Back Talk: Michelle Goldberg

ADRIAN BELLESGUARD

Michelle Goldberg is a freelance journalist whose newest book, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World (Penguin Press, $25.95), explores the past fifty years of global reproductive issues. --Christine Smallwood

What is the story you're telling in this book?

The broad sweep of the story starts in the 1950s and 1960s, when there was a cold war panic about overpopulation. There were these almost Strangelove-ian military planners freaking out that overpopulation would make Third World countries so immiserated that they would go communist. You know, George H.W. Bush used to be known as Rubbers because he was so obsessed with contraception. And then there was almost a complete switch. Part of the story is about the rise of the religious right and the rise of the feminist movement. Politicians couldn't concede that much [to the right] in the United States because of Roe v. Wade, but they could do its bidding on the global stage. I also try to show how this dynamic is now rebounding all over the world. Some of the same players and same ideas and organizations intersect in totally different ways in Nicaragua, India or Kenya.

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