On the same day as President George W. Bush signed into law a ban on partial birth abortions, independent historian and author Rickie Solinger addressed a room of about 25 students and faculty on the topic of reproductive rights.
Solinger engaged the audience throughout her prepared remarks on her most recent book, Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion and Welfare in the United States. She posed questions and offered anecdotes from her own life and research.
"I keep writing the same book over and over again, with slightly different twists on the same question," Solinger told attendees of the 45-minute lecture in College Hall. "Who is a mother and who has the right to decide?"
Solinger's most recent book addresses class disparity in defining legitimate motherhood in the United States. Early in the lecture, she described simultaneous 1990s Senate debates over the restriction of welfare and whether stay-at-home mothers should receive tax credit.
"Here we get the real expression... that motherhood is a class privilege and should be a class privilege," Solinger said.
She proceeded to define common American perceptions of poor women that affect public policy, listing seven ways that poor women are viewed. Among others, she said they are judged "aesthetically" -- or, seen as unseemly for reproducing so often -- and as "selfish women," for bringing disadvantaged children into the world.
Solinger offered her own opinion -- that poor women are poor not due to bad judgment, but due to an oppressive social structure. She went on to indict the modern welfare system, inequities in child care and health care and the lack of a living wage in many service jobs.
A lively discussion followed the lecture, addressing such topics as reproductive "choice" versus "rights." Solinger addressed one of the arguments in her book -- that the term "choice" implies women are consumers of adoption, parenting and abortion, according to their means.
Solinger concluded with a call for activism from Penn students in response to the ban on partial birth abortion.
College senior Sara Zenreich attended the lecture after hearing Solinger speak in her "History of Sexuality" class that morning.
"She's really interesting," Zenreich said, adding that "I don't think women's issues get enough attention on campus."
Second-year medical student Melissa Rosenstein said she enjoyed the discussion of attempts to explain single motherhood in the United States.
"Nobody asks, 'Why did your mother have a baby?'" Rosenstein said, adding that it is only asked of poor mothers.
Solinger, invited to speak by the History Department, is the author of three books and the editor of two anthologies on reproductive history.
