Full Description
This vivid account by a nationally prominent doctor reports the daily challenges of offering and receiving abortion services in a volatile political and social atmosphere. In stories from the front lines - from protecting patients and staff from protesters' attacks to the dangers to women of restricted access to abortion services, and the pertinent findings of his remote research in Latin America, Hern's book is strikingly detailed just as it exposes the needs of women and the U. S. national interest. Dr. Hern - an abortion specialist, researcher, scholar, and highly visible public advocate -shows how abortion saves women's lives given the many risks that arise during pregnancy - remarkably more than most people realize. He points to political and national solutions to reverse a reawakened crisis that now threatens democracy. Throughout the book, Dr. Hern shows how the current emergency was largely created by political actors who have exploited and distorted the abortion issue to increase and consolidate their power.
A vital component of women's health care, the crisis over abortion is not new. Yet the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the steady accumulation of power by America's right wing has put the issue at a level of urgency and national prominence not seen since the days before legalization. Women's need for safe abortion services will continue as the struggle to secure their rights intensifies. This book is about that struggle during what has evolved, over the last 50 years, to an Age of Unreason.
Contents
Introduction: Abortion in the age of unreason 1 Terror on the labor deck 2 Abortion and public health in the Americas 3 Focus on family planning 4 Abortion becomes an issue in America 5 Making safe abortion real for women 6 "Please don't ever stop doing this." 7 Abortion in the seventies 8 Abortion politics and public policy in Colorado 9 Doing something radical in the most conservative way possible 10 Know the tree by its fruit 11 Anti-abortion violence: assassinations and stochastic terrorism 12 The illness of pregnancy 13 When is an egg not an egg? 14 Abortion and the Supreme Court 15 Partial truth abortion - or, political pornography for Republicans 16 The language of abortion - words matter 17 "First, kill all the doctors" 18 The international role of abortion in women's health and population growth 19 Choice comments 20 I can't wear a tank 21 Keep your paws off my pussy and your laws out of my uterus 22 The voices of women, their families, and those who help them 23 After Dobbs and post-Roe
