Birth Control Books

Taking Charge of Your Fertility, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health This comprehensive book explains in lucid, assured terms how to practice the fertility awareness method (FAM), a natural, scientifically proven but little-known form of birth control (which is not to be confused with the woefully ineffective "rhythm" method). Author Toni Weschler has been teaching fertility awareness for almost 20 years, and it's only just now gaining in popularity. As the book explains, by using simple fertility signs including peaks in morning body temperature and changes in cervical position and cervical mucus, it's possible to determine when ovulation is taking place. Fertility awareness is therefore useful for not only couples who are trying to conceive, but for those who are aiming to avoid pregnancy without the use of chemical contraceptives. It will be of special interest to those women who have suffered from infertility; many FAM practitioners have told the author that by filling in the detailed charts in the book, they've realized that they were chronically miscarrying, even when their doctors told them they weren't conceiving at all. As the book explains, by charting body temperature, it's simple to tell when pregnancy has occurred--and when there's danger of miscarriage. Taking Charge of Your Fertility also explains how to choose the sex of your baby by timing intercourse according to certain fertility signs. It also features thorough, easy-to-understand explanations of hormones, the menstrual cycle, and menopause, along with fertility tests and treatments and their long- and short-term side effects, plus a topnotch resource section. Recommended for any woman who wants to better understand her body. --Erica Jorgensen

Celebrating 10 years of helping hundreds of thousands of women achieve pregnancy, avoid pregnancy naturally, and gain better control of their health and lives, the 10th Anniversary Edition of the classic bestseller will include:

For any woman unhappy with her current method of birth control; demoralized by her quest to have a baby; or experiencing confusing symptoms in her cycle, this book provides answers to all these questions, plus amazing insights into a woman's body. Weschler thoroughly explains the empowering Fertility Awareness Method, which in only a couple minutes a day allows a woman to:

•Enjoy highly effective, scientifically proven birth control without chemicals or devices

•Maximize her chances of conception or expedite fertility treatment by identifying impediments to conception

Gianna (Living Books) At the tender age of 17, Tina was frightened and pregnant. Feeling abandoned and desperate, she stepped into the clinic to have an abortion. But in the midst of it, something unexpected happened . . . something wonderful. Instead of snuffing out the growing life within, the procedure failed. And with defiance and courage, a baby girl made her way into the world. Gianna is the incredible true story of one girl's remarkable journey from abortion survivor to steadfast defender and lover of life. This book isn't about issues --it's about a young woman's determination to make the most of her God-given opportunities.

Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos "We fail to mandate economic sanity," writes Garrett Hardin, "because our brains are addled by...compassion." With such startling assertions, Hardin has cut a swathe through the field of ecology for decades, winning a reputation as a fearless and original thinker. A prominent biologist, ecological philosopher, and keen student of human population control, Hardin now offers the finest summation of his work to date, with an eloquent argument for accepting the limits of the earth's resources--and the hard choices we must make to live within them.
In Living Within Limits, Hardin focuses on the neglected problem of overpopulation, making a forceful case for dramatically changing the way we live in and manage our world. Our world itself, he writes, is in the dilemma of the lifeboat: it can only hold a certain number of people before it sinks--not everyone can be saved. The old idea of progress and limitless growth misses the point that the earth (and each part of it) has a limited carrying capacity; sentimentality should not cloud our ability to take necessary steps to limit population. But Hardin refutes the notion that goodwill and voluntary restraints will be enough. Instead, nations where population is growing must suffer the consequences alone. Too often, he writes, we operate on the faulty principle of shared costs matched with private profits. In Hardin's famous essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," he showed how a village common pasture suffers from overgrazing because each villager puts as many cattle on it as possible--since the costs of grazing are shared by everyone, but the profits go to the individual. The metaphor applies to global ecology, he argues, making a powerful case for closed borders and an end to immigration from poor nations to rich ones. "The production of human beings is the result of very localized human actions; corrective action must be local....Globalizing the 'population problem' would only ensure that it would never be solved." Hardin does not shrink from the startling implications of his argument, as he criticizes the shipment of food to overpopulated regions and asserts that coercion in population control is inevitable. But he also proposes a free flow of information across boundaries, to allow each state to help itself.
"The time-honored practice of pollute and move on is no longer acceptable," Hardin tells us. We now fill the globe, and we have no where else to go. In this powerful book, one of our leading ecological philosophers points out the hard choices we must make--and the solutions we have been afraid to consider.

Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico Original and compelling, Laura Briggs's Reproducing Empire shows how, for both Puerto Ricans and North Americans, ideologies of sexuality, reproduction, and gender have shaped relations between the island and the mainland. From science to public policy, the "culture of poverty" to overpopulation, feminism to Puerto Rican nationalism, this book uncovers the persistence of concerns about motherhood, prostitution, and family in shaping the beliefs and practices of virtually every player in the twentieth-century drama of Puerto Rican colonialism. In this way, it sheds light on the legacies haunting contemporary debates over globalization.
Puerto Rico is a perfect lens through which to examine colonialism and globalization because for the past century it has been where the United States has expressed and fine-tuned its attitudes toward its own expansionism. Puerto Rico's history holds no simple lessons for present-day debate over globalization but does unearth some of its history. Reproducing Empire suggests that interventionist discourses of rescue, family, and sexuality fueled U.S. imperial projects and organized American colonialism.
Through the politics, biology, and medicine of eugenics, prostitution, and birth control, the United States has justified its presence in the territory's politics and society. Briggs makes an innovative contribution to Puerto Rican and U.S. history, effectively arguing that gender has been crucial to the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, and more broadly, to U.S. expansion elsewhere.

CHOICE attempts to raise the discourse on reproductive choice, which often devolves to clichés and name-calling, by posing the question--what is it like to make any sort of reproductive choice? What is it truly like to use birth control, the morning after pill, use a sperm bank, have an abortion, adopt a child, give a child up for adoption, bring a pregnancy to term?

In these 22 stunningly honest essays, writers describe their experiences making some of these decisions, as well as many others. Established writers such as Francine Prose, Jaquelyn Mitchard, Pam Houston, Carolyn Ferrell, Ann Hood, Deborah Macdowell, and Sarah Messer contribute essays, along with emerging writers such as Kimi Faxon Hemingway, Stephanie Anderson, and Ashley Talley.

The essays in CHOICE explore the complexities inherent in every reproductive decision, whether it is to choose to have a child or terminate a pregnancy; the guiding philosophy of the book is that this issue is too complex and individual to be legislated, and the writers honesty about their experiences will humanize this issue, no matter what the reader s stand on it.

Why Pro-Life?: Caring for the Unborn and Their Mothers (Today's Critical Concerns) So much is at stake in the abortion debate. If pro-choicers are right, precious freedoms are in jeopardy. If pro-lifers are right, innocent children are being robbed of their most basic freedomâlife. Though bumpersticker slogans prevail, the facts are rarely presented. We need clear and credible answers to the central questions of the abortion debate. For those who have had abortions or are currently considering one, for pro-choicers and fence-straddlers alike, Why Pro-Life? provides answers to these questions in a concise, straightforward, and nonabrasive manner.

Head: Human Life Beginsâ¦When?

No issue is more divisive or troubling than abortion. Many believe that we have to choose between helping women and helping children. This book shows how critical it is that we help both. In a concise, non-abrasive fashion, Randy Alcorn offers compassionate, factual answers to the central issues of the abortion debate.

[Insert Sarah Marie Switzer image] An award-winning photo of an operation on Sarah Marie Switzer, a twenty-four-week unborn child with spina bifida. Sarah, here grasping a surgeon’s finger, was reinserted into her mother’s womb and born two months later, nine weeks premature.

[Insert 3-D Real-Time ultrasound image] A 3-D ultrasound photo of a baby 21 weeks after conceptionâjust over halfway through the pregnancy. Modern technology offers a window to the womb that is changing the face of the abortion debate.

Story Behind the Book

There have always been likable people who hold to wrong positions on ethical issuesâincluding slavery and anti-Semitism. Sincere people can be wrong and often are. We need a clear presentation of what is true. Randy Alcorn has intervened for the unborn and their mothersâand at great personal cost. In writing this book on one of today’s critical issues, he has endeavored to lay out well-supported facts on why the pro-life position is right and true when it comes to valuing human life.

"If you have come to help me, please go away. But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together."-Lila Watson, Aboriginal Activist

Vibrant. Strong. Fierce. Undivided Rights captures the evolving and largely unknown activist history of women of color organizing for reproductive justice-on their own behalf.

Undivided Rights presents a fresh and textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. Using historical research, original organizational case studies, and personal interviews, the authors illuminate how women of color have led the fight to control their own bodies and reproductive destinies. Undivided Rights shows how women of color--starting within their own Latina, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities-have resisted coercion of their reproductive abilities. Projected against the backdrop of the mainstream pro-choice movement and radical right agendas, these dynamic case studies feature the groundbreaking work being done by health and reproductive rights organizations led by women-of-color.

The book details how and why these women have defined and implemented expansive reproductive health agendas that reject legalistic remedies and seek instead to address the wider needs of their communities. It stresses the urgency for innovative strategies that push beyond the traditional base and goals of the mainstream pro-choice movement-strategies that are broadly inclusive while being specific, strategies that speak to all women by speaking to each woman. While the authors raise tough questions about inclusion, identity politics, and the future of women's organizing, they also offer a way out of the limiting focus on "choice."

Undivided Rights articulates a holistic vision for reproductive freedom. It refuses to allow our human rights to be divvied up and parceled out into isolated boxes that people are then forced to pick and choose among.

A Cry from the Womb: Healing the Heart of the World: A Guide to Healing and Helping Souls Return to the Light After Sudden Death, Miscarriage, Stillbirth or Abortion A CRY FROM THE WOMB- Healing the Heart of the World contains astounding information that completely reframes the debate between pro-life and pro-choice. It offers an alternative viewpoint that will make you stop and reconsider all you have ever believed. English born author, Gwendolyn Awen Jones is a medical intuitive and spiritual teacher. She has had the gift of spiritual sight since childhood and can see all levels of the human energy field. This has helped her diagnose conditions in clients who have had various illnesses that doctors had not been able to heal. She has found that illness can relate directly to the loss of a child, even if that child was lost many years ago. In the event of a difficult death, a child's soul may remain entangled in the energy field of the mother or father if it has not been safely guided back to the light. This is particularly true with abortions, miscarriages and stillbirths as often no transitional rites have been done. Emotional cords from the grieving parents can hold the child's soul back depleting all concerned, causing depression, cancer, or even suicide attempts in the parents if not resolved with healing and prayer. Stunning case histories provide insights into the wounding at all levels caused by these losses and the healing that should be done to balance parents and help the child's soul during this critical time. Gwendolyn provides proof of the awareness of the incoming child's spirit even in the early days gestation. She teaches that a woman should lovingly speak with the spirit of her child at all times. In the event that the timing of a pregnancy is not appropriate, she explains that a child's spirit is intelligent and can be gently spoken to. She gives examples that prove the child's spirit can understand and consciously choose to leave the body. At this critical time in history many wounded souls cry out for help after sudden death. It is important to understand how to guide them to the light with love. Prayers are included in the back of the book for healing all involved and to assist the transition of all souls no matter how they were lost. As each family heals their hearts, the Heart of the World heals also.

Now available in paperback, Judith Levine's controversial book challenges American attitudes towards child and adolescent sexuality-especially attitudes promulgated by a Christian right that has effectively seized control of how sex is taught in public schools. The author-a thoughtful and persuasive journalist and essayist-examines the consequences of "abstinence" only education and its concomitant association of sex with disease, and the persistent denial of pleasure. She notes the trend toward pathologizing young children's eroticized play and argues that Americans should rethink the boundaries we draw in protecting our children from sex. This powerful and illuminating work was nominated for the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State In the second decade of the twentieth century, an idea became all too fashionable among those who feel it is their right to set social trends. Wealthy families took it on as a pet cause, generously bankrolling its research. The New York Times praised it as a wonderful "new science." Scientists, such as the brilliant plant biologist, Luther Burbank, praised it unashamedly. Educators as prominent as Charles Elliot, President of Harvard University, promoted it as a solution to social ills. America's public schools did their part. In the 1920s, almost three-fourths of high school social science textbooks taught its principles. Not to be outdone, judges and physicians called for those principles to be enshrined into law. Congress agree, passing the 1924 immigration law to exclude from American shores the people of Eastern and Southern Europe that the idea branded as inferior. In 1927, the U. S. Supreme Court joined the chorus, ruling by a lopsided vote of 8 to 1 that the sterilization of unwilling men and women was constitutional.

That idea was eugenics and in the English-speaking world it had virtually no critics among the "chattering classes." When he wrote this book, Chesterton stood virtually alone against the intellectual world of his day. Yet to his eternal credit, he showed no sign of being intimidated by the prestige of his foes. On the contrary, he thunders against eugenics, ranking it one of the great evils of modern society. And, in perhaps one of the most chillingly accurate prophecies of the century, he warns that the ideas that eugenics had unleashed were likely to bear bitter fruit in another nation. That nation was Germany, the "very land of scientific culture from which the ideal of a Superman had come." In fact, the very group that Nazism tried to exterminate, Eastern European Jews, and the group it targeted for later extermination, the Slavs, were two of those whose biological unfitness eugenists sought so eagerly to confirm.

What are sometimes called the "excesses" of Nazism drove the open advocacy of eugenics underground. But there's little evidence that the elements of society who once trumpeted the idea have changed their mind. Dr. Alan Guttmacher provides a good example. The fact that he had been Vice-President of the American Eugenics Association was no hindrance to his assuming the Presidency of Planned ParenthoodWorld Population in 1962. And his seedy past did not keep Congress from providing millions of dollars in federal funds to Planned Parenthood. Nor did it stop the Supreme Court from carrying out the central item in Dr. Guttmacher's political agenda‹legalized abortion. Many of those who now admit that eugenics was evil have trouble explaining why so few of its advocates were every exposed and why so many are still honored.

As the title suggests, eugenics is not the only evil that Chesterton blasts. Socialism gets some brilliantly worded broadsides and Chesterton, in complete fairness, does not spare capitalism. He also attacks the scientifically justified regimentation that others call the "health police." The same rationalizations that justified eugenics, he notes, can also be used to deprive a working man of his beer or any man of his pipe. Although it was first published in 1922, there's a startling relevance to what Chesterton had to say about mettlesome bureaucrats who deprive life of its little pleasures and freedoms. His tale about an unfortunate man fired because "his old cherry-briar" "might set the water-works on fire" is priceless.

That tale illustrates Chesterton's brilliant use of humor, a knack his foes were quick to realize. In their review of his book, Birth Control News griped, "His tendency is reactionary, and as he succeeds in making most people laugh, his influence in the wrong direction is considerable. Eugenics Review was even blunter. "The only interest in this book," they said, "is pathological. It is a revelation of the ineptitude to which ignorance and blind prejudice may reduce an intelligent man."

History has been far kinder to Chesterton than to his critics. It's now generally agree that eugenics was born of evolution and the "ignorance and blind prejudice" of social elites. But never forget that Chesterton was the first to say so, condemning what many of his peers praised.

The completely new edition of Chesterton's classic includes almost fifty pages from the writings of Chesterton's opponents. They illustrate just how accurate his attacks on eugenists were. For researchers, it also includes a detailed, 13-page index.

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