Birth Control Books

My therapist told me about this book and said it was not psycho babble, but edgy, funny, informative, and extremely helpful. Well, with that kind of reccomendation, I went to Amazon and found and bought it! It arrived quickly and that night I started reading, it is all the things my shrink said and more! Anyone wanting to put some spice in your sex life, for couples that are getting bored, and anyone else who is puzzled about their sex life, this is the one!!

This book is one of the best guides you can find for overall, general information about the sex act. It is very ambitious, and runs the gamut from top to bottom, left to right and every other direction. It's fun to read, and is a must for any sexually active couple. Couples may also like a more specific book about oral sex. The Sensuous Couple's (Flip Over) Guide to Seismic Oral Sex is highly recommended because it is a flip over book. One side is dedicated to cunnilingus; flip it over, and the other side is dedicated to fellatio. Both acts get equal treatment, and it is not necessarily heterosexually biased. Highly recommended.

I have been using this book since 1998 and I have been giving it as a gift to anyone interested in sex. This is well written, well researched book, and the authors know when to poke fun and when to be serious making it a balanced read.
The best part about this book is you can read it cover to cover and gain insight into all aspects of sex including the social history or you can grab the index and read only the sections that apply to you and you won't feel like you're missing something.

By Dr. Paul Joannides - repost
Sorry, but I'm the author of this book, and they wouldn't print this note unless I gave the book a star rating.

We've been wrestling with Amazon for the past year to have the current 5th edition of the GUIDE TO GETTING IT ON come up first when shoppers do a search. It still doesn't. Instead, the 3rd edition from 2001 comes up. Heck, the German edition comes up before the current 5th edition!

I pride myself on making sure that you get the absolute latest information, and I put more work into each new edition than a lot of authors put into an entire new book. You are selling yourself short if you read anything other than the current 5th edition, which is light years better than the 4th edition.

You might ask, what's changed about sex? There's a tremendous amount of new information about human sexuality that is coming out all of the time. We are constantly finding out that we've been wrong about certain things, plus there's new research findings to analyze and integrate. At any given time, I've got a "must read" stack of new publications about sexuality that is at least three feet high--from the latest in the Journal of Sexual Medicine to learning about new sex slang.

If you are reading The Guide, I hope you'll make sure it is the latest edition--which for now is the 5th with a publication date of 2006. We did an updated 2nd printing of this edition in June of 2007.

Sorry, but I'm the author of this book, and they wouldn't print this note unless I gave the book a star rating.

We've been wrestling with Amazon for the past year to have the current 5th edition of the GUIDE TO GETTING IT ON come up first when shoppers do a search. It still doesn't. Instead, the 3rd edition from 2001 comes up. Heck, the German edition comes up before the current 5th edition!

I pride myself on making sure that you get the absolute latest information, and I put more work into each new edition than a lot of authors put into an entire new book. You are selling yourself short if you read anything other than the current 5th edition, which is light years better than the 4th edition.

You might ask, what's changed about sex? There's a tremendous amount of new information about human sexuality that is coming out all of the time. We are constantly finding out that we've been wrong about certain things, plus there's new research findings to analyze and integrate. At any given time, I've got a "must read" stack of new publications about sexuality that is at least three feet high--from the latest in the Journal of Sexual Medicine to learning about new sex slang.

If you are reading The Guide, I hope you'll make sure it is the latest edition--which for now is the 5th with a publication date of 2006. We did an updated 2nd printing of this edition in June of 2007.

No seriously. If new to the study, stay away from Russell. And if your past the novice choose something more lighthearted as well as enlightening rather than grotesque academia. Two stars only becuase the detail in it.

Finally, over 20 years after college, I got around to taking a summer and reading this, by far the book I most wish I'd been required to read in college. The writing style is lively and easy to follow: it doesn't read like a philosophy book. (As Mencken observed, "Kant was probably the worst writer ever heard of on Earth before Karl Marx. Some of his ideas were really quite simple, but he always managed to make them seem unintelligible. I hope he is in Hell.")

One reason for Bertrand's writing style being lively is that he doesn't hesitate to inject his opinion. Some philosophers and historians complain about this "editorializing," but I like it. It's fun to watch him rip into Plato or Aristotle or Aquinas or Nietzsche, because he was smarter than they were!

I read this book almost 30 years ago as a young philosophy student, and found it one of the best intros to the subject that was available back then. The coverage of some topics is a little uneven (Russell was, after all, more a mathematical logician rather than a philosophical historian like Copleston), but overall, it's a readable, enjoyable, and even-handed introduction to the subject. I eventually went on to read graduate level works in the area (although I was by training mostly a biologist, but I felt it important to know some philosophy), and this was one of the books that was invaluable to my early education in the subject.

I am not exactly sure what led me to read this book.
In high school and college, I avoided history and western philosophy as much as I could. They seemed like really dry topics to me. My interests and talents were scientific and mathematical. However, I am glad that I read this book, because, to me, it is one of the 20 best books ever written. Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was an accomplished philosopher, mathematician, and a very clear rational thinker. Russell provides a tour de force of philosophical history from ancient times into the twentieth century. He interweaves, remarkably, events in world history and how philosophers helped to shape those events. This book is quite long, but my interest in it never flagged. I highly recommend this book. It is an incredible achievement.

I've read A History of Western Philosophy more than a few times, and even gave it as a gift to a few friends. Russell has accomplished a lot with this, having created a page-turner that you just can't put down, while at the same time providing one of the most lucid histories of philosophy ever written. He also editorialized a good amount, commenting and interpreting the concepts of others in a honest manner.

Fives stars but it deserves ten.

I dub the authors of this book "King and Queen of NFP". I have a copy of it in my bedroom and another one by the telephone. You do not have to read all of this reference book to learn nfp, but it will make you an expert in the field of nfp if you do. I have been using nfp since l983 (it is now 2008) and this book has had all the answers I have needed throughout my childbearing years. I have been teaching nfp for around 15 years and it has answered all the phone call questions that I have had as well. I have not had to look at other books or call other people...it's ALL here.

This book has been the Couple to Couple League's "handbook" for the last 30 years or so. It has a lot of information, but is cumbersome to the beginner. It also is very preachy, even to practicing Catholics. It teaches 4 rules for postponing pregnancy and is overly complicated. The sections on mucus can be confusing.

The Couple to Couple League has just come out with all-new materials for the sympto-thermal method. It is "The Art of Natural Family Planning Student Guide." It is modernized and straight forward. It still encompasses religious reasons for choosing NFP, but it does so with respect for the reader. It is mostly used in conjunction with the live courses, but it can also be used alone. The 4 rules of the other book have been combined into one easy rule. It is still 99.9% effective, they have just found a better way to teach it after 30+ years of experience. The mucus explanations are highly friendly to the new user. I haven't found the new one yet on Amazon, but you can get it through the Couple to Couple League for now. I recommend it over the older one.

I found this book extremely helpful and would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to use NFP as a means of either pregnancy prevention or pregnancy achievment. The book is very descriptive and leaves no question unanswered when it comes to this method. Definitely an excellent resource!

Trying to have a baby (or another one)? Trying to avoid pregnancy? Want to know what makes NFP so popular? This book has it all! Very informative about every aspect of the three signs that make up the Sympto-Thermal Method (STM). It also has helpful information if you're trying to conceive. Or maybe you're just interested in learning how your body actually works. It truly is a art as well as a science, and the Kippleys do a great job in helping you master your OWN fertility awareness, instead of relying on (somewhat unreliable and sometimes dangerous) alternatives.

Bar none, the best NFP book there is. I simply can't recommend it enough.

I used this book to teach myself the principles of NFP. It was very easy to understand. I highly recommend.

The cover and title itself, at first glance, could lead one to believe this was another in a long line of Oprah-esque literary campaigns designed to scare the crap out of our kids not to mention us....their parents!
Unprecedented in it's examination of past as well as current issues of Childhood Sexuality as well as an almost non-debatable presentation of facts, legal and/or otherwise, this is proving to be the benchmark of books on this delicate subject.
To her credit Judith Levine has taken the proverbial 'Slings and Arrows' for daring to write "Harmful to Minors" and will probably spend the better part of her career defending it's position. This reviewer never thought a book like this could ever be written much less published and I never thought I would be able to say this but ` It's about g*# damn time!'
This is coming from a proud parent and a loyal son. Now before some of you go off on some wild tangent about `sexualizing our kids' understand this. Sex and experimentation happens whether we want to believe it or not. It happens at various ages with various ages at various times in various places with various people. One of the `Bromides' I've always lived by is `I don't care who's wrong or right, I care what's wrong or right!' and after reading her book on this subject, I have come to the conclusion that Judith Levine is RIGHT! I am a proud father of two girls and I am both my girl's `Daddy'. Levine's common sense attitude, backed by her meticulous research of facts will find readers asking questions they were either afraid to or refused to ask before. As expected it had its early detractors. Those detractors could do nothing to prove her wrong. They operated with scare tactics and no facts. What a real 'Halloween Coalition' her detractors turned out to be. The extremists of both parties have trashed Levine. People from America's 'Far Right Wing', including it's most vocal ally, the Christian Right's very own 'Eva Braun', Dr. Laura Schlessinger, to the far Left Wing represented by a cavalcade of forgettable names, closely associated with the frigid/asexual/female chauvinist wing of the radical feminist movement. There hasn't been an alliance of this `weirdness' since the 1992 Anti-GAT/NAFTA campaign!
Ironically what I appreciated first was what I appreciated the most; The Title. A passerby catching a glance of just the books title would certainly come to the conclusion that it was some Pseudo-Clinical study of childhood sexual encounters, chocked full of stories of molestation and violence and predictably backed up by law-enforcement statistics proving things like the site of an exposed female breast to anyone under the age of 18 (check your local jurisdictions for Age-Of Consent) will cause that person to become a sexual predator, a deviant, a nymphomaniac or perhaps even go blind.
After delving into it one finds that it is anything but a scare mongering, painfully statistical treatise. While Oprah Winfrey, Pat Robertson and others continue ranting, all the while, steeped in the paranoia of `group-think and waiting for the call to go on the next witch hunt, you may want to take your hopefully open mind into an area not talked about much these days; The positive effects of childhood sexuality. While not an endorsement for `sex for any age with anyone' she does make an excellent and seemingly airtight case for a relaxation of certain `Prurient American ' sex-laws and attitudes. She also thankfully promotes a long overdue examination of our antiquated thoughts and ideas about sex as it relates to our children. It also may be one of the cleverest title-ings for a non-fiction work in the last 20 years. Whether or not you get the 'dipped in sarcasm' humor of the title you will, if read with an open mind, get a sense of the current state of childhood sexuality with it's almost 'Stalinistic' roundups and persecutions of caring parents and bright kids. She provides a common sense approach to dealing with issues of masturbation, sexual experimentation, child/child contact, adult/child contact and fear of sex as it relates to our views as adults. Reviled in some sectors, revered in others, Levine's major accomplishment is perhaps the one thing she didn't foresee. With the release of `Harmful To Minors: The Perils of Protecting Your Children From Sex', she has cracked open the door to a long over-due dialogue on sex and has done so in a way that forces us to face it, discuss it and finally deal with it.... and that my friends, is the most important thing of all.

Mike D.Jones, Sacramento, California

This excellent book provides the ammunition needed in the fight against those that wish to raise the age of sexual consent to 21. Already thousands of children and adolescents have been forced to register as sexual offenders for committing harmless acts such as groping or even pre-marital kissing.

Is consensually kissing someone a couple years under an arbitrary age of consent is really "sinful"? Is it really the job of government to punish this sin with a lifetime sentence?

All thinking people must not fall for the absurd "save the children from sin" bandwagon movement that is spreading sexual dysfunction and fascism. A fascist police state becomes absolutely necessary when the age of consent is higher than puberty. The natural age of consent is puberty. The ultimate goal of the child purity movement is to outlaw premarital sex. Outlawing premarital sex will criminalize far too many of those that we claim to want to protect.

Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (University of Minnesota Press, 2002)

I have read, over the years, a handful of books that I consider to be truly important, books that look at a particular aspect of our society, how it has damaged us (perhaps irreparably), and how we might change facets of our culture to stop further damage, and maybe heal some of the damage that's already been done-- Stanton Peele's The Diseasing of America, Gina Kolata's Rehtinking Thin, Philip K. Howard's The Death of Common Sense, and a few others. It's a very short list, mostly because these are books that do not fit in with the prevailing norms in the least. These are books that are unafraid to take a stand against the stupidity of our current culture. They are unpopular, and it's very hard to get them published. That, of course, makes them all the more important. And of them, perhaps, Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors is the most important. While all of them address very important topics, this one attacks the most wide-reaching subject I've found in one of these books: how America's puritanical attitude towards sex has resulted in generations of increasingly oversheltered, and dangerously uninformed, children, and how that oversheltering and lack of information have pushed America to the brink of disaster and allowed a number of social ills (of which AIDS is only the most visible) to fester unchecked.

When I started thinking about how to write this review, the obvious place to start, it seemed, would be with an extended quote from the book. Problem is, I couldn't come up with just one quote; so much of this book needs to be quoted, so much of what Levine has to say needs said, that singling out one or two paragraphs from the book seemed to be doing the rest of it a disservice. With one short exception (we'll get to that later), the entire book is quotable. Obviously, reprinting a 270-page book does not make for a good review, and yet if I could have done so here, I'd have done it in a heartbeat; this is a book that every American parent, or anyone who was raised in the increasingly oppressive anti-child culture that began to foment in the 1950s, desperately needs to read. Some will find validation in these pages that their embarrassing, socially unacceptable, or "morally repugnant" thoughts are universal. Some will come to understand that their beliefs about how they should be parenting their children are shared by many others. The majority, I think, will find that they are not alone, or nearly as rare as they had believed. It's the people whose voices have caused all these insane "protect the children" laws to be enacted who are in the minority; they just scream louder and know what buttons to press. When Levine traces the raft of onerous laws involving day-care workers (especially male day-care workers) not being allowed to show affection to children to the long-discredited McMartin case, the obvious reaction is, "well, since none of that actually happened, why do we still have the laws?" Indeed. And yet, somehow, we do.

I was prepared to stick this book far atop my list of best reads of the year for 2008, despite us being less than five months into the year, before I hit the epilogue. Levine stumbles a bit at the very end of the book; where she spent the majority of the book completely on-point, in the epilogue she suddenly starts lashing out at things that seem to have nothing to do with her thesis, drawing the most tenuous of connections at best. But this is in no way to say that the rest of the book is not well worth your time; in fact, were I drawing up a curriculum of must-read books for every American, this would most certainly be on it.

Children, especially those who are suffering between the onset of puberty and the so-called "magic age" at which we are all supposed to gain maturity overnight, are the last subclass of people it is considered socially acceptable to repress in America. Judith Levine is outraged by this, as we all should be, and Harmful to Minors is the result. The trouble she had getting the book published, which she recounts in the prologue, should set off major warning bells to everyone reading it. This is a deeply, deeply important book, and I strongly suggest you read it as soon as you possibly can. For in the six years since its release, not surprisingly, things have only gotten worse. The arm is already lopped off; the more of us who read this book, understand the consequences of our culture's actions, and speak up about them, the better a chance we have to stanch the bleeding. For if we don't, the patient may not survive the operation. **** ½

I'm almost all the way done, and I absolutely adore this book. The author sets up and supports very firm arguments against the neo-cons and overprotective parents who seek to push their morality on the rest of the nation. This is a must-read for those who wish to understand how our system got to be the mess it is today concerning sex.

I would say this is one of the 5 most important books I've read in my life.

Finally...FINALLY someone has the courage to stand up and say what needs to be said. Our society is dysfunctional. Parents don't know how to talk about sex and earn their children's trust in sexual matters. They pass their ignorance and fear right down to the next generation. Children who do not trust their own parents are definitely more vulnerable to abuse from others, especially when they learn to trust others.

There is so much hysteria, paranoia and flat out ignorance about sex in America. It is astounding!!!

The controversy that this book generated is mostly due to the repressive, morally righteous environment in this country. But Ms. Levine is also sex-positive. She goes beyond simply providing objective information about sex or our dysfunctional ways of dealing with it, she actually advances many of her own opinions about the positive nature of sex and the negative consequences of repression.

To me, sex raises many questions. I don't have all the answers. The only criticism I could make of the book is that Ms. Levine is a little too opinionated and like a race horse at the starting gate. She comes on a little strong for the majority of Americans, many of whom are still struggling to understand how people can be gay. I'm sure many of these people are not yet able to fathom that children can enjoy and benefit from sex with adults. So that part created a lot of controversy.

Don't look for unsupported opinion in this book. ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments presents the facts.

Whether you're prolife or prochoice, you should know why you believe the way you do about abortion. You won't be disappointed with this book.

This book is organized wonderfully and points out all of the fallacies of the pro-abortion/pro-infanticide stance. I refer to it in one of the chapters of a pro-life book I am writing about how not only the unborn human beings but newborn and infants have been dehumanized by the "legal non-person" pro-abortion argument. Now we see the return of eugenics, where people sue because they had a baby with Down syndrome, such as wrongful life and wrongful birth lawsuits and where whole organs are used from aborted children for research. Great book!

The only thing I would vehemently disagree with is where he defends not allowing abortion in the case of rape or incest. It was not the woman or girl's choice to have sex so she should have a choice to get cleaned out after a rape, even if a conception, and therefore new human life, has already formed. This is less than one percent of abortions anyway, and if leftists let us keep rapists and murderers in jail that would be less of a problem. The right of a raped person to get cleaned out from a rape outweighs any right a 2-hour old embryo does to life. It is sad but forcing a raped girl to carry to term is inhumane.

That said, 99 percent of abortions are currently for convenience (the mother wants to go on a ski trip, for example) or for eugenic reasons, like the father was ugly or the unborn child has a fixable cosmetic flaw such as cleft lip.

see www.culturejamforlife.com

This book has every pro-choice argument you can think of! I love that it doesn't have religious answers. I am personally a religious person, but I don't think abortion is a religious issue but rather one of basic human rights. Every pro-life person should have this book and see how to articulate your views.

IT MAKES VERY CLEAR WHY ABORTION IS WRONG,AS ITS NAME SAY S ANSWERING PRO ABORTION ARGUMENTS.
IT ALSO HAS RELIABLE AND USEFUL INFORMATION.

I am still reading this book (borrowed it from the library), but I was impressed enough to write a review halfway through the book. First off, Alcorn presents all his arguments in a logical order, grouping like arguments together. He also responds to each individual reason why a pro-choice person supports abortion, and crafts his counter-argument calmly and rationally. Alcorn is adept at putting into words the vague reasons why pro-life people oppose abortion, and he explains it in such a logical way that Vulcans would approve of.

However as rational Mr. Alcorn may be, he is not above describing what a fetus (fetus and unborn baby is used interchangably duirng the book) feels during abortion, or using pictures of miscarried babies, aborted babies, and surgeries perfomed on fetuses that will increase their chance of living.

He also uses anecdotes when appropriate, like the one about a three year old who inadvertently saw a picture of an aborted baby (to put it gently, an aborted baby is a baby that's been taken apart) The three year old, in tears, asked his mommy, "Who broke the baby?" Randy Alcorn does try not to dwell on the gruesome; he'll just matter-of-factly explain things. My favorite anecdote is the one that involved Alcorn himself. He'll speak to college students and explain that while he was introduced as pro-life, he's really pro-choice. (Students nod in approvement) He believes that people can choose what they want to do with their bodies. (Cheers) Men can do what they want with their bodies, too. (More approval) For example, if a man wants to force a lady to have sex with him, and rapes her, that's his choice. Nobody has the right to tell him not to use his body to rape her, so he shouldn't be punished for it. (Silence).
Alcorn then uses this to compare the rape with an abortion, in both stories the victim is barely paid lip-service. The victim is the one who has no say in these these things, but in a rape, people will go to the defense of the lady, making sure she recovers, but who's going to the defense of the fetuses? (By the way, if a rape victim gets pregnant, she shouldn't abort the baby, Alcorn says. It won't be our fault for "forcing" her to carry it full term, it's the rapist's fault for invading her in the first place, it's the rapist's fault for forcing a pregnancy on the lady. If the baby is aborted, then the lady will be as guilty as the rapist.)

Another main argument is over the fact whether a fetus is a person. Well, is it a lesser sin to murder a teenager because he's not full person yet, an adult? Is it a lesser sin to kill a child because she's not a teenager yet? How about killing an infant, because the baby isn't a child yet? Well, how about a fetus? (Clue: a fetus is a baby, even if it lives in a womb vs. a crib.) Then how about a "product of conception"? Questions like these abound in this book.

I started reading this book with an open mind, and even halfway through I am forced to conclude that abortion does indeed kill babies. Even if you are firmly in the pro-choice side, it would do you good to read this book, just to see where pro-lifers are coming from. Alcorn said that many pro-choicers are virtually clueless when it comes to the pro-life position, and that's where the heated arguments come from. Read this book, know each side's view, and THEN start arguing. We'd save a lot of time that way.

FYI, Dorothy Boyett's review is very biased. She's a part of Operation Rescue.

My star rating is not very accurate at this time as I haven't finished the book yet. I will give a full review when I am finished reading, although I have read enough to understand what kind of hatred these abortion providers have had to endure. It makes it all the worse that nobody believed them.

Because of my work in the field of reproductive health, I have suffered at the hands of these "Christians," people like Raney and Rolke, both of whom wrote absurd comments about "Targets of Hatred." These people insist that everyone must worship their God in their way, and also believe every bit of fabricated dogma. They should live in Iran!

Windle and Bader expose these religious extremists for what they truly are: Terrorists!

Eleanor Bader and Patricia Baird-Windle have done an excellent job of exposing the ugly underbelly of American society -- the anti abortion demagogues who use any means, large and small, to terrorize those who lawfully protect and provide women's reproductive rights. Too much of the abortion debate has been made into a political game. The on-the-ground damage caused by these harassers and supported by cynical politicians who demonize women's health care is described in vivid riveting detail in this book. The multiple snapshots across the country portray the ugly truth about the "pro-life" movement -- from the stories of the daughter of a provider who is afraid to leave her room to the hypocrisy of an anti-abortion terrorist who, in a deposition, admits that he uses lies and deceit. I wish every newsroom had a copy of this book on every journalist's desk, and then maybe the anti-abortion terrorists would be recognized for the hateful anti-democratic manipulators and dangers to civil society that they truly are.

Mrs. Windle's book was very entertaining although not very original. Mostly it consists of a laundry list of the alleged activities by the 'anti's' whom she blames for all her troubles, although others may say that her career 'choice' was the cause of her grief. She specifically blames Operation Rescue's IMPACT school graduates for her decline in health and finances, but brushes aside the stigma of an "image of providers as less than noble" (her own words) and the visual carnage that must be the daily reproductive health scene as contributing factors. Although the subtitle of this book is 'Antiabortion Terrorism' she details many antiabortion activites which are harmless and legal. Could these actions have significantly lowered the daily "take" and thus be the real reason why Mrs. Windle cried Uncle?

Targets of Hatred, is a necessary book for all young people to read. Eleanor Bader and Patricia Baird-Windle have written a detailed and thought provoking book documenting the anti-abortion movement in the United States. It is clear after reading this book that many young poeple need to be made aware of the threat the anti-abortion movement poses to our reproductive freedoms. The young generation who was not present during the past struggles for pro-choice rights must not, out of ignorance and comfort, let the anti-abortion movement take away a right that was won after such a hard battle.

This book had many helpful tips for being prepared for my c-section and claimed to be unbiased on the subject of elective c-sections. However the more that I read, the more that I got heated because the author repeatedly kept saying "in efforts to avoid labor pain" when referring to an elective c-section. Avoiding labor pain had nothing to do with my decision to have a c-section so I felt a little insulted by this book at times. That being said, I do think I took away many good tips to help with a speedier recovery time.

I had an unplanned c-section for my first child. This book gave me the information I needed to understand what happened the first time and why my doctor reccommended a planned c-section for my second child. This book gave me the information to ask the right questions and make an informed decision about my body and the welfare of my child. I think natural child birth classes gloss over this information and if a c-section becomes necessary, many women are ill informed to make the necessary decisions.

This book has great information for anyone who has had a c-section or is going to have one. I would even recommend any pregnant woman to check this book out just in case she ends up having a c-section. I just had my first baby, my pregnancy was healthy and I had no problems yet I had to have a c-section done at the last minute. Having the information in this book days after my c-section instead of weeks would have been much better. It's informative and lets you realize your not alone. This is a very good book.

I will be having a planned Cesarean in 6 wks b/c of placenta previa. I've been anxious & wanted to know as much as I could about this upcoming c-section. I've read several books on the topic & this book really stands out from the rest! It covers the surgery, recovery, breastfeeding & many other issues all in great detail, which is great for me, being this is my first baby & first cesarean. I'm looking forward to getting back into shape using this book as a reference as well. I'm even bringing it to the hospital with me. I highly recommend it for anyone faced with a Cesarean!

I tend to be a person who is not satisfied with just one source of information and do extensive research on every subject that I am educating myself on. After looking at many different books and resources, I can honestly say that this is the only book that you need to prepare you for your c-section. This comprehensive reference provides thorough information while maintaining a humanistic approach to the subject matter. This book contains a whole chapter on the emotional aspects of having a cesarean which I found to be very helpful, since it is something that is not usually addressed. On top of the information included to aid you in your physical recovery there is another chapter with workout information when you are ready for that. I would have paid twice the price I did for this truly "essential" resource

First of all, I want to say that this book opened my eyes even more to the horrors that the radical pro-life movement imposes to human and reproductive rights of women around the world. This piece will make any pro-choice feminist to become furious like me as I have devoted my life to do my best to defend the rights of women despite my parents' disapproval. This book discuss every issue with compelling arguments backed by credible scientific FACTS and reading this book is a must. It should be read by any american pro-choice or pro-life because I believe that in the end, the horrible consequences of pro-life movement in america will affect the vast majority of the citizens pro-choice or not. To Miss Christina Page, I applaud you for the a job well done. In my eyes, you are a real modern hero fighting for justice and women's rights.

Cristina Page's thesis is simple: with the majority of the anti-abortion movement, abortion, or prevention thereof, is not the core issue. Rather, the core issue is the ideology that intercourse cannot take place outside marriage, and even then, birth control is not acceptable. To support this thesis, Page cites examples, of pro-life organizations fighting measures in states that would make health care plans pay for contraceptive services, as well as any kind of measure that would increase daycare funding. Page also includes some rather shocking examples of pharmacists who refused to fill prescription orders for contraception (including that of one rape victim). Other issues discussed include the failure of the nationwide abstinence-only programs, and the FDA's refusal to grant over-the-counter status to the "morning after pill."

One story the author relates is particularly disturbing. The Population Research Institute, an extremely small branch (about 6 members) of the lobby Human Life International, successfully led a campaign to de-fund UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund). They were working in China to try to stop China's forced abortion policy by encouraging voluntary family planning in a certain number of counties. By all accounts, it was going quite successfully, and China was going to expand the number of counties participating in the program. The PRI, however, erroneously claimed that UNFPA was collaborating with China's forced abortion policy. They denied this, and pointed that there was no evidence to back up the allegation. Bush, however, listened to them and withdrew the US funding for the agency. In response, European nations increased their funding of UNFPA to compensate for the US withdrawal (worth about $25 million). The result: ideology triumphed, and we lost even more credibility among the world.

Page does a good job in showing how the pro-life movement is about more than the prevention of abortion, and how countries with access to contraception and comprehensive sex-ed are the ones that have the lowest abortion rates. She only spends a little time on how access to contraception and the entry of women into the workforce has improved the country socially; given the title of the book, I wish she had spent a little more time on the issue. Further, it would have been a good idea to give at least a brief philosophical defense of the pro-choice position, or to show the inconsistencies of the pro-life position beyond the utilitarian consequences thereof. Overall, however, this is an interesting and important little book that will help citizens inform themselves about crucial issues.

How the Pro Choice Movement Saved America is a celebratory book of sorts, written by a woman who has been fighting for reproductive and family planning rights for much of her adult life. Cristina Page has been a leader in several different pro- choice organizations and she is a fervent believer not only in the importance of keeping abortion legal, but also in the many benefits that society has reaped since abortion was legalized in 1973.

Abortion is a passionate issue that divides many Americans. It's a delicate issue and there are so many "ifs", "ands", and "buts" that it is often difficult to take a divisive stand. Cristina Page, however, has taken a stand and hers isn't as radical as the book's title suggests. She feels that abortion, while certainly not a desirable procedure and something everyone should avoid, has had some positive benefits to society. Once abortion and contraception were legalized, women were empowered to take control of their lives. It has led to greater enrollment in college, greater financial security for the children, and a smaller child- bearing burden to bear. The fact that family planning is now a choice has led to a stronger family, for these and other reasons.

Cristina Page didn't write this book mainly as a defense of the pro- choice movement. What Page really intended with this book is to expose the more extreme elements in the pro- life movement and how they will resort to anything to validate their position. While pro- choice advocates rely on science and reason to support their views, pro- life adherents will use any tactic necessary to win support for their cause. This includes distorting the facts and manipulating data, presenting false and misleading information, and commissioning phony studies or surveys that are biased in favor of the pro- life side.

I can agree with much of what Page says in this book. One doesn't have to look very far or very hard to see the smokescreen tactics of pro- life organizations. However, before we begin demonizing pro- life political groups for misleading the public in their efforts to make abortion a crime, we also have to consider the fact that abortion, at present, is legal. Could it be that the pro- life organizations feel they have to stretch the truth a little bit if they have any hope of overturning a Supreme Court decision? If Roe vs. Wade is overturned and abortion is severely restricted or outlawed, isn't there a good chance the pro- choice organizations would resort to precisely the same tactics?

As for the writing and presentation of this book, it is okay at best. I like the fact that Page devoted so much time to gathering official research data because it helps persuade the reader. But the added notes and sources comprise about thirty percent of the book's pages. Take them away, and you have a book with only 168 pages: Not nearly enough to give a topic like this the justice it deserved. The presentation isn't the best either. It is basically a solid wall of words and statistics. I would have liked it better if it included some tables and/or graphic illustrations to drive its points home.

With such limited space, this book doesn't dive deeply enough into the abortion issue the way I would prefer. This fact is most glaring in the book's final chapter, which discusses what the United States would be like if Roe vs. Wade was overturned. It was a good idea to include some frank discussion on this important concern, but there are so many valid points that could have been made and weren't, I got frustrated reading it. For example, there is almost no discussion at all of the black market in abortions that would most certainly rise out of nowhere if Roe vs. Wade was removed from the legal code. And even more frightening is the government crackdown on illegal abortion that would most certainly follow. It would mean the end of most of our privacy rights as we know them today, yet this issue is barely touched in the book's closing chapter.

Overall, "How the Pro- Choice Movement Saved America" is a good book, but not quite the blockbusting piece of political non- fiction I was hoping for. It has many important and perfectly valid points to make and it backs itself with plenty of statistics and sources. It's good and worth a read, but it is really too short to make its way onto a list of the most important books on reproductive rights.

The book was a waste of both Page's and my time.

She essentially cherry picked some quotes to support her absurd hypothesis that pro-lifers just want to punish people who have sex.

Absurd, yes. Are there some people like that? No doubt. If you look hard enough you'll find a communist who thinks he is a can of tomato paste. But that isn't representative of the communist argument, and punishing people who have sex isn't representative of the pro-life argument.

The real argument is a very sincere and serious one. It's about the very important right to privacy, and the very important right to life. It's not the kind of debate that dishonest cherry-picking writers should be meddling in.

You have to be mentally ill to think a movement based on killing children is saving America. Furthermore, what liberal thinks America is saved in the first place? All they do is complain about how horrible it is. Sadly, the abortion racket is nothing more than a money-making scheme and a political tool. If you are pro-choice like I am, you need to stop being so selfish and think about what abortion is. It's killing a child. This is horrible. Let's just face the facts. You are killing a living being with a beating heart. The question is, does the government have the right to decide what a women does with the baby in her body? My answer is no. So, abortion should be legal. But let's get all the lies and political garbage out of it. Stop fooling yourselves and admit that what you want to for a women to be able to have a doctor tear an unborn fetus from her body. So in order to improve the abortion system, the truth must be spoken about it. No more should organization like planned parenthood be able to spread lies about what abortion is. The absolute truth and only the truth must be spoken about what this practice is. Finally, the mother does not have sole rights to her child. Therefore, the mother's parent's as well as the father of the baby must sign sworn testimony that they authorize the mother to murder this baby, as they are the baby's grandparent's and father they have as much right to the child as the mother does. Only under these circumstances should abortion be legal.

It's hard to review a book like this: as the author states, each chapter could be a book itself; the volume of information is astounding. The basic thesis is simple: Black brings home the idea that America was a pioneer in the eugenics movement, influencing politics and society worldwide by the early 20th century. Although the most obvious disciple of America's eugenics program is Germany under the Nazis, Black documents how other countries, such as Sweden, Norway and England also took their cues from US policies to regulate marriage and birth of those considered desirable and undesirable.

There's simply too much information to fully review, but some of the major items include the fallacy of IQ testing; the campaign to prevent interracial marriage (some laws in the American South lasted into the 21st century); sterilization of those deemed 'feeble-minded' (a very subjective decision made by racists and others with an eugenical agenda); and a general re-ordering of society to create a 'master race'(most evident in Nazi Germany). The final chapter deals with 'Newgenics', and was perhaps the most potentially frightening, as it clarifies the challenges of dealing with genetic issues such as cloning, medical and life insurance based on an individual's genetic 'predisposition' to certain diseases based on family history, and the possible emergence of the designer children by the 'GenRich', those who can afford to create their own mini-master race kids.

As a side-note, I found it interesting that although Black devotes several chapters to Germany, there's no mention of the Paraguayan 'Nueva Germania' colony set up by Elizabeth Nietzsche in the 1880s. Like many of the characters Black mentions, Nietzsche and her group wanted to preserve the 'pure' Aryan race they felt was already corrupted in Germany by too many 'outsiders'. Their attempt to create their utopia in South America failed, just as Black's Davenport, Laughlin and others failed in the US. 'The War Against the Weak' is a great addition to modern social science; I learned a lot, and Black's book makes me want to learn more about this topic.

This is one of the most thorough volumes on the topic of eugenics that have surfaced in years. "War Against the Weak," gives a no-holds-barred look at this revolting practice and how it started in America. It chronicles the rise and fall of the eugenic movement, how Darwinism was embraced due to its notion of natural "superiority" and current practices that hint at other forms of eugenics in the world.

This is a great starter book for those new to the topic as well as a full reference for those familiar with it.

As a child in grade school in the mid-40s I wondered why our principal (and his preacher friend) were always ranting about 'bad blood' and 'sins of the father' - Edwin Black's book, War Against The Weak, sheds great light on their attitudes and demonstrates how famous, well-intentioned people get sucked into evil notions such as Eugenics and other 'absolutes'. Ideas, no matter how bright and glittery, can lead down
ugly paths and take that evil fork in the road which leads to holocast.
This book should be required reading for every freshman college class.

This book single-handedly was responsible for opening my eyes to the eugenics movement, and I've been fascinated ever since. It's cited in many of my papers, excellent source, well researched, and an exciting read. Highly recommended!

This book lays out a case, in plain language, that diseased ideas can propogate like wildfire, particularly when powerful people get behind them. Adolf Hitler did not just wake up one day and decide that Jews, homosexuals and the mentally disabled should be killed. That idea had been alive, spreading and in fact exported to Europe by US. This may explain why ships of Jewish refugees were turned back from entrance to this country during the war, eventhough everyone knew they would likely face death. This explains why so many Nazi scientists were welcomed into this country to continue biological research after the war.
But mostly what this well-researched work shows is the importance for standing up for all people and not assuming that any one of us has the right to determine who is fit or unfit to exist.

This is a compelling story about the life and survival of an aborted child. Anybody with doubts about when life begins, should read this book. I was must distraught to read how much a baby goes through while being aborted. Giana remembered the burning sensation. Whether we want to hear it or not, it's real and the information is out. This book is hopeful about life and it's a possitive story. It's a good, quick read. You won't put it down. It will make you feel good, possitive and hopeful. Enjoy!

This book provided a great in sight from a surviver of an attempted abortion. It was a joy to read.

Hi! I'm Jessica Shaver and I wanted to respond to a couple of readers' comments.

Yes, Gianna was really aborted. The abortionist was Dr. Edward Allred, who lives in Southern California. After thirty years of doing abortions in many locations--150,000-160,000 a year, he told me--he recently sold his business. He and I have talked about Gianna's abortion in 1977 and he says back then doctors did not have the technology to be sure how far a long a pregnancy was. So he "guess-timated" and did not use enough of the saline solution to kill her. Abortion is still legal in this country till birth.

Gianna will be 30 this year (2007) and is still happy to be alive. She is based in Knoxville, TN and sings and speaks around the world.

I hope you will be interested in my new book about abortion--a novel called Compelling Interests. I'd be glad to know what you think about it. (I also have a novella out, New Every Morning, under my new name, Jessica Shaver Renshaw.)

Thank you for your comments!

Jessica Shaver

This is just an amazing book! I can't believe how far Gianna has come. It makes you want to hug her and tell her how brave of a person she is.

This book doesn't contain the best writing I've ever seen, but it still tells the story of a remarkable young woman. Obviously, the abortion doctor's name could not be used for legal reasons, but the documents that came to Gianna's adoptive mother, combined with the "from the horse's mouth" information from Gianna's birth mother are all the evidence that a reasonable person could expect to find in a situation such as this.

But Gianna's story isn't just about whether abortion is the killing of a human being or not; a great deal of her story is about forgiveness, love, and determination.

Gianna is an inspiration because she's a survivor, because she's not afraid to speak her mind, and because she "walks the walk," in addition to "talking the talk."

Definitely worth reading.