reproductive rights

CBS's decision to air a Focus on the Family ad during this year's Super Bowl, while frustrating for pro-choice advocates, has a silver lining: It has inspired some pretty, well, inspiring, responses.

 The murder of Kansas physician George Tiller is a devastating and, unfortunately, perfect illustration of the stupid, hypocritical, blindered self-righteousness of the anti-choice movement. And just as painful as the news itself is seeing the variety of twists and dodges with which the mainstream media does—or doesn’t—cover it.

Michelle Goldberg’s groundbreaking book comes in like a lion this April. The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World (Penguin Group) is no ordinary overview.

Goldberg's investigation into the intersection of the war on reproductive freedom and the global war for power spans four continents. From the HIV/AIDS epidemic to female circumcision to overpopulation to infant mortality to abortion rights, Goldberg analyzes how the means of reproduction influences the health of whole societies--even as women's rights have been sidelined by governments and social movements, and even as reproductive rights are weirdly isolated as "women’s issues" only. Goldberg emphasizes how the struggle to control women's bodies is the next great human rights struggle of our globalized world.

Goldberg found time in her travels through Buenos Aires to answer questions for Bitch about this struggle and about her book