Reproductive Rites

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A provocative exploration of the witches—and witch hunts—in the untold history of abortion, from the days of Socrates through the Salem Witch Trials and the 1980s Satanic Panic, all the way to our fraught post-Roe present, from journalist Sophie Saint Thomas.

For millennia, across cultures and continents, women and people who experience pregnancy, as well as midwives and those who assist them, have been persecuted as witches (whether they actually practiced the craft or not). In this dauntless, voice-driven reassessment of that history, journalist Sophie Saint Thomas follows the tangled threads of witches and reproductive rights through the ages.

Through it all, she maintains an intersectional eye toward the communities most affected by reproductive oppression (including Native Americans, enslaved Black women, and trans people) and a scathing exposure of the hypocrisy of anti-choice crusaders (from the eugenicist Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey to the astrology-loving Republican Nancy Reagan). With heart, humor, and deeply researched insights, Reproductive Rites brings a new level of context to the urgency of our present moment as we fight for our rights in a post-Roe v. Wade America.Sophie Saint Thomas is a writer based in New York City and originally from the US Virgin Islands. She is the author of books including Weed Witch. She has been published in GQ, Playboy, VICE, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, Allure, Glamour, Marie Claire, High Times, Nylon, Refinery29, Complex, Harper’s Bazaar, PRIDEMagazine, SELF, and more.“Through a cross-cultural lens, Saint Thomas offers us a fascinating exploration into the socio-psychological dynamics which underscore the practice of witch persecution and the ongoing oppression of women’s reproductive rights. Her work is an incisive critique of human prejudice and its historical consequences.” —Alan Kilpatrick, author of The Night Has a Naked Soul: Witchcraft and Sorcery among the Western Cherokee

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