Reproductive WrongsReproductive Wrongs

"Where do damaging ideas about women come from? The belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to a natural order, to "traditional" values, is a myth that has long dominated American politics, providing justification for increasing control over women's bodies and lives. It could not be further from the truth. In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and independent scholar Sarah Ruden exposes how an ideology that vilified women in service of authoritarianism and power took hold. Beginning with Ovid's poetry, commissioned by Augustus, first emperor of Rome, and continuing through today, to the memoirs of an evangelical American "abortion survivor," Ruden shows how a doctrine of brutality against women was both invented and propagated. Reproductive Wrongs hinges on seven works that each marked key moments in this feminist, literary history of the West: The Pastoral Epistles introduced near-totalitarian measures to force childbearing in the early days of Christianity; The Hammer of the Witches outlined a program for demonizing women's fertility, justifying mass torture and killing during the Inquisition; And, Charles Dickens' The Chimes glorified the virtues of a large family, providing moral cover for a government campaign to raise birth-rates, thus filling a need for low-wage laborers in Industrial Britain. Illuminating, and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a deep radicalism that still rages into the 21st century, when half of the US population is once again threatened with restricted freedoms and totalitarian law"--Provided by publisher.