Transcending Borders Abortion in the Past and Present

This multidisciplinary volume investigates different abortion and reproductive practices across time, space, geography, national boundaries, and cultures. The authors specialize in the reproductive politics of Australia, Bolivia, Cameroon, France, ‘German East Africa,’ Ireland, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, the United States, and Zanzibar, with historical focuses on the pre-modern era, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the present day. This timely work complicates the many histories and ongoing politics of abortion by exploring the conditions in which women have been forced to make these life-altering decisions.  

1. 'Every body has its own feminism': Introducing Transcending Borders.- 2. Abortion, Infanticide and a Return to the Gods: Politics of Pregnancy in Early Modern Japan.- 3. Unlocking the Mysterious Trunk: Nineteenth-Century American Criminal Abortion Narratives.- 4. 'Impossible to get to know these secret means' – Colonial anxiety and the quest for controlling reproduction in 'German East Africa'.- 5. A ‘grievously sinful attempt to destroy the life which God has given’: Abortion, Anglicanism, and Debates about Community Composition in Twentieth-Century Zanzibar.- 6. Troubled Women: Abortion and Psychiatry in Sweden in the 1940s and 1950s.- 7. ‘It is not your personal concern’: Challenging Expertise in the Campaign to Legalize Abortion in France.- 8. Feminism, Foetocentrism and the Politics of Abortion Choice in 1970s Australia.- 9. We’re All Feminists Now: How to Pass an Anti-Abortion Policy in Australia.- 10. A Provider’s Right to Choose: A LegalHistory.- 11. Abortion Politics in a State in Transition: Contesting South Africa’s ‘Choice Act’.- 12. Quiet Contestations of Irish Abortion Law: Abortion Politics in Flux?.- 13. The Landscape of Unwanted Pregnancy and Abortion in Highland Bolivia, 1982-2010.- 14. Settler Colonialism, Native American Motherhood, and the Politics of Terminating Pregnancies.- 15. Revelation and Secrecy: Women’s Social Networks and the Contraception-Abortion Process in Cameroon.- 16. The End of Feminist Abortion Counseling?: Examining Threats to Women’s Health.- 17. True Threats: Wanted Posters, Stalking, and the First Amendment.