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"With stories from the front lines, a legal scholar journeys through distinct legal climates to understand precisely why and how the war over abortion is being fought. Drawing on her years of research in El Salvador--the only country to ban abortion without exception--legal scholar Michelle Oberman explores what happens when a country makes ending a pregnancy a crime. She reveals the practical experiences of criminalizing abortion, such as selective enforcement, mistaken diagnoses, wrongful convictions, and a thriving black market in abortion drugs, and she describes how Salvadoran doctors and lawyers collaborate in order to identify and prosecute those suspected of abortion-related crimes. To illustrate how similar draconian polices are enforced in the United States, Oberman turns her attention to Oklahoma, one of the most pro-life states. Through a series of interviews with current and former legislators in Oklahoma, and in stories gathered from crisis pregnancy centers and abortion clinics, Oberman reveals how abortion-related laws become incentives or penalties, nudging pregnant women in one direction or another. A fresh look at the battle over abortion law, Her Body, Our Laws is an invitation to those on all sides of the issue to move beyond the incomplete discourse about legality by understanding how the law actually matters"--

Winner of the 2008 Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer don't write for news magazines or prime-time investigative television shows, but the stories they tell hold the same fascination. When Mothers Kill is compelling. In a clear, direct fashion the authors recount what they have learned from interviewing women imprisoned for killing their children. Readers will be shocked and outraged--as much by the violence the women have endured in their own lives as by the violence they engaged in--but they will also be informed and e

A special kind of horror is reserved for mothers who kill their children. Cases such as those of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons by driving her car into a lake, and Melissa Drexler, who disposed of her newborn baby in a restroom at her prom, become media sensations. Unfortunately, in addition to these high-profile cases, hundreds of mothers kill their children in the United States each year. The question most often asked is, why? What would drive a mother to kill her own child? Those who work with such cases, whether in clinical psychology, social services, law enforcement or ac