Barbara Kruger | New York Magazine cover

Following the recent leak of a Supreme Court ruling that aims to overturn Roe vs. Wade, Barbara Kruger reimagines her classic 1989 silk-screen portrait Untitled (Your body is a battleground) for the current cover of New York Magazine. 

Kruger first made the iconic image for the 1989 Women’s March on Washington, which followed a series of new anti-abortion laws passed to undermine Roe v. Wade. Utilizing the visual language of advertising, the artist created the image for fliers which were distributed at the pro-choice rally. 

“The issue of who gets charged with ‘murder’ will be a challenge for the right to finesse,” Kruger recently told Artnet News, “Is the ‘little lady’ capable of making that decision, or does the doctor or medical facility do the time or worse because the woman can’t possibly be capable of making the decision on her own?”

“The end of Roe was clearly the result of the right’s rage-filled campaign to undo women’s reproductive health and agency,” she said. “They have been unrelenting, while the middle and left too often kept silent, seeing the issue as the third rail of American politics, regardless of the poll numbers favoring Roe. For decades, abortion was absent or marginalized at campaign debates.”

“Many who insisted on not voting, or ‘voting their conscience,’ rather than for a less-than-ideal Democratic candidate, should not complain about the undoing of Roe, as the current court is the result, in part, of their actions.”

In the New York issue, Kruger makes a similar point: “If the end of Roe has come as a shock to anyone, that means they haven’t been paying attention. The left and center are asleep at the wheel of a slow-moving car crash and have not addressed the issue with forthrightness. The question, “Who becomes a ‘murderer’ in post-Roe America?” — and I put murderer in quotes for a reason; it is the discourse of the right — is really the crux of the issue that few on the right have the candor to ask or answer. Who is punished in a world where abortion is ‘murder’?”