Reproductive Wrongs, Sarah Ruden
Reproductive Wrongs, Sarah Ruden
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Reproductive Wrongs
A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women

Author: Sarah Ruden

Narrator: Eva Wilhelm

Unabridged: 6 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/03/2026

Synopsis

A bracing feminist chronicle of the history of the West told through seven texts, exposing where our most virulent ideas about women came from.The dangerous belief that granting women reproductive freedom poses a threat to "traditional" values is a myth that has long prospered in American politics, playing an especially vicious role in the development of totalitarianism in the West. How did such damaging ideas arise?In Reproductive Wrongs, acclaimed translator and cultural historian Sarah Ruden exposes how ideologies that oppress women and families in the service of power took hold. Ruden traces a sweeping history through her trenchant analysis of seven pieces of literature that, she argues, marked key inflection points across two thousand years. From propagandistic poetry written by Ovid in the early Roman Empire to the biography of an evangelical American "abortion survivor," Ruden lays bare how doctrines of control over women were invented and propagated.Scathing and vital, Reproductive Wrongs unearths the evolution of a right–wing radicalism that endures to this day, when half of the United States population is losing access to basic human rights.

About Sarah Ruden

Sarah Ruden was educated at the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins. She has translated a number of ancient literary works, among them Vergil's Aeneid and Augustine's Confessions, and is the author of Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time and The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible. She is a past recipient of Guggenheim and Whiting awards, and completed the Gospels translation with the help of a grant from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. Formerly a scholar-in-residence at Yale Divinity School, she is currently a visiting researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Krystelle on February 13, 2026

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC! I found this was a really interesting look at a world in crisis about reproductive rights, although it was a short look in some ways and I would have loved to have more information and context. With that said, I am absolutely aware that could ha......more

Goodreads review by Madison ✨ on March 10, 2026

3.5 stars rounded up. Sarah Ruden is a classicist who was convinced to write about the history of how men talk about women, basically. She was confused by the suggestion of this task (as was I, initially), but it is a necessary examination in a time when reproductive rights are being constantly and c......more

Goodreads review by MsB on March 10, 2026

3.5 for me. A fascinating and often unsettling look at the long history of suspicion and control directed at women and women’s bodies. What struck me most is how systemic the cruelty is, embedded across legal, medical, and religious structures for centuries and still visible today. It’s not just abo......more

Goodreads review by Brittany on March 07, 2026

this was a book I did as an audio for a good reads challenge. this is not my typical read. it was thought provoking, but at times I felt lost because of not knowing the history or theology Ruden was referencing. it challenged things that I was taught as a woman and as a catholic. it is incredibly ev......more

Goodreads review by achilles on March 08, 2026

great idea, bad execution. some of the evidence and arguments leads to different directions (with little correlation), i sometimes forgot what the book is about. the writing style is not my favourite either, it's hard for no reason.......more

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