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Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women
Not yet published
Expected 3 Mar 26A bracing feminist chronicle of the history of the West told through seven texts, exposing where our most virulent ideas about women came from.
The belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to “traditional” values is a dangerous myth that has long prospered in American politics, providing justification for increasing control over women’s bodies and lives. How did such damaging ideas arise?
In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden exposes how ideologies that oppress women and families in the service of power took hold. Ruden traces a sweeping history through her trenchant analysis of seven pieces of literature that, she argues, marked key inflection points across two thousand years. From propagandistic poetry written by Ovid in the early Roman Empire to the biography of an evangelical American “abortion survivor,” Ruden lays bare how doctrines of control over women were invented and propagated.
The New Testament’s Pastoral Epistles introduced near-totalitarian measures to force childbearing in the early days of Christianity. In the late fifteenth century, The Hammer of Witches outlined a program that demonized women’s fertility, justifying mass torture and killing. And Charles Dickens’s The Chimes glorified the virtues of large families among the very poor, playing into their suffering and exploitation in industrialized Victorian Britain. Scathing and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a right-wing radicalism that endures to this day, when half of the US population is once again threatened with the loss of basic human rights and totalitarian law.
The belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to “traditional” values is a dangerous myth that has long prospered in American politics, providing justification for increasing control over women’s bodies and lives. How did such damaging ideas arise?
In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden exposes how ideologies that oppress women and families in the service of power took hold. Ruden traces a sweeping history through her trenchant analysis of seven pieces of literature that, she argues, marked key inflection points across two thousand years. From propagandistic poetry written by Ovid in the early Roman Empire to the biography of an evangelical American “abortion survivor,” Ruden lays bare how doctrines of control over women were invented and propagated.
The New Testament’s Pastoral Epistles introduced near-totalitarian measures to force childbearing in the early days of Christianity. In the late fifteenth century, The Hammer of Witches outlined a program that demonized women’s fertility, justifying mass torture and killing. And Charles Dickens’s The Chimes glorified the virtues of large families among the very poor, playing into their suffering and exploitation in industrialized Victorian Britain. Scathing and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a right-wing radicalism that endures to this day, when half of the US population is once again threatened with the loss of basic human rights and totalitarian law.
Kindle Edition
Expected publication March 3, 2026
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About the author
Sarah Ruden
24 books111 followersSarah Elizabeth Ruden is an American writer of poetry, essays, translations of Classic literature, and popularizations of Biblical philology, religious criticism and interpretation.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A surprising lack of Aristotle. And Foucault, for that matter.
This book is about anti-abortion arguments in Western civilization. The author uses the term propaganda and it suits. It is about the control of women, focusing on different texts, starting in Ancient Rome and ending in contemporary United States. The arguments differ as the social conditions and specific intentions of the authors differ, but the shape of it is that the sexual autonomy of women is bad and needs to be stopped. This is usually in the pursuit of turning women into breeding stock, and is usually about erasing anything that does not fit that image.
If you want a bitchin’ polemic, get a Classicist. The number of professional pundits and philosophers, almost exclusively on the political right, who think that they write like this, and do not, is all of them. In other hands this would be an indictment of the West as a concept, except that it is written by someone who loves it and lives it, knowing it better than you do.*
The strongest argument here is on Saint Augustine. This is also the funniest argument. It takes Augustine’s ecclesiastical moves and rereads them through a biographical critique, putting Our Man in Hippo on the psychoanalyst's couch to take his doctrinal writings and do pathology on them. You can imagine the movie of this view of the saint's life, a sort of Shakespeare in Love meets Life of Brian where Catholic doctrine arises out of a rom-com.** It is a sort of argumentation that customarily goes wrong, but it is so amazing well-stitched here I cannot deny its persuasiveness.
A more general strength of the author in the text is her ability to work within the original sources, and do all her own translations. This leads to some revelations on their own.
The weakest argument is the chapter on Marie Stopes’ Married Love. The chapter on Charles Dickens tends to print the legend and accept the Victorians at face value in an (admittedly weird) Dickens story. But the eugenics chapter is Texas Sharpshooter in finding the propaganda that fits the premise of a top-down, anti-women structure. It is not like Margaret Sanger et al is more humanist, but the arguments in other Feminist eugenicists either lack or invert the meaning of the argument around this semi-patriarchy.
The opening quip is intended as an opening quip, but after writing it, I started to feel the stick to it. It is the weakness, or at least the complication, of this book. There is a much larger discourse that this book floats on the surface of. On the principle of charity, that is strategic rather than ignorant. But I repeat myself; I wrote it was a polemic.
However, more than a lot of books I review, I wonder about the reception on this one. The reviews will be a referendum on abortion rights, probably without reading the text. Which is a mistake. Not many books leave me charting my favorite one-liners in the text. *** But there is light to the heat here, with a few lines of thought worth better exploration, even if I remain uniquely confident that zero people are going to. Culture war is a tar pit.
My thanks to the author, Sarah Ruden, for writing the book, and to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for making the ARC available to me.
-
* - At first I was a bit confused at an abortion advocate with a significant National Review byline collection, but no, of course it is. This is what National Review thinks it is, not how it acts.
** - All fourteen of us would find this hilarious to watch.
*** - "Erotic anthrax" won.
This book is about anti-abortion arguments in Western civilization. The author uses the term propaganda and it suits. It is about the control of women, focusing on different texts, starting in Ancient Rome and ending in contemporary United States. The arguments differ as the social conditions and specific intentions of the authors differ, but the shape of it is that the sexual autonomy of women is bad and needs to be stopped. This is usually in the pursuit of turning women into breeding stock, and is usually about erasing anything that does not fit that image.
If you want a bitchin’ polemic, get a Classicist. The number of professional pundits and philosophers, almost exclusively on the political right, who think that they write like this, and do not, is all of them. In other hands this would be an indictment of the West as a concept, except that it is written by someone who loves it and lives it, knowing it better than you do.*
The strongest argument here is on Saint Augustine. This is also the funniest argument. It takes Augustine’s ecclesiastical moves and rereads them through a biographical critique, putting Our Man in Hippo on the psychoanalyst's couch to take his doctrinal writings and do pathology on them. You can imagine the movie of this view of the saint's life, a sort of Shakespeare in Love meets Life of Brian where Catholic doctrine arises out of a rom-com.** It is a sort of argumentation that customarily goes wrong, but it is so amazing well-stitched here I cannot deny its persuasiveness.
A more general strength of the author in the text is her ability to work within the original sources, and do all her own translations. This leads to some revelations on their own.
The weakest argument is the chapter on Marie Stopes’ Married Love. The chapter on Charles Dickens tends to print the legend and accept the Victorians at face value in an (admittedly weird) Dickens story. But the eugenics chapter is Texas Sharpshooter in finding the propaganda that fits the premise of a top-down, anti-women structure. It is not like Margaret Sanger et al is more humanist, but the arguments in other Feminist eugenicists either lack or invert the meaning of the argument around this semi-patriarchy.
The opening quip is intended as an opening quip, but after writing it, I started to feel the stick to it. It is the weakness, or at least the complication, of this book. There is a much larger discourse that this book floats on the surface of. On the principle of charity, that is strategic rather than ignorant. But I repeat myself; I wrote it was a polemic.
However, more than a lot of books I review, I wonder about the reception on this one. The reviews will be a referendum on abortion rights, probably without reading the text. Which is a mistake. Not many books leave me charting my favorite one-liners in the text. *** But there is light to the heat here, with a few lines of thought worth better exploration, even if I remain uniquely confident that zero people are going to. Culture war is a tar pit.
My thanks to the author, Sarah Ruden, for writing the book, and to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for making the ARC available to me.
-
* - At first I was a bit confused at an abortion advocate with a significant National Review byline collection, but no, of course it is. This is what National Review thinks it is, not how it acts.
** - All fourteen of us would find this hilarious to watch.
*** - "Erotic anthrax" won.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Turning on the news or scrolling through social media today, there is no dearth to the bad ideas people have about women, reproductive rights, and "traditional values". While some days it feels like we've really just come into this age of ridiculousness over the course of a certain presidency, there have always been bad ideas about women, from propagandistic poetry written by Ovid in the early Roman Empire to the biography of an evangelical American “abortion survivor". In "Reproductive Wrongs", translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden follows history to reveal how doctrines of control over women were invented and propagated, and why understanding the history of 'then' can help in the 'now', where a fast-evolving right–wing radicalism continues to decimate the reproductive and general rights of half the population.
I read a lot of feminist literature, and especially a lot of books about reproductive justice in these dark times, and I really liked the deep dive this author took into the far-flung historical ways in which ideas about women and their "roles" and right developed. I liked getting snapshots with each section of life and the important writings related to reproductive justice through the centuries, and definitely learned more than I knew before about scholarly attitudes towards women even in the last few centuries than I did before. A compartmentalization of women into pre-defined roles based on feelings and a desire for power has always been present, and I think it's important for the women and femme-presenting people of today to realize that as we face the same attitudes and challenges to rights in 2025 that women of the 1800s, 1600s, 1300s, and before did. This book would be a great launching pad for those who want a bird's eye view of the big picture with some specific examples, and will hopefully encourage those who read to do more exploration into texts that do a deeper dive on certain topics.
I read a lot of feminist literature, and especially a lot of books about reproductive justice in these dark times, and I really liked the deep dive this author took into the far-flung historical ways in which ideas about women and their "roles" and right developed. I liked getting snapshots with each section of life and the important writings related to reproductive justice through the centuries, and definitely learned more than I knew before about scholarly attitudes towards women even in the last few centuries than I did before. A compartmentalization of women into pre-defined roles based on feelings and a desire for power has always been present, and I think it's important for the women and femme-presenting people of today to realize that as we face the same attitudes and challenges to rights in 2025 that women of the 1800s, 1600s, 1300s, and before did. This book would be a great launching pad for those who want a bird's eye view of the big picture with some specific examples, and will hopefully encourage those who read to do more exploration into texts that do a deeper dive on certain topics.
February 13, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!
I found this was a really interesting look at a world in crisis about reproductive rights, although it was a short look in some ways and I would have loved to have more information and context. With that said, I am absolutely aware that could have been a whole other book and a whole other can of worms, so this is a really good introductory essay into women’s bodies, reproduction, and where we went wrong.
I found the chapters about the ancient world fascinating, but probably the most interesting to me was the examination of Dickens, his impact on the popular culture and zeitgeist, and the legacy of the Victorian era. It’s no secret that Queen Victoria had significant issues in having as many children as she did in the modern era, but I imagine at the time she would have been seen as the epitome of motherly grace. The way the ‘big family’ concept wormed into society and took over the norm was fascinating.
These kinds of texts are absolutely vital to us understanding the world we’re currently in and how we can make it a better place than what we’ve found in it. I love that it contained so many zingers of knowledge and ammunition for further discussion. I do feel like some of the content in the Marie Stopes chapter could have been edited a bit better, and I would have loved some more info all around, but as a whole? This is well worth the read to understand our modern age and where we need to go from here.
I found this was a really interesting look at a world in crisis about reproductive rights, although it was a short look in some ways and I would have loved to have more information and context. With that said, I am absolutely aware that could have been a whole other book and a whole other can of worms, so this is a really good introductory essay into women’s bodies, reproduction, and where we went wrong.
I found the chapters about the ancient world fascinating, but probably the most interesting to me was the examination of Dickens, his impact on the popular culture and zeitgeist, and the legacy of the Victorian era. It’s no secret that Queen Victoria had significant issues in having as many children as she did in the modern era, but I imagine at the time she would have been seen as the epitome of motherly grace. The way the ‘big family’ concept wormed into society and took over the norm was fascinating.
These kinds of texts are absolutely vital to us understanding the world we’re currently in and how we can make it a better place than what we’ve found in it. I love that it contained so many zingers of knowledge and ammunition for further discussion. I do feel like some of the content in the Marie Stopes chapter could have been edited a bit better, and I would have loved some more info all around, but as a whole? This is well worth the read to understand our modern age and where we need to go from here.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Reproductive Wrongs by Sarah Ruden is an ambitious and well researched look at the historical roots of harmful ideas about women’s reproductive lives. Ruden brings her background as a translator and cultural historian to bear on a range of texts, from ancient Roman writers to early modern thinkers, showing how male authors helped shape persistent narratives about female bodies and autonomy.
I appreciated the breadth of sources and Ruden’s clear, engaging writing. There were moments that made me rethink how older attitudes still influence today’s debates about reproductive rights. However, the book didn’t always land for me. At times the connections between eras felt more asserted than convincingly argued, and I wanted a bit more nuance in the interpretation of some historical figures.
I found it thoughtful and informative, but uneven in its execution. Worth reading for anyone interested in the history of ideas about gender and reproduction.
I appreciated the breadth of sources and Ruden’s clear, engaging writing. There were moments that made me rethink how older attitudes still influence today’s debates about reproductive rights. However, the book didn’t always land for me. At times the connections between eras felt more asserted than convincingly argued, and I wanted a bit more nuance in the interpretation of some historical figures.
I found it thoughtful and informative, but uneven in its execution. Worth reading for anyone interested in the history of ideas about gender and reproduction.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
As a history nerd, this book made me so happy! Sarah Ruden’s premise is compelling: by tracing seven influential texts across two thousand years, she argues that control over women has long been embedded in cultural storytelling, not just political systems.
She is sharp and witty in her explanations, which helps this avoid sounding like a textbook. This is perhaps what I would most critique about the book, only because it at times left me confused and wanting a bit more. This is probably more of a flaw with me and my understanding of the texts but alas, we can not all be experts!
3.5 stars, I would definitely recommend to any human living in the U.S. currently and ask themselves how the hell we got here.
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC to review!
She is sharp and witty in her explanations, which helps this avoid sounding like a textbook. This is perhaps what I would most critique about the book, only because it at times left me confused and wanting a bit more. This is probably more of a flaw with me and my understanding of the texts but alas, we can not all be experts!
3.5 stars, I would definitely recommend to any human living in the U.S. currently and ask themselves how the hell we got here.
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC to review!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews