Investigates the politics of women's health and work in early Victorian England, where government officials and reformers surveying the laboring population became convinced that the female body would be ruined by employment.

Jane Ussher takes a unique approach to the study of the material and discursive practices associated with the construction and regulation of the female body.

Jane Ussher takes a unique approach to the study of the material and discursive practices associated with the construction and regulation of the female body.

This book examines the development and changes that occur in the reproductive system of both sexes--from conception through puberty and adulthood.

Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication. "A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and gender justice in America." —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies. From slave masters’ economic stake in bonded women’s fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood—and the exclusion of Black women’s reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas. “Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States.” —Ms.

Discusses the male and female reproductive systems, explaining how they work together to form new life, and describing sexually transmitted diseases and other illnesses that affect the reproductive system.