Pushback

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The long history of how restricting access to abortion has been used to curtail women’s advancement

Attitudes about abortion cycle between long periods of widespread tolerance, to repression, and back again. What accounts for these pendulum swings? From ancient Greece to the modern West, historian of medicine Mary Fissell argues, abortion repression springs up in response to men’s anxieties about women’s increasing independence…

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In The Press

“A compelling, compulsively readable, and timely account of the very long history of abortion and abortion restrictions. Fissell’s prose sparkles, and the stories of women—married and single, rich and poor, enslaved and free—leap off the pages. Fissell shows us that the need and desire to control one’s reproductive life is not a modern phenomenon; women have been controlling their fertility by seeking abortions for thousands of years. Recurrent attempts to ban abortion have never been successful and have always had devastating consequences for women and families. This is essential reading for health-care providers, policy makers, and all who care about the lives and well-being of pregnant and potentially pregnant people.”
Kathleen Crowther, author of Policing Pregnant Bodies


About the Author

Mary Fissell is the Mario Molina Professor in the department of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Fissell has appeared on the BBC and has been cited as an expert in the New York TimesWashington PostSlate, and Vice. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.


  • Publisher: Basic Books
  • Published: March 2025
  • ISBN: 9781541604087
  • Title: Pushback
  • Author: Mary Fissell
  • Imprint: Seal Press
  • Language: English

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