Rickie Solinger

"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.

Before Roe vs. Wade, hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions were performed in the U.S. every year. Award-winning author Rickie Solinger tells the revealing story of Ruth Barnett, who performed 40,000 such abortions between 1918 and 1968 and never lost a patient. 8-page photo insert "This twenty-fifth anniversary edition places abortion politics in the context of reproductive justice today and explains why abortion has been--and remains--a political flashpoint in the United States. Before Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions occurred in the United States every year. Rickie Solinger tells the story of Ruth Barnett, an abortionist in Portland, Oregon, from 1918 to 1968, to demonstrate how the law, not back-alley practitioners, endangered women's lives in the years before legalized abortion. Women from all walks of life came to Barnett, who worked in a proper office, undisturbed by legal authorities, and never lost a patient. But in the illegal era following World War II, Barnett and other practitioners were hounded by police and became targets for politicians; women seeking abortions were forced to turn to syndicates run by racketeers or to use self-induced methods that often ended in injury or death. This new edition places abortion politics in the context of reproductive justice today. Despite the change in women's status since Barnett's time, key cultural and political meanings of abortion have endured. Opponents of Roe v. Wade continue their efforts to recriminalize abortion and reestablish an inexorable relationship between biology and destiny. The Abortionist is an instructive reminder that legal abortion facilitated women's status as full members of society. Barnett's story clarifies the relationship of legal abortion to human dignity and shows why preserving and extending Roe v. Wade ensures women's freedom to decide for themselves what is best for their health." --

This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the USSR/Russia, and the United States. The essays focus on the official, organized efforts that states pursued to facilitate state decisions about how many people, and which people, would be born within their borders.

Tracing the historical roots of reproductive politics up through the present, Solinger considers a range of topics from abortion and contraception to health care reform and assisted reproductive technologies. She tackles some of the most contentious questions up for debate today, including the definition of "fetal personhood," and the roles poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights. The answers she provides are informative, balanced, and sometimes quite surprising.

Contains eighteen essays that offer a pro-rights perspective on the issue of abortion, examining the topic within the historical framework of the second half of the twentieth century, and discussing the reasons why abortion continues to be one of the most violently contested issues in the United States.