A woman's book of choices: Abortion, menstrual extraction, RU-486 - Softcover

Chalker, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941423867 ISBN 13: 9780941423861

Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1992

Synopsis

The New Our Bodies, Ourselves calls menstrual extraction (ME) "a powerful example of medical research done by women on and for ourselves." As the safest and most effective of the techniques that can be performed on women by women, independently of any legal restrictions that may be imposed on doctors in the coming months and years, menstrual extraction is today at the center of the raging abortion debate, serving both symbolically and practically as the line of first defense against recent rollbakcs of women's reproductive rights in the nation's courts. A Woman's Book of Choices chronicles the history of ME, the currently accepted standard of ME practice, and its legal ramifications, and offers accounts of actual ME procedures. It also describes the who range of other abortion alternatives, from state-of-the-art clinical abortions to folk remedies, for women who may be considering terminating a pregnancy. In addition, there is a comprehensive chapter that is directed to medical personnel who may be providing abortion care, and a chapter on the French-developed abortion pill, RU-486.

About this title

About the Author:

REBECCA CHALKER is the author of The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World At Your Fingertips and A Woman's Book of Choices. She teaches Women's and Gender Studies at Pace University in New York City where she teaches a course on the cultural history of sexuality.

From Publishers Weekly:

Authors Chalker ( The Complete Cervical Cap Guide ) and Downer (charged in 1972 for practicing medicine without a license after applying a yogurt antidote to a yeast infection) may have written the ultimate guerilla guide to reproductive choices. In an era when a woman's access to health care is determined increasingly, and arbitrarily, by age, race, health insurance, socio-economic status and geography--as of 1990, 82% of the counties in the U.S. did not have an abortion provider--this book helps to even the odds. It tells you how to find and evaluate an abortion clinic, where to go for low- or no-interest loans to finance an abortion and what a woman's options for ending a pregnancy were before 1973. Personal accounts of doctors and women here depict some harrowing pre- Roe experiences and some inspiring grassroots initiatives, such as the group of University of Chicago students who launched a clandestine abortion referral service in a dorm room in 1964. In the final chapters of the book, Chalker and Downer look to the future of RU-486, the controversial abortifacient, and cover a selection of dangerous folk remedies that don't work, as well as some herbs and remedies that do, according to the authors.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0941423867
• ISBN 13: 9780941423861
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 271