The Boundaries of Her Body: The Troubling History of Women's Rights in America

Whatever your political beliefs, if you are a woman, you must know what the law says about you.

The Boundaries of Her Body is the definitive history of the cycle of advances and setbacks that characterizes women's rights in America. Author Debran Rowland covers emotionally charged issues with thoughtful detail, offering insight into the strategies used by politicians and lobbyists to defeat long-standing law.

The defeat for women's rights is an emotional and often polarized debate:

• A debate over what a woman is
  
• What a woman ought to be
  
• And what a woman should, therefore, be allowed to do

Today, the future of women's rights is in jeopardy.

"If I had to guess at the future for women, I would say we stand to lose many more significant battles—and the rights that go with them—if we don't begin to abandon the niceties of a comfortable life with educated opinions and start waging the kind of aggressive, no-holds-barred guerrilla war that our opponents have been riding to victory."
—from the Epilogue to The Boundaries of Her Body

Rowland combines provocative arguments with exhaustive research and affirms that, in spite of advancements, the boundaries of women's bodies will continue to be a source of bitter contention in the law.

"Debran Rowland brilliantly argues the continuing inequality of women's rights in America with the most meticulous and comprehensive research in our times."
—Betty Friedan author of The Feminine Mystique

Debran Rowland is an attorney, a writer, and an artist who earned her law degree at Loyola University of Chicago School of Law. In addition, Ms. Rowland holds a degree in English from Carleton College and an M.A. in cultural anthropology from Columbia University in New York. She has studied at the Art Student's League of New York and her illustrations have been published in Al Dia newspaper in addition to other places.

Ms. Rowland has written for The Korea Times, New York; The New Pittsburgh Courier; Pittsburgh Press; the Chicago Tribune; and, the Commercial Appeal. Writing awards include Best News Feature, Chicago Association of Black Journalists, 1991, and the Robert L. Vann award for Best Print News Series, 1988.

Legal academic awards for Ms. Rowland include the American Jurisprudence and Corpus Secundum awards. Legal articles written by Ms. Rowland have been published in American Law Reports (5th Series); Loyola University School of Law Public Interest Law Reporter; and, the Illinois Bar Examiner.

She has lived in India, where she taught English to "untouchable" children in a slum, and in Australia, where she covered the Constitutional Convention in 1998. In addition to writing, Ms. Rowland is a volunteer with Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, where she handles civil-rights based immigration appeals in federal court.