Melissa Haussman. 2013. Reproductive Rights and the State: Getting the Birth Control, RU‐486, and Morning‐After Pills and the Gardasil Vaccine to the U.S. Market. (Reproductive Rights and Policy Series; Series Editor, Judith A. Baer). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. $37.00. Hardcover. pp. 184. ISBN 978‐0‐313‐39822‐3.

• Author: Karen Baird
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.128
• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Date: 01 March 2015

Book Review

Melissa Haussman. 2013. Reproductive Rights and the State: Getting the Birth Control,

RU-486, and Morning-After Pills and the Gardasil Vaccine to the U.S. Market.

(Reproductive Rights and Policy Series; Series Editor, Judith A. Baer). Santa Barbara,

CA: Praeger. $37.00. Hardcover. pp. 184. ISBN 978-0-313-39822-3.

In Reproductive Rights and the State, Melissa Haussman, Professor of Political

Science at Carleton University, brings together reproductive rights, drugs,

abortion, birth control, and the HPV vaccine to compare their intertwined politics.

Why did the Gardasil vaccine f‌ly through the FDA approval process, but RU-486

(i.e., medical abortion) and the morning-after pill take years to receive FDA

approval? No pressing need had been demonstrated for the vaccine against HPV,

a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer, but doctors,

scientists, and women’s health advocates lobbied for decades for approval of the

birth control and RU-486.

Feminists often criticize social conservatives for attempting to control

women’s bodies and sexuality through punitive public policies. As all of the

drugs examined in Reproductive Rights and the State revolve around women’s, and

girls’, sexual conduct, how is it that the vaccine bypassed the usual moral

controversies? This quagmire is what Melissa Haussman explains by document-

ing how for-prof‌it pharmaceutical companies’ interests can sometimes triumph

over anti-reproductive rights interests. She writes, “This drug [Gardasil vaccine]

and Viagra for men, which was approved by the FDA in fewer than 6 months,

are the two outliers in the typical history of state and market neglect to develop

reproductive-related drugs” (p. 139). The many different groups involved in

reproductive rights policies and the different governmental levels and agencies

that regulate reproductive rights are also vividly documented.

Reproductive Rights and the State covers the pre- and post-Roe periods: pro-

reproductive rights arguments dominated the former and anti-reproductive rights

groups dominated the latter. The book details the f‌ight for FDA approval of

RU-486 and the morning-after pill and then, after its approval, the struggle to

make Plan B (a patented version of the morning-after pill) available over the

counter. Supporters in and out of government fought tirelessly by lobbying, f‌iling

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2015

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1948-4682 #2015 Policy Studies Organization

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