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

“The best book I have read on the politics of reproduction. It raises complex theoretical and strategic questions, in a clear and accessible way, and represents an important breakthrough in feminist thinking.”
– Leslie Doyal, author of What Makes Women Sick

This prize-winning study is the definitive work on the politics of abortion and fertility. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky provides overwhelming evidence against the anti-abortion forces and in the process takes up issues of teenage sexuality, the politics of eugenics, and women’s relationship to medical technology. The book’s continuing relevance is a tribute to the author and a sad indictment of contemporary politics.

Rosalind Petchesky is a political scientist and a leading theorist on international reproductive rights. Petchesky is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of The Individual’s Rights and International Organization and Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights. In addition to her research contributions, she initiated and coordinates the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group (IRRRAG) in its work of assessing, across cultures, women’s own views of their reproductive rights. She is also involved with the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy in coordinating a multicountry, multisite comparative study of national and international policies affecting sexuality and sexual rights.

Foreword by Zillah Eisenstein
Abortion Again? Preface to the 2024 Edition
Foreword to the British Edition
Preface

Introduction: Beyond ‘‘A Woman’s Right to Choose’’—Feminist Ideas about Reproductive Rights
Controlling Our Bodies / The Social Relations of Reproduction / Reproductive Politics, Past and Future

PART I Fertility Control in Theory and History
1. Fertility, Gender, and Class
The Role of Technology / Malthusian Ideology and Bourgeois Culture  / Birth Control in the Bourgeois Family / Class Divisions, Motherhood, and Fertility Control among the Poor / The Place of Abortion

2. Abortion and the State: Nineteenth-Century Criminalization
Falling Birthrates and Rising Abortions / The Medical Attack / The Eugenics Movement and Sterilization / Abortion, Sterilization, and the Socialist-Feminist Birth Control Movement

3. Abortion and the State: Twentieth-Century Legalization
Falling Birthrates and Rising Abortions in the 1960s and 1970s / Population Control and the Legalization of Abortion / The Role of Popular Organizing: Feminists and Libertarians

PART II Abortion Practice in the 1970s
4. The Social and Economic Conditions of Women Who Get Abortions
Recent Trends in Abortion Practice / Class and Race Differences in Resolving Nonmarital Pregnancies / Abortion Access for Poor Women

5. Considering the Alternatives: The Problems of Contraception
The Politics of Contraception / The Inadequacies of Contraception / Abortion and Contraception—The Necessary Link / The Failure of institutional ‘‘Delivery Systems’’

6. Abortion and Heterosexual Culture: The Teenage Question
Defining Sexuality—The Role of Abortion / The Rise in Teenage Sex and Pregnancy—A Revised View / Continuities in Heterosexual Culture / Grids of Conflict and Sources of Change

PART III Sexual Politics in the 1980s
7. The Antiabortion Movement and the Rise of the New Right
Launching the Neoconservative State / The Organizational Base: Churches and Reproductive Politics / The Ideological Message: Reprivatizing Sexuality and ‘‘Preserving the Family’’

8. Protecting Family Integrity: The Rightward Drift in the Courts
‘‘Medical Necessity’’ versus Women’s Autonomy: Roe v. Wade / Privacy Rights versus Social Justice: Medicaid Funding / Sexual Freedom versus ‘‘Authority in Their Own Household’’: Parental Notification

9. Morality and Personhood: A Feminist Perspective
Fetuses and Persons / Toward a Feminist-Humanist Concept of Personhood / Fetal Politics and False Dilemmas
 
10. Women’s Consciousness and the Abortion Decision
Doing and Believing—The Morality of Praxis / Maternal Practice and Reproductive Consciousness

Conclusion: The Feminist Movement and the Conditions of Reproductive Freedom

Index