Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

Senior Editor

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee was a senior editor for Rewire.News, where she edited opinion pieces and cultural commentary, and was part of the Appalachian Reporting Project staff team.

Based in Durham, North Carolina, Cynthia is a writer and historian. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in history from Duke University.

How Abortion Storytelling Was Born

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

The women sharing their abortion stories in the Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole briefs owe much to the women lawyers who filed a 1970 landmark case challenging New York’s abortion ban.

How Photographer Wendi Kent Hopes to Galvanize the Quiescent ‘Pro-Choice Majority’

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

While Kent’s photographs show predictable tableaux, they underscore the contradiction between protesters’ declarations of Christian compassion and their behaviors: yelling, shaming, and metaphorically bludgeoning people with the Bible.

The Largely Forgotten History of Abortion Billboard Advertising—and What Pro-Choice Advocates Can Learn From It

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

Ideological warfare about abortion via advertising has a long track record, though it’s a past largely forgotten in history’s fog and the present’s relentless attacks on abortion rights. Today’s reproductive rights and justice advocates can’t afford to forget that past.

Fighting for Access and Justice: A Q&A With the Incoming Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

Yamani Hernandez recently chatted with Rewire about her work to build a broad human rights movement that lives up to its inclusive values, her unconventional professional trajectory, and the people who inspired and stoked her activism.

It’s Not Helpful to Tell Indiana Residents to ‘Just Move to a Blue State’

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

There’s certainly a lot to be unhappy with Indiana’s government right now. But the way progressives are reacting displays how comfortable people in blue states are with making counterproductive, harmful assumptions about more conservative regions.

Percy Sutton’s 1966 Abortion Rights Bill: Groundbreaking, But Often Unremembered

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

Though many remember New York's Percy Sutton as an investor, lawyer, and power broker, he also introduced the state's first bill that would have relaxed abortion restrictions—opening the door for the liberalization of New York's abortion laws before Roe v. Wade.

Beyond the Coat Hanger: What’s Next for Abortion Rights Iconography?

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

For me, and many others born after Roe v. Wade, the fixation on coat hangers as the prevailing imagery of the reproductive rights movement excludes the possibility of alternatives that are more relevant to current struggles.

Letters to Justice Blackmun Offer Glimpse of Public’s Post-‘Roe’ Reactions

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

By 1994, when Roe v. Wade's majority opinion author Justice Harry Blackmun retired from the Supreme Court, more than 70,000 Americans had poured out their approval, outrage, and ambivalence in letters to him, a sample of which are stored at the Library of Congress.

Riots and Research: What a 1968 Report on Urban Unrest Has to Do With Ferguson

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

More than 40 years later, the Kerner Report proves to be prescient in its observations about unchecked police power, problematic in its embrace of notions of Black pathology, and simultaneously hard and soft on white racism.

‘Freedom Riders’ and Evolving Pro-Choice Protests

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

The Freedom Rides are a powerful symbol, but we—and Stop Patriarchy, which began an "Abortion Rights Freedom Ride" on July 30—should think deeply about what they mean in conversation with the history of abortion rights.

Dr. Cynthia Greenlee

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