Reproductive wrongs : a short history of bad ideas about women / Sarah Ruden.
| Author/creator | Ruden, Sarah author. |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication | New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2026] |
| Copyright Date | ©2026 |
| Description | xvii, 220 pages ; 22 cm |
| Subjects |
| Portion of title | Short history of bad ideas about women |
| Contents | Dawn of the dicks : the Roman imperial poet Ovid inaugurates antiabortion propaganda -- Pregnant and foot-washing and in the kitchen : early Christian reproductive backlash -- It's the baby, stupid : Augustine's neurosis, our theocracy -- Hammered : a monk off his head about women's bodies -- Hell's bells : Dickens shills for Victorian misery -- This looks oddly familiar : eugenics and the holy image -- You can make this stuff up : antiabortion messaging in Wonderland. |
| Abstract | "The belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to 'traditional' values is a dangerous myth that has long prospered in American politics, providing justification for increasing control over women's bodies and lives. How did such damaging ideas arise? In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden exposes how ideologies that oppress women and families in the service of power took hold. Ruden traces a sweeping history through her trenchant analysis of seven pieces of literature that, she argues, marked key inflection points across two thousand years. From propagandistic poetry written by Ovid in the early Roman Empire to the biography of an evangelical American 'abortion survivor,' Ruden lays bare how doctrines of control over women were invented and propagated. The New Testament's Pastoral Epistles introduced near-totalitarian measures to force childbearing in the early days of Christianity. In the late fifteenth century, The Hammer of Witches outlined a program that demonized women's fertility, justifying mass torture and killing. And Charles Dickens's The Chimes glorified the virtues of large families among the very poor, playing into their suffering and exploitation in industrialized Victorian Britain. Scathing and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a right-wing radicalism that endures to this day, when half of the US population is once again threatened with the loss of basic human rights and totalitarian law" -- Jacket. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 192-207) and index. |
| Issued in other form | ebook version : 9781324075912 |
| LCCN | 2025052862 |
| ISBN | 9781324075905 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 1324075902 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | (electronic book) |
| Standard identifier# | CIPO000336822 |