Synopses & Reviews
Traditionally, the history of the birth control movement has been told through the accounts of the leaders, organizations, and legislation that shaped the campaign. Recently, historians have begun examining the cultural work of printed media, including newspapers, magazines, and even novels in fostering support for the cause.
Broadcasting Birth Control builds on this new scholarship to explore the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by twentieth-century birth control advocates to promote family planning at home in the United States, and in the expanding international arena of population control.
Mass media, Manon Parry contends, was critical to the birth control movementandrsquo;s attempts to build support and later to publicize the idea of fertility control and the availability of contraceptive services in the United States and around the world. Though these public efforts in advertising and education were undertaken initially by leading advocates, including Margaret Sanger, increasingly a growing class of public communications experts took on the role, mimicking the efforts of commercial advertisers to promote health and contraception in short plays, cartoons, films, and soap operas. In this way, they made a private subjectandmdash;fertility controlandmdash;appropriate for public discussion.
Parry examines these trends to shed light on the contested nature of the motivations of birth control advocates. Acknowledging that supporters of contraception were not always motivated by the best interests of individual women, Parry concludes that family planning advocates were nonetheless convinced of womenandrsquo;s desire for contraception and highly aware of the ethical issues involved in the use of the media to inform and persuade.
Review
andquot;Heather Munro Prescott has written an important and timely book that fills a significant gap in the literature on contraception and significantly deepens our knowledge of reproductive medicine.andquot;
Review
andquot;The Morning After tells the dramatic story of the decades-long effort to achieve effective and accessible emergency contraception, and demonstrates the power of feminist activism to gainand#160; womenandrsquo;s reproductive rights.andquot;
Review
andquot;Prescott offers an incisive history of one of the newest forms of birth control, one that could reduce the need for abortion while guaranteeing women's control--because we all make mistakes.andquot;
Review
andquot;
The Morning After is a richly detailed history of the development of one of the least known or understood forms of birth control, emergency contraception. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;Prescott provides an engrossing and many-angled account of the origins and development of emergency contraception in the United States through to 2010.andquot;
Review
andquot;Heather Munro Prescott's timely book offers insight into the scientific, historical, and political contexts of [reproductive] policy decisions. This is a complex story to tell in a slim volume, and yet it offers an enticing first attempt at both adding this chapter to the history of reproductive rights and broadening the scope of such research to include science and public policy.andquot;
Review
"
The Morning After sheds light on how contraceptive technologies bring together diverse groups working to improve women’s reproductive health
Rebecca M. Kluchin - author of Fit to be Tied
Review
andquot;To examine the broadcasting of birth control information from the silent era to the Internet, Parry thoroughly researched extensive media archives. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;Manon Parryandrsquo;s engrossing book,
Broadcasting Birth Control, takes readers through the arguments early sexual and reproductive health advocates had when deciding what would be the best messaging to gain popular support for the use of contraception in America.andquot;
Review
andquot;Parry's clear, compelling, meticulously researched, and accessible book is the first to specifically examine the extensive use of mass media to garner support for the legalization of birth control during the twentieth century.andquot;
Review
andquot;By showing how the popular media helped win over a skeptical public, Parry deepens our understanding of the history of birth
control . . . a subtle and persuasive reinterpretation.andquot;
Review
andquot;
Broadcastingand#160;Birth Control is jam-packed with surprising historical tidbits on ways the media has been used by the family planning movement since its inception. Manon Parry has done a major service to the family planning field by capturing the history of its early engagement with the media and the evolution of that engagement with all the pitfalls and challenges along the way.andquot;
Review
andquot;Parry reveals to us many important parts of the [birth control] story we have for too long overlooked.andquot;
Review
andquot;[A] fine survey of the meditation of birth control.andquot;
Review
andquot;Historians of childrenandrsquo;s health and school hygiene have eagerly awaited this work, and Classrooms and Clinics does not disappoint. Meckel covers a tremendous range of topics, but the narrative is clearly focused and the argument carefully developed. Classrooms and Clinics is sure to stimulate a wealth of new scholarship on the history of schoolchildrenandrsquo;s health.andquot;
Review
andquot;Meckel demonstrates that government and medical authorities contested the claim that because the state mandates education, it bears a concomitant responsibility for student health. This is an excellent history into herto uncharted territory, accompanied by supurb notes and index. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;This is the first comprehensive history of public school hygiene in the United States. Meckel skillfully traces the origins and evolution of school health programs and their troubled legacy today.andquot;
Review
andquot;This book adds an important dimension to our understanding of childrenandrsquo;s healthand#160;and the contested role of the state in providing health services to needy populations. Meckel illuminates the sometimes promising, sometimes disappointing evolution of school health in America during a critical period of growing public institutions, philanthropies, and private entities.andquot;
Review
andquot;Beautifully written and impressively researched, Classrooms and Clinics is a major contribution to the history of education, medicine, and public health policy. It deserves a wide readership as Americans continue to debate public versus private responsibility for health care and the welfare of urban school children.andquot;
Review
andquot;Classroom and Clinics reveals how the subtleties of disagreement over issues of individual versus governmental responsibility and the dividing line between preventive and therapeutic services resulted in the abandonment of a movement to put clinics in schools. Meckelandrsquo;s meticulous research and sophisticated analysis challenges scholars of this period to rethink their characterizations of the contours of reform.andquot;
Review
andquot;In Fit to Be Tied, Rebecca Kluchin impressively navigates a critical period in the history of reproductive health in America. Fit to Be Tied is very innovative in a subtle and understated way: Kluchin is one of the first historians of gender and medicine to provide a sophisticated framework for mapping the sterilization practices of the pre-World War II period into the post-Roe V. Wade culture.andquot;
Review
andquot;In Fit to be Tied, historian Rebecca Kluchin offers a thoroughly researched, nuanced analysis of sterilization, reproductive rights, and what she calls 'neo-eugenics.' An important and powerful book that fills a critical gap in the literature on postwar reproductive rights.andquot;
Review
andquot;A welcome addition to the history of sexuality, birth control, medicine, and politics in the US. The writing is compelling, and the story Kluchin tells, particularly of forced sterilizations, is harrowing. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;Aand#160;compelling and original account of eugenic steralization. This
Review
andquot;Kluchin has added an important contribution to the history of sterilization.andquot;
Review
andquot;Kluchin's nuanced and thoughtful study shows how sterilization was too often foisted upon poor women of color to reduce economic 'dependency' and racial 'degeneracy' while too often denied to middle-class white women who hoped to secure reliable, permanent contraception. Fit to Be Tied makes a much-needed contribution to our historical understanding of women's never ending attempts to secure reproductive control. It is a terrific and important book.andquot;
Review
andquot;Much more has been written on the history of birth control and abortion than on the history of sterilization in the second half of the twentieth century. Kluchin's excellent study fills this crucial gap in the scholarly literature, adding breadth and depth to our understanding of the history of reproductive rights and wrongs in America.andquot;
Review
andquot;Fit to Be Tied is a refreshing and vital addition to the history of reproductive politics and sexuality in America. Kluchin's analysis is both compelling and smart, demonstrating how race and class affected reproductive policy and practice in the second half of the twentieth century. Her composite portrait of sterilization is particularly interesting and important because it assesses both those who were victims of sterilization abuse and those who fought for the right to sterilization as a contraceptive. Such a study is long overdue.andquot;
Review
andquot;Kluchin should be congratulated for her highly readable, well-researched study of this important, but largely neglected aspect of postwar women's health history. This book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on women's studies, social policy, and the history of medicine and public health.andquot;
Review
andquot;Kluchin has produced a much-needed study of the social and legal status of sterilization from the 1950s through the 1970s, based on a wealth of official documents and archival materials and featuring the voices of women from across the social spectrum who were adversely affected. Her narrative is a meticulous and compelling account of the legacies of negative and positive eugenics for reproductive politics and the lives of American women differentially marked by race, ethnicity, and class.andquot;
Review
andquot;
The Morning After sheds light on how contraceptive technologies bring together diverse groups working to improve womenandrsquo;s reproductive health
Review
andquot;
Theand#160;Morning After pulls together the scientific, historical, social, and political aspects of emergency contraception. Prescott provides a model for future historical research and a framework for understanding the continuing saga of emergency contraception.andquot;
Synopsis
The Morning After tells the story of emergency contraception in America from the 1960s to the present day and, more importantly, it tells the story of the women who have used it. Side-stepping simplistic readings of these women as either radical feminist trailblazers or guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, medical historian Heather Munro Prescott offers a portrait of how ordinary women participated in the development and popularization of emergency contraception, bringing a groundbreaking technology into the mainstream with the potential to alter radically reproductive health practices.
Synopsis
Since 2006, when the andldquo;morning-after pillandrdquo; Plan B was first sold over the counter, sales of emergency contraceptives have soared, becoming an $80-million industry in the United States and throughout the Western world. But emergency contraception is nothing new. It has a long and often contentious history as the subject of clashes not only between medical researchers and religious groups, but also between different factions of feminist health advocates.
The Morning After tells the story of emergency contraception in America from the 1960s to the present day and, more importantly, it tells the story of the women who have used it. Side-stepping simplistic readings of these women as either radical feminist trailblazers or guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, medical historian Heather Munro Prescott offers a portrait of how ordinary women participated in the development and popularization of emergency contraception, bringing a groundbreaking technology into the mainstream with the potential to alter radically reproductive health practices.
Synopsis
In Reproducing Inequities, M. Catherine Maternowska argues that we too easily overlook the political dynamics that shape choices about family planning. Through a detailed study of the attempt to provide modern contraception in the community of Citandeacute; Soleil, Maternowska demonstrates the complex interplay between local and global politics that so often thwarts well-intended policy initiatives.
Synopsis
Traditionally, the history of the birth control movement has been told through the accounts of the leaders, organizations, and legislation that shaped the campaign. Historians have recently begun examining the cultural work of printed media, including newspapers, magazines, and novels in fostering support for the cause. This book builds upon this new scholarship on the womenandrsquo;s reproductive health movement to explore the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by twentieth-century birth control advocates to promote family planning in the U.S. and internationally.
Synopsis
Classrooms and Clinics is the first book-length assessment of the development of public school health policies from the late nineteenth century through the early years of the Great Depression. Richard A. Meckel examines the efforts of early twentieth-century child health care advocates and reformers to utilize urban schools to deliver health care services to socioeconomically disadvantaged and medically underserved children in the primary grades to improve childrenandrsquo;s health and thereby improve their academic performance.
Synopsis
The 1960s revolutionized American contraceptive practice. Diaphragms, jellies, and condoms with high failure rates gave way to newer choices of the Pill, IUD, and sterilization.
Fit to Be Tied provides a history of sterilization and what would prove to become, at once, socially divisive and a popular form of birth control.
During the first half of the twentieth century, sterilization (tubal ligation and vasectomy) was a tool of eugenics. Individuals who endorsed crude notions of biological determinism sought to control the reproductive decisions of women they considered "unfit" by nature of race or class, and used surgery to do so. Incorporating first-person narratives, court cases, and official records, Rebecca M. Kluchin examines the evolution of forced sterilization of poor women, especially women of color, in the second half of the century and contrasts it with demands for contraceptive sterilization made by white women and men. She chronicles public acceptance during an era of reproductive and sexual freedom, and the subsequent replacement of the eugenics movement with "neo-eugenic" standards that continued to influence American medical practice, family planning, public policy, and popular sentiment.
About the Author
HEATHER MUNRO PRESCOTT is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University. She is the author of Student Bodies: The Impact of Student Health on American Society and Medicine and the award-winning A Doctor of Their Own: The History of Adolescent Medicine.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Unraveling Fertility and Power by Paul Farmer
Acknowledgements
Acronyms
1 Introduction: When Pigs Feasted and People Starved
2 Interpretations of Reproduction: Demography, Anthropology, and the Political Economy of Fertility
3 Gender and Survival: Living on the Edge in Citandeacute; Soleil
4 The Family Planning Center: A Clinic in Conflict
5 A Community Consumed: Fire, Politics, and Health Care
6 The Political Economy of International Aid: Grounding Ethnography, Engaging History
7 Health in Haiti: Producing Equity
Epilogue
Appendix: Organizations Supporting COmprehensive Reproductive Health and Economic Empowerment
Notes
Bibliography
Index