Reviews for The agonizing choice: birth control, religion and the law

The average rating for The agonizing choice: birth control, religion and the law based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-07-30 00:00:00 Patricia Jackson Treating equally those who are unequal creates further inequality Helena Kennedy is a barrister working in criminal law, and she sees in the current spate of miscarriages of justice coming to light an opportunity for radical reform in the courts… except it's 1992. I need a sequel to this book! I should read her more recent work to see what happened next. She certainly creates a mood of drama and urgency here. Kennedy more or less fell into the law and the training for the Bar could only have been less hospitable to her if she hadn't been white. At the Inns of Court, she describes an overwhelmingly male and overtly misogynistic environment steeped in bizarre ritual. The percentage of women in the profession was small and confined to the lower ranks, with hardly any women ascending to the bench (becoming judges). The statistics were even more dire for people of colour whether female or male. Ancient, alienating tradition continues into the courtroom, with wigs, robes and pompous jargon designed to make the defendant feel uncomfortable. But some defendants feel more uncomfortable than others. The further you are from being white, male, middle class, highly educated and professional, the more terrifying this environment is going to be. Most of this book concerns how stereotypes about women operate in the law, particularly in criminal justice. These can be exploited by one side or the other: women willing and able to present themselves as virtuous and devoted wives and mothers will be smiled on by the court (especially if white). Women are considered to be family glue rather than actual humans: [in 1991] a retired Appeal Court judge explained that if it were open to wives to bring prosecutions against rape, albeit against a background of domestic violence, it would prohibit any chance of rehabilitation of the marriage and would have a deleterious effect on children - as though rape itself, rather than the prosecution, might not already have had that effect. Precisely these arguments about 'irreparable damage to the family' have been used to counter the introduction of every piece of reforming legislation for the benefit of women in the last hundred years. Far from protecting women from it, the law has historically sanctioned the abuse of women within marriage as an aspect of the husband's ownership of his wife and the right to chastise her 'with a stick no thicker than his thumb' […women risk] being condemned by popular mythology about domestic violence: either she was not as badly beaten as she claims, or she must have stayed out of some masochistic enjoyment of it. Kennedy argues that expert testimony from psychiatrists is needed to prevent the fallback to stereotypes in cases of intimate partner abuse as many people on juries have little understanding of how women are affected by such violence, and cannot make sense of their behaviour. She notes that psychiatry tends to be treated with derision, yet women are usually cast as 'mad rather than bad', not in control of their own actions. While this is problematic, Kennedy points out that the majority of women in the CJS have been subjected to more criminal behaviour than they have been responsible for: studies consistenly show that most women offenders are abuse victims. Marital rape became legally possible in the UK in... um 1991(!) before which the marriage contract was taken to include the right to sex any time for men. Kennedy says that rape jokes used to be constant at legal dinners. The gross acceptability of rape in our culture (unless a woman is leapt upon in an alley by a stranger with a knife) is leveraged to the full by defendants. Victims have no representation in court. Very often, women cannot win. Signs of a struggle are brushed off by defendants as signs of vigorous sex-play, while lack of such signs as proof that it wasn't rape at all, even though women are advised not to struggle in order to prevent further, potentially fatal, violence (not an unfounded fear as countless cases show) Women who kill their husbands after years of horrific abuse can rarely successfully argue that they acted in self defense or were provoked unless they were actually being physically attacked at the time. The courts are harsh on these women, Kennedy finds, while treating men who kill 'nagging' wives leniently. Juries are instructed to compare the behaviour of defendants to that of 'a reasonable man', an absurdity which surely hampers the defence of women; what constitutes provocation must be inflected by power structures including gender. When Kennedy says 'it's not just women' she ought to say 'it's not just white women' - the mixed-gender composition of 'other groups' tends to get lost in writing by white feminists. But Kennedy is better than most on this, tracing not only how black men fare badly in the CJS and how it affects their families, and how stereotypes about Afro-Caribbean, Asian and other minoritised women are played out in the courts, but how race forms a barrier for lawyers, and how it affects defendants' experiences. Constructions of femininity that may hinder or help white women are usually weaponised against black women: The writer Ann Oakley has pointed out that the dividing line between what is masculine and what is criminal is at times a thin one; assertiveness and independence are seen as exclusively male characteristics, and when displayed by young black women are seen as indicative of 'trouble' She meanders through the her arguments: there are so many cases to make, so many pieces of evidence, that there is no time to cycle back, yet points of confluence are returned to again and again, theme and variation, not for the sake of repetition, but by chance: each fact has resonance in many themes. The only chapter I really struggled to read was about serial killers. Kennedy's penchant for psychological explanation here reminded me of Joan Smith's work, but Kennedy is much more restrained, and never speculative. The acuity of her analysis is clear in its congruence with women's lived experience. I am no proponent of Law & Order: I am an anarcha-feminist and I believe in alternatives to criminalisation and especially imprisonment, which I am learning to understand as an extension of colonisation. But I find little to disagree with in Kennedy's writing. I don't know which, if any, of her suggested reforms have been enacted, but I'm especially interested in her argument for a Bill of Rights in the UK. Still no sign of that one.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-21 00:00:00 Marco Travaglini This book is so important. Not only does it tackle women's issues brilliantly, but it never fails to keep in mind that class and race are also major factors in women's discriminations. I'd highly, highly recommend it to everyone; especially (white) men.