Giving Sorrow Words
Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief After Abortion (Duffy&Snellgrove, 2000) is a collection of personal stories of 18 Australian women and how they felt after their abortions. Many felt pressured by others to have abortions and were unprepared for what they would go through.
What reviewers said:
“true…compelling and wrenching…Reist’s book, like Bringing Them Home, is a compendium of information we had to have…Read this book…” – Bob Ellis The Age
…powerful and moving…strangely uplifting…a staggeringly powerful, and at times heartbreaking read.’ – Bendigo Advertiser
“harrowing – Daily Telegraph
“heart-rending” – The Australian
“A ground-breaking, deeply pro-woman experience” – Tharunka, University of NSW
“Exposing one of the last taboos…deeply emotional and uncomfortable” – Sydney Morning Herald
“A moving, enraging and ultimately liberating collection of women’s stories. Compelling reading for everyone, no matter their position on abortion.” – Dr Renate Klein
Getting Real
ALREADY IN ITS SECOND PRINTING!
PB / $34.95 / ISBN 9781876756758
“Getting Real contains a treasure trove of information and should be mandatory reading for all workers with young people in health, education and welfare” - Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Adolescent Psychologist
ABOUT
Getting Real puts the spotlight on a critical issue of international concern: the sexualisation and objectification of girls and women in the media, popular culture and society more broadly.
Girls and young women are growing up in an increasingly sexualised environment. Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a ‘thin, hot, sexy’ norm.
Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Getting Real brings together for the first time, some of the most vocal critics of the widespread pornification of culture. Academics, psychologists, authors and activists, they call corporations, the media and the sex industry to account for creating this toxic environment.
Contributors: Tania Andrusiak, Steve Biddulph, Abigail Bray, Selena Ewing, Melissa Farley, Julie Gale, Maggie Hamilton, Noni Hazlehurst, Clive Hamilton, Renate Klein, Betty McLellan, Louise Newman, Emma Rush, Melinda Tankard Reist and Lauren Rosewarne.
Released in September, now in its second print run!
Defiant Birth
Defiant Birth says that society’s demands for physical perfection are placing enormous pressure on women to terminate ‘imperfect’ foetuses diagnosed by prenatal technology.
The intensely moving and courageous stories of 20 women who continued their pregnancies despite immense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations to terminate, are told in Defiant Birth.
Defiant Birth is the story of women from around the world who were told they should not have their babies because of perceived disabilities – either in the child or themselves. Facing silent disapproval and sometimes open hostility, the book chronicles what happened when these women went ahead and had their babies anyway.
More Details
Defiant Birth challenges widespread medical, and often social aversion to less than perfect pregnancies or genetically different babies. It also features women with disabilities who were discouraged from becoming pregnant at all. Tankard Reist argues that the widespread practice of prenatal screening and abortion are a continuation of eugenics, which is a view that we must weed out the imperfect in order to perfect the human race. Those with the best genetic makeup are valued over those considered genetically flawed. “Prenatal screening may appear to give pregnant women more power but often it actually takes choices away,” says Tankard Reist. Defiant Birth tells the frank and courageous of women who have persevered through enormous adversity, social prejudices and suffering to defy the worst predictions.
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Now in its second printing!
