Investigative journalist Michelle Goldberg exposes the global war on women's reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences for the future of global development. Women's rights are often treated as mere appendages to great questions of war, peace, poverty, and economic development. But as networks of religious fundamentalists, feminists, and bureaucrats struggle to remake sexual and childbearing norms worldwide, the battle to control women's bodies has become a high-stakes enterprise, with the United States often supporting the most reactionary forces. Goldberg shows how the emancipation of women has become the key human rights struggle of the 21st century. Empowering women is the key to retarding the progress of AIDS, curbing overpopulation, and helping the third world climb out of poverty, but attempts to improve women's status elicit fierce opposition from conservatives who see women's submission as key to their own national or religious identity.

Sandinista family values -- The great population panic, or fighting communism with contraception -- Sisterhood is international -- Cairo and Beijing -- Rights versus rites -- The globalization of the culture wars -- Missing girls -- The birth strike.