Description
Book SynopsisA sweeping chronicle of women's battles for reproductive freedomReproductive politics in the United States has always been about who has the power to decidelawmakers, the courts, clergy, physicians, or the woman herself. Authorities have rarely put women's needs and interests at the center of these debates. Instead, they have created reproductive laws and policies to solve a variety of social and political problems, with outcomes that affect the lives of different groups of women differently. Reproductive politics were at play when slaveholders devised breeding schemes, when the US government took indigenous children from their families in the nineteenth century, and when doctors pressured Latina women to be sterilized in the 1970s. Tracing the main plot lines of women's reproductive lives, the leading historian Rickie Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the effort to control sex and pregnancy in America over time. Revisiting
Trade Review"This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic." -- Publishers Weekly
"Readers will find within this book a deeply researched and fine analysis of reproductive politics spanning 250 years. It definitely should be of interest to legal scholars and law students and also to political and social historians." -- The American Journal of Legal History
"Offers a thoughtful, lucid overview of reproductive issues throughout US history—an extremely valuable contribution that should be widely read." -- Linda Gordon, author of
The Moral Property of Women
