The Real Domestic Product: How Birth Control Built Equality (and Why the Future of the Economy and the Planet Depends on It)

An urgent and clear-eyed look at the battle over reproductive control in our tipping-point moment-and how to forge a path forward. Birth control, which includes contraception, abortion access and more, has not only enabled women to enter civic life in significant numbers for the first time, but it has also expanded our democracy and grown our economy.While many embrace these changes, which aim to share the nation’s economic bounty among all Americans, those who see themselves as benefiting from the old hierarchies do not.They resist this progress with divisive rhetoric condemning “woke”-ness in anything they find threatening. In The Real Domestic Product, fertility researcher Elizabeth Gregory argues that our battles over abortion and LGBTQ bans and pronatalism are economic at base-that conservatives seek to push women out of civic life through forced childbearing.Their goal? To maintain their discount on domestic labor and a steady supply of low-wage workers.But, she contends, this sh