Abortion And Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom

by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky

Book by Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack

Genres: Feminism, Politics, Nonfiction, History

416 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1984

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read this (probably around 1989 or early 1990- ok, maybe late 1990) for a women's studies college class. Thought-provoking and eye-opening to me in its historical detail and arguments, as I recall (I've read it a few times since but it's been awhile.)

[Aron Pinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book explores how women's reproductive choices are controlled by the state, by using feminist theory, legal analysis, and history. The book tlaks about how society's perspectives on sexuality, autonomy, and power influence these discussions rather than merely concentrating on the morality of abortion. It makes a strong case for why reproductive freedom is necessary for actual gender equality. This book is very educational if you want to understand the background and history of abortion rights.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of information in this book that was interesting. Much of it was about birth control in addition to abortion. Indeed, so much of it was about birth control then I started thinking it was miss titled. But then it focused on abortion in later chapters.It was interesting to learn about The way birth control and abortion were looked at in the 1800s and early 20th century. The book discussed different types of contraception that were used in the past, when they were used and how effective they were. There was interesting information about The history of women's sexuality and reproductive control.

But after those chapters, the book became somewhat tedious. The author distorts the pro-life position – she seems absolutely convinced that pro-lifers don't care one bit about the unborn baby, but rather they want to control women's sexuality and take away their choices – I have never met a pro-lifer who was inspired by wanting to control women rather than wanting to save unborn babies. It's like she can't acknowledge that the pro-lifers could have a legitimate cause, she can't even allow herself to comprehend that unborn babies might be worth saving or that the pro-life position may have some merit or even that pro-lifers are motivated by something other than the desire to discriminate against women.In her world, all pro-lifers are anti-women and their concern for unborn babies is just a smoke screen, which makes absolutely no sense to me as I've been part of the pro-life movement for decades and have never encountered that mindset. Of course, I knew she was pro-choice before picked up the book – but her contradictory, often rambling arguments do not seem very compelling to me. She contradicts herself, 1st saying that conservatives want to reduce the number of poor and the "undesirable races" by forced sterilization and lack of social programs such as welfare, then she turns around and says they oppose abortion because they want to control women's sexuality – you can't have it both ways – if they are racist and want to control population, wouldn't they be proabortion? This is just one of the contradictions of her arguments, which she seems to be completely oblivious of.

I also found the last couple chapters of the book very slow and dry, and had a hard time finishing. If I was not reading it for research, I may not have finished it all.