Adult Non-Fiction

These suggested readings provide a range of perspectives on issues raised by the POV documentary On the Divide and allow for deeper engagement. Compiled by Veronda Pitchford, Assistant Director of the Califa Group - a non-profit library membership consortium in California.

Adult Non-Fiction

Alcorn, Randy. Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments Expanded and Updated. Expanded and Updated ed., Sisters, Oregon, Multnomah Publishers, 2000
Presents opposing views or "answers" to many arguments used by the Pro-Choice movement as to why abortion should be legal in the United States.

Browder, Sue Ellen. Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement. Softcover, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2019
Contraception and abortion were not originally part of the 1960s women's movement. How did the women's movement, which fought for equal opportunity for women in education and the workplace, and the sexual revolution, which reduced women to ambitious sex objects, become so united? In Subverted, Sue Ellen Browder documents for the first time how it all happened, in her own life and in the life of an entire country. Trained as an investigative journalist, Browder unwittingly betrayed her true calling and became a propagandist for sexual liberation and wrote pieces meant to soft-sell unmarried sex, contraception, and abortion as the single woman's path to personal fulfillment. She did not realize until much later that her thinking and personal choices were unwittingly being influenced by those looking to subvert the women's movement.

Cunningham, Anne. Reproductive Rights. New York, Greenhaven Press, 2017
There has been a neat divide in the United States and elsewhere between the pro-choice and pro-life camps. Reproductive rights are more expansive than the abortion debate. Access to affordable health services is a fundamental right, yet women, who are subject to discrimination, poverty, and violence at a higher rate than men, are at risk for losing access to screenings, maternal care, and contraception. Does the government have the right to legislate women's health? This close examination provides perspectives from all sides to help readers understand what is at stake.

Fessler, Ann. The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. Reprint, New York, Penguin Books, 2007
The untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. The author is an adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently contacted her mother, brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times.

Gutmann, Matthew. Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico. First, Oakland, CA, University of California Press, 2007
Fixing Men illuminates what men in the Mexican state of Oaxaca say and do about contraception, sex, and AIDS. Based on extensive fieldwork, this breakthrough study by a preeminent anthropologist of men and masculinities reveals how these men and the women in their lives make decisions about birth control, how they cope with the plague of AIDS, and the contradictory healing techniques biomedical and indigenous medical practitioners employ for infertility, impotence, and infidelity. Gutmann talks with men during and after their vasectomies and discovers why some opt for sterilization while so many others feel "planned out of family planning."

Johnson, Abby, and Kristin Detrow. The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2018
This book narrates the experiences of former abortion clinic workers, including those of the author, who once directed abortion services at a large Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas. These individuals, whose names have been changed to protect their identities, left their jobs in the abortion industry after experiencing a change of heart.

Kimport, Katrina. No Real Choice: How Culture and Politics Matter for Reproductive Autonomy (Families in Focus). New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2021
In the United States, the “right to choose” an abortion is the law of the land. But what if a woman continues her pregnancy because she didn’t really have a choice? What if state laws, federal policies, stigma, and a host of other obstacles push that choice out of her reach?

Based on candid, in-depth interviews with women who considered but did not obtain an abortion, No Real Choice punctures the myth that American women have full autonomy over their reproductive choices. Focusing on the experiences of a predominantly Black and low-income group of women, sociologist Katrina Kimport finds that structural, cultural, and experiential factors can make choosing abortion impossible–especially for those who experience racism and class discrimination.

Miller, Patricia. Good Catholics: The Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church. First, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2014
Good Catholics tells the story of the nearly fifty-year struggle to assert the moral legitimacy of a pro-choice position in the Catholic Church, as well as the concurrent efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to suppress abortion dissent and to translate Catholic doctrine on sexuality into law. The author also describes the profound and surprising influence that the conflict over abortion in the Catholic Church has had not only on the church but also on the very fabric of U.S. politics.

Nokes, Emily, et al. Shout Your Abortion. Toronto, Between the Lines, 2018
The Shout Your Abortion (SYA) movement inspired people all over the country to share their experiences with abortion through creative cultural expressions such as art and begin organizing in a range of ways to start conversations that had never happened before and build communities of healing. The book presents a collection of these photos, essays, and creative work inspired by the movement and illuminates the individuals who have breathed life into this movement to spark their liberatory and political power of defying shame and claiming sole authorship of their experiences.

Parker, Willie. Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice. New York, 37 Ink, 2018
Dr. Willie Parker, a southern born Christian fundamentalist, read an interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and realized that in order to be a true Christian, he must always show compassion for all people.

He stopped practicing obstetrics to focus entirely on providing safe abortions for women who need help the most—often women in poverty and women of color—in the hotbed of the pro-choice debate: the South. He thereafter gave up his extravagant life and became an itinerant abortion provider, becoming one of the few doctors to provide such services in Mississippi and Alabama.

Pollitt, Katha. Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights. Reprint, Picador, 2015.
Through poetry, essays, and criticism, feminist writer Katha Pollitt illustrates the political and social issues of reproductive rights including racism, and poverty. The book makes an impassioned argument for a renewed commitment to the struggle for abortion rights.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1997.
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.

Shah, Meera. You’re the Only One I’ve Told: The Stories Behind Abortion. Chicago, Chicago Review Press, 2020
This book collects the stories that were shared with Dr. Meera Shah after she started revealing that she was an abortion provider and not just a doctor. Each time she met someone new, they would confide that they'd had an abortion themselves. And the refrain was often the same: You're the only one I've told. The stories humanize abortion and combat the myths that persist in the discourse that surrounds it through the inclusion of a wide range of ages, races, socioeconomic factors and experiences, showing that abortion does not happen in a vacuum--it always occurs in a unique context.

Singer, Elyse Ona. Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico. 1st ed., Stanford, CA. Stanford University Press, 2022
Lawful Sins reorients reigning perspectives in medical and feminist anthropology that celebrate reproductive rights as a hallmark of women's citizenship in liberal societies. By challenging the application of a liberal rights framework to Mexican abortion, the book uncovers an apparently contradictory situation--the state's increased surveillance of women's bodies precisely in the context of their presumed liberation. The book offers a critical account of the relationship between reproductive rights, gendered citizenship, morality, and public healthcare.

Kaplan, Laura. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service. First Edition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2019.
This is the first account of Jane's evolution as an underground abortion service, the conflicts within the group, and the impact its work had both on the women it helped and the members themselves as told by one of its members. This book stands as a compelling testament to a woman's most essential freedom--control over her own body--and to the power of women helping women.

Walbert, David, and Douglas Butler. Whose Choice Is It?: Abortion, Medicine, and the Law. Seventh, Chicago, American Bar Association, 2021
This book strives to give a comprehensive view of the entire subject of abortion-safety, morality, legality, accessibility, human rights and freedoms, reproductive justice, and a host of other issues as it relates to ongoing public policy.

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