The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: population panic, birth strike, female feticide, United States, United Nations, World Congress of Families (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism by the author of the New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming, Michelle Goldberg exposes the global war on women’s reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences for the future of global development

Women’s rights are often treated as mere appendages to great questions of war, peace, poverty, and economic development. But as networks of religious fundamentalists, feminists, and bureaucrats struggle to remake sexual and childbearing norms worldwide, the battle to control women’s bodies has become a high-stakes enterprise, with the United States often supporting the most reactionary forces.

In a work of incisive cultural analysis and deep reporting, Michelle Goldberg shows how the emancipation of women has become the key human rights struggle of the twenty-first century. The Means of Reproduction travels through four continents, examining issues such as abortion, female circumcision, and Asia’s missing girls to show how the battle over women’s bodies has been globalized and how, too often, the United States has joined sworn enemies such as Iran and Sudan in an axis of repression. Reporting with unique insight from both the rarefied realm of international policy and from individual women’s lives, Goldberg elucidates the economic, demographic, and health consequences of women’s oppression, which affect more than half the world’s population.

As The Means of Reproduction reveals, the conflict between self-determination and patriarchal tradition has come to define pressing questions of global development. Empowering women is the key to retarding the progress of AIDS, curbing overpopulation, and helping the third world climb out of poverty, but attempts to improve women’s status elicit fierce opposition from conservatives who see women’s submission as key to their own national or religious identity.

From the anticommunist genesis of America’s attempts to stem population growth in poor countries to the current worldwide attack on women’s rights as a decadent Western imposition, Goldberg explores the interplay between the great issues of our time and the politics of sex and childbearing. Finally, The Means of Reproduction shows how women, strengthened by a solidarity that transcends borders, are fighting for freedom.

About the Author

Michelle Goldberg is an investigative journalist and the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a New York Times bestseller that was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. A former senior writer at Salon.com, Goldberg has written for Glamour, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian (UK), and many other publications, and she has taught at New York University’s graduate school of journalism. The Means of Reproduction won the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Work- in-Progress Award.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition edition (April 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594202087
• ISBN-13: 978-1594202087
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #183,315 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #18 in	Books > Science > Medicine > Reproductive & Sexual > Reproduction
  #19 in	Books > Nonfiction > Women's Studies > Abortion & Birth Control
  #24 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Rights

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smart and engaging, April 5, 2009

By	Beth Fredrck (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Michelle Goldberg brings passion and intelligence to an important global issue--women's health and rights. Her ability to combine political analysis with compelling storytelling makes this an interesting and informative read.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All the facts, not opinions to support Reproductive Health, April 5, 2009

By	Zoe Ann Nicholson (Newport Beach, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I first read about this book at RHRealityCHeck.org in an interview of Michelle Goldberg by Mandy Van Deven. I ordered it immediately and had to wait for it to arrive on April 4. This book is landing in our march toward reproductive intelligence, liberty and health at precisely the right moment. While social justice is unfolding; the backlash is mounting, gasping its last breaths, this book is rich with vision and understanding.
American women need to understand the reach of their influence, their dollars and their personal religion. There are places in the world where pregnancy and childbirth can be punishment, torture and deadly, US policies are contributing through policies and funding certain programs, unfunding others, gag orders and relinquishing responsibility to religious organizations.
Michelle explains all of this and more, making it clear how decisions in Washington DC or a neighborhood clinic end up practiced in Africa or India with no understanding of the cultural consequences.

The Means of Reproduction is brilliant, responsible and approachable. I highly recommend it. Finally a book that makes it clear that American women, with all our freedom, need to commit to provide women world-wide with comprehensive birth control information and methods.

22 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read on radical right and reproduction, April 5, 2009

By	Frances Kissling (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just read Nick Kristoff's op-ed column in the Sunday Times on the need for more funding for international family planning assistance. The Means of Reproduction is critical to a modern understanding of why something as simple and noncontroversial as family planning has been stalled for the last decade by the US religious right and the Vatican. Solid data, great stories and good analysis.