Customer Reviews

Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century

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Alexander Sanger's Beyond Choice is an extraordinary book. While I consider myself to be mostly pro-choice, I had never really asked myself the question why we should we have reproductive freedom in the first place. This is the question that Alex Sanger tackles in this provocative book. Sanger makes the case of why all reproductive freedom, including abortion, is moral because it helps humanity survive. The book discusses the difficulties and dangers, especially to women, of human reproduction and makes it clear that we evolved to have reproductive freedom because it helps women and children survive. Sanger is not afraid to say that there can be limits on choice, especially in the area of new reproductive technologies. Of more importance, the book sets out rationales and strategies for including men in the battle for reproductive rights, and defines what the role of government should and should not be in our private lives. I am convinced, as will all readers and writers be, that no one who wants to express any opinion on the issue of choice, or life, can do so without reading this page-turning and vitally important book.

Alexander Sanger clearly relies on his grandmother's reputation in order to sell his book. Rife with grammatical errors and uncited sources, Sanger constantly calls his own credibility as a competent researcher into question. His ideas ARE interesting, but without telling us where he gets his statistics from, he leaves those good ideas unsupported.

I am heartily glad I only paid $1 for this book.

The grandson of Margaret Sanger is also involved in reproductive issues, but he openly is unable to completely appreciate today's sociopolitical realities with the policy area. Instead, he uses his famous name to sell a book that does not contribute to the pro-choice cannon. The lack of quality research might even inadvertently toughen present organizing conditions for people such as myself who currently work the policy trenches without benefit of celebrity.

While he muses about the Sadie Sachs story which propelled his grandmother to open the first birth control clinic in America, he asks us to find common ground with the people who want nothing more than to see that myself and other women are returned to similar conditions.

Ultimate unworkability of that aforementioned public policy oddly does not deter Sanger from his daydream. He continues to believe that the rest of the world is universally awed by the tale and the rightwing is only interested in recriminalizing abortion. Current evidence from Planned Parenthood Federation of America itself indicates the American rightwing opposes all sexuality outside of procreation but cannot publicly act on their real sentiments for fear of massive public outrage.

To be fair, Sanger proactively identifies the numerous flaws within his grandmother's political organizing-which was genuinely considered progressive during her life. In an obviously personally difficult chapter, he concedes that she worked with Eugenicists and let the south warp birth control into a system to shrink African Americans. Because it would have been easier to tout the homogenized family history and ignore `alternate' perspectives such as Dorothy Roberts, he performs a great reader service. Reproductive rights must include all options for all women regardless of ethnicity and/or disability.

Unfortunately, he looses the audience again with a chapter on men's role in the reproductive rights movement. Is Sanger trying to increase women's equality or keep their sexuality in check lest society become too independent? He also fails to identify that men have always marched for reproductive rights---while the `liberal' mass media presents these same events as "women only". Sanger falls into a similar trap by lamenting the passive reproductive issues position men take. Because they were the ones historically ruling if women could have access to contraception and/or abortion (and both physicians and judges until recently were overwhelmingly male) they played a very active reproductive policy role.

This book is certainly interesting from the `insider' perspective, but it does not provide any riveting insight for myself or other pro-choice advocates. If somebody else had written this same book it would quickly become one title of many. Since there is no current shortage of reproductive issue controversies, Sanger's book fell short of my expectations. Get the book for the `history' perspective, but don't expect path breaking content or something that can be applied to today's reproductive policy debate.

The defense of women's rights might be called the key American battle. It goes without saying that these are reproductive rights. The right to control the size of one's family, or, indeed, not to have a family at all, was established with great courage and effort only recently, by the grandmother of the author of this book. In America today whatever position one holds on this essential matter of private life and social policy, what is absolutely critical is ongoing public debate and behind it, education. Every American should know and think carefully about this subject, hence every American should read this book. How fortunate we are that an intelligent, articulate author like Alexander Sanger is a committed champion of women's rights.

Alexander Sanger has clearly spent many years living with the complex issues related to human reproduction. His recent book, Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom In The 21st Century, is the intellectual product of his remarkable experience, and his gift to all of us who are interested in maintaining freedom as a moral imperative.
Indeed, the strongest argument in his book is that chosing abortion can be morally positive, because the availability of abortion maximizes successful human reproduction. Equally compelling are his thoughts on the role of men in support of reproductive freedom, and the new insights that emerge from evolutionary biology.
In short, every thinking woman and man will benefit from reading this deeply considered book.

Abortion as a moral positive? I consider myself a pro-choice liberal to the core, but I think that's taking it a bit too far. I'm all for birth control, and for women taking control of their sexual and reproductive destinies, but I think Sanger misses the boat here.

As someone who volunteers at a local women's clinic by escorting patients in to see the doctor of their choice, I find it hard to fathom the idea that I am supposed to reach out and appreciate the viewpoint of those who call me a murderer, call the employees of the clinic murderers, and call the patients murderers (screaming all the while). Reasoning can be done only with the reasonable. To suggest otherwise is simply foolish.

Mr. Sanger is pro-choice, which is good. The government has no right, in a free society, to watch the progress of a pregnant woman and make sure she doesn't do anything to her own body. The quam with this book however, is that Mr. Sanger advocates socialistic policies that woudl basically force, through taxes, everyoen to pay for prenatal healthcare, including abortions. If he was truly pro-choice, he would advocate the choice of whether or not to fund abortion.