In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.

"In Thomas's skilled hands, and in her unabashed love of story-telling, intimate events in Kenya help us think more clearly and more critically about Africa in the twentieth century. The politics of the womb are at the core of the colonial experience and of colonial politics…. Africans struggled amongst themselves over the regulation of reproduction, and these layers of intimate strife, and the policies and protests emanating from London and mission hospitals and African homesteads, give us something we haven't had before-- a gendered and transnational colonial history."—Luise White, author of Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa

This book tells the real-life horror story of states' abusing laws and infringing on rights to police women and their pregnancies.

With over 400 A-Z entries, this new dictionary provides clear and authoritative definitions of terms within the fast-growing field of African Politics. It includes coverage on elections, parties and judiciaries, but also popular protest, gender-relations, the politics of development, and Africa's international relations. Entries comprise of major events and figures within African Politics, including the East African Community and independance, as well as covering key terms of particular relevance to Africa such as neopatrimonialism, queue voting, and post-conflict power sharing. Written by a world-leading political scientist working on the area of African politics, this dictionary is an essential guide for both undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics, journalists, and researchers working on African politics alike.

Among life’s choices is to have children or remain childfree. Yet those who want a child and find themselves unable, live through the trauma of ‘infertility’—cruelly attributed as ‘their fault’—to undergo the tribulations of assisted reproductive technology. But how safe is aggressive Ivf, invasive Icsi, exploitative ovarian hyper-stimulation and commercial surrogacy? Politics of the Womb proves that there can be broken babies and breaking mothers; it rips away the romanticism around uterus transplants, warns of genetic theft and ‘designer babies’, and points to the human element being sacrificed, as artificial reproduction uses, reuses and recycles the woman. Pinki Virani combines investigation with analysis to question those who lead the worldwide onslaught on the woman’s womb in the name of babies, and squarely confronts what has become the business of baby-making by a chain of suppliers that manufactures on demand. Written in a manner accessible to all, here finally is a path-breaking book which speaks up, in no uncertain terms, for the right to informed choice on responsible reproduction.

This pathbreaking book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As Brianna Theobald illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But Theobald examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist groups to confront these issues. Blending local and intimate family histories with the histories of broader movements such as WARN (Women of All Red Nations), Theobald links the federal government's intrusion into Indigenous women's reproductive and familial decisions to the wider history of eugenics and the reproductive rights movement. She argues convincingly that colonial politics have always been--and remain--reproductive politics. By looking deeply at one tribal nation over more than a century, Theobald offers an especially rich analysis of how Indigenous women experienced pregnancy and motherhood under evolving federal Indian policy. At the heart of this history are the Crow women who displayed creativity and fortitude in struggling for reproductive self-determination.

From the FDA review of RU-486 to the recent growth of fertility clinics to the rights of lesbian parents, women's reproductive lives are aggressively regulated by law and medicine. While a great deal has been written on such issues as abortion and postpartum depression, no single volume has offered a broad discussion of the interface between the legal, medical, and political aspects of women's reproduction in a manner accessible and informative to non-specialists.The Wandering Uterus fills that gap. Taking her title from an ancient Greek belief that women's health problems were caused by a wandering uterus that needed to be confined and controlled, Meyer exposes the way in which myths and prejudice about female sexuality continue to influence the practice of law and medicine today.This book offers new insights and provides a wealth of up-to- date information on a subject that changes every day. The text is divided into three main parts: political issues of pre- conception, the politics of pregnancy, and the politics of motherhood. Throughout, Meyer argues passionately that while technology and medicine must progress, they should not be allowed to do so at women's expense.