From a New York Times story by Joshua Prager headlined “Ten Books to Understand the Abortion Debate in the United States”:

After the Supreme Court reconsidered — and overturned — Roe v. Wade months shy of its 50th anniversary, it is worth pondering how the ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion came to divide the country.

Conflict was not inevitable. If abortion is freighted with universal points of contention — religion and sex, gender and autonomy, life and death — it has divided no country as it has the United States. And by 1975, two years after the 7-2 decision was announced, Roe had engendered so little pushback that John Paul Stevens, the first judge appointed to the high court after the ruling, was not even asked his opinion of it during his confirmation hearing.