Hugh Heclo
This is policy history at its best. With an eye for both telling detail and larger cultural trends, Professor Critchlow demonstrates the value of careful, impartial historical research on a subject filled with partisan assertion and misinformation. For anyone seeking a historically grounded understanding of the Federal government's role in family planning policy, this is the place to begin (Hugh Heclo is Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Public Affairs, George Mason University)
James T. Patterson
Tackling a highly controversial subject that has incited 'culture wars' in America, Donald Critchlow manages to tell the story in a remarkably balanced way (James T. Patterson is Ford Foundation Professor of History, Brown University).
Byron E. Shafer
Nothing puzzles foreign observers of American politics more than the centrality of conflict over public policy on abortion. That conflict appears multifaceted, passionate, recurrent--and out of all proportion to policy impact. Critchlow provides a firmly rooted and richly textured picture of its emergence, sufficient to convert the puzzle into an explanation. It is a story where many consequences were not intended, but Intended Consequences proves to be a diagnostic example of what policy history should be (Byron E. Shafer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government, Oxford University).
Philip Gleason
Intended Consequences provides a superb account of the evolution of federal policy on population issues, family planning, and abortion. The themes are controversial, but Critchlow's tone is moderate, his insights shrewd, and his judgments balanced. A work of permanent value (Philip Gleason is Professor Emeritus of History, University of Notre Dame).
Jane Sherron De Hart
Intended Consequences is essential reading for those who wish to understand how concern about burgeoning global population in the aftermath of World War II evolved into federally funded family planning programs and ultimately into the highly polarized debate over abortion rights that wracks contemporary American society (Jane Sherron De Hart is Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara).