Contraception Books

I can't say enough great things about this book. I purchased this book when I starting trying to conceive, and since reading it, I feel empowered in regards to understanding my body and reading its signs and signals. I conceived after two months of charting my BBT and checking cervical fluid following the book's methods.
My only criticism of the book is that it gets a little cheesy at times in some of the case studies (i.e. Sally checked her cervical fluid and knew she was fertile. She and her husband had intercourse that night and 9 months later little Henry was born.) I'm not sure if the techniques lead to magical results with one instance of well-timed intercourse, but it certainly does help and for me I found this to be a more useful product for TTC than the Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor.
I wish my sister, girlfriends and mom would all read this book. I grew up in a household where these types of things were not discussed, and as a well-educated woman I was embarrassed at how little I knew about my own body. Check out this book. It's a wonderful resource!

This book changed my life, making me a happier and more empowered womyn. And my sex life was much better when I stopped fearing my fertility as much.

Easy to understand, very informative and much more detailed than any other book on the subject that I've come across. We used this method as our form of birth control for 2 years effectively. When we were ready to conceive, the information in this book as well as in Choosing the Sex of Your Baby helped us conceive in a matter of a few months and we now have a 10 month old son, thanks in part to this book :).

This book is a great educational tool. Even if you do not want to practice FAM, it educates a woman on her body beyond what you will get in any biology class. Definitely a must have.

Considered the "Bible" of Fertility Awareness (FAM), this book is a real eye-opener for women and girls of all ages. The information about our bodies that is contained in this book is invaluable, and should really be taught to every girl approaching puberty (or sooner!). You will wonder why you weren't taught/didn't know the secrets that your body shares with you every month or so during different steps in your fertility cycles. Do you realize that the "due dates" doctors project for their pregnant patients can be completely inaccurate, depending on the length of your cycle and when you ovulated the month you conceived? Really awesome information. (FYI, This is not your mother's "Rhythm Method" of the past.)

To complete the journey from preconception health, to pregnancy, to birth and beyond, look to Healing Our Children: Because Your New Baby Matters! Sacred Wisdom for Preconception, Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting (ages 0-6) by Ramiel Nagel. The Fertility Awareness Method or Natural Family Planning is recommended by Ramiel as the only method of contraception safe enough to ensure the healthiest pregnancy and child possible.

Contraceptive Technology is a must-have reference for anyone interested in birth control. As a freelance medical writer/editor, I have used several revisions of this useful book over the years. I was very pleased when the long-awaited 19th revised edition was finally available. I had preordered the book directly from the publisher, who didn't follow through. Amazon, however, got me the book in record time.

A must have if you provide health care to women or have to answer questions about birth control.

I find this text an excellent source of easy to read information. Every method of birth control/contraception is covered, including fertility based methods, surgical procedures, etc. There is also applicable information in regards to women's health issues and sexuality. Another reviewer stated that this book needs an update; I've heard that another edition is coming out soon and I would imagine that it would include new methods that have become available since the publication of this edition.

I recommend this text to any women's health practitioner.

Great book in great condition for a great price and I got it in less than a week!
Will definitely use this vendor again!

This is an integral desk reference for the reproductive health educator. This text outlines all that there is to know to date about contraceptive methods and their function. I don't inted to part with this until the 19th edition is released.

I have used this book since 1992, both as a student and as a provider. My past editions have been well thumbed through and open imediately to the charts I used most. It is invaluable in the decision making process of changing pills or starting OCPs. The ability to safely manage side effects and fine tune women's health is found in this book. I highly recommend this to the student and experienced practitioner. Well worth the money, many times over. Not sure I would want it in a PDA format.

I daily use this handbook in my practice and have bought every edition since the 7th. Every question is answered. Allows sense to be made of oral contraceptive choice and adjustment without relying on big pharma's propaganda.

This book has clear guidelines for prescribing oral contraceptive agents. It provides a section on bothersome side effects, causal factors and options. The section on contraceptive activity is good as is the composition and identification section. Very helpful, easy to use and it takes the guesswork out of oral contraception.

Consistent in it's format, easy to use,concise and up to date. Recommended to all medical personnel managing patients on oral contraceptives. I have purchased the last three editions over the last 7 years and have not been disappointed.

An excellent reference guide and teaching text for every clinician who has a personal relationship with patients of reproductive age. The book fits in a lab coat pocket and has a unique design, which enables the user to find critical information quickly and easily. It is strongly recommended to physicians, residents, nurse practitioners and all other medical professionals in an OB/GYN clinic or teaching hospital. The 11th edition includes the new patch, ring and all new pills available 9/02.

Engelman demonstrates that providing women a basic level of health care, including effective birth control, will solve the problem of overpopulation!

This is an optimistic view and provides useful guidance for every person and every nation which is concerned about overpopulation and overstressed world resources.

Reports vary, but about 2752 people died in the 9/11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In response, the United States has spent (so far) over a trillion dollars and perhaps half a million people have died in a "war on terror" all this with vast amounts of media coverage.
Today, and every other day since 9/11, about 22,000 people died of complications of hunger, most of them children, 8 million a year. In addition, violent conflicts, genocides and natural disasters come fundamentally from too many people competing for too little space. But population has almost disappeared from media and public debate. The U.S. spends less than $400 million a year on family planning programs. Before 2015, barring disaster, human population will have grown from 1 billion to 7 billion in just over two hundred years. Many ecologists think we are in "overshoot" with current population unsustainable on this small planet. Engelman's book, in this context, should be read by everyone.
Engelman's combination of a sharp reporter's eye and ear with serious depth of historical research and long population NGO experience packs this book with big ideas and fascinating stories. He paints the historical big picture--while quoting the moving words of a poor woman in Kenya. Engelman made a serious effort to listen to what women, throughout history, had to say about family planning and child bearing. He empathizes with the challenges women face in places where large families lead to higher death rates and poverty for children and women. He spent two decades observing successful and unsuccessful population control efforts.
The core message of More : "Women aren't seeking more children, but more for their children." ( p8) If every woman was free to choose family size and had access to birth control, the world's population would stabilize. And, that would be a very good thing for many reasons including reducing poverty, war, disease and environmental losses--and, by the way, terrorism. The price tag for providing birth control to every poor woman would be a fraction of the U.S. budget for the Iraq war.
This message is even more important and fundamental than Al Gore's global warming Jeremiad, in fact, the growth in human population drives global warming and most other environmental disasters. Population growth will almost certainly stop during this century. What remains to be seen is whether this pause will occur mainly by reduction in birth rates and longer lives (as in Europe) or continued high birth rates and shorter lives (as in Africa). Will humans be wise enough to stop growth or suffer growth and collapse? Engelman argues that individual women prefer fewer children with longer lives, better futures and higher incomes.
Engelman does a nice job of making population history understandable and simple. Where demographers and ecologists might talk about logistic functions, Engelman points out that population growth meant that our pre-historic ancestors, at certain times, must have been able to raise three or more children. Any surplus above replacement fertility levels leads to exponential population growth. He traces historical evidence that women practiced birth control, abortion and infanticide for thousands of years in recognition that having fewer children improved their children's lives. If everybody in the world read this book and acted on its message, the human future would be far brighter.
While agreeing with everything Engelman says, I do feel that now that human population has increased above sustainable levels, your children--or rather, the sum of the 375,000 births per day, 136 million births per year--affect outcomes for my children. The world children will inherit differs depending on population growth--with a range of possible outcomes from collapse to prosperity. "Your rights do not include the right to damage others" logic led to all kinds of regulations such as drivers' licenses, drunk driving laws, zoning and land use regulations and so on. Governments do have a role in regulating population while protecting individual's rights, in fact, to protect individual's rights (to peace and a habitable planet, for example, not to mention affordable gasoline). When our actions affect other people--including future generations for millions of years-- then governments need to help women get to the good outcomes they want for their children by promoting responsible family planning. More countries are going to need something like China's one child policy to bring population and resources back into balance. Most Chinese have accepted the one child policy as preferable to living in a country with over 4 billion people--the forecast that led to the policy.
Engelman's message is more optimistic--he says population stability will happen by individual choices where women are free to control reproduction. But if so many responsible couples choose smaller families, why should irresponsible people be allowed to make life dangerous and resources scarce and expensive for the rest of us? An ancient Babylonian flood story quoted by Engelman "depicts overpopulation... as so painful the land itself howls." (p. 97) Alas, Babylon.

This was a very enlightening read for me. The author does a really good job of making his case for family planning and the necessity of making sure that women have control and plenty of choices over their bodies and reproduction. This book really details the problems with population rise, and gives a pretty good historical account of why population stability is so important. This is an important book that needs to be read.

The author offers the reader a pretty good thumbnail sketch of the theories of where we Homo Sapiens originally came from, and why it was that we ended up on top rather than some of our distant cousins. Many of these theories are subjective and in the field of evolutionary biology there are as many theories as there are really good scholars, pretty good scholars, amateurs and your run of the mill crackpot, so for the number of pages the author does a really nice job giving the reader a good sampling of theories without overloading the reader.

Next the author gives the reader a very interesting history of contraceptives, attitudes towards sex over human history, feminism and opposition to all of these. I was fascinated to learn parts of history I was completely ignorant about before reading this book. The author also posits some very interesting theories about humans move to agrarian societies all the way to the witch trials in Europe. The author makes a very strong argument for sex and population being very important prime movers in human events. Of course population size and sex are always important, but this book has put forth some ideas I had not considered before.

What was very compelling for me was the author's work and description of working in third world countries. Reading his interviews with these people and getting an idea of the desperation they live with and the problems they face because they do not have access to adequate contraceptives or education was distressing. I couldn't imagine a life spent either pregnant or taking care of an infant all of ones life, or having sex be similar to playing Russian roulette where every encounter could cause pregnancy or disease. Even more than that was how badly these people want access to contraceptives and family planning resources which is heartbreaking. As I was reading about all the deaths and disease attributable to abortions and births performed in unsafe conditions that could have been prevented with nothing more than a simple condom you realize how lucky we are and just how little it would take to change other peoples lives for the better.

This book has some very well thought out arguments with detailed conclusions backed up with historical data and first hand research. Not only that but the author presents the material in a very accessible way. The book is short which diminishes the intimidation factor, and will hopefully make it more palatable for a more general readership. My one main criticism is that I hate the silly little puns and some of the attempts at levity that peppers this work. The author is obviously a well educated individual who has written a well thought out scientific book that is meant to be taken seriously. These puns and metaphors in scientific works are the bane of my existence. I cannot express the depth of my loathing for this practice. They irk me to no end. With that said, I understand that the author was attempting to give this book a wider readership and perhaps these attempts at levity help to lighten a very deep and serious subject for readers helping to bring more people to the book, but my understanding that doesn't have to mean that I like it. I didn't take off for it though, but felt I still needed to vent here a little.

This is a very serious subject, and is one that needs our attention now. This book is important for the discussion that needs to be taking place now. With that said I highly recommend this work.

Engelman's MORE is a book I thoroughly enjoyed. It it is an affirmation of the intelligence of women, men and midwives throughout history and to the present. Contrary to approaches taken often by governments or religious orders, Engelman posits that trusting women to determine their own family size will benefit everyone. Not least in this equation is concern for the long term well being of our overall environment, the home and origin of all of life on earth. For too long, many of us in professions, healthcare and academia have been fearful and careful not to speak of human population in combination with environmental sustainability because of mistakes and abuses of certain efforts of population control. But, to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water (this pun is evocative here!), we have to admit that there are irrevocable links between human numbers and activity and environmental well being. Engelman takes us on a journey utilizing historical information and recent scientific consensus though several disparate disciplines, which builds a coherent narrative and winds up with some solid recommendations. It is no easy task to bring together such scholarship, long term vision and rich detail. It reads like intriguing journalism, and a good novel with solid reference work thrown in. I counted numerous references to contraceptive plants used throughout several cultures and time periods, a history of midwives, a thorough account of human-primate prehistory among other things. The protagonists were resourceful women and men, often pitted against those whose intent was to exert control over other women's fertility. Did you know, for instance, that in 1792, the mother of the future author of frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote essays about women's rights and parenting which included information about how breast feeding can augment family planning because it decreases fertility? The volume More teems with insight and examples which will inspire those who work for a future that is plentiful. You may find yourself taking notes like I did, to use in talks and lectures, or to trace back for yet more information. Or you may find that it is a well supported affirmation of an integrated way of looking at the earth. More makes clear that we are one species in a vast web, and to achieve "more" over a longer time, we must learn to take a little less room. Engelman's book shows that this is not a new idea, but that this is the time for such a synthesis.

Emme Edmunds is a Midwife and Women's Health Nurse Practitioner currently pursuing a PhD in Development Sociology. She is interested in connecting issues of human rights and women's autonomy with birth control and environmental susatainability.

Finally, a book about population and family planning that those of us who work on population issues can distribute proudly to those who aren't in the field!

Engelman outlines the history of women managing their fertility through the ages, from our humble beginnings as homo erectus through modern day. Throughout human history some women have prevented conception with herbs and pessaries. And some women have always backed up these methods with abortion and infanticide.

His point is that women's desire to have small families is not new and that modern contraception should be available to any woman who wants it, in order to avoid the crude methods that our ancestors were stuck with.

Engelman writes about women with great respect and humorously describes why men and women so often differ on their ideas about ideal childbearing (both timing and total number). In fact, humor is an integral part of this book. Engelman was a journalist in a past life and his catchy, accessible writing style shines through on every page.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about demography, women's reproductive rights, and/or anthropology. This book should interest just about anyone and is not the dry, academic sort of textbook that you might expect of this topic. I'm even going to propose it as a selection for my monthly book club!

I bought this book through Amazon and quite happy with this service and book too.It is recommended for my masters course in Reproductive medicine.Thanks Amzone.

Dear Amazon--
In the hopes that someone will read this-- the title of the book with the error in the title (Leon Speroff's textbook) is Clinical Gynecologic Endocrinology and Infertility. That much is true. The subtitle is wrong. It is not, I repeat not, subtitled: :Cervical Spine Research Editorial Committee. The cervix Dr Speroff treats is in the pelvis, not the neck. Please correct this.
Sorry to notify you in this roundqbout way, but I don't know any other way to let your web masters know of this error. This "review" obviously is not for publication.
Sincerely, Irene M Piekarski, M.D.
206-522-3330 (O)
206-284-2003(H)

This is an incredible book. Speroff is still the king when it comes to infertility. In our OB/Gyn setting we refer to it many times in our treatment of basic infertiltiy and have had great success following the guidelines given by Speroff. It should be on the bookshelf of anyone who treats basic infertility!!

This text offers a straight-forward reference to assist in the management of gyn problems I commonly encounter as a Family Doctor. It goes into great detail about anatomy and physiology of gynecologic problems yet is well-organized for use as a "quick reference". For example, it took less than a minute to find the section on hirsuitism to refresh my memory as to what the initial work-up should consist of.

This is one of the bibles of the OB/GYN resident. Excellent reference for the in-service exams. Simple diagrams & tables make this text readable and easy to understand.

This guide is written very clearly. I am no student of science and, unfortunately, many Natural Family Planning books read like biology text books! If you've been put off by other NFP guides, or are confused about checking different fertility signs, you may want to get a copy of Honoring Our Cycles. An added bonus are the charts right in the back so you can refer to the "rules" very easily if needed.
Great for beginners, pretty cover.

This book was a very quick and simple read--I think that is one of the book's main strengths, it is written in very clear, basic English (maybe a sixth grade reading level?). However, it also makes it somewhat stilted or somehow "off" to read it though because it IS so simplistically written (makes you feel like you are none-too-bright or something! LOL!). Anyway, to be totally honest, one of the only reasons I wanted this book is because I'm so enraptured by the cover. I just love it. I think it is a beautiful, wonderful book cover.

The book is about using fertility awareness to avoid or promote pregnancy The book is clear and easy to follow. It contains some inaccurate breastfeeding information, which I'm very sensitive to--including such odd comments as, "sometimes, when a mother is away from her baby for an afternoon or more, her milk dries up." Huh?! This is where the overly simplistic approach does not succeed, because it is NOT correct (in this case).

I'm very interested and excited right now by fertility awareness--how coolly and magically women's bodies indicate where they are in their fertility cycle. I am regretful that I spend so many years hormonally manipulating my cycle rather than just paying attention to my own body (which clearly communicates with me). so, this book reinforced this "magic-ness." I guess I would recommend it to others. There is a certain "spark" missing because it is so basic (I think it is designed for use with low-literacy populations). That gorgeous cover makes up for a lot though! ;-)

Part of this review was originally posted to my blog, http://mollyreads.blogspot.com.

I have read "Natural Family Planning" and "Taking Charge of your Fertility" and have practiced NFP/FAM (fertility awareness method) for a while now. I bought this mostly so I wouldn't have to print and bind my own charts anymore because this one comes ready to use and is small and thin like a workbook. I am very pleased with the charts- they are the easiest to use of all the ones I've tried.



What surprised me was the incredible job the author has done of teaching the method in a very concise and easy to understand manner. I can't emphasize enough how much easier it is to learn how to chart to prevent or to plan a pregnancy with this book than with other books.



Most exciting to me was the way the author teaches how to use NFP while breast feeding. The other books make it so complicated and when I did finally think I de-coded what they meant, it didn't work for me because my mucus was too eratic while nursing to use their methods. But, Singer does an excellent job in this book explaining how to use NFP while nursing a baby and she does it in under one page! She makes perfect sense and her method is much, much easier to use and is actually doable.



Awesome, awesome book!

this is the perfect gife for newlyweds if you're looking for something outside of the box to give!

Katie Singer shares her plethora of knowledge in HONORING OUR CYCLES: A NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING WORKBOOK FOR KNOWING WHICH DAYS YOU CAN AND CAN'T GET PREGNANT.

I've been practicing Natural Family Planning (NFP) with success for several years and I know that many women hesitate to embrace NFP or Fertility Awareness because they are afraid to trust the method. With her gentle encouragement and ease of communication, Singer's confidence in the accuracy of fertility awareness transfers to the readers - at least it did for me.

It's very important to gain confidence in NFP if you are going to rely upon it. The examples helped clarify various issues and scenarios. I also learned a new technique by reading this book: the "coverline."

The cover design is so enticing that my teenage daughters were intrigued with HONORING OUR CYCLES. I highly recommend this book.

-Lynn M. Griesemer, Author of YOUR BODY, YOUR BIRTH: SECRETS FOR A SATISFYING AND SUCCESSFUL BIRTH

I had the pleasure of taking this class with Dr. King as an undergraduate and now use this text when teaching my own college course in sexual behavior. Dr. King's relaxed yet informative writing style make's it one of the few textbooks my student's don't seem to mind reading. It has a wealth of good information for anyone wanting to learn more about sexuality and sexual behavior.

Dr. King's human sexuality texts (any of the editions) are very good learning tools. They're very no nonsense and easy to understand, some things it it are very alarming to say the least, there's graphic pictures of STDs, some of the material can be disturbing as the book does review fetishes and sexual abuse cases. I had taken Dr. King's class the semester before he retired. I was rather inspired to direct my path towards sex therapy after taking his class. thanks dr king!

I recently had Dr. King's class at the University of New Orleans during the Spring semester of 05, his class is the best! I enjoyed every minute of sitting through his lectures! He's is a great professor and a great writer! Keep up the good work!

The book arrived in timely manner. Also, the book was in good condition
thanks

I had to use this textbook when I took Dr King's Psychology class at the University of New Orleans (Spring '06). I found it to be a very informative eye-opener. Dr King presents information in a clear, concise, just-the-facts way, yet it doesn't read like a 'boring old textbook.' The information really makes the reader think twice about the West's cultural, historical, and scientific perspectives on the nature of sexuality.

Read this book, for a class or personal education or whatever reason. At the very least you'll come out with some interesting facts about human behavior, but more likely you'll change your entire perspective on human sexual behavior.

Birth Control For Christians: Making Wise Choices by Jenell Williams Paris (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota) is a book of facts and choices, presented without judgmental overtones, written expressly to inform Christians of all denominations about the various means of birth control. A fertility awareness instructor with Fertility Awareness-Twin Cities, Paris expertly examines the pros and cons of behavioral methods, barrier methods, hormonal method, IUDs, and male and female sterilization -- however, abortion is not discussed extensively since Christian denominations generally oppose it. Birth Control For Christians: Making Wise Choices is a highly recommended resource on the subject of family planning and birth control technologies for all interested Christian couples.

This book was a wonderful way to resolve many of the questions my fiance and I had about birth control. As a Protestant Christian, I felt that there was a lack of information on birth control--I had taken Natural Family Planning classes through a local Catholic parish, but was hoping to find some counsel that combined both the medical perspective and the moral/religious aspect in a way seperate from the specific teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Paris' book was extremely helpful in my questions and concerns. I would highly recommend this book!

This book was invaluable, and I feel that it should be a gift to every engaged Christian Couple.

This books looks closely at the Biblical and moral issues of all the methods of birth control out there. You will walk away feeling informed and empowered by this book! Very well written and easy to read, but incredibly thorough, and well researched. Very solid theological explanations througout to help you make decisions that you can feel right before God about.

As a newlywed, this book has been very helpful. A few months into our marriage, I began to question the form of birth control we had chosen. A friend suggested this book, and I am so happy she did. Paris explains in clear language so many things about birth control, ovulation, anatomy, and sex that I didn't know before. The questions at the end of each chapter sparked conversation between my husband and I about issues we had not discussed before. While Paris writes from a moral Christian standpoint, the book is written in a frank practical way, not overly spiritual. Paris raises moral questions, but allows the reader to come to his/her own conclusions. This book has helped us to come to a point of feeling confident and comfortable with our choice of birth control, and it has also informed us of other methods we may want to consider later in our marriage. I would highly reccommend this book to anyone who has questions about birth control, especially those who are newly married or preparing for marriage.

This book exposes the fear that is at the heart of the modern reproductive rights movement: fear of female reproductive power. We need a women's movement that allows us to be ourselves, instead of a women's movement that demands that we chemically castrate ourselves. Angela Franks points the way to a new women's movement that is based on what is truly distinctive about women. We need to celebrate motherhood, not fear it. Angela Franks shows that Margaret Sanger and her movement were strongly eugenic, and feared too much reproduction by people they considered unfit. The women's movement has never recovered.

I can't say enough good things about this book. Angela Franks does a wonderful job exposing with thorough research how Margaret Sanger tainted the women's movement with an insidious agenda. Feminism should work to protect the vulnerable; instead feminists have joined forces with the population controllers to oppress low-income women in the U.S. and third world countries, all in the name of "reproductive health." It's hard to see how women can have a "choice" when they are subjected to forced abortions and sterilization. Shame on feminism for allowing Margaret Sanger and her cronies in the eugenics movement to advance their agenda under the guise of freedom and justice. Unfortunately the agenda of Planned Parenthood is engrained in our contraceptive culture.
This book is a must-read for anyone in the pro-life movement, whether your concern is eugenics, embryonic stem-cell research, contraception, abortion, euthenasia or the death penalty.

Those who're interested in this book might also want to check out a newly released book, Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull and a companion book that will soon be released, Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Writings of Victoria Woodhull.

In her 1938 autobiography, Margaret Sanger noted that "Eugenics, which started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and the prevention of conception." Eugenics and free love was a reference to Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President (1872), for a time a fierce advocate of free love, and a life-long advocate of eugenics and state-controlled child rearing. In 1927, in what was perhaps Woodhull's last public statement, she praised Buck v. Bell, a US Supreme Court decision declaring forced sterilization constitutional and, according to the New York Times, told a reporter that she had "advocated that fifty years ago."

The two books mentioned above present detailed evidence that one of the nation's leading feminists was advocating eugenics, then called stirpiculture, in the 1870s, three decades before Francis Galton took up the cause in earnest and four decades before it acquired a significant following in Margaret Sanger and others. That demolishes the argument of those who claim that feminists such as Sanger only adopted eugenic rhetoric because the movement was too powerful to ignore. When Woodhull took up eugenics, she was virtually the only public figure in the U.S. speaking on the topic. She 'mainstreamed' an issue, controlled human breeding, that had previously only been discussed by strange utopian cults on the American frontier, such as the Oneida Community.

The historical reality is that, far from being united in defending 'reproductive freedom,' certain groups of well-connected and powerful women have been some of the strongest proponents of the government limiting the birth rates of women they consider "unfit" or inferior. (You see this in their sneers at 'stay-at-home' mothers.) Newspapers noted that Woodhull attracted those sorts of women in the 1870s-90s when she advocated eugenics. They continued to do so when Charlotte Perkins Gilman promoted negative eugenics in the 1910s, and when Sanger did so with her birth control movement from 1917 on.

Woodhull's speeches and pamphlets also demonstrate that there is a close connection between those who want to control who can have children and those who want to limit the rights of parents to rear their children after they are born, as illustrated by a recent Ninth Circuit decision denying the right of parents to protect their grade-school children from sexual questions. These are most emphatically not people who believe in protecting anyone's "privacy."

--Michael W. Perry, Seattle
Editor of The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective by Margaret Sanger
Editor of Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton

TIME magazine called Margaret Sanger one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, saying that "her crusade to legalize birth control spurred the movement for women's liberation." While many remember her advocacy for birth control, few remember or give due consideration to the eugenic philosophy that drove Sanger and her allies in the birth control, and later population control or "family planning" movements. This book corrects that significant historical deficit.

In this book, Franks shows that any concern Sanger had for women's rights was secondary to her larger agenda -- helping to create a better race by controlling the fertility of those she saw as society's least "fit" members -- the poor, the disabled, the "feebleminded," the sickly, the epileptic, the alcoholic, etc. Where persuasion worked, that was fine, but as Franks points out, Sanger and her allies were prepared to use coercion when they felt it was necessary to achieve their eugenic aims.

Franks traces what she identifies as the "control movement" from its earliest days in the 1920s when sterilization programs began to spring up in Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, and later California to the 1990s when U.N. "family planning" money helped support forced sterilizations and abortions in China. Along the way, she identifies the key players, policies, and programs that helped to mainstream many of the ideas that the world once found so abhorrent in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

There are those in our modern PC culture that might be tempted to dismiss such charges, but this book is thorough and well documented, with over 1,200 footnotes and a bibliography featuring about a thousand books, articles, and interviews on Sanger, her associates, and the organizations they founded and led.

The tone is academic, but the language is generally accessible, so that both scholars and activists alike will benefit from the reading of it.

Despite Sanger's celebration as a liberator of women and the feminist hagiographies that have been written of Planned Parenthood's founder, Franks argues that Sanger's eugenic ideas are antithetical to freedom and to true feminism, aiming to suppress precisely what it is that makes women women.

Sanger certainly had enormous influence, but before deciding whether that influence was good or bad, one would be well advised to read this book.

Pliny (23-79 AD.) "If a man makes water upon a dog's urine he will become disinclined to copulation." (Yeah, but what about the Dog?) He also suggests that; "If a woman's loins are rubbed with blood taken from the ticks upon the back of a black wild bull, she will be inspired with an aversion to sexual intercourse. (Yes, and so too, the tick gatherer, and tick blood spreader - I would imagine.)
This book The Pill by Bernard Asbell besides being full of useful and energizing information is more than interesting. It is a social as well as a religious experience. One thing is for certain - trying not to have babies has been going on for centuries; thank God.

I almost couldn't put this book down and read it in a few days. Asbell does a really good job of making the story of the Pill at once comprehensive and entertaining. He develops all the various characters involved in the story: priests, scientists, activists, doctors, funders of research and ordinary citizens in a way that makes gives you a sense of familiarity with their personalities and psychologies. He shows how risk taking, serendipity, and passion led some to succeed and left others virtually anonymous. He gives fair treatment to many of scientific disputes that went on during the invention of the pill and introduces us to the future of contraception. The way he describes science is very accessible and also honest; he does not idolize scientists or science and shows the pitfalls involved in research.
I don't think I fully appreciated how revolutionary the Pill was before I read this book. It has made me much more grateful and informed about the options I can now make. He presents the story with the gravity it deserves.

A wonderful account of the scientific, medical, political and social contexts surrounding the research and development of the oral contraceptive pill...something I realize that we take for granted and revolutionized our view of ourselves and our way of looking at the future.

This is a pretty good book and doesn't deserve to be out of print. The author's writing technique isn't scintillating but the book is very readable nonetheless. I was a little disappointed by the lack of biochemical details of how the pill works but other readers may see this as a blessing. The book does a superb job of making the people involved come alive. The descrption of a pre-birth control pill world which is unimagable to most people is simiarly excellent.