Women’s History Month Reading List: Grow Your Knowledge of the Fight for Reproductive Freedom
In honor of Women’s History Month, we wanted to share these great reads to equip you with the knowledge to fight back against decades of anti-choice disinformation.
Women’s History Month Book Club Reading List
- The Lie That Binds by NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue and former Research Director Ellie Langford traces the evolution of abortion from a non-controversial issue to a partisan tactic used by a right-wing movement bent on impeding social progress.
- How Politics Become Reproductive Politics by Laura Briggs argues that all politics are reproductive politics. From longer work hours to the election of Donald Trump, our current political crisis is above all about reproduction.
- Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women by Barbara Gurr examines the reproductive healthcare experiences on Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota — where Gurr herself lived for more than a year.
- Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts 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.
- Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice by Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta J. Ross, and Elena R. Gutiérrez captures the evolving and largely unknown activist history of women of color organizing for reproductive justice — on their own behalf.
- Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique by one of the mothers of the reproductive justice movement, Loretta Ross, expands the social justice discourse surrounding “reproductive rights” to include issues of environmental justice, incarceration, poverty, disability, and more.
- Queering Family Trees: Race, Reproductive Justice, and Lesbian Motherhood by Sandra Lee Patton argues that significant barriers to family-making exist for queer mothers of color in the United States.
- Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America by Jeanne Flavin looks beyond abortion to document how the law and the criminal justice system police women’s rights to conceive, to be pregnant, and to raise their children.
- Handbook for a Post-Roe America by Robin Marty is a comprehensive and user-friendly manual for understanding and preparing for the looming changes to reproductive rights law, and getting the healthcare you need — by any means necessary.
Last but certainly not least, here are some additional materials to add to your learning:
- Mrs. America is a television show that tells the story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the backlash led by Phyllis Schlafly, who was determined to stop the ERA and instead advance an extreme right-wing agenda of power and control. It’s available on Hulu and you can also check out NARAL President Ilyse Hogue’s op-ed on the show.
- The Lie That Binds Podcast is a 6-part podcast series that unpacks the terrifying rise of the anti-choice movement from its surprising roots in school segregation to the election of President Donald Trump. It’s available on Apple Podcasts or anywhere podcasts are streamed!
- Trapped is a documentary which explores how the legislative process works to shut down access to abortion care and clinics at the state level. It’s available on Netflix.
- She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a documentary that covers the rise and rise of second wave feminism during the late ’60s and early ’70s. It’s available for free on Tubi.
