Katherine Parkin, Ph.D., Jules Plangere Endowed Chair in American Social History and professor in the department of History and Anthropology, recently received two prestigious awards at the Business History Conference in London, England.
Parkin earned the 2025 Ralph Gomory Prize for her book, “The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe,” and the 2025 Philip Scranton Prize, for the article, “The Business of Abortion: Referral Services, Cross-Border Consumption, and Canadian Women’s Access to Abortion in New York State, 1970-1972,” which was co-authored with Sarah Elvins, Ph.D., from the University of Manitoba, and published in Enterprise and Society.
According to the prize committee, members were “extremely impressed by both the concept and execution” of “The Abortion Market.” They also praised the accompanying article for its “originality, conceptual clarity, and exemplary integration of business history with the histories of consumption, gender, and the state.”
The committee also noted that the article “stood out immediately for the precision of its argument and the sophistication with which it situates entrepreneurial activity,” adding that it, “is a model of how business history can engage with urgent historical questions without sacrificing analytical rigor.”
In addition to these honors, “The Abortion Market” was named a finalist for the organization’s Hagley Prize.
