Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Abortion, Gender and Sexuality, Law, History of Medicine, California, Borderlands, US West

About Me: Alicia Gutierrez-Romine is an associate professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino. She earned her doctorate degree in history from the University of Southern California in 2016. Her work so far has focused on illegal abortion in California and the borderlands before Roe v. Wade and has been published in Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West (University Press of Kansas, 2018) and most recently in her book From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). She has been featured on CSPAN, where she has discussed her research on illegal abortion, and she is a regularly featured expert on the Science Channel’s Mysteries of the Abandoned and Secrets in the Jungle. Her current project explores the intersections of race and professional medicine in early 20th century California and the Borderlands.

Recent Publications: “‘She Thought California was Without Prejudice: Race and Medicine in Jim Crow California,'” Southern California Quarterly, vol 105, no. 3 (Fall 2023): 314-347.

“Disease in History,” California History, vol. 100, no. 3 (Fall 2023), 86-96.

“Abortion and the Historical Record”

“Abortion and the Law in California: Lessons for Today,” California History vol. 99, no. 1 (2022): 10-29

From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020)

“Abortion and Intimate Borderlands,” in Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West (University Press of Kansas, 2018)

Media Coverage: https://www.c-span.org/video/?453206-6/mid-20th-century-abortion-access

Expertise by Topic: Gender, Law, Medicine, Politics, Race, Science, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Women