Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, when roughly half of all U.S. states moved to ban or significantly curtail abortion, people across large swaths of the country were already facing enormous obstacles to accessing the procedure. Life-Altering: Abortion Stories from the Midwest examines different aspects of abortion from the perspectives of those who have terminated pregnancies, illustrating how court cases, state legislation, and religious beliefs can shape the lives and reproductive choices of ordinary people. Based on pieces that originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune, each chapter imparts one person’s experience with abortion; in several cases, Leventis Lourgos followed up with her interviewees to find out how their situations and opinions have changed since the first interview and the Dobbs decision. By looking at myriad factors that influence the decision to abort a pregnancy—be they socio-economic, religious, legal, or medical—the accounts collected in this volume challenge the conventional labels of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.”