Doing public history has been everything to me & has been central to my career. So forgive me for these thoughts in response to yet another debate / put down over the merits of public history.
1. The fact that we're debating here means we're debating historical methods in public 2. Those who dismiss public facing work as lacking rigor may want to try writing for a popular venue that fact checks every line that they write. I have received more scrutiny/edits from places like Slate and Jezebel than I ever have from a peer reviewed journal.

In the '60s, mainline Protestants & Jews had Anthony Comstock on their minds as they fought for abortion rights. They'd been thinking about Comstock's terrible legacy for decades in their fight for contraceptive rights. For these religious leaders, Comstock was a fanatic. The above quote is from Reverend Howard Moody of Judson Memorial Church in NYC. Moody was one of the leaders of a religious effort to repeal abortion laws.

A short thread: For the past month I've been working w/ historians, legal scholars & religious scholars on an amicus brief in a case about a religious right to abortion access. The context: post-Dobbs, people of faith are filing suit against parochial laws limiting abortion. In their legal filings, abortion opponents have claimed that "religious support for abortion rights" and contraception "is not sincere nor is it an accurate reflection of the historical record." That contention is of course false (I'm writing a book on this!)