This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shimita Basu. Today, what a

pre-row past tells us about a post for abortion rights.

Sisters, we must unite to fight for the repeal our restrictive abortion law.

I have been labeled a criminal by this society.

Shirley is believed to be the first American woman to be held criminally responsible for having an abortion.

She was found guilty of manslaughter. She became an important voice in the reproductive rights movement that led up to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. But Shirley's story has mostly been lost to history.

I was really struck by just how difficult it was to really find her full story anywhere.

That's Susan Matthews.

She's the news director at Slate, and the host of this season of the podcast, Slowburn,

which explores the path to Row and how abortion became the contentious and politicized issue that it is today.

The first episode of the season is all about Shirley Wheeler.

She died in 2013.

One of the things that you hear today is that if Roe is overturned, if abortion laws are put into place,

the woman isn't going to be punished.

So one of the things that I thought was really ruling overturning abortion rights at the federal level.

Susan says we're already starting to see states pick their own battles about how to

protect or penalize people who want abortions.

And it's more important than ever to understand who Shirley Wheeler was and why

she sought the medical care that she did. So one of the things that I found out about Shirley when I did start researching her

is that her early life was really tough. Her mother died when she was about a year old

and her father was an alcoholic and she was the youngest of several

I think eight children and so she grew up in North Carolina and she was kind of out of sorts like

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