>[Please forward to your pro-choice friends in Ohio]
Diane,
have you had a chance to read Rickie Lee Solinger's criticism of
framing the fight for abortion rights in terms of choice (there was a
favorable review in the NY TImes review of books a few weeks ago). I
have only read Solinger's first book Wake Up Little Susie which is
excellent and disturbing. Here are the amazon.com reviews of the last
book.
Rakesh
Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption,
Abortion, and Welfare in the United States
is a thorough feminist history of
public policy on abortion since Roe v.
Wade, as well as a reconsideration of
recent political strategy. Rickie
Solinger's third book on reproductive rights hinges on a crucial
semantic shift in the
1970s from "abortion rights" to the
softer, less direct "choice" and "pro-choice," itself an attempt to
shake off the
awkward "pro-abortion" tag. While "rights"
are undeniable, Solinger asserts, "choice" is a market-driven concept.
"Historical distinctions between women of
color and white women, between poor and middle-class women, have been
reproduced and institutionalized in the
"era of choice," she continues, "in part by defining some groups of
women as
good choice makers, some as bad."
Solinger also advances a troubling
economic thesis about adoption, defined roughly as "the transfer of
babies from
women of one social classification to
women in a higher social classification or group." Bracing and
well-researched,
Solinger's arguments should be considered
by anyone working for women's and children's rights. --Regina Marler
From Publishers Weekly
Feminists need a paradigm shift, argues
Solinger (Wake Up Little Susie;, The Abortionist), away from the
post-Roe v.
Wade concept of "choice" and back to the
'60s concept of "rights," based on the approach of the civil rights
movement,
which argued that all citizens were
entitled to vote, for instance, regardless of class status. "Choice"
evokes a marketplace
model of consumer freedom, she explains,
while rights are privileges to which one is justly and irrevocably
entitled as a
human being. The shift from the language
of rights to that of choice was deliberate, aimed at reducing the
federal welfare
tab and increasing the pool of adoptable
children, which began to diminish after the early 1970s, Solinger
argues. Once
the pill and legal abortion were
available, poor women could be considered "bad choice-makers" if they
kept having
babies they couldn't afford hardly the
government's responsibility. (Never mind, Solinger observes, that
many poor
women can't afford either option and might
want children, just as middle-class women do.) Is this progress? No,
Solinger
writes: "women with inadequate
resources... must... have the right to determine for themselves
whether or not to be
mothers." With its crisp, jargon-free
prose and copious footnotes, Solinger's reexamination of those twin
bogeys the
Back Alley Butcher and the Welfare Queen
is a provocative read for any modern feminist.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Historian Solinger argues cogently that
the post-Roe v. Wade decision to articulate the women's movement's
goals in
terms of "choice," not "rights," had
fateful consequences for women and for the movement. "Choice" shifted
abortion into
the marketplace, as one of many consumer
choices, leaving women who were too poor to qualify as consumers at
the
mercy of antiabortion politicians. Many
activists, she observes, didn't think about the fact that pregnancy
and childbearing
have historically and dramatically
separated women by race and class in this country. Solinger traces
that separation,
analyzing powerful stereotypes such as the
"back-alley butcher" and the "welfare queen" and exploring the
shifting
qualifications imposed on women as
gestators, mothers, and decision makers. In particular, she considers
the interaction
between advocates of "choice" and women
who sought but did not always receive feminist support in their
campaign for
reunion with children they had reluctantly
surrendered for adoption. A provocative reading of recent "herstory."
Mary
Carroll
