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Fit to Be Tied
First Paperback Edition
Cloth Price: $45.95
Paper Price: $26.95
Subtitle:
Sterilization and
Reproductive Rights in America, 1950-1980
Author:
Rebecca M. Kluchin
Subject: Medicine,
Women's
Studies, History
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4527-1
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4999-6
Pages:
304 pages
Publication Date: March 2011
Series:
Critical
Issues in Health and Medicine
Awards:
Winner of the
Keller-Sierra Book Prize from the Western Association of Women's
Historians for best monograph published in 2009
Praise for Fit to Be Tied:
"Kluchin should be congratulated for her highly readable,
well-researched study of this important, but largely neglected aspect
of postwar women’s health history. This book makes a valuable
contribution to the literature on women’s studies, social policy, and
the history of medicine and public health."—Molly Ladd-Taylor, York
University
"Kluchin has added an important
contribution to the history of sterilization."—Journal of American History, March
2010
"Highly Recommended."—Choice
"In
Fit to Be Tied,
Rebecca Kluchin impressively navigates a critical period in the
history of reproductive health in America. Fit to Be Tied is very
innovative in
a subtle and understated way: Kluchin is one of the
first historians of gender and medicine to provide a sophisticated
framework
for mapping the sterilization practices of the pre-World War II period
into the
post-Roe V. Wade culture."—Bulletin
of the History of Medicine
"Kluchin has produced a much-needed study of the social and legal status of sterilization from the 1950s through the 1970s, based on a wealth of official documents and archival materials and featuring the voices of women from across the social spectrum who were adversely affected. Her narrative is a meticulous and compelling account of the legacies of negative and positive eugenics for reproductive politics and the lives of American women differentially marked by race, ethnicity, and class."—Journal of the History of Biology
Description:
The 1960s revolutionized American
contraceptive practice. Diaphragms, jellies, and condoms with high
failure rates gave way to newer choices of the Pill, IUD, and
sterilization. Fit to Be Tied
provides a history of sterilization and what would prove to become, at
once, socially divisive and a popular form of birth control.
During the first half of the twentieth
century, sterilization (tubal ligation and vasectomy) was a tool of
eugenics. Individuals who endorsed crude notions of biological
determinism sought to control the reproductive decisions of women they
considered “unfit” by nature of race or class, and used surgery to do
so. Incorporating first-person narratives, court cases, and official
records, Rebecca M. Kluchin examines the evolution of forced
sterilization of poor women, especially women of color, in the second
half of the century and contrasts it with demands for contraceptive
sterilization made by white women and men. She chronicles public
acceptance during an era of reproductive and sexual freedom, and the
subsequent replacement of the eugenics movement with “neo-eugenic”
standards that continued to influence American medical practice, family
planning, public policy, and popular sentiment.
Relevant Links
Fit to be Tied on Facebook
About the Authors:
Rebecca M. Kluchin
is an assistant professor of history at California State University,
Sacramento.
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Cloth Price: $45.95
Paper Price: $26.95
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