Fertility Health And Reproductive Politics

Set in the context of the processes and practices of human reproduction and reproductive health in Northern India, this book examines the institutional exercise of power by the state, caste and kin groups. Drawing on ethnographic research over the past eighteen years among poor Hindu and Muslim communities in Rajasthan and among development and health actors in the state, this book contributes to developing analytic perspectives on reproductive practice, agency and the body-self as particular and novel sites of a vital power and politic. Rajasthan has been among the poorest states in the country with high levels of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. The author closely examines how social and economic inequalities are produced and sustained in discursive and on the ground contexts of family-making, how authoritative knowledge and power in the domain of childbirth is exercised across a landscape of development institutions, how maternal health becomes a category of citizenship, how health-seeking is socially and emotionally determined and political in nature, how the health sector operates as a biopolitical system, and how diverse moral claims over the fertile, infertile and reproductive body-self are asserted, contested and often realised. A compelling analysis, this book offers both new empirical data and new theoretical insights. It draws together the practices, experiences and discourse on fertility and reproduction (childbirth, infertility, loss) in Northern India into an overarching analytical framework on power and gender politics. It will be of interest to academics in the fields of medical anthropology, medical sociology, public health, gender studies, human rights and sociolegal studies, and South Asian studies.

A sweeping chronicle of women’s battles for reproductive freedom Reproductive politics in the United States has always been about who has the power to decide—lawmakers, the courts, clergy, physicians, or the woman herself. Authorities have rarely put women’s needs and interests at the center of these debates. Instead, they have created reproductive laws and policies to solve a variety of social and political problems, with outcomes that affect the lives of different groups of women differently. Reproductive politics were at play when slaveholders devised “breeding” schemes, when the US government took indigenous children from their families in the nineteenth century, and when doctors pressured Latina women to be sterilized in the 1970s. Tracing the main plot lines of women’s reproductive lives, the leading historian Rickie Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the effort to control sex and pregnancy in America over time. Revisiting these issues after more than a decade, this revised edition of Pregnancy and Power reveals how far the reproductive justice movement has come, and the renewed struggles it faces in the present moment. Even after nearly a half-century of “reproductive rights,” a cascade of new laws and policies limits access and prescribes punishments for many people trying to make their own reproductive decisions. In this edition, Solinger traces the contemporary rise of reproductive consumerism and the politics of “free market” health care as economic inequality continues to expand in the US, revealing the profound limits of “choice” and the continued need for the reproductive justice framework.

A concise, comprehensive guide to reproductive politics in America

The term "reproductive politics" was coined by feminists in the 1970s to describe contemporary Roe v. Wade-era power struggles over contraception and abortion, adoption and surrogacy, and other satellite issues. Forty years later, questions about reproductive rights are just as complex--and controversial--as they were then. Focusing mainly on the United States, Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know® explores the legal, political, religious, social, ethical, and medical dimensions of this hotly contested arena. Tracing the historical roots of reproductive politics up through the present, Rickie Solinger considers a range of topics from abortion and contraception to health care reform and assisted reproductive technologies. Solinger tackles some of the most contentious questions up for debate today, including the definition of "fetal personhood," and the roles poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights. The answers she provides are informative, balanced, and sometimes quite surprising. Offering a wide range of information in an accessible and engaging manner, Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know® orients readers and provides the knowledge necessary to follow the debates in this important and continually evolving field. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the USSR/Russia, and the United States. The essays focus on the official, organized efforts that states pursued to facilitate state decisions about how many people, and which people, would be born within their borders.

The sites, spaces and subjects of reproduction are distinctly geographical. Reproductive geographies span different scales - body, home, local, national, global - and movements across space. This book expands our understanding of the socio-cultural and spatial aspects of fertility, pregnancy and birth. The chapters directly address global perspectives, the future of reproductive politics and state-focused approaches to the politicisation of fertility, pregnancy and birth. The book provides up-to-date explorations on the changing landscapes of reproduction, including the expansion of reproductive technologies, such as surrogacy and intrauterine insemination. Contributions in this book focus on phenomenologically-inspired accounts of women’s lived experience of pregnancy and birth, the biopolitics of birth and citizenship, the material histories of reproductive tissues as "scientific objects" and engagements with public health and development policy. This is an essential resource for upper-level undergraduates and graduates studying topics such as Sociology, Geographies of Gender, Women’s Studies and Anthropology of Health and Medicine.

Today all politics are reproductive politics, argues esteemed feminist critic Laura Briggs. From longer work hours to the election of Donald Trump, our current political crisis is above all about reproduction. Households are where we face our economic realities as social safety nets get cut and wages decline. Briggs brilliantly outlines how politicians’ racist accounts of reproduction—stories of Black “welfare queens” and Latina “breeding machines"—were the leading wedge in the government and business disinvestment in families. With decreasing wages, rising McJobs, and no resources for family care, our households have grown ever more precarious over the past forty years in sharply race-and class-stratified ways. This crisis, argues Briggs, fuels all others—from immigration to gay marriage, anti-feminism to the rise of the Tea Party.

Ideas of choice and rights traditionally dominate discussions concerning reproduction and gender politics. Fertile Ground argues that the current political climate in Canada necessitates a broader understanding of the links between the politics of reproduction, the state, and gender relations. Three major themes are developed in the book: women's lived experiences, the role of the state in reproductive politics, and discourses around reproduction. Contributors examine unequal access to in vitro fertilization treatments depending upon class, race, age, disability, and health status; critique Health Canada's adherence to a medical model of breastfeeding; analyze marketing campaigns for birth-control products; and recount the Aamjiwnaang First Nation's experience of seeking recognition for reproductive health concerns. Fertile Ground links reproduction to marginalization, contestation, and the state in order to illuminate the continuity of reproductive moments and their implications for identity, activism, policy formation, and further scholarship. A timely and multidisciplinary account of reproduction and gender politics in Canada, Fertile Ground will interest academics, activists, and professionals involved in the areas of women’s studies, politics, sociology, and public health.