Pregnancy and power : a history of reproductive politics in the United States / Rickie Solinger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Solinger, Rickie, 1947- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human reproduction--Political aspects--United States.

Human reproduction.

Birth control--Political aspects--United States.

Birth control.

Abortion--Political aspects--United States.

Abortion.

Women's rights--United States.

Women's rights.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

Revised edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2019]

Summary:

A sweeping chronicle of women’s battles for reproductive freedomReproductive politics in the United States has always been about who has the power to decide—lawmakers, 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 these issues after more than a decade, this revised edition of Pregnancy and Power reveals how far the reproductive justice movement has come, and the renewed struggles it faces in the present moment. Even after nearly a half-century of “reproductive rights,” a cascade of new laws and policies limits access and prescribes punishments for many people trying to make their own reproductive decisions. In this edition, Solinger traces the contemporary rise of reproductive consumerism and the politics of “free market” health care as economic inequality continues to expand in the US, revealing the profound limits of “choice” and the continued need for the reproductive justice framework.

Contents:

Introduction: what is reproductive politics?

Racializing the nation: from the Declaration of Independence to the Emancipation Proclamation, 1776-1865

Sex in the city: from secrecy to anonymity to privacy, 1870s to 1920s

No extras: curbing fertility during the Great Depression

Central planning: managing fertility, race, and rights in postwar America, 1940s to 1960

The human rights era: the rise of choice, the contours of backlash, 1960-1980

Revitalizing hierarchies: how the aftermath of Roe v. Wade affected fetuses, teenage girls, prisoners, and ordinary women, 1980 to the present.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4798-6170-7

OCLC:

1227050909