Available From UC Press

The landmark case Roe v. Wade redefined family: it is now commonplace for Americans to treat having children as a choice. But the historic decision also coincided with widening inequality, an ongoing trend that continues to make choice more myth than reality. In this new and timely history, Matthiesen shows how the effects of incarceration, for-profit healthcare, disease, and poverty have been worsened by state neglect, forcing most to work harder to maintain a family.
 

Sara Matthiesen is a historian of gender, sexuality, and reproduction in the United States. She is Assistant Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at George Washington University.

"Reproduction Reconceived is a meticulously researched history of the US state's effort to constrict motherhood among the poor, lesbians, incarcerated women, and Black women. Sara Matthiesen forces us to grapple with the false promise of choice since Roe v. Wade in the lives of marginalized families and the devaluation of mothers' uncompensated labor."—Sherie M. Randolph, author of Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical

"Amid debates over whether childcare qualifies as 'infrastructure,' Reproduction Reconceived intervenes with a call to radically reframe reproduction, family, motherhood, and caregiving as public goods, rather than as private obligations. Compellingly argued and compulsively readable, it makes clear why public support for families and caregiving has never been more urgent or necessary. It is required reading for anyone trying to make sense of our current moment."—Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, New York University

"As contemporary events continue to focus our attention on what the United States would be like without access to legal abortion, Matthiesen asks us to consider that by making pregnancy and childbirth into a 'choice,' Roe v. Wade opened the door to brutal and devastating state neglect of the survival and well-being of children, pregnant people, and all their kin and caregivers."—Laura Briggs, University of Massachusetts, author of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics

"This remarkable book expands our understanding of reproductive choice well beyond Roe, forcing us to grapple with what it means for the most marginalized to have and raise children in a devastating context of state neglect. Thoroughly researched, deeply engaging, and brilliantly argued, it is a must-read for anyone who cares about the well-being of working families."—Premilla Nadasen, author of Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States

"Matthiesen's brilliant and detailed history of women's 'family making' exposes how the focus on 'choice' in reproductive politics has obscured a legacy of governmental neglect that has produced inequities that sharply impact how families are made. This neglect has most impacted those who live and make families on the margins."—Jennifer Nelson, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Redlands

"An original and provocative argument about how reproductive politics offers a new perspective on key changes in the political economy of the United States."—Sara Dubow, author of Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America

"Matthiesen brings together a unique set of case studies to paint a dire picture of the state of family making in the post-Roe United States."—Clare Daniel, author of Mediating Morality: The Politics of Teen Pregnancy in the Post-Welfare Era