Fighting for Control

“Not only does Fighting for Control offer a multifaceted historical analysis, but it also presents readers with crucial insight into the labor and praxis that makes reproductive freedom possible.”—Society for US Intellectual History

“A theoretically rich, methodologically innovative, and politically urgent monograph, Murillo’s is more than just a history about reproductive rights. It is a history of somatic, discursive, and affective control of their own and their community members’ bodies and their decisions over family planning.”—Pacific Historical Review

“Unlike many histories of family planning, women are the main actors in this story. . . . Murillo’s exhaustive archival work [has] produced a rich people-centered history.”—Hispanic American Historical Review

“This book is crucial to Latina history, women’s history, and reproductive justice.”—Journal of Texas History

“Murillo’s recreation of the worlds of reproductive care and Planned Parenthood surprises in its scope and delights in its transnational texture and tightly documented narrative detail.”—Diplomatic History

“A groundbreaking and foundational history of Mexican-origin women in the borderlands. Lina-Maria Murillo’s eloquently written and meticulously researched book brings to light this overlooked and marginalized story.”—Miroslava Chávez-García, author of Migrant Longing: Letter Writing across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

“Fusing feminist theory, archival sleuthing, and compelling storytelling, Lina-Maria Murillo has crafted an unparalleled history of women’s reproductive health care in the US-Mexico borderlands. By turns heartbreaking and inspiring, Fighting for Control will be discussed for decades to come.”—Vicki L. Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America

“A fresh analysis and critical, transnational perspective on the xenophobic discourses, practices, and worries about Mexican women’s fertility that emerged in the late twentieth century. This book powerfully illustrates the quotidian expressions of compassion, nurturing, and information-sharing that enabled these Mexican women and activists to live in dignity.”—Patricia Zavella, author of The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism

“Fighting for Control is a revelation and rewrites the history of birth control in America as we know it. Along the US-Mexico border, in the face of unrelenting eugenic feminism, Mexican-origin women innovated a reproductive justice framework long before a reproductive rights one took root.”—Jennifer L. Holland, author of Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

“Fighting for Control is a riveting narrative that manages to be both sweeping and exquisitely detailed. Murillo brilliantly mobilizes the concept of reproductive care to show how Mexican-origin women navigated the constraints of eugenics, population control, poverty, and injustice across the long twentieth century.”—Alexandra Minna Stern, author of Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America