“They all did it. They’re all guilty.” — Amy Littlefield
Who killed Roe? Amy Littlefield, the abortion access correspondent at The Nation and big time Agatha Christie fan, has written a true crime book about it. Literally. Killers of Roe treats the death of the constitutional right to abortion as a murder mystery in the Poirot or Miss Marple tradition, complete with suspects, motives, and a forensic reconstruction of the 50-year crime scene. The suspects have Christie-style names: the Racist (Jesse Helms), the Little Brother (James Buckley), the Devout Bureaucrat (Paul Herring), the Closeted Congressman (Bob Bauman), and of course Mr Hyde Amendment himself, Henry Hyde — six foot three, helmet of white hair, serial groper of women who ensured poor women lost access first.
The Hyde Amendment is where the crime begins: 1976, a ban on federal funding of abortion. If you’re poor, the Supreme Court ruled, that’s your problem. The constitutional right exists, but don’t expect anyone to pay for it. Surprise surprise. Black women, low-income women, women on Medicaid understood immediately. Democrats and mainstream pro-choice groups took longer to notice. By which time the damage was done — and the playbook established: chip away at access rather than try to ban it outright.
Littlefield is more Miss Marple than Poirot — unassuming, persistent, sitting with her suspects for hours until they tell her why they did it. The devout bureaucrat, Paul Herring, spent their interviews trying to convert her to Catholicism. Henry Hyde made a pass at the president of Planned Parenthood during a commercial break on the Phil Donahue show. Bob Bauman — closeted, adopted, alcoholic — confessed to her that his anti-abortion politics may have come from identifying with the unwanted fetus, because that could have been him. These are complicated people doing terrible things for reasons they believe are righteous.
And the ending? Littlefield steals it from Murder on the Orient Express. They all did it. Every suspect is guilty — including the Democrats who failed to defend poor women, and the pro-choice movement that didn’t fight hard enough for the most vulnerable. Since the Dobbs decision in 2022: 59 excess pregnancy-associated deaths, 500 additional infant deaths, 22,000 additional births. The numbers aren’t a Miss Marple mystery. The crime is ongoing. And Trump, who declared himself “very pro-choice” before he appointed the justices who drove the final nail in, is the ultimate opportunist — the Jekyll to Mr Hyde. Murder on the Abortion Express. They all did it. All the men, at least.
