Caron, Simone M. Who Chooses? American Reproductive History since 1830.

• Author: van Hartesveldt, Fred R.
• Position: Book review

Caron, Simone M. Who Chooses? American Reproductive History since 1830. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2008. iv + 361 pages. Cloth, $69.95.

Who Chooses? is a much needed, comprehensive synthesis on the subject of reproductive rights. The author begins with a discussion of the era when abortion was a woman's choice and birth control was largely unavailable. It follows these techniques, showing how decisions concerning them came under the purview of physicians as part of the process of the professionalization of the practice of medicine. Caron then highlights nativist sentiment that led to concern about a decline in white fertility. This concern that the "best" elements in the population--that is, well-to-do, white, and Protestant--might be overwhelmed by the supposedly inferior types continued into the early twentith century. When it became clear that attempts to deny the "best" groups contraception and/or abortion was not going to increase their fertility, the effort shifted to making such services available to those deemed "inferior." This meant overcoming the Comstock Laws that equated information about contraception with pornography, even when that information was dispensed by a doctor to a patient. Such changing patterns showed that women of all classes were interested in birth control, but making it available did not change the demographic patterns that caused racists and nativists to be apprehensive. Slowly, the medical profession came to accept and even endorse contraceptives, and, in the 1960s, "the pill" (oral contraceptives) made it increasingly easy for women to control their own fertility. Initially, there was little effort to control abortion, but that changed. Abortion continued to be available to the middle and upper classes, but remained illegal and controversial in many places. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) removed most legal barriers regarding abortion, but not the controversy.

The eugenics movement ran parallel to concerns about abortion and contraception. Through much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were individuals and organizations that favored sterilization of those they considered inferior. The standards for such judgments were often based on race, class, and religion, though they were usually cloaked in terms of disease or mental defect. Rarely in the United States was there significant support for killing such "inferior" types. The...