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The Boundaries Of Her Body: The Troubling History Of Women's Rights In America
Whatever your political beliefs, if you are a woman, you must know what the law says about you. The Boundaries of Her Body is the definitive history of the cycle of advances and setbacks that characterizes women's rights in America. Author Debran Rowland covers emotionally charged issues with thoughtful detail, offering insight into the strategies used by politicians and lobbyists to defeat long-standing law. The defeat for women's rights is an emotional and often polarized Today, the future of women's rights is in jeopardy. "If I had to guess at the future for women, I would say we stand to lose many more significant battles―and the rights that go with them―if we don't begin to abandon the niceties of a comfortable life with educated opinions and start waging the kind of aggressive, no-holds-barred guerrilla war that our opponents have been riding to victory."
―from the Epilogue to The Boundaries of Her Body Rowland combines provocative arguments with exhaustive research and affirms that, in spite of advancements, the boundaries of women's bodies will continue to be a source of bitter contention in the law. "Debran Rowland brilliantly argues the continuing inequality of women's rights in America with the most meticulous and comprehensive research in our times."
―Betty Friedan author of The Feminine Mystique
―from the Epilogue to The Boundaries of Her Body Rowland combines provocative arguments with exhaustive research and affirms that, in spite of advancements, the boundaries of women's bodies will continue to be a source of bitter contention in the law. "Debran Rowland brilliantly argues the continuing inequality of women's rights in America with the most meticulous and comprehensive research in our times."
―Betty Friedan author of The Feminine Mystique
788 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2003
20 people are currently reading
2315 people want to read
About the author
Debran Rowland
7 books4 followersDebran Rowland is a writer, civil rights attorney and artist. Rowland received her B.A. from Carleton in English, her M.A. in cultural anthropology from Columbia University and her J.D. from Loyola University of Chicago School of Law. She has won numerous awards for journalism, including Best News Feature from the Chicago Association of Black Journalists.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 20, 2017
I read this because I am teaching The Handmaid's Tale again, and this seemed like a good sourcebook. It will make you rather angry, but it does also make some things currently going on a bit clearer.
I have to give Rowland credit; she takes what could be a really dry topic for non-lawyers, and writes it with engrossing prose. You do not have to be a lawyer to understand this book, and there is plenty in this massive tome.
You just don't really realize you are reading a tome.
I have to give Rowland credit; she takes what could be a really dry topic for non-lawyers, and writes it with engrossing prose. You do not have to be a lawyer to understand this book, and there is plenty in this massive tome.
You just don't really realize you are reading a tome.
March 14, 2013
The Boundaries of Her Body
This is a history of woman’s rights in America. The scope of this book – and it is a huge and heavy book – is wide and due to the subject matter highly interesting. We should always be concerned with what is slightly more than one half of the population. We should also be concerned that women continue, but to a lesser extent then 60 years ago, to be treated as second class citizens. Yes – second class – why for instance are there so few female politicians and business leaders? Why are woman’s roles in religion minimal – particularly in the Catholic Church and Islam?
The author explores the woman’s rights movement mostly from a legal perspective and for the most part in the U.S. There are times when the book does bog down in legal terms and there are a tremendous amount of footnotes. But overall there are many rewards.
The author highlights that many rights for women were established during the 1960’s – equal employment opportunities, equal rights and of course the legalization of abortion (Roe vs. Wade). I do feel, and the author mentions it - that the employment and educational opportunities offered to women during World War II, and the Roosevelt era in general, was beneficial for the advancement of women. There were many positive female role models during the Roosevelt period (Eleanor, Frances Perkins was Labour minister, Amelia Earhart, Margaret Bourke-White…)
Of course after the war there were many advances in birth control with women beginning to take reproductive control of their bodies. Sexuality became more and more removed from pregnancy. The openness in sexuality that evolved from 1950 onwards is hardly mentioned. Terms that are in common use today were taboo in 1950. Kinsey, Master and Johnson are hardly noted in this book. The focus is on legal rights.
Abortion is examined in great detail and ever since its’ ‘legalization’ there has been an ever increasing crusade (deliberate word) by anti-abortionists to diminish abortion rights. It should also be pointed out that there are many women involved in this anti-abortion crusade. They have whittled away – legally asking for 24 hour wait period for the abortion to proceed, abortion is not available under Medicaid, abortion for minors requires parental consent in some states. There are also (rabid) anti-abortion demonstrations in front of abortion clinics. Doctors and workers in abortion clinics can face daily harassment and some have been murdered. So even though abortion is legal – in many states women (and younger women especially) face a continuing onslaught of bureaucratic red tape and physical and psychological harassment.
The anti-abortion crusaders have upped the anti and become increasingly sophisticated in using science. They do not refer to the ‘fetus’ but to an ‘unborn child’.
Abortion and a woman’s right to control her body suffered even more under the conservative Bush administration of 2000-08. Various forms of contraceptive pills were vetoed.
Pregnancy laws are also examined. Pregnancy leave in the U.S. seems to be far less regulated than in other developed countries. Sexual harassment also lags behind. In Canada, where I live, our company passed strict sexual harassment guidelines in the early 1990’s. Harassment exists from the person receiving the harassment. In other words, if the victim perceives it as harassment, then it is such. The onus is placed on management to end it (not that it happens in all cases).
What is most frightening is rape. The statistics are only one aspect of this serious problem – think of the damage done to a woman and all her future relationships. Not all rapes are reported, which can only add to these horrendous figures.
During the Bush administration (once again) national legislation of ‘Violence Against Women’ was not passed. The Supreme Court could be regressing and putting ‘state’s rights’ above the national agenda.
Perhaps Europe has now surpassed the U.S. in the rights of women. This is an issue which was not examined in the book. For sure, women in Europe (and Canada for that matter) have far greater access to abortion and contraception than in many U.S. states. Liberalization and woman’s rights generally go hand-in-hand. Since the Reagan era there has been an increasingly anti-liberal agenda in the U.S.
This book has a broad spectrum of issues – such as adolescence and the conflicts this creates in young girl-woman. The wide and ever-increasing range of fertility prospects is also explored (it also prompted me to re-read Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’).
This is a history of woman’s rights in America. The scope of this book – and it is a huge and heavy book – is wide and due to the subject matter highly interesting. We should always be concerned with what is slightly more than one half of the population. We should also be concerned that women continue, but to a lesser extent then 60 years ago, to be treated as second class citizens. Yes – second class – why for instance are there so few female politicians and business leaders? Why are woman’s roles in religion minimal – particularly in the Catholic Church and Islam?
The author explores the woman’s rights movement mostly from a legal perspective and for the most part in the U.S. There are times when the book does bog down in legal terms and there are a tremendous amount of footnotes. But overall there are many rewards.
The author highlights that many rights for women were established during the 1960’s – equal employment opportunities, equal rights and of course the legalization of abortion (Roe vs. Wade). I do feel, and the author mentions it - that the employment and educational opportunities offered to women during World War II, and the Roosevelt era in general, was beneficial for the advancement of women. There were many positive female role models during the Roosevelt period (Eleanor, Frances Perkins was Labour minister, Amelia Earhart, Margaret Bourke-White…)
Of course after the war there were many advances in birth control with women beginning to take reproductive control of their bodies. Sexuality became more and more removed from pregnancy. The openness in sexuality that evolved from 1950 onwards is hardly mentioned. Terms that are in common use today were taboo in 1950. Kinsey, Master and Johnson are hardly noted in this book. The focus is on legal rights.
Abortion is examined in great detail and ever since its’ ‘legalization’ there has been an ever increasing crusade (deliberate word) by anti-abortionists to diminish abortion rights. It should also be pointed out that there are many women involved in this anti-abortion crusade. They have whittled away – legally asking for 24 hour wait period for the abortion to proceed, abortion is not available under Medicaid, abortion for minors requires parental consent in some states. There are also (rabid) anti-abortion demonstrations in front of abortion clinics. Doctors and workers in abortion clinics can face daily harassment and some have been murdered. So even though abortion is legal – in many states women (and younger women especially) face a continuing onslaught of bureaucratic red tape and physical and psychological harassment.
The anti-abortion crusaders have upped the anti and become increasingly sophisticated in using science. They do not refer to the ‘fetus’ but to an ‘unborn child’.
Abortion and a woman’s right to control her body suffered even more under the conservative Bush administration of 2000-08. Various forms of contraceptive pills were vetoed.
Pregnancy laws are also examined. Pregnancy leave in the U.S. seems to be far less regulated than in other developed countries. Sexual harassment also lags behind. In Canada, where I live, our company passed strict sexual harassment guidelines in the early 1990’s. Harassment exists from the person receiving the harassment. In other words, if the victim perceives it as harassment, then it is such. The onus is placed on management to end it (not that it happens in all cases).
What is most frightening is rape. The statistics are only one aspect of this serious problem – think of the damage done to a woman and all her future relationships. Not all rapes are reported, which can only add to these horrendous figures.
During the Bush administration (once again) national legislation of ‘Violence Against Women’ was not passed. The Supreme Court could be regressing and putting ‘state’s rights’ above the national agenda.
Perhaps Europe has now surpassed the U.S. in the rights of women. This is an issue which was not examined in the book. For sure, women in Europe (and Canada for that matter) have far greater access to abortion and contraception than in many U.S. states. Liberalization and woman’s rights generally go hand-in-hand. Since the Reagan era there has been an increasingly anti-liberal agenda in the U.S.
This book has a broad spectrum of issues – such as adolescence and the conflicts this creates in young girl-woman. The wide and ever-increasing range of fertility prospects is also explored (it also prompted me to re-read Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’).
January 4, 2008
Quite the eye-opener, this book might make you wish you had become a lawyer and will definitely get you riled up. Even with a title that shows it has a bias, I was pleased by the lack of that typical angry-feminist rhetoric which tends to keep an otherwise worthy book from influencing those who need influencing most. The fact that it covers the history of women's REAL rights—the law as it is carried out—in America by analyzing court decisions makes its credibility unquestionable, which is exactly why it will scare the bejeezus out of you like fiction just can't.
January 29, 2012
This is a must read for everyone, but is especially important for women to see how legal precedent has made it harder for women to have an equal place in American society.
November 8, 2012
Boundaries of her body should be required reading for the completion of all degrees in Women’s Studies. The heft of the work is daunting yet the author’s presentation, knowledge and through research while impressive, makes the topic quite accessible to the lay reader. Her passion practically leaps from each page.
Quoteable...
“Women were good or bad. Often “dumb,” but rarely smart. Childlike and foolish. Submissive by godly mandate. And always the tools of men. These were the early themes that shaped the lives of women, eventually making their way into law in Europe and later into the United States. For most of the twentieth century, women tried to undo many of these laws.”
“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Woman and the new race by Margaret Sanger
“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or begat a child.” 1891 US Supreme Court
“The Constitution guarantees that no person should be arbitrarily deprived of his (or her) life, liberty or property. Proponents of birth control argued that women – not the state – should choose whether or not they would have children, grounding their arguments in historic notions of personal privacy. Still others grounded challenges in general assertions of equality and freedom. And yet, as “freedom” arguments of the 1960s gained steam, debate turned inevitably to consideration of the concept of “liberty.” The question ultimately considered by the Justices of the United States Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut was whether the notion of “liberty” included privacy and the freedom to make reproductive choices and whether these choices superseded the interests of the state.”
“There are those among us who would argue that everything a person does says something about him or her. Thus, everything a person does offer evidence of his or her character. There it remains in wordless suggestion, provoking the question over and over in one’s mind: Is this the kind of person you would believe? Of course that matters to women, because there are still people who care about whether a woman has had an abortion.”
“Many women’s rights activists already know that the violent tactics of the mid- to late-1980s has largely come to a close. Replacing it instead in the battle that never ends in recent years is has been a campaign designed to dismantle women’s rights by stealth. And though the tactics of the “kinder, gentler” movement may largely have gone unnoticed by the younger public, they are just as deliberate and inflammatory as they ever were. It is just that today, instead of bomb threats, blockades, and vandalism, the fight to shatter women’s rights is more often presented in the form of bills, laws, and executive orders.”
Quoteable...
“Women were good or bad. Often “dumb,” but rarely smart. Childlike and foolish. Submissive by godly mandate. And always the tools of men. These were the early themes that shaped the lives of women, eventually making their way into law in Europe and later into the United States. For most of the twentieth century, women tried to undo many of these laws.”
“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Woman and the new race by Margaret Sanger
“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or begat a child.” 1891 US Supreme Court
“The Constitution guarantees that no person should be arbitrarily deprived of his (or her) life, liberty or property. Proponents of birth control argued that women – not the state – should choose whether or not they would have children, grounding their arguments in historic notions of personal privacy. Still others grounded challenges in general assertions of equality and freedom. And yet, as “freedom” arguments of the 1960s gained steam, debate turned inevitably to consideration of the concept of “liberty.” The question ultimately considered by the Justices of the United States Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut was whether the notion of “liberty” included privacy and the freedom to make reproductive choices and whether these choices superseded the interests of the state.”
“There are those among us who would argue that everything a person does says something about him or her. Thus, everything a person does offer evidence of his or her character. There it remains in wordless suggestion, provoking the question over and over in one’s mind: Is this the kind of person you would believe? Of course that matters to women, because there are still people who care about whether a woman has had an abortion.”
“Many women’s rights activists already know that the violent tactics of the mid- to late-1980s has largely come to a close. Replacing it instead in the battle that never ends in recent years is has been a campaign designed to dismantle women’s rights by stealth. And though the tactics of the “kinder, gentler” movement may largely have gone unnoticed by the younger public, they are just as deliberate and inflammatory as they ever were. It is just that today, instead of bomb threats, blockades, and vandalism, the fight to shatter women’s rights is more often presented in the form of bills, laws, and executive orders.”
April 16, 2008
So far very deep, and inspiring. Saddening also, obviously.
but, the farther i have gotten into it, i have some disturbing thoughts about, idk, god i guess. At genesis 3:16 it says that man will rule over the woman, and that she will obey(something like that...i think). It really bothered me, is god sexist? Is that for all women around the world, were women accidently placed below man, is a woman less important, or more important because we have a uterus? Lol, sounds silly, but it really does bother me. Was i destined in gods eyes to follow a man? I definatley have a problem with that...
but, the farther i have gotten into it, i have some disturbing thoughts about, idk, god i guess. At genesis 3:16 it says that man will rule over the woman, and that she will obey(something like that...i think). It really bothered me, is god sexist? Is that for all women around the world, were women accidently placed below man, is a woman less important, or more important because we have a uterus? Lol, sounds silly, but it really does bother me. Was i destined in gods eyes to follow a man? I definatley have a problem with that...
December 9, 2012
This book goes beyond outstanding to me as an American female. Did you know The Woman's Right To vote was tacked onto the Civil Rights bill as a joke; the higher ups did not think the civil rights bill would pass. Debran Rowland Esq., my hat is off to you. Continue to keep us educated on the TRUTH behind legal issues.
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April 23, 2009from this book, i learned that being a liberal is ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS.
May 17, 2012
This is a thoroughly researched book about the politics of abortion and its evolution in America by a lawyer. I recommend this book to anyone who calls themselves prochoice, or even prolife. It does have a bias, but not as much as some other books on abortion that I have read. It is fairly long though, so if you are looking for a short book on the issue, I recommend other books out there.
March 20, 2022
a little out of date now, clearly, which renders some of the information and conclusions uninteresting. however, the book was comprehensive, firmly based in the law and not opinions, written engagingly for such an academic outline, and absolutely frustrating, as it should be. i thought it was very well done.
August 24, 2009
An important part of understanding women's history in America is reading the legislative chronology of her rights, this book is a great tome for that.
August 12, 2010
Great eye opener!
April 11, 2018
Shocking? Not if you watch the news.
This book discusses how men have used the law to regulate pretty much every part of her life and body. It is very dense, covering the issues as they related to the courts.
I do feel like the book could use an update. It was published 14 years ago, and some of her 'current" information dates from back when I was in high school. (Brittney Spears and bandana halter tops are no longer the epolitone of cool youth culture.) Because it was written a while ago, we miss out on some hugely important cases that have happened in the meantime.
Still, a very important read that should encourage women to resist legal efforts to control their bodies and their lives.
This book discusses how men have used the law to regulate pretty much every part of her life and body. It is very dense, covering the issues as they related to the courts.
I do feel like the book could use an update. It was published 14 years ago, and some of her 'current" information dates from back when I was in high school. (Brittney Spears and bandana halter tops are no longer the epolitone of cool youth culture.) Because it was written a while ago, we miss out on some hugely important cases that have happened in the meantime.
Still, a very important read that should encourage women to resist legal efforts to control their bodies and their lives.
January 3, 2020
Very informative and a good reference to legal cases relating to women’s rights, but needed more editing / tightening up - there were several instances where the same story was told in multiple chapters as if it were new the second time, and it often felt like the argument was all over the place, like jumping from topics of violence against women to suddenly discussing libel law and offensive emails.
June 6, 2018
The main reason I knock a star off of this is because it was published in 2004 and is in severe need of updating.
October 4, 2020
Better use as a reference.
April 3, 2018
This is a great book that I am not going to be able to finish. The information is so interesting and relevant..... and so dense. Be prepared if you enter here--it is astonishing and some heavy lifting.
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January 29, 2008Important.
June 19, 2008
Clear and approachable yet thorough overview of legal history of women's status in U.S. Good read.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews