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| TITLE | AUTHOR(S)/EDITOR(S) | SUMMARY | TOPIC(S) |
| A Question of Choice (Penguin 1993) | Sarah Weddington | Weddington, at 27 years old, won the Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion in America. This book recounts her amazing story of how she, her husband and few other pro-choice lawyers and doctors invoked the right to privacy defense to the court. However, given certain conditions affecting access to abortion, like limited funding and services, have made the author speak out for the presevation of freedom of choice. | Abortion |
| Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (University of California Press 1984) | Kristin Luker | Luker’s book examines the different and conflicting world views that shape both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. She argues that because one’s world view is by definition “those parts of life we take for granted, never imagine questioning, and cannot envision decent, moral people not sharing,” a fundamental difference in world views necessarily creates “outrage and vindictiveness” when these world views clash over an issue like abortion. | Abortion |
| Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950-2000 (University of California Press 1998) | Rickie Solinger ed. | This book is a compilation of essays on abortion and reproductive rights taken from a variety of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, political science, medicine, and law. I would recommend the book as a way to get a grasp of the shifting reproductive rights debate from a number of different perspectives. | Abortion |
| Abortion: The Clash of the Absolutes (W.W. Norton & Company 1992) (1990) | Laurence H. Tribe | The majority of the book focuses on setting out the debate itself and the social, political, and legal frameworks that encompass each side and color the terms of the debate. It provides a surprisingly comprehensive and readable history of the development of reproductive rights from Roe to Casey. | Abortion |
| Our Choices, Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion (iUniverse 2004) | Krista Jacob ed. | This book is a collection of women’s personal testimonies about their abortion experiences. The book conclues with an analysis of the current state of abortion politics. | Abortion |
| Protecting the Right to Choose (Plume 2007) | Kate Michelman | From the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America comes a political, thought-provoking, and timely narrative about a woman’s constitutional right to control her own body. | Abortion |
| Understanding the New Politics of Abortion (SAGE Publications 1993) | Malcolm L. Goggin ed. | This compilation of essays looks at abortion from a political science perspective. Since the book was published a decade ago, some of the arguments and most of the empirical data is out of date, but it provides an incredibly useful framework for looking at the way in which the nature and scope of the conflict in the political battle over abortion rights. | Abortion |
| What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: The Nation’s Top Legal Experts Rewrite America’s Most Controversial Decision (NYU Press 2005) | Jack Balkin | Eleven constitutional scholars, including Reva Siegel, rewrite the opinions in this case making use only of sources available at the time of the original decision. They take positions for and against the right to have an abortion. Balkin gives a comprehensive introduction to Roe v. Wade, including the history of the litigation, the constitutional and political battles that followed it, and where abortions rights are today in America. | Abortion |
| Legal Issues in Biotechnology and Human Reproduction: Artificial Conception and Modern Genetics (Quorum Books 1991) | Warren Freedman | With advances in biological engineering and human reproduction, society is confronted with legal, ethical, and religious dilemmas. Freedman gives us a comprehensive examination of the subjects by sorting through the various issues surrounding artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, and other aspects of contemporary reproductive and technology trends. | Assisted Reproductive Technology |
| Making Women Pay: The Hidden Cost of Fetal Rights (Cornell University Press 2003) | Rachel Roth | Roth’s comprehensive research shows how legal policies and court decisions that grant fetal personhood will displace women as recipients of needed services such as health care and welfare, and as citizens deserving of equal rights under the Constitution. | Fetal Rights |
| Education, Equality and Human Rights: Issues of Gender,’Race’, Sexuality, Disability and Social Class (Routledge 2006) | M. Cole | This book addresses the issue of human rights and itsir relationship to education in the last century. The issues of gender, race, sexuality, disability, and social class are covered individually and in context with education. | General/Background |
| Gender and Rights in Reproductive and Maternal Health: Manual for a Learning Workshop | World Health Organization | This workshop manual is designed for policy-makers and others responsible for reproductive health. | General/Background |
| Historical and Multicultural Encyclopedia of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States (Greenwood Press 2002) | Judith A. Baer ed. | This book is "what college teachers have long needed for students interested in learning more about reproductive rights. Intelligently organized and reader-friendly." - Wendy Brown, Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley | General/Background |
| Learning to Dance: Advancing Womens Reproductive Health and Well-Being from the Perspectives of Public Health and Human Rights (FXB Center for Health and Human Rights 2005) | Alicia Ely Yamin ed. | This book promotes understanding of how health and human rights more effectively work together, including addressing human rights implications of reproductive health interventions and fostering rights-based policies and laws relating to sexuality and reproductive health. | General/Background |
| Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America (NYU Press 2005) | Rickie Solinger | This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic. Solinger writes from a broad, multi-issue, feminist perspective, placing the struggle for reproductive freedom at the center of a variety of political battles. | General/Background |
| Reproductive Health and Human Rights: Integrating Medicine, Ethics, and Law (Issues in Biomedical Ethics) (Oxford University Press, USA 2003) | Rebecca J. Cook, Bernard M. Dickens, and Mahmoud F. Fathalla | The authors are authorities on reproductive medicine, human rights, medical law, and bioethics. They provide a comprehensive introduction to reproductive and sexual health. The book also analyzes fifteen case-studies of reoccuring problems and considers what kinds of social change that would relieve the underlying problems of reproductive health. | General/Background |
| Reproductive Rights (Issues on Trial) (Greenhaven Press 2006) | William Dudley ed. | This book is designed for grades 9 and up. It examines various issues related to the topic through a compilation of writings about famous Supreme Court cases. The essays include court decisions and dissenting opinions as well as contemporary journalism pieces and retrospective commentary. | General/Background |
| The Reproductive Rights Reader: Law, Medicine, and the Construction of Motherhood (NYU Press 2008) | Nancy Ehrenreich ed. | The pieces in this interdisciplinary book favor a critical analysis that addresses the concrete material conditions that limit choices, the role of law and social policy in creating those conditions, and the gendered power dynamics that inform and are reinforced by the regulation of human reproduction. | General/Background |
| Trading Women’s Health and Rights?: Trade Liberalization and Reproductive Health in Developing Economies (Zed Books 2006) | Caren Grown ed., Elissa Braunstein ed., and Anju Malhotra ed. | Economic law and trade policies shape public health, including reproductive health. This book combines research from various areas on how the strength of international trade can affect reproductive rights and general public health. | General/Background |
| Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality, And Women in the New Millennium (Rutgers University Press 2005) | Wendy Chavkin ed. and Ellen Chesler ed. | This collection of eight essays examines various policies implemented by the international community to recognize women’s rights as Human Rights in an effort to protect women’s health and sexual freedom. These essays discuss the impact of these policies using case studies and consider the future path governments must take in order to ensure that their goals become reality. | General/Background |
| Agenda Setting, the UN, and NGOs: Gender Violence and Reproductive Rights (Georgetown University Press 2007) | Jutta M. Joachim | Joachim’s deft examination of the documents, proceedings, and actions of the UN and women’s advocacy NGOs reveals flaws in state-centered international relations theories as applied to UN policy, details the tactics and methods that NGOs can employ in order to push rights issues onto the UN agenda, and offers insights into the factors that affect NGO influence. | International |
| Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition (Routledge 1998) | Kamala Kempadoo ed. and Jo Doezema ed. | This book is a collection of essays written by scholars, activists, and grassroots organization leaders. It discusses studies concerning both male and female sex workers who are coming primarily out of developing countries and explores the social and economic issues of the sex industry. | International |
| Reproductive Rights in a Global Context: South Africa, Uganda, Peru, Denmark, the United States, Vietnam, Jordan (Vanderbilt University Press 2006) | Lara M. Knudsen | The book discusses the experiences of women within the global context. It shows the reader how population control policies have affected women’s reproductive rights in the past, and how the changing international debate on reproductive health will continue to influence those rights. | International |
| Women’s Reproductive Rights (Women’s Rights in Europe) (Palgrave Macmillan 2006) | Heather Widdows ed., Itziar Alkorta Idiakez ed., and Aitziber Emaldi Cirion ed. | Based on reports from various countries and practical input from researchers and activists in the reproductive rights field, this book is a current account of the issues surrounding reproductive rights in Europe. The contributions provide theoretical analysis of existing problems and suggest possible alternatives. | International |
| Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (Harvard University Press 1997) | Kristin Luker | Luker’s book discusses the history of America’s obsession with teen pregnancy. Her main point is that pregnancy not a cause of poverty, but a measurement of it. This book has great statistical information, but also interviews with pregnant teens. | Minors |
| Who Decides?: The Abortion Rights of Teens (Praeger Publishers 2006) | J. Shoshanna Ehrlich | Using case studies, Ehrlich explores the legal, social, and emotional dimensions of underage girls who are pregnant but who are not ready to give birth to or raise a child. | Minors |
| When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex--and Sex Education--Since the Sixties (W.W. Norton 2006) | Kristin Luker | Kristin Luker spent following parents in four America communities engaged in a passionate war of ideas and values, When Sex Goes to School explores a conflict with stakes that are deceptively simple and painfully personal. For these parents, the question of how their children should be taught about sex cuts far deeper than politics, religion, or even friendship. | Sexual Education |
| Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Vintage 1998) | Dorothy Roberts | Roberts passionately discusses how African American women have been engaged in an ongoing fight to gain control of their reproductive rights from the early days of slavery through the governments use of the long-term contraceptive Norplant in African American communities. | Women of Color |
| Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (NYU Press 2003) | Jennifer Nelson | Nelson tells the story of the struggle for legal and safe abortions and reproductive rights from the 1960s up through the early 1980s through the contributions of women of color. | Women of Color |
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