A Woman’s Right to Know: How Women’s Health Became a Political Pawn – and the Surprising Alliances Working to Reclaim It
by Carol Roye
4.6 stars – 11 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
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Here’s the set-up:
When women’s health wasn’t a political issue…
The surprising history every woman deserves to know.Women’s health has long been seen as a divisive social issue. But behind inflammatory news headlines is an untold story that every man and woman is entitled to know. This factual and eye-opening story recounts how women’s health devolved from being a medical issue, supported even by religious groups, to a divisive political debate.Exposing a chain of historic events, author Carol Roye reveals how only recently groups such as the Religious Right organized against abortion rights, using it as an influential political tool. Roye, an academic, longtime nurse practitioner and mother of six, also dispels many of the inaccurate, political arguments surrounding abortion and instead shines a light on the real concern at hand – public health.
A Woman’s Right to Know goes beyond the old argument of moral imperative vs. women’s rights. Instead, it presents a third point of view in which people on either side of the issue have aligned in support of the true moral imperative – women’s and children’s health. Roye’s book points us towards a solution and details the unlikely alliances and religious coalitions that are already working together to protect women’s health, including access to contraception and abortion.
This book supports neither pro-life nor pro-choice sentiments. Instead, it effectively affirms why we must move beyond the tired political debate and find common ground in order to protect the lives of women and children.
A Woman’s Right to Know is a stirring must-read for anyone concerned with women’s rights, as well as those who want to be better informed about this critical public health issue.
The surprising history every woman deserves to know.Women’s health has long been seen as a divisive social issue. But behind inflammatory news headlines is an untold story that every man and woman is entitled to know. This factual and eye-opening story recounts how women’s health devolved from being a medical issue, supported even by religious groups, to a divisive political debate.Exposing a chain of historic events, author Carol Roye reveals how only recently groups such as the Religious Right organized against abortion rights, using it as an influential political tool. Roye, an academic, longtime nurse practitioner and mother of six, also dispels many of the inaccurate, political arguments surrounding abortion and instead shines a light on the real concern at hand – public health.
A Woman’s Right to Know goes beyond the old argument of moral imperative vs. women’s rights. Instead, it presents a third point of view in which people on either side of the issue have aligned in support of the true moral imperative – women’s and children’s health. Roye’s book points us towards a solution and details the unlikely alliances and religious coalitions that are already working together to protect women’s health, including access to contraception and abortion.
This book supports neither pro-life nor pro-choice sentiments. Instead, it effectively affirms why we must move beyond the tired political debate and find common ground in order to protect the lives of women and children.
A Woman’s Right to Know is a stirring must-read for anyone concerned with women’s rights, as well as those who want to be better informed about this critical public health issue.
Reviews
“Carol Roye has provided critical documentation and analysis of the history and current realities and barriers to reproductive health. Interweaving her own complex experience of compassionate care, compelling case illuminations of how forces outside of the lives and bodies of real girls and women constrain choice, and a comprehensive retelling of what was and what is at stake in reproductive justice, this book is a must read for all of us.” –Deborah Tolman, EdD, Hunter College
“A Women’s Right to Know provides a comprehensive picture of the politics behind the increasing number of assaults on reproductive freedom. Roye’s book not only shines a light on the untold story of women’s health, but shows us a way forward on steps we can take to reclaim it.” –Vicki Breitbart, New York University
About the Author
Dr. Carol Roye is a well-known researcher in reproductive health who specializes in issues pertinent to adolescents, including teen pregnancy prevention and working with mothers of pregnant and parenting teens to improve outcomes for their daughters. She was also awarded a prestigious research grant from the National Institutes of Health to study HIV/AIDS prevention. Her work has been featured by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and appears in the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth. She has appeared on radio and television to talk about adolescent and women’s health issues and has spoken at numerous national and international conferences.
Dr. Roye is a Professor of Nursing at Hunter College in New York City and a practicing pediatric nurse practitioner. She splits her professional time between research, teaching and her clinical practice providing reproductive health care to adolescent girls in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York. She is the author of many publications on a range of topics in adolescent reproductive health, including Adolescent Sexual Development and Sexuality: Assessment and Interventions, a popular book for professionals who work with teenagers around issues of sexuality.
She is the mother of six children, the last adopted from a Romanian orphanage, and the grandmother of twelve.
You can learn more about Carol and her work at www.CarolRoye.com.