Böcker av Leslie J. Reagan

"Essential."--New York Times "A first-rate exposition of the changing cultural and legal climate regarding abortion in America."--Washington Post "For those who take abortion for granted, Reagan's work is an eye-opener."--Publishers Weekly "This book is one of the most important books I have ever read. It has shaped my thinking about abortion and many other things in deep ways."--Katha Pollitt, contributor, The Nation "Exploiting legal as well as medical records, Reagan has retrieved the history of women who struggled for reproductive autonomy and provides our best account of how the practice and policing of abortion evolved in relation to medicine, the state, and the condition of women. [This] is a major contribution to social history."--James W. Reed, Rutgers University "This is a fascinating book--energetic, even urgent in its narrative. It is based on entirely new material, making ingenious and enlightening use of criminal trials, inquests, and newspaper accounts. Both creative and painstaking in her research, Reagan persuasively establishes historical patterns in the availability of assisted abortion and documents a striking antiabortion backlash in the 1940-50s. In addition to the book's value for scholars, it will undoubtedly be valuable to feminists, lawyers, doctors, and others interested in the conditions of abortion today."--Nancy Cott, Yale University

Dangerous Pregnancies tells the largely forgotten story of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s and how it created national anxiety about dying, disabled, and "e;dangerous"e; babies. This epidemic would ultimately transform abortion politics, produce new science, and help build two of the most enduring social movements of the late twentieth century--the reproductive rights and the disability rights movements. At most a minor rash and fever for women, German measles (also known as rubella), if contracted during pregnancy, could result in miscarriages, infant deaths, and serious birth defects in the newborn. Award-winning writer Leslie J. Reagan chronicles for the first time the discoveries and dilemmas of this disease in a book full of intimate stories--including riveting courtroom testimony, secret investigations of women and doctors for abortion, and startling media portraits of children with disabilities. In exploring a disease that changed America, Dangerous Pregnancies powerfully illuminates social movements that still shape individual lives, pregnancy, medicine, law, and politics.

Original essays by leading media scholars and historians of medicine that explore the rich history of health-related films.