Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America
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The intense policing of women's reproductive capacity places women's health and human rights in great peril. Poor women are pressured to undergo sterilization. Women addicted to illicit drugs risk arrest for carrying their pregnancies to term. Courts, child welfare, and law enforcement agencies fail to recognize the efforts of battered and incarcerated women to care for their children. And decades after Roe, the criminalization of certain procedures and regulation of abortion providers still obstruct women's access to safe and private abortions. In this important work, Jeanne Flavin looks beyond abortion to document, how the law and the criminal justice system police women's rights to conceive, to be pregnant, and to rear their children, as well as how the state seeks to establish what a "good woman" and "fit mother" should look like. Calling for broad-based measures that strengthen women's economic position, choice-making, autonomy, sexual freedom, and health care, Our Bodies, Our Crimes is a battle cry for all women in their fight to be fully recognized as human beings. Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Author and sociologist Flavin (Class, Race, Gender and Crime) turns with typical vigor and abundant research to the subject of women's reproductive rights. Taking a historical perspective, Flavin outlines a set of progressive arguments focusing on abortion and family planning, the parental rights of incarcerated women, and "structural barriers posed by our drug laws and child welfare policies that disproportionately and adversely affect poor and minority women." Flavin's text faces tough issues head on from a viewpoint somewhere to the left of liberal, and her passion for women's rights makes a powerful narrative engine. Bolstered by quotes and firsthand accounts, Flavin delivers eye-opening reports on topics including abortion rights, infant abandonment and battered women, detailing little-noticed or taken-for-granted policies that restrict and remand women. Written in a flowing academic style, Flavin's attention to historical detail and unfailing moral compass make her progressive reexamination of women's rights thorough and convincing. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction 1Part I Beginning1 "Race Criminals": Reproductive Rights in America 11Part II Begetting2 "Breeders": The Right to Procreate 293 "Back-Alley Butchers": Terminating Pregnancies 514 "Baby-Killers": Neonaticide and Infant Abandonment 74Part III Bearing5 "Innocent Preborn Victims": Fetal Protectionism and Pregnant Women 956 "Liars and Whiners": Incarcerated Women's Right to Reproductive Health 119Part IV Mothering7 "Bad Mothers": Incarcerated Women's Ties to Their Children 1398 "Asking for It": Battered Women and Child Custody 164Conclusion: Being 182Notes 191Bibliography 263Acknowledgments 297Index 299About the Author 307
