The University of California Press has published Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice After Roe v. Wade (2021), by Sara Matthiesen (George Washington University). A description from the Press:
The landmark case Roe v. Wade redefined family: it is now commonplace for Americans to treat having children as a choice. But the historic decision also coincided with widening inequality, an ongoing trend that continues to make choice more myth than reality. In this new and timely history, Matthiesen shows how the effects of incarceration, for-profit healthcare, disease, and poverty have been worsened by state neglect, forcing most to work harder to maintain a family.
Praise from reviewers:
"Amid debates over whether childcare qualifies as 'infrastructure,' Reproduction Reconceived intervenes with a call to radically reframe reproduction, family, motherhood, and caregiving as public goods, rather than as private obligations. Compellingly argued and compulsively readable, it makes clear why public support for families and caregiving has never been more urgent or necessary. It is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of our current moment."—Melissa Murray
"As contemporary events continue to focus our attention on what the United States would be like without access to legal abortion, Matthiesen asks us to consider that by making pregnancy and childbirth into a 'choice,' Roe v. Wade opened the door to brutal and devastating state neglect of the survival and well-being of children, pregnant people, and all their kin and caregivers."—Laura Briggs
More information is available here. (H/t: New Books Network)
-- Karen Tani
