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Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood Kindle Edition

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 132 ratings

In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.

From the Publisher

Policing the Womb, Roe vs, Wade, Abortion, reproductive rights

Editorial Reviews

Review

Policing The Womb tells a frankly disquieting and frightening story about the status of reproductive health and rights in the United States. It captures what has become the modern day horrors of reproductive health across the country, from the escalating attacks on abortion rights, to the civil and criminal penalization of pregnant women for falling down steps, refusing c-sections, and attempting suicide. Michele Goodwin brilliantly captures what is at stake in the war on women's reproductive health and rights. I could not put the book down. Anthony Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

Michele Goodwin's Policing the Womb is aprerequisite to understanding the very real dangers posed by punitive statelaws enacted under the guise of protecting women's health, but which haveinstead criminalized women's conduct during pregnancy, harmed women's andgirls' health, and allowed unimaginable state interventions into women'sreproductive lives. Goodwin brings into sharp focus the compelling stories ofthe first targets and victims of these laws--primarily poor women and women ofcolor--as she puts into context the risks to all women given the currentpolitical climate and Supreme Court's jurisprudence. After you finish reading Policing the Womb and havequelled your anger, you will have no choice but to join one of the many localand national efforts to fight for women's full constitutional and fundamentalhuman rights. Kathy Spillar, ExecutiveDirector, Feminist Majority Foundation

Basedon extensive research and advocacy, Michele Goodwin vividly shows how theintensifying punishment of pregnant women in the name of fetal protection comesat a devastating cost to human health and freedom.
Policing the Womb is an urgent call to end the dehumanizingpractice of criminalizing pregnancy.
Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing theBlack Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

"
Policing The Womb is the roadmap we need RIGHT NOW to understand how to navigate the sandstorm of laws being created to claim ownership of our bodies. It brilliantly lays out all the ways politicians and the medical community are removing pregnant people from the most important decisions we will make about how best to manage our reproductive lives." Lizz Winstead, Co-Creator of the Daily Show, Founder/Chief Creative Officer: Abortion Access Front

ProfessorGoodwin has written the definitive examination of the disturbing and pervasivetrend of policing pregnant women's bodies. She skillfully draws on contemporarystories as examples that reflect how the establishment of legal rights for theunborn - so-called "fetal protection laws" - inevitably define pregnant women'sbodies as objects of the state, to be controlled and punished. Informative and eye-opening,
Policing the Womb makes a clear casefor systemic change towards reproductive justice.
Rebecca Haimowitz, Director and Producer, 62Days

From the Inside Flap

In this brilliant, shocking book, Michele Goodwin critiques recent lawsfiguring embryos and fetuses as legally independent "persons."Goodwin shows how criminalizing pregnant women who are incest survivors orsuicidal or drug dependent or homeless exacerbates the brutal consequences ofliving with trauma, poverty or toxic environmental hazards. Shackling andimprisoning women--particularly poor, uninsured women of color--for failures to"control" themselves has ushered in policies that place prosecutorsand their surrogates in delivery rooms. Goodwin makes clear the heartbreakingirony of laws that, in the name of protecting life, divide women's bodiesagainst themselves and implement profound violations of medical ethics,privacy, and ruptures in constitutional process and equal protection.
Patricia Williams, James L. Dohr Professor of Law Emerita, Columbia Law School

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B082PZHR4Q
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press (March 12, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 12, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2383 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 326 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 110703017X
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 132 ratings

About the author

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Michele Goodwin
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Michele Goodwin is an author, commentator, public speaker, and professor. Her editorials appear in the LA Times, NY Times, Huffington Post, AlterNet, Politico, Forbes, Chicago Sun Times, and other prominent news media.

She is a Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine with appointments at the School of Law, Program in Public Health, Department of Criminology, Law, & Society, Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Center for Psychology and Law. She is the founder and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at UC Irvine School of Law and its internationally acclaimed Reproductive Justice Initiative. Professor Goodwin is one of the world’s leading authorities on the regulation of medicine, science, and biotechnology. Her publications include five books and over 70 articles and book chapters on law’s regulation of the human body, including civil and criminal regulation of pregnancy and reproduction, reproductive technologies, human trafficking (for organs, sex, and marriage), and tissue and organ transplantation. Her recent works appear in or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Georgetown Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, and Texas Law Review, among others.

For more information, visit her website: michelebgoodwin.com

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
132 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2024
    This a scholarly treatment of the issues surrounding the women of childbearing age. A pregnant woman has enough to deal with without being threatened by prosecutors and lawyers should she have to terminate her pregnancy for legitimate reasons--health, financial, or any other reason. It is her body her risk and nobody else's! The antiabortionists don't care! Just put women and their physicians in jail. We cannot return to pre-Roe. I'm old enough to know from personal experience the desperation a pregnant, poor, unmarried woman.
    experienced. Justice demands that the government--federal, state, county. or city--have no interest in these matters.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2023
    Beautiful book and I highly recommend it. A MUST read
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2022
    I’m still reading this but I feel like it’s important to understand the legal ramifications of the new normal
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2021
    I’m purchasing at least 2 or 3 more copies; especially for the young women in my life that are Activist & concerned about the declining Rights that Must be in place for Women to maintain our hard fought & hard won progress!!!
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2024
    As a woman and healthcare provider deeply concerned about the state of reproductive healthcare in this country I would recommend reading this book. Women are human beings not incubators and abortion is healthcare vital healthcare for many women. To think otherwise is deny a living breathing woman a right to life not a “potential” person. A woman who could have living children, a husband, sisters, brothers, a mother, father. I challenge you to claim to call yourself a Christian when you hold those beliefs.
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2020
    Has some great material but a little to academic for my taste.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2022
    I've noticed that the font size in many books is getting smaller. I've been looking forward to reading this book but found the font size to be impossible to read...the smallest print I've seen. Will be returning the book and looking for alternatives...
    14 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2022
    Inside the. Womb provides a deep understanding of how religion, politics, and policies have been weaponized as a decisive tool to demonize and manipulate the thoughts of the global population to minimize basic human rights!
    10 people found this helpful
    Report

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