In the book Reproductive Rights and the State: Getting the Birth Control, RU-486, and Morning-After Pills and the Gardasil Vaccine to the U.S. Market (Praeger, 2013), Melissa Haussman tackles a subject that remains controversial more than 60 years after “the pill” was approved for use in the United States. The first book to examine the politicization of the FDA approval process for reproductive drugs, this study maps the hard-fought battles over the four major drugs currently on the U.S. market.
The facts in the birth control battle are sobering, among them that women’s access to contraception and medical abortion in the United States has never been offered without restriction. More disturbing, as studies of four key, birth-control-related drugs demonstrate, is the realization that politics and profit have continually trumped medical considerations in determining the availability and use of birth control drugs.
Simultaneously examining four significant, never-before-combined case studies, this unique feminist analysis offers troubling revelations about the private-public interaction in U.S. policy affecting birth control drugs.
Monday, September 9, 2013 in Department of Political Science, Faculty Publications, News
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