Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction

By: Heather Brook Adams (Author), 2022, Paperback A study of the rhetorical power of shame and its effect on reproductive politicsNot long ago, unmarried pregnant women in the United States hid in maternity homes and relinquished their "illegitimate" children to more "deserving" two-parent families―all to conceal "shameful" pregnancies. Although times have changed, reproductive politics remain fraught. In Enduring Shame Heather Brook Adams recasts the 1960s and '70s―an era of presumed progress―as a time when expanding reproductive rights were paralleled by communicative practices of shame that cultivated increasingly public interventions into unwed and teen pregnancy and new forms of injustice.Drawing from personal interviews, archival documents, legal decisions, public policy, journalism, memoirs, and advocacy writing, Adams articulates how the rhetorical power of shame persuaded the American public to think about reproduction, sexual righteousness, and unwed pregnancy. Despite the as