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Acknowledgments This book is the granddaughter of one originally published in 1976, so it is itself a piece of historiographical evidence for future historians. In their interest, I have organized these acknowledgments of my vast intellectual debts in historical periods. Regarding the 1976 edition: The interpretations offered in this book depend on virtually everything I have learned about history and gender and sexual politics. While the immediate labor on it is mine, congealed in it, invisible to most readers, is the labor of many others. I can mention only those to whom my debt is quite specific. I am grateful to those who read and criticized part or all of the draft: Ros Baxandall, Frank Brodhead, Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, Nancy Chodorow, Michele Clark, Ellen DuBois, Elinor Langer, Charles Rosenberg, Sheila Rowbotham, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Marilyn Webb, and Peter Weiler. Allen Hunter read virtually the entire manuscript , demanding clarity, proof, and precision in many places; although I was not always able to meet his demands, their existence as goals greatly improved what I was able to accomplish. Ellen DuBois, Elinor Langer, Martin Legassick , and Rabbi Saul Spiro generously contributed useful source materials. Discussions with my Bread and Roses consciousness-raising group, my students at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, my Marxist-feminist conference group, the Radical America editorial board, and the Marxist Institute for a New History, as well as with Ros Baxandall, Elizabeth Ewen, Stuart Ewen, Susan Reverby, and Meredith Schwarz greatly elevated my thinking. During the years of working on this book, I benefited from the support and confidence of friends, especially Wini Breines, Michele Clark, Margery Davies, Ann Froines, David Hunt, Allen Hunter, and Danny Schechter. Susan Siens typed a great deal of this manuscript beautifully. My editor, Ellen Posner, and my copy editor, Caroline Lalire, helped me to clarify my thoughts. In the 1960s, 00.FM.i-xvi/Gord 9/25/02, 10:42 AM 11 xii / Acknowledgments thanks to Ellen Walker, I spent some time with Dr. Lena Levine, and I vividly remember her warmth and intelligence. Had she been alive when I turned to birth control as a historian, I suspect that my interpretation of her pioneering sex counseling work would have been greatly strengthened through discussion with her. Regarding the 1990 edition: I am grateful to the Vilas Associates and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin at Madison for awards that helped me work on the revision. My main intellectual debt is to Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, whose Abortion and Woman’s Choice, published in 1984, remains the most sophisticated interpretation of recent reproduction control politics; I have been influenced by her interpretations probably more than I realize. I am particularly indebted to Allen Hunter, Judith Walzer Leavitt, Nancy MacLean, Rosalind Petchesky, Norma Swenson, and Nadine Taub, who read all the new material, offered detailed comments, and saved me from some errors. Susan Stanford Friedman helped me say more exactly what I wanted to in the preface to the second edition. Vicki Alexander, Ros Baxandall, Elizabeth Fee, Ruth Hubbard, Carole Joffe, and Barbara Katz Rothman made thoughtful suggestions. Norma Swenson of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective gave me not only a long evening but also her vast store of knowledge and understanding. Jan Brin, Judy Norsigian, and Esther Rome of the Collective went out of their way to help me; I am grateful to the whole Collective , even those I’ve never met, for the wonderful archive of material they have created. I am indebted to Byllye Avery, Vicki Alexander, and Larry Bumpass for telephone consultation and to Bob Buchanan, Marie Laberge, Chris Sullivan, and Susan Traverso for research help. My editor, Lori Lipsky, graciously offered not only editorial but even some research assistance. Many of those named in my earlier acknowledgments are still parts of my intellectual life, and I am now also indebted to some newer friends and colleagues, particularly those in the history department and the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I have particularly learned a great deal about the meanings of reproduction from Judy Leavitt and Susan Friedman. I am grateful to Nancy Miller for beginning my education about the meanings of infertility several years ago. My discussion of the teenage pregnancy problem was influenced by Martha Fineman, Sara S. McLanahan, and Ann Orloff. In less direct but equally important ways I learned from several colleagues and friends who have let me try out my...

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