A Miscarriage of Justice : Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil / Cassia Roth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roth, Cassia, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Maternal health services--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History--20th century.

Maternal health services.

Reproductive health--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History--20th century.

Reproductive health.

Women--Health and hygiene--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History--20th century.

Women.

Birth control--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History--20th century.

Birth control.

Birth control--Law and legislation--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A Miscarriage of Justice examines women's reproductive health in relation to legal and medical policy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the onset of republicanism in 1889, women's reproductive capabilities—their ability to conceive and raise future citizens and laborers—became critical to the expansion of the new Brazilian state. Analyzing court cases, law, medical writings, and health data, Cassia Roth argues that the state's approach to women's health in the early twentieth century focused on criminalizing fertility control without improving services or outcomes for women. Ultimately, the increasingly interventionist state fostered a culture of condemnation around poor women's reproduction that extended beyond elite discourses into the popular imagination. By tracing how legal thought and medical knowledge became cemented into law and clinical practice, how obstetricians, public health officials, and legal practitioners approached fertility control, and how women experienced and negotiated their reproductive lives, A Miscarriage of Justice provides a new way of interpreting the intertwined histories of gender, race, reproduction, and the state—and shows how these questions continue to reverberate in debates over reproductive rights and women's health in Brazil today.

Contents:

A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Currency, Spelling, and Translation

Introduction

1. The Law of Responsibility, the Medicine of Gender, the Science of Race

2. Constructing Motherhood

3. Birthing Life and Death

4. A “Plague of Criminal Abortions” Fertility Control and the Consolidation of Medical Authority

5. Ouviu Dizer (Heard Said)

6. Policing Pregnancy

7. Prosecuting Honor, Defending Madness

Conclusion

Notes on Sources

Appendix A: Reproductive-Related Police Investigations by Archive and Criminal Court (Pretoria or Vara), City of Rio de Janeiro

Appendix B: Reproductive-Related Court Cases by Archive and Criminal Court (Pretoria or Vara), City of Rio de Janeiro

Appendix C: Reproductive-Related Police Investigations and Court Cases by Archive and Vara (State of Rio de Janeiro and Supreme Court)

Appendix D: Reproductive-Related Police Investigations and Court Cases by Archive and Vara (1830 Criminal Code)

Appendix E: Midwives

Appendix F: Women in Infanticide, Child Abandonment, and Abortion Trials

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9781503611337

1503611337

OCLC:

1099539883