Overview

"""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."

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9780520259034

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Reviews

Previously confidential, unpublished court cases and individual accounts add to the uniqueness of Reagan's historical angle. --Foreword

Previously confidential, unpublished court cases and individual accounts add to the uniqueness of Reagan's historical angle. --Foreword Ultimately inspiring story that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the benefits of vaccines. --New Scientist Intellectual. --Jrnl of American History Fascinating. --Jrnl of Clinical Investigation

Previously confidential, unpublished court cases and individual accounts add to the uniqueness of Reagan's historical angle. Foreword 20100729 Ultimately inspiring story that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the benefits of vaccines. -- Jo Marchant New Scientist 20100821 Intellectual. -- Margaret Marsh Journal Of American History 20110620 Fascinating. -- Mary Devereux Journal Of Clinical Investigation 20110620 Powerfully moving, historically precise, and politically relevant. -- Carol Mason American Studies 20101101

Previously confidential, unpublished court cases and individual accounts add to the uniqueness of Reagan's historical angle. --Foreword Ultimately inspiring story that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the benefits of vaccines. --New Scientist Intellectual. --Jrnl of American History Fascinating. --Jrnl of Clinical Investigation Powerfully moving, historically precise, and politically relevant. --American Studies

"""Previously confidential, unpublished court cases and individual accounts add to the uniqueness of Reagan's historical angle."" Foreword ""Ultimately inspiring story that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the benefits of vaccines."" -- Jo Marchant New Scientist ""Intellectual."" -- Margaret Marsh Journal Of American History ""Fascinating."" -- Mary Devereux Journal Of Clinical Investigation ""Powerfully moving, historically precise, and politically relevant."" -- Carol Mason American Studies ""Its historical approach lays the groundwork for future understandings of the fears and other emotions aroused by diseases, particularly for marginalized populations and/or during an epidemic."" Bioethical Inquiry"

Author Information

Leslie J. Reagan is Professor of History, with affiliations in gender and women's studies, law, media and cinema studies, and medicine, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States 1867-1973 (UC Press) and coeditor of Medicine's Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television.

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