With events and movements such as #MeToo, the Gender Equality UN Sustainable Development Goal, the Irish and Chilean abortion policy changes, and the worldwide Women's March movement, women's rights are at the top of the global public agenda. Yet, countries around the world continue to debate if and how women should have access to reproductive rights, and specifically abortion. This book provides the most comprehensive comparative review of this topic to date. How are reproductive rights produced? This book analyzes three spheres of influence on abortion policymaking: civil society, national government, and international bodies. It engages scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate students in social sciences, law, gender studies, and development and sustainability studies. With insights into the influence of intergovernmental bodies, international health organizations, state-level political representatives, and religious civil society players, this book will be of interest to policymakers, organizations and individuals concerned with influencing reproductive policy.

A new understanding of the slow drift to extremes in American politics that shows how the anti-abortion movement remade the Republican Party "A timely and expert guide to one of today's most hot-button political issues."-Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A sober, knowledgeable scholarly analysis of a timely issue."-Kirkus Reviews "[Ziegler's] argument [is] that, over the course of decades, the anti-abortion movement laid the groundwork for an insurgent candidate like Trump."-Jennifer Szalai, New York Times The modern Republican Party is the party of conservative Christianity and big business-two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the anti-abortion movement helped to forge and later upend this alliance. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain power in the GOP by changing how campaign spending-and the First Amendment-work. The anti-abortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in U.S. politics and persuaded conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ultimately, the campaign finance landscape that abortion foes created fueled the GOP's embrace of populism and the rise of Donald Trump. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics-and explains how it had everything to do with the strange intersection of right-to-life politics and campaign spending.

In the United States, egg donation for reproduction and egg donation for research involve the same procedures, the same risks, and the same population of donors-disadvantaged women at the intersections of race and class. Yet cultural attitudes and state-level policies regarding egg donation are dramatically different depending on whether the donation is for reproduction or for research. Erin Heidt-Forsythe explores the ways that framing egg donation itself creates diverse politics in the United States, which, unlike other Western democracies, has no centralized method of regulating donations, relying instead on market forces and state legislatures to regulate egg donation and reproductive technologies. Beginning with a history of scientific research around the human egg, the book connects historical debates about the "natural" (reproduction) and "unnatural" (research) uses of women's eggs to contemporary political regulation of egg donation. Examining egg donation in California, New York, Arizona, and Louisiana and coupled with original data on how egg donation has been regulated over the last twenty years, this book is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the politics of egg donation across the United States.

Foreign assistance by the United States is tangled with domestic politics, and perhaps this is most clear in relation to funding for health and family planning. The long arm of U.S. domestic politics has reached the intimate lives of women all over the world because it has threatened major cuts in funding to healthcare organizations in developing countries if they perform or promote abortions. This "global gag rule," so-called because to even mention abortion endangered funding, has been a hallmark of Republican administrations since it was first enacted by President Ronald Reagan. When Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the policy, there was popular uproar and a firestorm of debate. Proponents of the policy emphasize the importance of reducing the number of abortions globally and claim that the gag rule will be effective in achieving this goal. In this innovative book, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers argues that the gag rule has failed to achieve its goal of reducing abortions, in fact the restrictive legislation likely has increased unsafe abortions, and because the reduction in funding is indiscriminate there are negative repercussions across a range of health outcomes for women, children, and men. While proponents of the policy rely on ideology, Rodgers provides systematic analysis of how the global gag rule affects women's reproductive health across developing regions, grounded in a conceptual framework that models the complex factors that influence women's decision making about fertility. She also traces the background to American policy, the evolution of international family planning programs, the links between contraceptive access and fertility rates, and the relationship between restrictive abortion laws and abortion rates. And because Rodgers provides a rounded perspective on factors influencing women's decisions on reproduction and abortion, she offers a constructive and cost-effective approach for U.S. family planning assistance that targets integrated reproductive health services.

This text provides a careful examination of "mizuko kuyo", a Japanese religious ritual for aborted foetuses. Popularized during the 1970s, when religious entrepreneurs published frightening accounts of foetal wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers ritual attonement for women who, sometimes decades previously, chose to have abortions.;In its exploration of the complex issues that surround this practice, the text takes into account the history of Japanese attitudes towards abortion, the development of abortion rituals, the marketing of religion and the nature of power relations in intercourse, contraception and abortion. Although abortion in Japan is accepted and legal and was commonly used as birth control in the early postwar period, entrepreneurs used images from foetal photography to mount a surprisingly successful tabloid campaign to promote mizuko kuyo. Adopted by some religionists as an economic strategy, it was rejected by others on doctrinal, humanistic and feminist grounds.

What are the contemporary issues in abortion politics globally? What factors explain variations in access to abortion between and within different countries? This text provides a transnationally-focused, interdisciplinary analysis of trends in abortion politics using case studies from around the Global North and South. It considers how societal influences, such as religion, nationalism and culture, impact abortion law and access. It explores the impact of international human rights norms, the increasing displacement of people due to conflict and crisis and the role of activists on law reform and access. The book concludes by considering the future of abortion politics through the more holistic lens of reproductive justice. Utilising a unique interdisciplinary approach, this book provides a major contribution to the knowledge base on abortion politics globally. It provides an accessible, informative and engaging text for academics, policy makers and readers interested in abortion politics.

First edition, Winner of the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize, American Public Health Association With an emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation explores the long and unsettled history of eugenics in the United States. This expanded second edition includes shocking details demonstrating that eugenics continues to inform institutional and reproductive injustice. Alexandra Minna Stern draws on recently uncovered historical records to reveal patterns of racial bias in California's sterilization program and documents compelling individual experiences. With the addition of radically new and relevant research, this edition connects the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies.

'The history of how abortion came to be banned and how women lost--for the century between approximately 1870 and 1970--rights previously thought to be natural and inherent over their own bodies is a fascinating and infuriating one.