"By declaring unconstitutional laws that criminalized abortion in states across the country, the decision in Roe v. Wade also swept away much of the collective memory of what had gone before. Records of court cases that had taken years to build were now rendered irrelevant, and transcripts of testimony once painstakingly compiled were carelessly misfiled or discarded. And beyond the loss of paper records, the Supreme Court decision itself proved a distorting lens through which to look back on what had preceded it."
January 1, 1970