Challenging choices
Subtitle: Canada's population control in the 1970s
By: Erika Dyck and Maureen Lux
Contributors: Lux, Maureen K. (Maureen Katherine), 1956- author
Series: McGill-Queen's/Associated Medical Services studies in the history of medicine, health, and society -- 54; McGill-Queen's/Associated Medical Services studies in the history of medicine, health, and society -- 54.
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2020
Place of publication: Montreal; Kingston; London; Chicago
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780228004424; 9780228004417
Subjects: Birth control; Case studies; History; Reproductive rights; Reproductive health
Description: "Between the decriminalization of contraception in 1969 and the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, a decade regarded as a landmark era in the struggle for women's rights, public discourse about birth control and family planning was transformed. At the same time, a transnational conversation about the 'population bomb' that threatened global famine caused by overpopulation embraced birth control technologies for a different set of reasons, revisiting controversial ideas about eugenics, heredity, and degeneration. In Challenging Choices Erika Dyck and Maureen Lux argue that reproductive politics in 1970s Canada were shaped by competing ideologies on global population control, poverty, personal autonomy, race, and gender. For some Canadians the 1970s did not bring about an era of reproductive liberty but instead reinforced traditional power dynamics and paternalistic structures of authority. Dyck and Lux present case studies of four groups of Canadians who were routinely excluded from progressive, reformist discourse: Indigenous women and their communties, those with intellectual and physical disabilities, teenage girls, and men. In different ways, each faced new levels of government regulation, scrutiny, or state intervention as they negotiated their reproductive health, rights, and responsibilities in the so-called era of sexual liberation. While acknowledging the reproductive rights gains that were made in the 1970s, the authors argue that the legal changes affected Canadians differently depending on age, social position, gender, health status, and cultural background. Illustrating the many ways to plan a modern family, these case studies reveal how the relative merits of life and choice were pitted against each other to create a new moral landscape for evaluating classic questions about population control."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Cover; title: Copyright; title: Contents; title: Introduction; title: 1 Making a New Mainstream; title: 2 Politics of Health in the Global North; title: 3 Indigenous Women in the Provincial South; title: 4 Sex and Responsibility in the Community; title: 5 Vasectomies and the Dilemma of Male Reproduction; title: 6 Teenagers and the Economics of Abortion; title: Conclusion; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index