Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

New Book Highlights How Anti-Abortion Terrorism Affects Abortion Providers' Daily Lives

ThinkProgress: How Anyone Who Works At An Abortion Clinic Becomes A Target For Violence And Harassment, by Tara Culp-Ressler: 

Joan, the president of a network of women’s health clinics in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, isn’t comfortable using her real name in this story because her private residence was vandalized last year. Someone threw a bucket of red paint all over her house. . . .

Joan is just one of the dozens of people who’s featured in a new book that attempts to detail the scope of anti-abortion harassment present in clinic staffers’ everyday lives. Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism argues that, although most Americans don’t realize it, many of the people who work in the field of abortion are living in a state of heightened fear and anxiety because targeted harassment follows them everywhere.

The book’s authors, law professor David Cohen and practicing attorney Krysten Connon, once worked together to represent abortion providers in Philadelphia and were struck by the stories of stalking and intimidation they heard in court. . . . 

Review of Mo Yan's "Frog" -- A Novel About China's One-Child Policy

The New York Times: Review: In Mo Yan’s ‘Frog,’ a Chinese Abortionist Embodies State Power, by Janet Maslin:

When the Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012 and was warmly lauded by the Communist government, he became one of the most reviled winners in the history of that great honor. Among the more benign accusations lobbed at him was that he was undeserving. . . .

Too easily lost in all this howling was Mr. Mo’s writing. His latest novel, “Frog,” gracefully and colloquially translated by Howard Goldblatt, is not the work of a hack or an ideologue. It is a rich and troubling epic — and a very human story — about China’s one-child policy, and Western readers who think they understand how this works have another think coming. . . .

Authors of Forthcoming Book Suggest Ways to Protect Clinic Workers from Anti-Abortion Terrorism

Slate: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, by David S. Cohen & Krysten Connon:

Ten ways that laws and law enforcement should protect clinic workers.

. . . According to a recent Feminist Majority Foundation report, personal targeting of abortion providers is rising precipitously. The 2014 National Clinic Violence Survey tallied the responses of 242 abortion providers from around the country. Providers were asked about their experiences with violence, harassment, and intimidation directed at clinics generally and patients. They were also asked about being targeted individually, which is our concern here. . . .

For the past four years, we have been doing our own study of targeted harassment of abortion providers. . . . These interviews form the basis of a book,Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism, which will be released in May. . . .

Reviews of Katha Pollitt's "Pro," And Interviews with Pollitt

The New York Times: Take Back the Right: Katha Pollitt's 'Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights', by Clara Jeffery:

“I never had an abortion, but my mother did. She didn’t tell me about it, but from what I pieced together after her death from a line in her F.B.I. file, which my father, the old radical, had requested along with his own, it was in 1960, so like almost all abortions back then, it was illegal.”

Thus begins “Pro,” the abortion rights manifesto by the Nation columnist, poet and red diaper baby Katha Pollitt. While parents with F.B.I. files may be exotic, her departure point is that abortion was and is not. . . .

The Chicago Tribune: Review: 'Pro' by Katha Pollitt, by Martha Bayne:

. . . Over the book's 200-odd pages, Pollitt — longtime columnist for The Nation and all-around feminist public thinker — charts with passion and intellectual rigor just how much the lives of American women have changed since 1960, and how very much they haven't. . . .

Here's an interview with Pollitt:

Democracy Now: Abortion as a Social Good: Author Katha Pollitt Pens New Vision for Pro-Choice Movement

And a roundtable on Minnesota Public Radio among Pollitt, Sarah Stoesz, President of the Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund, and Teresa Collett, Professor of Law at the University of St Thomas:

MPR News: The politics and policy of abortion

Excerpt from Katha Pollitt's New Book, "Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights"

The Huffington Post -- The Blog: The Abortion Conversation We Need To Have, by Katha Pollitt:

Abortion. We need to talk about it. I know, sometimes it seems as if we talk of little else, so perhaps I should say we need to talk about it differently. Not as something we all agree is a bad thing about which we shake our heads sadly and then debate its precise degree of badness, preening ourselves on our judiciousness and moral seriousness as we argue about this or that restriction on this or that kind of woman.

We need to talk about ending a pregnancy as a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women -- and not just modern American women either, but women throughout history and all over the world, from ancient Egypt to medieval Catholic Europe, from today's sprawling cities to rural villages barely touched by modern ideas about women's roles and rights. . . .

Jonathan Eig, Author of 'The Birth of the Pill,' Interviewed in The New Republic

The New Republic: It's Astounding That We're Still Debating the Pill After 50 Years, by Rebecca Leber:

It wasn't easy to create a birth control pill in an era where contraception, along with abortion, was still illegal in most of the country. In his new book, The Birth of the Pill, veteran journalist Jonathan Eig writes on the history of how four people came together to make oral contraceptives a reality in the 1950s. (Ann Friedman reviewed it for the New Republic here). The creators wouldn't have expected the challenges women still face today to their reproductive rights.I spoke to Eig about this in the context of the contemporary debate on abortion and contraception in America. . . .

Call for Applications: Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court

 U.S. Feminist Judgments Project -- Call for Applications:

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of revised opinions and commentary for an edited collection entitled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court. This edited volume is a collaborative project among feminist law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key Supreme Court decisions relevant to gender issues. Editors Kathy Stanchi, Linda Berger, and Bridget Crawford seek prospective authors for 20 to 25 rewritten Supreme Court opinions covering a range of topics including reproductive rights, equal protection, the state’s use of criminal power, privacy, the family, women’s political participation, Title IX, employment discrimination and substantive due process. The editors also seek authors for commentaries of 1,500 to 2,500 words to put into context each of the rewritten cases.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments project was inspired by the successful collection and publication in Britain of Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice, edited by Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn, and Erika Rackley. This volume, which included feminist versions of twenty-three key British decisions from the Court of Appeal and House of Lords, was published in 2010 and has been very well received. Like the sister project in Britain, the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project endeavors to pioneer “a new form of critical socio-legal scholarship” that illustrates how cases could have been decided differently had a feminist method been employed. We believe that U.S. Supreme Court law is ripe for this kind of scholarly treatment.

Those who are interested in rewriting an opinion or providing the commentary on one of the rewritten opinions must apply by September 15, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. eastern. Click here for the application.

Editors will notify accepted authors and commentators by October 7, 2014. First drafts of rewritten opinions will be due on February 1, 2015. First drafts of comments on the rewritten opinions will be due on March 15, 2015. The editors are in the process of identifying a publisher; publication of the final volume is anticipated for late 2015.

Applicants may indicate their preferences among the list of cases posted here.  Applicants also may suggest other cases for rewriting. The tentative cases were chosen with the input and advice of an Advisory Panel of distinguished U.S. scholars including Kathryn Abrams, Katharine Bartlett,Devon Carbado, Mary Anne Case, Erwin Chemerinsky, April Cherry, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Martha Fineman, Margaret Johnson, Sonia Katyal, Nancy Leong, Catharine MacKinnon, Rachel Moran, Melissa Murray, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Nancy Polikoff, Dorothy Roberts, Dan Rodriguez, Susan Ross, Vicki Schultz, Dean Spade, Robin West, and Verna Williams.

NPR Interviews Author of "Dirty Work," a Novel About an Abortion Provider

NPR:  In 'Dirty Work,' A Doctor Turns To Fiction To Talk About Abortion, by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro:

All surgeons must pick the organ they'll spend their career protecting, Gabriel Weston writes in her new novel, Dirty Work. And as Nancy, the obstetrician-gynecologist at the center of the book, explains, "We gynecologists have the womb to look after. ... And whichever specialty we choose, each of us has to do something ruthless to keep our patient safe: We have to forget about the human significance of the organ we're operating on." . . .

Weston, who is also an ear, nose and throat surgeon, joins NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro to discuss the book. . . .

A Review of "God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis"

Salon: The 10 strangest facts about penises, by Tracy Clark-Flory:

Simone de Beauvoir called it “a small person … an alter ego usually more sly … and more clever than the individual.” Leonardo da Vinci said it “has dealings with human intelligence and sometimes displays an intelligence of its own.” Sophocles said that having one was to be “chained to a madman.”

These great thinkers were referring so exasperatedly, so powerlessly, to none other than the penis. That’s a lot of hype for a body part that can “be seen as something the Creator doodled in an idle moment,” as Tom Hickman puts it in the new book, “God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis.”  . . .

Book Review of "Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control"

MotherBoard: Should We All Stop Taking Birth Control?, by Kelly Bourdet:

What is our obsession with the “natural” state of humanity? As if that is a thing, a truer state—a toolless, techless, laudable past we ought to revere. We’re urged to unplug; every time I use the internet I’m accosted with the warnings of a generation, endless articles shrilly decrying how this technology or that one is hastening the end of human connection or communication or authenticity. Inherent in this worldview is the idea that the tools created by humanity are somehow so “other,” so opposed to the natural world, that they manifestly alter our relationship with ourselves and with our destiny.

Holly Grigg-Spall’s new book, Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, available in the US on September 7, investigates our complex relationship with human alteration, pharmaceutical interests, and the benefit of a “natural” state of femaleness. . . . 

Linda Greenhouse on Backlash after Roe

SCOTUSblog:  Ask the author:  Linda Greenhouse on "Before (and After) Roe v. Wade:  New Questions About Backlash", by Kali Borkoski:  

In 2010, Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent three decades covering the Court for The New York Times, and Reva Siegel, Professor of Law at Yale, published Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling. (SCOTUSblog’s Q&A with both authors is here.) The authors recently released a second edition of the book, which is available for free from the Yale Law Library or can be printed on demand ($10) from Amazon, with proceeds going to the Yale library.  The second edition includes a new afterword, Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Questions About Backlash, in which Greenhouse and Siegel use the source materials republished in the book to challenge the conventional wisdom that, “if the Court had stayed its hand or decided Roe v. Wade on narrower grounds, the nation would have reached a political settlement and avoided backlash.” Once again, Linda Greenhouse has graciously agreed to answer a few questions about her work on this subject. . . .

Book Review of Naomi Wolf's "Vagina, A New Biography"

The New York Times:  Upstairs, Downstairs (book review of ‘Vagina: A New Biography,’ by Naomi Wolf), by Toni Bentley:

Sit back and relax, will you? Naomi Wolf has got her orgasm back. Yep. I know you were worried. We were all worried. I mean, to lose one’s orgasm at a time like this, what with Syria undergoing mass civilian murder and Romney closing in on Obama, it is really enough to put a liberated gal’s thong in a knot.

But Wolf didn’t just get back one of those little clitoral thingamajigs that Masters and Johnson so laboriously put back on the map after Freud had brushed them aside. Or rather inside, where he felt they belonged. She has reclaimed the Great Big Cosmic I-Am-a-Gorgeous-Goddess (Feminist-Goddess, that is) kind. Phew!

“Vagina: A New Biography” should have been an important book. A very important book. . . .

NPR Interviews Author of New Margaret Sanger Biography

NPR: Writing the Messy Life of a Sexual Health Pioneer, hosted by Michel Martin:

Transcript:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. As women around the world are rethinking and rewriting their roles in society, we decided to take a look at how the biographies of notable women reflect those changes. So, throughout women's history month, we've been digging into biographies of all kinds of women, divas, dancers, leaders of nations and queens of fashion.

And, today, we're talking about a woman who, although she died four decades ago, is back in the news. We're talking about nurse and activist, Margaret Sanger, the founder of the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood.

Sanger began her efforts in behalf of sex education and contraception at a time when even talking about contraception was considered obscene and, in some places, even criminal. Women risked arrest when they sought out makeshift birth control devices that were often unsafe.

To this day, Margaret Sanger is lauded by many for her work in changing that and, as well, vilified by others for ushering in a culture that her critics say devalues life and women in the process.

Her life and work are chronicled in the new book, "Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion." The author is Jean Baker. She is an historian and history professor at Goucher College and she's with us now in Washington, D.C. . . . 

 

Audio of the interview is available through the link above.

‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ Celebrates 40th Anniversary

The Washington Post: 'Our Bodies, Ourselves' taught women about sexuality and reproductive health, by Stefanie Weiss:  

When it comes to women’s sexuality and reproductive health, I’ve come to believe that the world divides into two camps: those who know something about hand mirrors and those who don’t.

My sister Julie, solidly in the first camp, recently went to a 30-something female gynecologist, who’s in the second. At Julie’s first mention of hand mirrors, she told me, her doctor was more than a little taken aback.

“You did what?” she asked. . . . 

Levi Johnston on Abstinence and Bristol Palin's Pregnancy

Washington Post - Political Book-Worm blog: Levi Johnston on love, sex and abstinence, by Steven Levingston:

As Levi Johnston tells it, it was love at first sight — or at least what counts for love in a 15-year-old. He ran into Bristol Palin in the local grocery store back when he was a student at Wasilla High playing on the hockey team. “She had on a soft-pink turtleneck sweater. Hot,” he writes in his new book, “Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs.” . . .

Mara Hvistendahl Responds to Douthat's Column About Her Book on Sex-Selective Abortions

Salon.com: Blaming abortion for disappering girls, by Mara Hvistendahl:

NYT's Douthat thinks curtailing women's rights will solve the problem of sex selection. Here's why he's wrong

This article is in response to Ross Douthat's New York Times column about the implications of Mara Hvistendahl's book, "Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men." Ross Douthat posted a follow-up piece on the subject on Thursday.

In a 1994 article for the journal First Things, Amherst College political scientist Hadley P. Arkes outlined a calculated plan for the antiabortion movement. "We seek simply to preserve the life of the child who survives the abortion," Arkes wrote. "From that modest beginning, we might go on to restrict abortions after the point of 'viability,' or we could ban those abortions ordered up simply because the child happens to be a female." Such limitations were useful steppingstones toward achieving what Arkes called the "ultimate end": banning all abortions.

Arkes saw opposing sex-selective abortion as a tactical maneuver, not a remotely feminist act, and 17 years later his strategy has taken hold. Antiabortion legislators are using the prevalence of sex selection in Asia to justify restrictions on abortion in the United States. Bans on sex-selective abortion have passed in four states -- Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Arizona -- and been proposed in five others this year -- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, West Virginia, New York and New Jersey. These bills are filled with language intended to set a precedent for declaring a fetus equivalent to a life. . . .

See also: Ross Douthat on New Book Addressing Sex-Selective Abortions

Review of Xinran's "Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love"

NY Times: Casualties of China’s One Child Policy, by Lesley Downer:

In 1989, the Chinese writer and broadcaster Xinran was in a remote mountain village in Shandong Province having dinner with the headman when she heard cries from an adjoining room, where his daughter-in-law was giving birth. A while later, as the midwife collected her fee, Xinran noticed a movement in the slops bucket. “To my absolute horror,” she recalls, “I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail.” But she was the only one who was shocked. “It’s not a child,” the headman’s wife told her. “If it was, we’d be looking after it, wouldn’t we? It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it.”. . .

New Books Rebut Conservative Christian Views of the Bible on Sex

Newsweek Magazine: What the Bible Really Says About Sex, by Lisa Miller:

New scholarship on the Good Book’s naughty bits and how it deals with adultery, divorce, and same-sex love.

The poem describes two young lovers aching with desire. The obsession is mutual, carnal, complete. The man lingers over his lover’s eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at “the mount of myrrh.” He rhapsodizes. “All of you is beautiful, my love,” he says. “There is no flaw in you.”

The girl returns his lust with lust. “My lover thrust his hand through the hole,” she says, “and my insides groaned because of him.”

This ode to sexual consummation can be found in—of all places—the Bible. . . .

A Conversation with Amy Chua Compares Chinese and Western Mothers

Time Magazine: Chinese vs Western Mothers: Q&A with Amy Chua, by Belinda Luscombe:

"A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies," writes Amy Chua in her provocative new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. "Well I can tell them because I've done it."  With those words she set off a storm of controversy.

Chua's book, which she wrote as a memoir of her conversion from authoritarian Chinese drillmistress to marginally less authoritarian drillmistress has led to people calling heartless and worse. She makes one daughter, Lulu, play piano late into the night until she gets the piece exactly right, with no water or bathroom breaks. She never lets her girls have sleepovers or do drama at school or get less than A on report cards. Result: one daughter gets to play a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. The other, Lulu,  rebels, drops violin and takes up tennis. . . .

Long-Awaited Biography of Justice Brennan Is Finally Published and Includes Some Surprises

NY Times: Brennan’s Biographer Took His Time, by Adam Liptak:

In 1986, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal made an unprecedented secret deal with Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who had by then served on the Supreme Court for 30 years and was its leading liberal voice.

“I basically would sneak up to his chambers at 7 o’clock in the morning and interview him and go through papers,” the reporter, Stephen Wermiel, said last week. Over the next four years, Mr. Wermiel conducted 60 hours of interviews. . . .

The book is brisk, accessible, fair-minded and studded with surprises. Among them, Mr. Stern said, was how often Justice Brennan’s votes in cases like Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion, were in tension with his personal views.

“He has discomfort with women in his workplace,” Mr. Stern said, “yet he’s a champion of women’s rights in his decisions. He’s uncomfortable about abortion, but his privacy decisions make Roe possible. The press infuriates him at a personal level, and yet he’s a champion of the press.” . . .