Search Results

This chapter follows Mary Calderone’s early writings on sexuality education, which emphasize the child’s right to sexual (self-)pleasure, her work at Planned Parenthood, her first book (Release from Sexual Tensions,1960), and Planned Parenthood’s unwillingness to take on the problem of sex education at the same time as it was introducing the birth control pill. The chapter concludes with Calderone’s decision to create an organization devoted to sexuality education and her departure from Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1964.

To the extent Sandel hints at substance, his republican virtues suitable for multiple-situated selves sound suspiciously liberal or at least compatible with liberalism, raising the question whether there is a significant distance between his pluralistic republicanism and the most attractive form of liberalism. If republicanism’s concern is simply that citizens engage in morally worthy social practices, then a regime that places no value on choice could simply assign citizens to engage in those practices; if Sandel objects that forcing persons into particular relationships and practices compromises the moral worth of those practices, he must implicitly assume that there is some value attached to the element of choice, autonomy, or personal self-government. Sandel does not comment on perhaps the most republican aspect of the joint opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: the latitude that it gives to the state to shape women’s decision-making process in favor of childbirth over abortion to encourage “wise” or responsible decisions, in part because of the “consequences” of the abortion decision for the women, the community, and prenatal life. Toleration need not be grudging and fragile if its proponents persuasively make a moral argument for it and its possible tempering of the formative project: autonomy is a human good, as are diversity, equal citizenship, and toleration itself, and a commitment to protecting those goods should often (but not always) constrain government from coercively acting to make citizens lead good lives by compelling “moral” and prohibiting “immoral” choices. It remains an open question whether we should wish to revitalize the republican tradition and to search for a substantive republic, but even if we should, most of the work of developing a moral reading of the Constitution of the substantive republic remains to be done.

This chapter explores the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case. It notes that many women during the decade after Roe v. Wade, got used to the notion that substantial access to abortions was a right they could count on. It further notes that concern is expressed by the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) about the likely consequences of a repudiation of Roe v. Wade. It provides that such Justices almost seem to concede that Roe v. Wade might have been, in 1973, a mistake which it would now be an even more serious mistake to repudiate altogether.

Today’s sexuality education emphasizes risk reduction rather than sexual health and pleasure, Mary Calderone’s original vision. Some programs, developed outside the school system, do show possibilities for something richer and more positive. This chapter describes the history of two such programs, those of the Unitarian Universalist Association and of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. But even these programs run into opposition from parents who must be respectfully engaged in preparatory education to disarm many understandable fears and misunderstandings. And even so, disputes do arise. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of a recent—ultimately successful—campaign in Worcester, Massachusetts, New England’s second largest city, to launch a comprehensive sex-education program. Interference from outside organizations such as Focus on the Family and a lack of inclusiveness in the planning process initially frightened the local School Committee and many families into opposing it. The campaign was successful only after a three-year effort. Sex education has changed over the decades in some ways, but its fundamentally defensive and fearful approach to sexuality still prevails in much of the country.

The 1970s history of school-based sex education, over which conservatives had declared victory at the close of the 1960s, demands a revised interpretation that emphasizes the persistent power of progressivism in the K–12 schoolhouse and society. Sex education programs in the 1970s were shaped by the feminist and gay liberation movements, and in California frequently provided by Planned Parenthood. Sex education and the fraught conversations it inspired also engaged a broader swath of the population during this period than they had just a few years earlier. Even amid the cultural transformations of the late 1960s, sex education programs had been conceived for and rolled out in mostly white districts, and the parents who organized against these curricula were largely suburban Anglo homemakers. In the 1970s, however, sex education programs were bolder, engaging more schoolchildren in more hours of instruction across a diverse range of communities.

While Sanger’s early focus was on increasing access to and information about birth control, one of her most loyal supporters, Katharine McCormick, consistently argued for the research and development of a new method of accessible, safe, reliable contraception controlled by women themselves, at a time when diaphragms, condoms, and withdrawal were common methods of birth control. Chapter 7 posits that McCormick’s feminism drove her to back development of the pill, correcting earlier historians who misunderstood her relationship with her husband. I also explain why Sanger and McCormick supported a prescription pill, which could be difficult for some women to obtain, while ostensibly trying to expand access to birth control. The chapter traces the way McCormick’s scientific interest in endocrinology, which developed from her intervention in her mentally ill husband’s medical care, and her feminist philosophy came together in her funding of the development of the birth control pill. At a time when Planned Parenthood was uninterested in research or concerned with developing a new contraceptive method that women could control, McCormick insisted that a pill was both possible and necessary, and she paid for its development by Gregory Pincus and John Rock. She then worked to ensure that women had access to the pill through its distribution at hospital clinics. McCormick single-handedly financed the expansion of reproductive rights for women through the development of the pill.

The beating of wives or girlfriends is a long-hidden aspect of family life that has existed over time and throughout cultures. There has been a dramatic change in both public and legal recognition at the end of the century that has resulted from the work of feminism. Although many aspects of family law have been influenced by the struggle for gender equality, legal transformation on domestic violence has been spearheaded by the women’s rights movement. This chapter examines some of the crucial aspects of this process and the legal reforms which have resulted. In 1992, the United States Supreme Court recognised the pervasiveness and severity of intimate violence for the first time in Planned Parenthood v Casey, and in 1994 Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act. Planned Parenthood v Casey is widely known as the decision in which the Supreme Court narrowly upheld constitutional protection for women’s right to reproductive choice. In its decision, the Court recounted the seriousness and the pervasiveness of the problem of domestic violence.

The manuscript concludes by examining the contemporary state of abortion activism in the United States. It considers the close friendship Scott Roeder struck with Shelley Shannon after she was incarcerated. In 2009, Roeder shot and killed Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his Wichita church. I also detail the surge in state and federal legislation intended to restrict women’s access to abortion and birth control, despite Americans’ stable attitude about abortion. Finally, the book considers how women were instrumental to the antiabortion movement’s efforts to diminish women’s ability to secure legal abortions in the post-Roe era.

The textualist says we can find what the Constitution means by consulting the plain words of the constitutional document. The consensualist consults a current social consensus on what the words of the document mean. This chapter treats these approaches together because both claim to consult conventional understandings of the meanings of the words. It concludes that the textualist and the consensualist reason, not from plain words or social consensus, but from a conception of democracy that is controversial enough to require a philosophic defense — a defense that textualists and consensualists would but cannot responsibly avoid. The chapter also distinguishes a plain words version of textualism from an abstract version of textualism, showing that the latter is equivalent to the philosophic approach. It sketches a preliminary view of the philosophic approach and previews objections that it would be undemocratic, un-American, dangerous, and/or fruitless.

Many feminist philanthropists believed that economic and political rights for women were incomplete without the right to control one’s reproduction. America’s leading birth control advocate, Margaret Sanger, was a skilled fund-raiser. She carefully managed a network of society women who supported her organizations, publications, and private life. Chapter 6 takes a new approach to understanding Sanger: by moving the spotlight from Sanger to her supporters, it becomes clear that her strategic turn to wealthy women did not come at the expense of her feminism (even if she did drop her socialism), as has been argued by some historians. This chapter shows that women like Gertrude Minturn Pinchot and Juliet Barrett Rublee rallied behind Sanger, creating a Committee of 100 to defend her and promote the birth control movement. Unafraid of being arrested, their personal lives and their birth control advocacy revealed their feminism. Chapter 6 focuses on the ways that feminism undergirded rich women’s donations, compelled them to take on controversial issues, and pushed them to influence Sanger and shape the movement and the American Birth Control League and Planned Parenthood. Furthermore, this chapter demonstrates the social networks of power created by wealthy women.

The first appointment to Planned Parenthood is some sort of a woman's rite of passage when it comes to her sexual awakening and pregnancy concerns. The use of contraceptive methods used to be unlawful for the general public, particularly minors and the unmarried, although access to pills and condoms was possible, if not for shady operations. These conflicts between formal rules and informal convenience only increased the separation between rich and poor, the more experienced and the naïve. This chapter focuses on the advocacy with respect to the legalization of access to contraception, looking back at the history of birth control devices and their availability. It also explains how the shortage of reliable birth control has become a hindrance for women's surge towards economic equality, as well as a stepping stone for the development of the red and blue paradigm dichotomy.

This chapter reviews the major findings of the book, demonstrating how Tea Party women differ from previous generations of right-wing women. It recounts how Tea party Women are appropriating feminism by arguing that conservative issues, particularly fiscal discipline and gun rights, are feminist issues. It also assesses the opportunities and challenges Tea Party women face in shaping the Republican Party. Lastly, it argues that Tea Party women face steep odds in changing the views of most American women, who remain more supportive of a social safety net and pro-active government providing more assistance to American families, not less.

Throughout the 1960s, the Protestant mainline developed a theology of “responsible parenthood,” grounded in scripture and Christian thought that turned the use of contraception within marriage into a site of Christian moral agency. Responsible parenthood language offered religious responses to scientific advances and scientifically articulated social problems like population explosion. Protestant clergy, nationally and locally, deployed it to encourage birth control among married couples. These leaders were often members of what is called “mainline” Protestantism, encompassing such moderate, non-evangelical denominations such as the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the American Baptist Church, and the Episcopal Church. They eschewed fundamentalism and valued ecumenical cooperation, particularly among liberal white Protestants, building alliances through groups such as the National Council of Churches (NCC). While the number of mainline Protestants has declined since the middle of the twentieth century, in the 1960s mainline Protestants constituted a prominent voice in public conversations. Their influence was so great that much of what historians tend to see as secular was actually deeply inflected with liberal Protestant values.

The epilogue briefly traces the history of population thought and policy from the 1974 UN World Population Conference to the present. It contends that the real problem with population is that it remains a prominent scapegoat for nearly all of the world’s ills and demonstrates that debates about how to control the growth of the world’s population have largely silenced and co-opted voices that refuse to attribute such pressing problems as poverty and climate change to expanding human numbers. The framing of the world’s complex issues as “the population problem” diverts resources from just and equitable solutions at the expense of the world’s most vulnerable people and of the planet itself.

Moralism’s implementation and impact were complex and variable. Rightist anxieties emerged strongly in the late 1960s and retained their strength among police even when, after 1974, hard-liners found themselves in an increasingly embittered minority, marginalized by democratization. In cultural and moral policy, as in other realms, the Brazilian regime often devolved into a confusing and contradictory array of agencies, factions, and prerogatives. If the unwieldy machinery of government closed ranks for some time around the hard-line, right-wing prerogatives of moralism and repression, this was not always seamless. The relative strength of rightist prerogatives faced challenges both in the uneven application of moralistic countersubversion and in the vicissitudes of rightists’ power as the dictatorship dragged its way to a close. By the late 1970s, redemocratization and cultural pluralism waxed just as hard-line interests and the power of moralism waned—much to the consternation and alarm of rightists within and outside of the regime. Via the stories of Brazilian pornographic film and of debates over birth control, I demonstrate the ways in which moral concerns continued to motivate the regime’s most repressive elements, in and out of power and favor.

This chapter reviews theory and research that seeks to explain the emergence of communication networks based on individuals’ cognitions about other people and the relations among those individuals. Contagion theories seek to explain networks as conduits for “infectious” attitudes and behavior. Semantic theories attempt explanations on the basis of networks that map similarities among individuals’ interpretations. Theories of cognitive social structures examine cognitions regarding “who knows who” and “who knows who knows who,” while theories of cognitive knowledge structures examine cognitions of “who knows what” and “who knows who knows what.” Finally, cognitive consistency theories explain how networks are understood on the basis of individuals’ cognitions of consistency or balance in their networks. The remainder of this chapter discusses each of these areas and their extensions. Contagion theories are based on the assumption that the opportunities for contact provided by communication networks serve as a mechanism that exposes people, groups, and organizations to information, attitudinal messages, and the behavior of others (Burt, 1980, 1987; Contractor & Eisenberg, 1990). This exposure increases the likelihood that network members will develop beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes that are similar to those of others in their network (Carley, 1991; Carley & Kaufer, 1993). The contagion approach seeks to explain organizational members’ knowledge, attitudes, and behavior on the basis of information, attitudes, and behavior of others in the network to whom they are linked. Rogers and Kincaid (1981) refer to this as the convergence model of communication. Theories that are premised on a contagion model, at least in part, include social information processing theory (Fulk, Steinfield, Schmitz, & Power, 1987; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978), social influence theory (Fulk, Schmitz, & Steinfield, 1990; see also Marsden & Friedkin, 1993), structural theory of action (Burt, 1982), symbolic interactionist perspectives (Trevino, Lengel, & Daft, 1987), mimetic processes exemplified by institutional theories (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977), and social cognitive and learning theories (Bandura, 1986). Fulk (1993) notes that these constructivist perspectives “share the core proposition that social and symbolic processes produce patterns of shared cognitions and behaviors that arise from forces well beyond the demands of the straightforward task of information processing in organizations”.

There are a number of possible reforms that could improve pregnancy experiences and make miscarriages less distressing. These reforms include rethinking childbearing metaphors that have emerged out of the history described in this book, and pushing back on marketers, public health advocates, parenting experts, anti-abortion activists, and others who encourage expectant parents to become attached to pregnancies in their early weeks, while the chance of miscarriage is high. This conclusion proposes that accepting the inevitable imperfections of childbearing, including miscarriages, makes room for parents to appreciate the benefits of modern childbearing culture that have emerged from the historical shifts of the past 250 years.