Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion
| AUTHOR | Fissell, Mary |
| PUBLISHER | Seal Press (CA) (03/11/2025) |
| PRODUCT TYPE | Hardcover (Hardcover) |
Description
The "eye-opening" (New York Review of Books) history of how restricting access to abortion has been used to curtail women's advancement Attitudes about abortion cycle between long periods of widespread tolerance, to repression, and back again. What accounts for these pendulum swings? From ancient Greece to the modern West, historian of medicine Mary Fissell argues, abortion repression springs up in response to men's anxieties about women's increasing independence. In Pushback, Fissell shows that, across centuries and continents, abortion has always been commonplace, and persecuting women for ending pregnancies has been about controlling their behavior. As Protestantism de-emphasized celibacy, new abortion restrictions policed unmarried women's sex lives. Nineteenth-century men unsettled by first-wave feminism hoped to establish medicine as a male profession, and so advocated for abortion bans to undercut women's new roles as physicians. Fissell presents this history through the hidden stories of women committed to reproductive self-determination: holy women of the early Catholic Church whose ability to end pregnancies was considered miraculous, midwives accused of witchcraft or criminal conspiracy, and everyday women whose pregnancies threatened their livelihoods--and their lives. Pushback is essential reading for understanding the complex history of abortion and making sense of recent crackdowns on reproductive rights.
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Product Format
Product Details
ISBN-13:
9781541604070
ISBN-10:
1541604075
Binding:
Hardback or Cased Book (Sewn)
Content Language:
English
More Product Details
Page Count:
288
Carton Quantity:
20
Product Dimensions:
5.90 x 1.00 x 9.30 inches
Weight:
1.05 pound(s)
Feature Codes:
Bibliography,
Index,
Price on Product
Country of Origin:
US
Subject Information
BISAC Categories
Social Science | Abortion & Birth Control
Social Science | Women
Social Science | History
Dewey Decimal:
362.198
Library of Congress Control Number:
2024039349
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
jacket back
Attitudes about abortion cycle between long periods of widespread tolerance, to repression, and back again. What accounts for these pendulum swings? From ancient Greece to the modern West, historian of medicine Mary Fissell argues abortion repression springs up in response to men's anxieties about women's increasing independence. In Pushback, Fissell shows that, across centuries and continents, abortion has always been commonplace, and persecuting women for ending pregnancies has been about controlling their behavior. As Protestantism de-emphasized celibacy, new abortion restrictions policed unmarried women's sex lives. Nineteenth-century men unsettled by first-wave feminism hoped to establish medicine as a male profession and so advocated for abortion bans to undercut women's new roles as physicians. Fissell presents this history through the hidden stories of women committed to reproductive self-determination: holy women of the early Catholic Church whose ability to end pregnancies was considered miraculous, midwives accused of witchcraft or criminal conspiracy, and everyday women whose pregnancies threatened their livelihoods and lives. Pushback is essential reading for understanding the complex history of abortion and making sense of recent crackdowns on reproductive rights.
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publisher marketing
The "eye-opening" (New York Review of Books) history of how restricting access to abortion has been used to curtail women's advancement Attitudes about abortion cycle between long periods of widespread tolerance, to repression, and back again. What accounts for these pendulum swings? From ancient Greece to the modern West, historian of medicine Mary Fissell argues, abortion repression springs up in response to men's anxieties about women's increasing independence. In Pushback, Fissell shows that, across centuries and continents, abortion has always been commonplace, and persecuting women for ending pregnancies has been about controlling their behavior. As Protestantism de-emphasized celibacy, new abortion restrictions policed unmarried women's sex lives. Nineteenth-century men unsettled by first-wave feminism hoped to establish medicine as a male profession, and so advocated for abortion bans to undercut women's new roles as physicians. Fissell presents this history through the hidden stories of women committed to reproductive self-determination: holy women of the early Catholic Church whose ability to end pregnancies was considered miraculous, midwives accused of witchcraft or criminal conspiracy, and everyday women whose pregnancies threatened their livelihoods--and their lives. Pushback is essential reading for understanding the complex history of abortion and making sense of recent crackdowns on reproductive rights.
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