund of Planned Parenthood, that number will rise. Rachel Maddow devoted herself to a series of segments exploring the real-life consequences of Roe v. Wade’s slow erosion. Hers was a lone voice in the reproductive rights wilderness. In many ways, I was fortunate to turn 18 in 1980. I spent a good six years having sex before AIDS began to be a poorly understood concern. Abortion was fairly cheap and widely available. Reproductive Rights, even with the Moral Majority groaning in the background, was pretty