Synopses & Reviews
aOur Bodies, Our Crimes is a beautifully written and well researched book that makes an original and important contribution to the emerging social science literature on reproductive politics. I strongly recommend it.a --Carole Joffe, author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v Wade
aIlluminates the dark corners of a public polity that holds pregnant women accountable for all aspects and outcomes of their reproduction without offering the compassion, education, or control necessary to produce happy endings a or beginnings.a
aJennifer Reich, author of Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System
aAt last, a book that recognizes that reproductive rights encompass more than abortion rights. Our Bodies, Our Crimes covers all of the essential and highly controversial topics regarding the intersection of reproductive rights and criminal justice.a
aClaire M. Renzetti, co-author of Women, Men, and Society
The intense policing of womenas reproductive capacity places womenas 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. Pregnant inmates are subject to inhumane practices such as shackling during labor and poor prenatal care. 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 todocument how the law and the criminal justice system police women's rights to conceive, to be pregnant, and to raise their children. Through vivid and disturbing case studies, Flavin shows how the state seeks to establish what a agood womana and afit mothera should look like and whose reproduction is valued. With a stirring conclusion that calls for broad-based measures that strengthen womenas 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. At its heart, this book is about the right of a woman to be a healthy and valued member of society independent of how or whether she reproduces.
Review
“Our Bodies, Our Crimes is a beautifully written and well researched book that makes an original and important contribution to the emerging social science literature on reproductive politics. I strongly recommend it.”
-Carole Joffe,author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v Wade
Review
“Illuminates the dark corners of a public polity that holds pregnant women accountable for all aspects and outcomes of their reproduction without offering the compassion, education, or control necessary to produce happy endings—or beginnings.”
-Jennifer Reich,author of Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System
Review
“Our Bodies, Our Crimes is one of the most compelling books I've read in recent years. Flavins writing is exquisite and her documentation is careful and thorough. Whether informing the reader about reproductive freedom, battered women, or incarcerated women, she does so even-handedly and ably captures the complexities and depravities that real women and girls encounter every day in this country. Flavin draws on high profile cases, unknown cases, laws, policies, history, criminology research and much more to explain how her cases are decided by race, gender, class, and sexuality. Her book will help students, legal professionals, gender and legal scholars, and lay people to understand the common themes and threads of violence against women and girls and the sexism, racism, and classism in labeling girls and women deviant and criminals.”
-Joanne Belknap,author of The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice
Review
"Illuminates the dark corners of a public polity that holds pregnant women accountable for all aspects and outcomes of their reproduction without offering the compassion, education, or control necessary to produce happy endings — or beginnings."
—Jennifer Reich, author of Fixing Families:Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System
Review
“At last, a book that recognizes that reproductive rights encompass more than abortion rights. Our Bodies, Our Crimes covers all of the essential and highly controversial topics regarding the intersection of reproductive rights and criminal justice.”
-Claire M. Renzetti,co-author of Women, Men, and Society
Review
“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, Flavins attention to historical detail and unfailing moral compass make her progressive reexamination of womens rights thorough and convincing.”
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
“Highly recommended.”
- Choice
Review
“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, Flavins attention to historical detail and unfailing moral compass make her progressive reexamination of womens rights thorough and convincing.”
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“In Our Bodies, Our Crimes, Flavin traces the life-and-death power that the little-examined patriarchal assumptions informing our common life can have--especially among poor, nonwhite women. Flavin . . . supplies a sobering primer on the laws and social constraints that keep women from fully controlling their bodies. The case studies she surveys in Our Bodies, Our Crimes make it painfully clear that the freedom to decide how and when to reproduce is, for a huge swath of American women, just as important as the much more fervidly discussed question of how and when women can choose not to reproduce.”
- Bookforum
“Highly recommended.”
- Choice
“Our Bodies, Our Crimes is a beautifully written and well researched book that makes an original and important contribution to the emerging social science literature on reproductive politics. I strongly recommend it.”
- Carole Joffe, author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v Wade
“Our Bodies, Our Crimes is one of the most compelling books I've read in recent years. Flavins writing is exquisite and her documentation is careful and thorough. Whether informing the reader about reproductive freedom, battered women, or incarcerated women, she does so even-handedly and ably captures the complexities and depravities that real women and girls encounter every day in this country. Flavin draws on high profile cases, unknown cases, laws, policies, history, criminology research and much more to explain how her cases are decided by race, gender, class, and sexuality. Her book will help students, legal professionals, gender and legal scholars, and lay people to understand the common themes and threads of violence against women and girls and the sexism, racism, and classism in labeling girls and women deviant and criminals.”
- Joanne Belknap, author of The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice
Review
"Flavin set out to examine the policing of women's reproduction in various contexts, and she succeeds in doing so with a text that is exceptionally well researched and written in a style that is both readable and eloquent. This book would make a fine addition to a course dedicated to social-justice issues in women's lives."-Feminist Formations,
Review
"Seen through Herbert's sharply focused analytical lens, the military is a socio-historical bastion of masculinity. Military service is a rite of passage into masculinity, a sort of 'finishing school' for men. In addition to questions of ability, women who join the service are suspected of gender transgressions. These management strategies reveal much about how the military controls gender and sexuality."-Jodi O'Brien,,Seattle University
Review
"Looks at how women in the armed forces deal with perceived conflicts between femininity and being a good soldier through active strategies that accentuate or play down perceptions of masculinity and femininity. . . . Goes a long way toward showing how this distorting pressure impedes the true integration of women and men." -Choice,
Review
"Working with interview data and with 285 surveys completed by veterans and active-duty personnel, Herbert shows how military women often adjust their language, dress, hairstyles, comportment, activities, and other characteristics in an effort to shape how they are perceived." -The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Review
"The book would serve as a valuable undergraduate text to introduce students to martial gender issues." -Sexualities 4,
Synopsis
Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association; Sex and Gender Section
The Real Issue behind the Abortion Debate
An op-ed by Jeanne Flavin in the San Francisco Chronicle
2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
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. Pregnant inmates are subject to inhumane practices such as shackling during labor and poor prenatal care. 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 raise their children. Through vivid and disturbing case studies, Flavin shows how the state seeks to establish what a -good woman- and -fit mother- should look like and whose reproduction is valued. With a stirring conclusion that calls 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. At its heart, this book is about the right of a woman to be a healthy and valued member of society independent of how or whether she reproduces.
Synopsis
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. Pregnant inmates are subject to inhumane practices such as shackling during labor and poor prenatal care. 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 raise their children. Through vivid and disturbing case studies, Flavin shows how the state seeks to establish what a good woman and fit mother should look like and whose reproduction is valued. With a stirring conclusion that calls 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. At its heart, this book is about the right of a woman to be a healthy and valued member of society independent of how or whether she reproduces.
Synopsis
Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association; Sex and Gender Section
2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
An important work documenting how the criminal justice system polices women's reproductive capacity
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. Pregnant inmates are subject to inhumane practices such as shackling during labor and poor prenatal care. 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 raise their children. Through vivid and disturbing case studies, Flavin shows how the state seeks to establish what a "good woman" and "fit mother" should look like and whose reproduction is valued. With a stirring conclusion that calls 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. At its heart, this book is about the right of a woman to be a healthy and valued member of society independent of how or whether she reproduces.
Synopsis
Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association; Sex and Gender SectionThe Real Issue behind the Abortion Debate
An op-ed by Jeanne Flavin in the San Francisco Chronicle
2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
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. Pregnant inmates are subject to inhumane practices such as shackling during labor and poor prenatal care. And decades after Roe, the criminalization of certain procedures and regulation of abortion providers still obstruct womens 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 womens rights to conceive, to be pregnant, and to raise their children. Through vivid and disturbing case studies, Flavin shows how the state seeks to establish what a "good woman" and "fit mother" should look like and whose reproduction is valued. With a stirring conclusion that calls for broad-based measures that strengthen womens 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. At its heart, this book is about the right of a woman to be a healthy and valued member of society independent of how or whether she reproduces.
Synopsis
Drawing on surveys and interviews with almost 300 female military personnel, Melissa Herbert explores how women's everyday actions, such as choice of uniform, hobby, or social activity, involve the creation and re-creation of what it means to be a woman, and particularly a woman soldier. Do women feel pressured to be "more masculine," to convey that they are not a threat to men's jobs or status and to avoid being perceived as lesbians? She also examines the role of gender and sexuality in the maintenance of the male-defined military institution, proposing that, more than sexual harassment or individual discrimination, it is the military's masculine ideology--which views military service as the domain of men and as a mechanism for the achievement of manhood--which serves to limit women's participation in the military has increased dramatically. In the wake of armed conflict involving female military personnel and several sexual misconduct scandals, much attention has focused on what life is like for women in the armed services. Few, however, have examined how these women negotiate an environment that has been structured and defined as masculine.
About the Author
Jeanne Flavin is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Fordham University and co-editor of Race, Gender, and Punishment: From Colonialism to the War on Terror. She is also a member of the board of directors for National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), a non-profit organization which protects the civil rights of women. Proceeds from this book will be shared with NAPW.
Table of Contents