Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America / Edition 1

by Rickie Solinger

Overview

A sweeping chronicle of women's battles for reproductive freedom

A sweeping 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. Tracing the diverse plot lines of women’s reproductive lives throughout American history, Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the effort to control sex and pregnancy in America over time.

Solinger asks which women have how many children under what circumstances, and shows how reproductive experiences have been encouraged or coerced, rewarded or punished, honored or exploited over the last 250 years. Viewed in this way, the debate over reproductive rights raises questions about access to sex education and prenatal care, about housing laws, about access to citizenship, and about which women lose children to adoption and foster care.

Pregnancy and Power shows that a complete understanding of reproductive politics must take into account the many players shaping public policy—lawmakers, educators, employers, clergy, physicians—as well as the consequences for women who obey and resist these policies. Tracing the diverse plotlines of women's reproductive lives throughout American history, Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the struggle to control sex and pregnancy in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814798287
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2007
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Rickie Solinger is a historian, the editor of a book series on reproductive justice, and a curator who organizes exhibitions associated with the themes of her books. Her books include Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade, The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law, and Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Is Reproductive Politics?
1 Racializing the Nation: From the Declaration of Independence to the
Emancipation Proclamation, 1776–1865
2 Sex in the City: From Secrecy to Anonymity to Privacy, 1870s to 1920s
3 No Extras: Curbing Fertility during the Great Depression
4 Central Planning: Managing Fertility, Race, and Rights
in Postwar America, 1940s to 1960
5 The Human Rights Era: The Rise of Choice, the Contours of Backlash, 1960–1980
6 Revitalizing Hierarchies: How the Aftermath of Roe v. Wade Affected Fetuses, Teenage Girls, Prisoners, and Ordinary Women, 1980 to the Present
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Readers will find within this book a deeply researched and fine analysis of reproductive politics spanning 250 years. It definitely should be of interest to legal scholars and law students and also to political and social historians.”
-The American Journal of Legal History

,

&8220;Solinger is impressively optimistic about America's potential not only to evolve into 'a country of reproductive justice,' but also to overcome centuries of the sex, race, and class prejudice that have literally built our society.”
-Bitch

,

&8220;A concise historical overview. . . . Based primarily on a vast array of well-documented secondary sources, this book is a well-written and useful overview of the politics behind pregnancy in the U.S. . . . Highly recommended.”
-Choice

,

“This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic.&8221;
-Publishers Weekly

,

“The book is well documented and well written... I expect this book to find a place in many classrooms.”
-The Journal of American History

Editorial Reviews

"The book is well documented and well written... I expect this book to find a place in many classrooms."

The Journal of American History

"A concise historical overview. . . . Based primarily on a vast array of well-documented secondary sources, this book is a well-written and useful overview of the politics behind pregnancy in the U.S. . . . Highly recommended."

Choice

"Solinger is impressively optimistic about America's potential not only to evolve into 'a country of reproductive justice,' but also to overcome centuries of the sex, race, and class prejudice that have literally built our society."

Bitch

"A concise historical overview. . . . Based primarily on a vast array of well-documented secondary sources, this book is a well-written and useful overview of the politics behind pregnancy in the U.S. . . . Highly recommended."

- Choice

From the Publisher

This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic. Independent historian Solinger (Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade) writes from a broad, multi-issue, feminist perspective, placing the struggle for reproductive freedom at the center of a variety of political battles. This approach yields unique new insights. Detailing antimiscegenation laws and common assumptions about family life and reproduction in Chinese-American communities, Solinger shows how immigration laws favoring Chinese merchant-class women over poor women "shaped the demographics of Chinatowns around the country." Similarly, she discusses how the relationship between civil rights and reproductive rights in the 1960s gave different cultural meanings to the "fertile body of women of color" in the eyes of the white establishment and within the African-American community. Solinger succeeds in moving the discussion of the social and legal politics of reproduction out of a confining category of "women's issues" and into the broader sphere of U.S. history and national politics, and her study will be helpful to anyone interested in how current debates about abortion, the morning-after pill and sex education were historically formed. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"Readers will find within this book a deeply researched and fine analysis of reproductive politics spanning 250 years. It definitely should be of interest to legal scholars and law students and also to political and social historians."

The American Journal of Legal History