 | Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America Subjects: Rubella -- United States -- History; Rubella in pregnancy -- United States -- History; Abortion -- United States -- History; Abnormalities Human -- United States -- History; Disability awareness -- United States -- History; Dangerous Pregnancies tells the largely forgotten story of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s and how it created national anxiety about dying, disabled, and "dangerous" babies. This epidemic would ultimately transform abortion politics, produce new science, and help build two of the most enduring social movements of the late twentieth century--the reproductive rights and the disability rights movements. At most a minor rash and fever for women, German measles (also known as rubella), if contracted during pregnancy, could result in miscarriages, infant deaths, and serious birth defects in the newborn. Award-winning writer Leslie J. Reagan chronicles for the first time the discoveries and dilemmas of this disease in a book full of intimate stories--including riveting courtroom testimony, secret investigations of women and doctors for abortion, and startling media portraits of children with disabilities. In exploring a disease that changed America, Dangerous Pregnancies powerfully illuminates social movements that still shape individual lives, pregnancy, medicine, law, and politics. Professor Leslie J. Reagan graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 1981, and earned an M. A. (1985) and a Ph. D. (1991) from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She became a professor at the University of Illinois in 1992, before which she was a visiting research Fellow at the Institute of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Areas of specialty include the history of medicine, American women's history and sexuality. She has been published in a variety of scholarly journals (including Bulletin of the History of Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, and Journal of American History) and her book, When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 (1997) received numerous awards, including the Presidents Award for the Social Science History Association, the Law and Society Association's James Willard Hurst Prize for Best Book in Legal History, and the Choice Outstanding Book of the Year. (Bowker Author Biography) |
