Reproductive Rights

By Raquel Horlick

06/28/2022

Reproductive rights refer to the composite of human rights that address matters of sexual and reproductive health. Reproductive rights are protected through the application of human rights in guidelines, national laws, constitutions, and regional and international treaties. While reproductive rights are instrumental to achieving population, health, and development goals, they are also important in themselves as human rights intended to protect the inherent dignity of the individual.

 

Reproductive Rights

Explore the following resources to learn more about Reproductive Rights. For the full guide, please visit Reproductive Rights - Reproductive Rights Library Guide - Library Guides at Tulane University

Websites

• Supreme Court Docket Search

  The Supreme Court’s docket system contains information about cases, both pending and decided, that have been filed at the Court. The docket provided here contains complete information regarding the status of cases filed since the beginning of the 2001 Term.

 

Scholarly articles

• Academic Search Complete 

  Our broadest, most general full-text database that includes both popular and scholarly periodicals. It covers virtually all academic areas of study, including social sciences, sciences, and humanities.

Legal Database

• Nexis Uni™ (formerly LexisNexis/Lexis Nexis Academic)

  Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.

Modern Newspapers

• Newspaper Source Plus 

  Newspaper Source Plus provides a full-text digital collection of the world's major news content. It includes millions of articles from newspapers, newswires and news magazines. In addition, it offers television and radio transcripts and ongoing daily updates from popular news sources. Included is cover-to-cover full text for The Christian Science Monitor and The Los Angeles Times as well as selected full text from hundreds of regional newspapers. International newspaper coverage includes cover-to-cover full text for The Times (London), The Toronto Star, The Australian, and more. Newswire coverage includes AP Online (Associated Press), Asia Pulse, Canadian Press Wire, World Stream Newswires and more.

More on Reproductive Rights - Reproductive Rights Library Guide - Library Guides at Tulane University

 

Books on Reproductive Rights

 

• Fired up about Reproductive Rights by Jane Kirby
  

  Call Number: HQ766 .K57 2017

  ISBN: 9781771132091

  Publication Date: 2017-05-10

Shows us the many ways our reproductive lives remain subject to state control. From the fight for safe, legal, and accessible abortion services to the fight against coercive sterilization, eugenics, and population control, threats to our reproductive control remain alive and well in our communities.

• Reproductive Rights in the Age of Human Rights by Alisa Von Hagel; Daniela Mansbach
  

  Call Number: HQ766.5.U5 V66 2016

  ISBN: 1137539518

  Publication Date: 2016-08-05

  This book traces the development of the discourse used by the pro-life movement since the 1970s, and its relationship to public policy efforts at the state and federal level.

• Reproductive Rights As Human Rights by Zakiya Luna
  

  Call Number: HQ1155 .L86 2020

  ISBN: 9781479852024

  Publication Date: 2020-09-01

  Reveals both the promise and the pitfalls associated with a human rights approach to the women of color-focused reproductive rights activism of SisterSong

 

Films on Reproductive Rights:

• Birthright a war story by Women Make Movies
  

  Call Number: DVD 2019- 0019

  Publication Date: 2017

  Birthright : a war story tells these stories of women caught up in a frightening new legal system, which criminalizes and physically violates women, threatens our lives, and challenges our constitutional protections

• Trapped

  Call Number: Online, access through December 20, 2026

  U.S. abortion clinics are fighting to survive. Since 2010, hundreds of laws regulating abortion clinics have been passed by conservative state legislatures, particularly in the south. These restrictions, known as TRAP laws (or Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) are spreading across America. Faced with increased costs of compliance and the alarming fear of violence from protestors, the stakes for the women and men on the frontlines couldn't be any higher. As the battle heads to the U.S. Supreme Court, TRAPPED follows the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers fighting to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.

Abortion

 

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705 (1973)

A person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks after conception. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Issue: Whether all pre-viability prohibitions (after 15 weeks) on elective abortions are unconstitutional in Mississippi. (https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/)

 

Book on Abortion

• Abortion in America by Mary Ziegler

Call Number: KF3771 .Z54 2020

ISBN: 9781108498289

Publication Date: 2020-03-26

The first comprehensive legal history of a vital period, Abortion and the Law in America illuminates an entirely different and unexpected shift in the terms of debate.

• Doctors of Conscience: The struggle to provide abortion before and after Roe v. Wade by Carol Joffe

  Call Number: HQ767.15 .J64 1995

  ISBN: 0807021008

  Publication Date: 1995-12-01

  Argues that in addition to the violence and disruption of the anti-abortion movement, the medical community itself must share the blame.

• The End of Roe V Wade by Robin Marty; Jessica Mason Pieklo

  Call Number: RA564.85 .M3923 2019

  ISBN: 9781632460851

  Publication Date: 2019-09-17

  Examines the state by state legal war that has been waged by conservative anti-abortion forces, showing how abortion has essentially been made unavailable in many states, and how each state law is designed to specifically challenge Roe.

• Making Women Pay by Rachel Roth

  Call Number: Online

  ISBN: 1501718657

  Publication Date: 2018-08-06

  Clearly delineates the threat to women's equality posed by the new concept of "maternal-fetal conflict," an idea central to the fetal rights movement in which women and fetuses are seen as having interests that are diametrically opposed.

 

Films on Abortion

• I had an abortion by Women Make Movies

  Call Number: Online, perpetual access

  Publication Date: 2005

  Powerful, poignant, and fiercely honest, I HAD AN ABORTION tackles this taboo, featuring 10 women,including famed feminist Gloria Steinem, who candidly describe experiences spanning seven decades, from the years before Roe v. Wade to the present day.

• After Tiller by Oscilloscope Laboratories

  Call Number: Online, access through December 20, 2026

  Publication Date: 2013

  After Tiller intimately explores the highly controversial subject of third-trimester abortions in the wake of the 2009 assassination of practitioner Dr. George Tiller

 

Books on Birth Control 

• Birth Control and American Modernity by Trent MacNamara

  Call Number: HQ766.5.U5 M24 2018

  ISBN: 9781316519585

  Publication Date: 2018-10-11

  Captures a movement that relied less on traditional public advocacy than dispersed action of the kind that nullified Prohibition.

• Birth Control by Beth L. Sundstrom; Cara Delay

  Call Number: HQ766.5.U5 S87 2020

  ISBN: 9780190069667

  Publication Date: 2020-07-01

  Offers more than a user's guide to available means of contraception: it will examine how supported family-planning infrastructure impacts society as a whole.

• The Contraceptive Revolution by Charles F. Westoff; Norman B. Ryder

  Call Number: Electronic

  ISBN: 0691616663

  Publication Date: 2015-03-08

  Here is the full report of the 1970 National Fertility Study, a national sample survey for which thousands of women were interviewed who had been married at some time and were of reproductive age when they were interviewed.

• Birth Control Battles by Melissa J. Wilde

  Call Number: HQ766.5.U5 W534 2020

  ISBN: 9780520303218

  Publication Date: 2019-12-17

  Explains how reproductive politics divided American religion. In doing so, this book shows the enduring importance of race and class for American religion as it rewrites our understanding of what it has meant to be progressive or conservative in America.

 

Read more on sterilization, fertility treatments, and sexual violence prevention on Sterilization - Reproductive Rights Library Guide - Library Guides at Tulane University