The University of Michigan Press 1992. Although Sally Kenney does not organize her book around its title question, no reader of this outstanding work will miss the answer. Exclusionary policies have not protected any identifiable group of infants or children from prenatal damage.
Exclusionary policies protect employers from having to create a safe workplace.
It is precisely the exclusion of women, and thereby of unborn children, which distracts attention from toxins, because exclusion removes the only victims society is willing to protect. Kenney's analysis of the only two British cases on exclusionary policies is a fine documentation of the triumph of employer self-interest. Even now, employers in both countries remain free of any obligation to remove hazards to men, women, or unborn children. One of this book's many virtues is that it delivers even more than it promises. One of its few weaknesses is Kenney's failure to probe the implications of what the book delivers.