Pregnancy and power
Subtitle: a short history of reproductive politics in America
By: Rickie Solinger.
Publisher: New York University Press; NYU Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
ISBN-13: 9780814798270
Subjects: Birth control -- Political aspects -- United States; Abortion -- Political aspects -- United States; Human reproduction -- Political aspects -- United States; Women's rights -- United States
Description: "A chronicle of women's battles for reproductive freedom throughout American history, Pregnancy and Power explores the many forces - social, racial, economic, and political - that have shaped women's reproductive lives in the United States." "Leading historian Rickie Solinger argues that a woman's control over her body involves much more than the right to choose an abortion. Reproductive politics were at play when slaveholders devised breeding schemes, when the U.S. government took Indian children from their families in the nineteenth century, and when doctors pressed Latina women to be sterilized in the 1970s. Pregnancy and Power is filled with powerful accounts of the fights women have waged in this country to control their bodies and their destinies against anti-miscegenation laws, labor laws, anti-contraception laws, and recent welfare reform laws that punish poor women for having children."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: What is reproductive politics?; title: Racializing the nation; title: From the Declaration of Independence to the Emancipation Proclamation, 1776-1865; title: Sex in the city; title: From secrecy to anonymity to privacy, 1870s to 1920s; title: No extras; title: Curbing fertility during the Great Depression; title: Central planning; title: Managing fertility, race, and rights in postwar America, 1940s to 1960; title: The human rights era; title: The rise of choice, the contours of backlash, 1960-1980; title: Revitalizing hierarchies; title: How the aftermath of Roe v. Wade affected fetuses, teenagers, prisoners, and ordinary women.