Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged abortion

Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America

Sara Dubow navigates the complexities of an impassioned and divisive issue in Ourselves Unborn. She takes a calculated historical look at how Americans have interpreted the fetus and pregnancy throughout ever-shifting political realities. Her thesis: Americans have cast their social and cultural anxieties onto the fetus, which often results in abortion-related policies that serve ulterior motives.

Revenge

Revenge sketches the transformation of Jhumur, an educated, ambitious Bengali lady who after marriage transforms into a meek, obedient wife. Taslima Nasrin has portrayes Jhumur as a strong yet submissive woman who married Haroon for love and is bewildered to see the change in her husband’s attitude after the wedding. The book keeps us pondering on the ideas of right and righteous acts.

Apple Core

So much folksy lady rock, so little time. Add Kendl Winter’s Apple Core to the ever-lengthening list of guitar-loving, country-inspired singer-songwriters with a flair for bluegrass. It may not be terribly original, but Winter makes a fine effort on her fourth solo album. At times, her work is hauntingly beautiful; at others, it’s frustratingly cliché.

Willing and Unable: Doctors' Constraints in Abortion Care

Ninety-three percent of all abortions are done in abortion clinics. Only three percent of non-metropolitan counties in the United States had an abortion provider in 2005, while thirty-one percent of metropolitan counties had at least one. After completing their residency, half of physicians who plan to perform abortions as part of their practice actually do so.

The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation

As a survivor of government sanctioned torture in Colombia, Hector Aristizabal was left with unsettled anger and fear. His wariness towards both his country and his future there worsens when one of his brothers is murdered by paramilitary soldiers. Aristizabal is eventually able to cast aside his bitterness, and find ways to aid others in their struggles by holding workshops for prisoners and victims of violence in the United States.

The Blue Orchard

I can't remember the last time a tale of fiction grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. I finished The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor over a week ago and it still haunts me during those quiet moments of my day. What drew me in to say 'yes' to reviewing this book was that it is a tale of a nurse in pre-Roe America who is arrested for performing illegal abortions.

Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us

Maybe I’m wrong, but in my understanding of war, combatants will do whatever it takes to destroy the opposing side. And that’s not what has happened in the conflict over abortion. Instead, one side, the anti-abortionists—from the Army of God to the Lambs of Christ, from Operation Save America to The National Right to Life Committee—have organized a multitude of campaigns to stop what they call “the murder of innocents.” Diverse tactics, from the ballot box to the bullet, have been used.

The Coat Hanger Project

Comprised of an impressive array of interviews, statistics, and visual demonstrations, The Coat Hanger Project is an informative documentary about the symbolism—and reality—of the coat hanger and its relationship to abortion.

Umbrella

From the get-go, I felt like I was cheating by reading director Cat Tyc’s explanation of her intentions for this film. But how could I not? They were listed directly below the film clip I watched on Vimeo.

Vanishing

Upon receiving my copy of Vanishing, Candida Lawrence’s writing was relatively new to me. The fourth offering in a series of standalone memoirs, Lawrence’s stories cover various stages in her life, from childhood father-daughter power struggles to marriage and child-rearing to aging. Her writing covers a vast array of life experiences and the resulting emotions.  Lawrence vividly describes experiences that have happened to many other women.

No Country for Young Girls

No Country for Young Girls is a twenty-five minute question posed to India: "How can this country move forward while there is still profound gender discrimination against females?" Director Nupur Basu introduces twenty-seven-year-old Vyjanthi, a mother of a three-year-old daughter. When she becomes pregnant with another girl, her husband and in-laws pressure her to an abortion. She flees to her parents’ house to weigh her options. Should she leave her husband and raise her daughters on her own?

The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World

In The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, author and investigative journalist Michelle Goldberg uses her abilities to uncover the truth about the reproductive rights (and lack thereof) for women around the world.

Miles from Nowhere

Present-day New York City is incomparable to its former seedy and dismal self. It was a city of survival up through the eighties, and as Nami Mun shows in her novel, Miles from Nowhere, people were either crushed by the city or driven to great lengths to make it through the day. The story follows the teenage Joon, the daughter of a Korean family who immigrated to New York.

Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America

I expected to write a strongly positive review for this book and am disappointed that I am unable to do so. The main strength of this book is its acknowledgment—in a single volume—of the many and layered aspects of women's reproductive health.

Revolutionary Road

In 1997 Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio made cinematic history by starring in the highest grossing film of all time, Titanic.

Speaking Truth to Power

“I’m no longer scared to hear people’s truths, and that has been incredibly liberating,” says feminist writer, filmmaker, and activist Jennifer Baumgardner. Truth-telling has been at the heart of Baumgardner’s work since she left Ms. magazine in the late-90s to become a prominent third wave feminist leader.

The Baby Lottery

Kathryn Trueblood takes on the weighty issues of motherhood in the age of abortion in her first novel, The Baby Lottery. (Trueblood is also the author of a book of short stories, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter.) Her characters are a circle of friends who have stayed together from college into their thirties. One is preparing for an abortion and coping with an overbearing husband. One is a nurse working with abortion providers.

I Had an Abortion

This documentary cuts to the core of reproductive freedom—to the stories of women's lives as told by ten women themselves. Distributed by Women Make Movies, the film features detailed accounts from a number of women, ages twenty-one to eighty-five, from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds who had abortions under different circumstances and at different points in their lives. Their stories are complicated and grounding - from a woman who had an abortion as a Mormon high school student in Utah, to a woman who had one at forty-four, married and with children.

Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work

Five thousand words, much less the 500 allowed here, are insufficient to review critically and appreciate properly a reference work this exciting, valuable, unique and scrupulously edited. Into two sturdy, attractive-looking and easy-to-use volumes, Melissa Hope Ditmore has assembled 341 entries from 179 experts from fields and perspectives as disparate as criminal justice and sex worker activism, pop culture studies and Asian history, musicology and English literature, cinematic studies and international health, and performance art and social services.

Absolute Convictions

If you’ve never heard of Roe v. Wade, you’ve either been living in Papua, New Guinea for the past four decades or Russian cosmonauts kidnapped you when you were two. The impact this decision continues to have on the cultural and political consciousness of our country could more accurately be described as a stranglehold. As we are seeing, once again, in this new political season, any politician who wants to run for national office has to pass the “litmus” test of _Roe v.

Pretty Little Mistakes

Apparently back in the day, there was such a thing as a chose your own ending book. Until I picked up Heather McElhatton’s Pretty Little Mistakes, I had never read one. After reading the book, I am glad I hadn’t. I am fairly certain there was never the option to become a drug dealer in Europe or marry the abusive crystal meth addict doctor in Berkeley.

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters

Jessica Valenti is a part of the feminist blogger elite, and for good reason. The blog she helped to establish, Feministing.com, receives a significant amount of web traffic and is well-known among young, internet savvy, hip feminists. Full disclosure: I read Feministing every now and then. Having read Valenti’s writing on the blog—which tends to be oversimplified and, quite frankly, bratty—I was hoping her analysis in book form would show a tad more depth.

The Abortion Diaries

In this 30-minute documentary short, director Penny Lane gathers a group of women around a kitchen table to share women’s stories about an experience that still does not get discussed openly: abortion. The interviews, interspersed with excerpts from Lane’s own diary about her abortion, are conversation snippets with twelve women who are Lane’s dinner party guests and other individual women lounging on couches and sitting in their yards.
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