A review by heidi_
Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America by Rickie Solinger
5.0
Essential reading. Solinger links centuries of efforts to restrict reproductive rights in the U.S. to white male supremacy and the evolution of how womanhood has been conceptualized. She reiterates how choice and access have always fallen along race and class lines, with poor women of color facing the brunt of efforts to control women's bodies. These disproportionate effects are compounded by narratives that blame those who are most constrained by their options for the moral degeneracy of the nation — a hallmark of the depiction of America's undeserving poor that underlies modern welfare requirements. Nativist ideas and eugenics movements shaped policies and discourse that sought to selectively breed white babies while curtailing the fertility of minorities (that is, after black slave labor was no longer needed).
"By managing the reproductive capacity of different groups of women differently — according to race — social relations could be maintained as they "always" had been.
Forced sterilizations, pornographic abortion trials and coathanger hemorrhages color the history of American reproductive rights. We haven't emerged from these trials fully enlightened, however. Today's court threatens a sharp return to regressive policies that put the health and safety of women everywhere at risk. I hope that we don't take this as an opportunity to move back into the darkness.
P.S. Please consider donating to an abortion fund in a hostile state where lawmakers are most likely to restrict access, or to Planned Parenthood.
"By managing the reproductive capacity of different groups of women differently — according to race — social relations could be maintained as they "always" had been.
Forced sterilizations, pornographic abortion trials and coathanger hemorrhages color the history of American reproductive rights. We haven't emerged from these trials fully enlightened, however. Today's court threatens a sharp return to regressive policies that put the health and safety of women everywhere at risk. I hope that we don't take this as an opportunity to move back into the darkness.
P.S. Please consider donating to an abortion fund in a hostile state where lawmakers are most likely to restrict access, or to Planned Parenthood.