Five years ago, when Curtis Boyd, MD, and Glenna Halvorson-Boyd, PhD, RN, set out to write a book about their lives and 50-year-career providing abortion care in Texas and New Mexico, Roe was still the law of the land. But their book, which was published in September, made its debut two years after that landmark case was overturned and just a few short months before Donald J. Trump will retake the White House. As they explain in the Afterword of We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe (Disruption Books), the work they devoted their lives to, expanding access to abortions, is being undone—and once Trump is back in power, that reversal will only accelerate. We can expect that Trump will seek out ways to impose international abortion bans like the global gag rule, and his supporters would like to see him enforce the Comstock Act, which would ban mailing abortion pills. Knowing all of that, Glenna’s question in the Afterword hits hard: “Why did we bother?”

It can really start to feel that way. But as the Boyds remind us, the 2022 ruling overturning Roe isn’t the end of the story, and neither are Trump’s electoral wins. “Abortion has been with us ‘since the dawn of time.’ It will not go away,” writes Glenna.

At the same time, as new ProPublica reporting makes clear, we can expect that more people will suffer and die as access to abortion is further limited and as health care is criminalized. For that reason and many others, they feel, we have a duty to tell our stories and document history. These stories will serve as an important counterweight to the onslaught of bad news that is sure to come, while ensuring future generations can pick up the torch and light the way forward.

In early October, I spoke with Glenna and Curtis about their new book.