Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women

"Blistering . . . A brisk and bracing work of cultural history fueled by Ruden’s righteous indignation and filigreed with her witty literary criticism." ―Jennifer Szalai, New York Times Book Review A bracing feminist chronicle of the history of the West told through seven texts, exposing where our most virulent ideas about women came from. The belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to “traditional” values is a dangerous myth that has long prospered in American politics, providing justification for increasing control over women’s bodies and lives. How did such damaging ideas arise? In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden exposes how ideologies that oppress women and families in the service of power took hold. Ruden traces a sweeping history through her trenchant analysis of seven pieces of literature that, she argues, marked key inflection points across two thousand years.