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Bodies Under Siege: Sian Norris & Edna Bonhomme

Sian Norris and Edna Bonhomme join Eleanor Penny to shed light on the disturbing relationship between the far right, misogyny, and the relentless assault on reproductive rights worldwide.

29 June 2023

Bodies Under Siege: Sian Norris & Edna Bonhomme

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VersoBooks · Bodies Under Siege | Sian Norris & Edna Bonhomme

 

This week Sian Norris and Edna Bonhomme delve into the tactics and goals of fascist ideologies across the globe. They explore how far right movements organise themselves transnationally with the aim of exerting control over individuals' bodies, rooted in a fundamental suspicion of women and their autonomy.

Sian Norris is a writer, a journalist, and an investigative reporter whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The New Statesman, openDemocracy, to name a few. She’s the author of the book Bodies Under Siege: How the Far Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, recently published with Verso.

 Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, a writer, an editor and a cultural critic. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Baffler, The Nation, and many more publications. She’s the author of the forthcoming books Tending to Our Wounds, and  A History of the World in Six Plagues, and the co-author of After Sex.

As the far right gains momentum in the streets as well as in the halls of power, we’ve witnessed an alarming surge in the backlash against abortion rights and gender-based rights. To explore this relationship between the anti-choice crusade and the far right, Sian and Edna discuss the effectiveness of misogyny as a rallying cry for these movements, whilst also touching upon conspiracy theories, the racial politics of the family, and the fascist obsession with bodies and baby-making.

Whilst the overturning of Roe vs Wade in the US has been a devastating symbolic and material blow to the pro-abortion movement, Sian and Edna also discuss the fact that in many places across the world - such as Argentina and Ireland - there have been victories around reproductive rights that should give us hope.

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Bodies Under Siege
Think today's anti-abortion ideas are rooted in religious prohibitions or arguments about where life begins? Wrong: today's anti-abortion movements is largely financed and planned by far-right extr...

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