A beautifully crafted, thoroughly researched account of the state of reproductive rights after the Dobbs decision.
A journalist chronicles the state of reproductive rights in the U.S. in the year following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
When Becker read the news that the Supreme Court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade, the seminal decision legalizing abortion, she knew she had to write a book about the devastating effects. “Recording this moment in our history is a form of bearing witness to that shared trauma,” she writes. In this urgent chronicle of the year after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the case that overturned Roe—Becker shadows a collection of individuals fighting courageously for reproductive rights. In Maryland, she talked to the founders of a clinic that provides second and third trimester abortions. In Alabama, she interviewed the executive director of the West Alabama Women’s Center, who had to excuse herself from an interview on CNN when her lawyer texted her that the Dobbs decision meant that she had to stop abortion services at the center immediately. In Arizona, Becker had an eye-opening discussion with a family-planning doctor to try to understand why a state in which 64% of people believe “abortion should be legal in all or most cases” has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. Throughout, Becker provides fascinating historical context, ranging from an account of canvassing in ancient Rome to the origins of abortion regulations passed in the U.S. in the late 1800s. The author masterfully uses individual case studies to delve into specific aspects of the current state of reproductive rights, illustrate broader trends, and make poignant, trenchant connections between them. Her conversational tone and expertise on her subject matter render this an excellent primer on life after Dobbs.
A beautifully crafted, thoroughly researched account of the state of reproductive rights after the Dobbs decision.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781639731862
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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