• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Coordinating Council for Women in History

Supporting women's history and all women in the historical profession

  • About
    • Executive Director’s Welcome
    • Executive Board
    • Affiliates
    • History
      • Overview
      • CCWH Presidents
      • National History Day Award
      • 45th Anniversary
      • Berenice Carroll’s Passing
      • Women’s March – Jan. 2017 – Member Photos
      • Achievements
  • Membership
    • Membership Information
    • Newsletter
    • Member Publications
  • Awards
    • Carol Gold Best Article Award
    • Catherine Prelinger Award
    • CCWH / Berks Graduate Student Fellowship
    • Ida B. Wells Graduate Student Fellowship
    • Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women’s History
    • Nupur Chaudhuri First Article Prize
    • Peggy Pascoe Memorial Fund
    • Rachel Fuchs Memorial Award
  • Resources
    • Professional Announcements
    • Job Opportunities
    • University Representatives
    • CCWH & Public History
      • Professional Organizations
      • Syllabi
      • History Departments
    • Host Program
    • Mentorship Program
    • Conference Liaisons
    • History Syllabi
  • Calendar
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
  • Donate
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Member Publications / A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil

A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil

miscarriageofjusticecoverA Miscarriage of Justice examines women’s reproductive health in relation to legal and medical policy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the onset of republicanism in 1889, women’s reproductive capabilities—their ability to conceive and raise future citizens and laborers—became critical to the expansion of the new Brazilian state. Analyzing court cases, law, medical writings, and health data, Cassia Roth argues that the state’s approach to women’s health in the early twentieth century focused on criminalizing fertility control without improving services or outcomes for women. Ultimately, the increasingly interventionist state fostered a culture of condemnation around poor women’s reproduction that extended beyond elite discourses into the popular imagination.

By tracing how legal thought and medical knowledge became cemented into law and clinical practice, how obstetricians, public health officials, and legal practitioners approached fertility control, and how women experienced and negotiated their reproductive lives, A Miscarriage of Justice provides a new way of interpreting the intertwined histories of gender, race, reproduction, and the state—and shows how these questions continue to reverberate in debates over reproductive rights and women’s health in Brazil today.

More about the book

Cassia Roth, A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil (Stanford University Press, 2020).

About the Author

Cassia Roth is Assistant Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Georgia.

Filed Under: Member Publications

Primary Sidebar

Coordinating Council for Women in History Logo

News

  • Call for Articles for FACH (Family and Community History)
  • 2020 Berks Article and Book Prize Nominations
  • Post-Doc Position at the University of Alabama
  • The Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Partnership: Women and Work in the City of London, 1870-1970
  • 2021-2022 Fellowships, New York Historical Society Museum and Library
  • Obituary Faye E. Dudden
  • Little Berks Virtual Conference, October 24, 2020
  • Engendering Transnational Transgressions: From the Intimate to the Global
  • CFP: Gender & History Special issue: Food and Sovereignty
  • National Council on Public History, 2021 Annual Meeting Proposal Deadline Extension

Connect with the CCWH

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Coordinating Council for Women in History. All Rights Reserved.

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | site by Doctorgeek