2009

Monday, October 12th

6:00pm

The Future of Reproduction: A Personal and Global Perspective

In this modern age, planning your life course is a tricky balancing act between career and family that often involves re-planning. Based on her own experience and the stories she gathered in her book, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood, about women looking for the best age at which to have a child, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt will speak about the consequences and dilemmas surrounding modern motherhood and fatherhood, infertility, and the new array of choices that we have from “instant families” to “egg freezing” to “single motherhood” to “the donor egg economy” to living “child free.” She will address the changing attitudes towards later motherhood and the uses of and advances in reproductive medicine.

Michelle Goldberg, author of The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, will speak about the global battle for control of women’s fertility, a battle that pits coalitions of religious fundamentalists against a cosmopolitan array of feminists, reformers and doctors. Goldberg will show the surprising ways that women’s rights, and their access to reproductive choice, is central to combating global poverty, maternal mortality, political instability and even collapsing birth rates in Europe, and she’ll discuss the profound effect that American abortion politics have on women all over the planet.

BIOS:

Michelle Goldberg, MJ ’98, is a journalist and author based in Brooklyn, New York. Her most recent book is The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, which was published in April by Penguin Press and won last year’s J. Anthony Lukas Work in Progress Award. Researched in four continents, The Means of Reproduction tells the story of the global battle for reproductive rights, and argues that the oppression of women is the great human rights issue of our time. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote that the book is “full of wonderful insights and stories…Goldberg is exactly right.” Goldberg is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. She is a columnist for The Daily Beast and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Glamour, The Los Angeles Times and many other publications.

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, MJ ’97, is an author, essayist and journalist living in the West Village of Manhattan. She writes about social trends, media, business, gender politics and the influence of science and technology on culture.  Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, New York, Vogue, O magazine, Self, Glamour, Outside, Wired, The New York Observer, US News and World Report, Salon.com, Business Week, and MSN Money. Her first book, In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood, was published in The United States, England and The Netherlands. First and second serial excerpts were published in Newsweek, The London Times, The Daily Mail, and The Irish Independent. Lehmann-Haupt appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. The book received positive reviews in both The New York Times and The Washington Post, where the reviewer wrote, “Lehmann-Haupt is a skilled, empathetic writer and an excellent researcher, alert to the absurdities and ethical ambiguities of her quest, and she has written a valuable guide.”

SPONSORED BY

The Graduate School of Journalism

LOCATION

Room 105 - North Gate Hall

Get directions to Room 105 - North Gate Hall