Books by Phyllis Chesler

Sacred Bond The Legacy of Baby M. by Phyllis Chesler Crown, 1988. 212 pp. May 12, 1988

Praise:

"Phyllis Chesler's Sacred Bond is fascinating and essential reading for anyone interested in the crucial debate over mothers' rights."
--Margaret Atwood

"In her latest book, Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M. Phyllis Chesler brings a feminist version of the Wisdom of Solomon to the complex issues surrounding parental rights and custody. Chesler's account of the story reads quickly and easily - at times almost like a fast-paced thriller, thanks to her excellent writing. Using the Baby M case as a launching pad, she raises a series of tough questions that force the reader to confront the contradictions inherent in our present definitions of family, father, mother, child."
-- San Francisco Chronicle

"Phyllis Chesler's work is our public conscience. We owe her an enormous debt for keeping cutting-edge feminist issues alive."
--Letty Cottin Pogrebin

"Though she writes from an avowedly radical feminist perspective, the author explores the issues with an understanding of, and openness to, other views, rare in literature of this genre. Her book resonates with a philosophic imagination, a grace of style, and a mordant wit that, for one rapt reader, made it impossible to put down."
--Cyril C. Means. Jr., Professor of Constitutional Law, New York Law School

"A powerful critique of the way many of us were inclined to think as we read of the Sterns and of serving sociological and psychological generalizations that pass for truth today simply fail to do justice to the range and complexity of human feeling…forceful and suggestive social comment. The author rallied to Mrs. Whitehead Gould's side during her recent, extensively reported struggle with William and Elizabeth Stern. Ms. Chesler regards the Baby M case not only a tragedy for a child, for its birth mother, for its adoptive parents - the wrangling between them is amply documented - but as an instance of a larger problem she has been actively studying for some time: "The reproductive and custodial rights of all women."
--Front Page New York Times Book