Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: Alexander Sanger's Beyond Choice is an extraordinary book. While I consider myself to be mostly pro-choice, I had never really asked myself the question why we should we have reproductive freedom in the first place. This is the question that Alex Sanger tackles in this provocative book. Sanger makes the case of why all reproductive freedom, including abortion, is moral because it helps humanity survive. The book discusses the difficulties and dangers, especially to women, of human reproduction and makes it clear that we evolved to have reproductive freedom because it helps women and children survive. Sanger is not afraid to say that there can be limits on choice, especially in the area of new reproductive technologies. Of more importance, the book sets out rationales and strategies for including men in the battle for reproductive rights, and defines what the role of government should and should not be in our private lives. I am convinced, as will all readers and writers be, that no one who wants to express any opinion on the issue of choice, or life, can do so without reading this page-turning and vitally important book.

Rating:
Summary: margaret sanger must be rolling over in her grave...
Review: As someone who volunteers at a local women's clinic by escorting patients in to see the doctor of their choice, I find it hard to fathom the idea that I am supposed to reach out and appreciate the viewpoint of those who call me a murderer, call the employees of the clinic murderers, and call the patients murderers (screaming all the while). Reasoning can be done only with the reasonable. To suggest otherwise is simply foolish.

Rating:
Summary: The debate Goes On!
Review: If there is one thing that will surely stir up emotions is a heated debate between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. The debate invariably brings in political, legal, religious, moral, medical and sociological factors that often times only confuse those who are the spectators.

Alexander Sanger is the recently retired president of Planned Parenthood of New York City and grandson of the renowned planning advocate Margaret Sanger.
In his defense of pro-choice, as exposed in his recent book, Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom In The 21st Century, Sanger argues that having abortion legalized and accessible is morally right, nor morally wrong. It is his contention that there should be a new perspective when defending the right to abortion in that it should be viewed as less of a rights issue but rather more of a reproductive one.
Up to now Sanger believes that the traditional arguments of the pro-choice as well as the pro-life defenders do not provide us with as much guidance as the public deserves and needs.

As his principal objective is to defend pro-choice, Sanger maintains that the central challenge for those in favor of choice is to show that the movement has the ideas and philosophy to help people cope with the ethical dilemmas that new reproductive technologies present. Furthermore, he believes that American and worldwide views of abortion will become more pro-choice only when abortion is put into a reproductive and biological context. In other words, shift the perspective from rights to reproduction.
As he states, "having the choice whether or not to become a parent and having a child has been and is essential to the survival and well-being of humanity." Furthermore, as he maintains, the abortion debate in the last quarter of the twentieth century failed to address the issue as to why it is biologically vital that women control childbearing.

In order to advance his argument, Sanger examines the following topics: the origins of choice, reproductive freedom and human evolution, the reproductive rights debate that ignored reproduction, putting reproduction back into reproductive freedom, enlisting men in support of reproductive freedom, defending reproductive freedom from the dangers of reproductive technology, and should the government have the right to enter our bedrooms and enact abortion laws.

Sanger neatly presents his arguments with a great deal of historical and scientific information incorporating his own personal observations. As to the validity of his arguments, readers will have to judge for themselves, however, this is what makes the book intriguing food for thought.

Norm Goldman Editor of Bookpleasures.com

Rating:
Summary: margaret sanger must be rolling over in her grave...
Review: Mr. Sanger is pro-choice, which is good. The government has no right, in a free society, to watch the progress of a pregnant woman and make sure she doesn't do anything to her own body. The quam with this book however, is that Mr. Sanger advocates socialistic policies that woudl basically force, through taxes, everyoen to pay for prenatal healthcare, including abortions. If he was truly pro-choice, he would advocate the choice of whether or not to fund abortion.

Rating:
Summary: Pro-Choice, but not on economic matters.
Review: Mr. Sanger is pro-choice, which is good. The government has no right, in a free society, to watch the progress of a pregnant woman and make sure she doesn't do anything to her own body. The quam with this book however, is that Mr. Sanger advocates socialistic policies that woudl basically force, through taxes, everyoen to pay for prenatal healthcare, including abortions. If he was truly pro-choice, he would advocate the choice of whether or not to fund abortion.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre research forms this book
Review: The grandson of Margaret Sanger is also involved in reproductive issues, but he openly is unable to completely appreciate today's sociopolitical realities with the policy area. Instead, he uses his famous name to sell a book that does not contribute to the pro-choice cannon. The lack of quality research might even inadvertently toughen present organizing conditions for people such as myself who currently work the policy trenches without benefit of celebrity.

While he muses about the Sadie Sachs story which propelled his grandmother to open the first birth control clinic in America, he asks us to find common ground with the people who want nothing more than to see that myself and other women are returned to similar conditions.

Ultimate unworkability of that aforementioned public policy oddly does not deter Sanger from his daydream. He continues to believe that the rest of the world is universally awed by the tale and the rightwing is only interested in recriminalizing abortion. Current evidence from Planned Parenthood Federation of America itself indicates the American rightwing opposes all sexuality outside of procreation but cannot publicly act on their real sentiments for fear of massive public outrage.

To be fair, Sanger proactively identifies the numerous flaws within his grandmother's political organizing-which was genuinely considered progressive during her life. In an obviously personally difficult chapter, he concedes that she worked with Eugenicists and let the south warp birth control into a system to shrink African Americans. Because it would have been easier to tout the homogenized family history and ignore `alternate' perspectives such as Dorothy Roberts, he performs a great reader service. Reproductive rights must include all options for all women regardless of ethnicity and/or disability.

Unfortunately, he looses the audience again with a chapter on men's role in the reproductive rights movement. Is Sanger trying to increase women's equality or keep their sexuality in check lest society become too independent? He also fails to identify that men have always marched for reproductive rights---while the `liberal' mass media presents these same events as "women only". Sanger falls into a similar trap by lamenting the passive reproductive issues position men take. Because they were the ones historically ruling if women could have access to contraception and/or abortion (and both physicians and judges until recently were overwhelmingly male) they played a very active reproductive policy role.

This book is certainly interesting from the `insider' perspective, but it does not provide any riveting insight for myself or other pro-choice advocates. If somebody else had written this same book it would quickly become one title of many. Since there is no current shortage of reproductive issue controversies, Sanger's book fell short of my expectations. Get the book for the `history' perspective, but don't expect path breaking content or something that can be applied to today's reproductive policy debate.




Rating:
Summary: Nilan you are an idiot!
Review: The title of my review is in response to the Neanderthal from the previous review. Obviously they have not read the book and had no right to comment on it.

If this uneducated moron had read the book, moron would have realized that pro-choice advocated do not condone murder, they condone free choice, which is the very right that gives this idiot the right to voice such archaic and rediculous views.

My rights as a human being do not end just because I get pregant. The government has no right to watch every move I make just because I am pregnant.

If Idiot had read Mr. Sanger's book, idiot would have realized that he is actually advocating more communication between proponents of both sides as well as suggesting that men should be involved in the discussion as well. Considering it take TWO to tango, I agree.

I suggest Idiot take all his/her fervent passion for children and direct it towards more productive avenues. Such as taking care of and feeding all the unwanted and undervalued already born children in the country right now.

Why is that anti-choice advocats only care about the childern in-utero, however once born they are conveniently ignored?

This fickle mind anti-choice group is not the kind of group who should be dictating care for unborn children. The rest of moron's statement regarding hell and abortion being a crime is so ludicrous no comment is needed. He/she makes the case for him/herself, specifically, "I am an idiot that needs others to tell me what to think and what to believe because I do not have the brain power to figure out the truth on my own"

For readers who are able to think for themselves, this is an engaging book that encourages people of all sides to look at the abortion issue from different ways. The goal is to keep abortion legal, yes, but the political atmosphere is different now that in the 70s and so our fight to keep our rights must be fought differently.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century
Review: What the pro-choice need to realize is that they support infanticide. Every day many innocent babes are killed since people have made bad decisions or simply do not feel like having children. They will pay for their crimes in hell on the level reseverd for vile killers and murderers.