Time Is Breaking “after” <i>Roe</i>

This essay works to render a world after the fall of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that enshrined a constitutional right to abortion in the United States, relaying what has come undone personally and politically. To capture the different strands of breaking that define this moment, the essay unfolds across temporally disjointed segments that serve as reflections on the fall of Roe and the broader field of reproductive politics from the perspective of an anthropologist, a red-state educator, and a woman. The essay considers the uncertainty of the post-Roe present and the blurriness between researcher and subject and between theoretical and personal, when one’s research topic encroaches unexpectedly on her own life. While the essay is based on real events, I have altered certain details of the stories I relay for reasons of privacy.