PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Elyse Ona Singer is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma.
This engrossing ethnography shows legal abortion in Mexico City to be a much-needed expansion of healthcare-and a site where norms of 'good' and 'responsible' womanhood are perpetuated rather than challenged. By sharing patients, staff, and activist experiences of this conundrum with nuance and care, Singer enables readers to think in new ways about what reproductive justice might truly mean. -- Emily Wentzell, Associate Professor of Anthropology * The University of Iowa * Elyse Ona Singer's beautiful, riveting account takes us inside Mexico's reckoning with reproductive rights. Her moving, honest stories from Mexico City abortion clinics show staff and patients acting with humility, humanity, and a healthy dose of ethical ambivalence. Lawful Sins is a brilliant, timely ethnography, offering insights into the tangled relations between Church and state as each strives to control reproductive lives and bodies. -- Lynn M. Morgan, Professor Emerita of Anthropology * Mount Holyoke College * In lucid and lively prose, Elyse Ona Singer tells a surprising story about abortion in Mexico. Yes, in Mexico City abortion is now legal. But the women who seek it refuse to live as autonomous rights bearers. Instead, they reckon with abortion only in relation to others: their families and God. Crucial reading for anyone engaged in debates about contemporary personhood, autonomy and reproductive governance. -- Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Professor of Anthropology * University of Michigan *
