Description
Book SynopsisThe landmark case Roe v. Wade redefined family: it is now commonplace for Americans to treat having children as a choice. But the historic decision also coincided with widening inequality, an ongoing trend that continues to make choice more myth than reality. In this new and timely history, Matthiesen shows how the effects of incarceration, for-profit healthcare, disease, and poverty have been worsened by state neglect, forcing most to work harder to maintain a family.
Trade Review"Reproduction Reconceived is an urgent reminder that a renewed fight for the right to choose must do more than restore legal access to abortion."
* Chicago Review *
"
Reproduction Reconceived is based on extensive research. . . .Its arguments and conclusions shed new light on the harsh conditions that encumber so many women’s efforts at family-making, call for a change in values that fully appreciate and support the essential work of private and public caregiving, and insist that making reproductive choice a reality demands the elimination of inequities based on gender, race, class and sexuality.' * Society for U.S. Intellectual History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Labor of Illegibility: Lesbian and Single Motherhood According to the Law
2. The Labor of Captivity: Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children
3. The Labor of Survival: Racism, Poverty, and the Uses of Infant Mortality Rates
4. The Labor of Risk: Or, How to Have a Family in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic
5. The Labor of "Choice": Navigating the Abortion Debate and Lifelines of Last Resort
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
