Margaret Pabst Battin | Sex and the Planet

TKE is partnering with PPAU to host local favorite Margaret Pabst Battin, to discuss and sign her new book: Sex and the Planet: What Opt-In Reproduction Could Do for the Globe.

This event is open to the public but tickets are required. Tickets are $10 and all proceeds will benefit Planned Parenthood (Association of Utah).

Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event. You may also pre-order your signed copy of Sex and the Planet to pick up at the event by either calling the store at 801-484-9100 or ordering online. If you cannot make this event, signed copies of Sex and the Planet may be ordered from our website. Please specify in the comments if you would like your copy personalized. Places in the signing line are reserved for those who purchase a copy from The King's English.

About the book

What would the world be like if all pregnancy was intended, not unintended as it is nearly half the time now? Considerably better, Margaret Pabst Battin suggests in Sex and the Planet, a provocative thought experiment with far-reaching real-world implications. Many of the world’s most vexing and seemingly intractable issues begin with sex—when sperm meets egg, as Battin puts it—abortion, adolescent pregnancy, high-risk pregnancy, sexual violence, population growth and decline. Rethinking reproductive rights and exposing our many mistaken assumptions about sex, Sex and the Planet offers an optimistic picture of how we might solve these problems—by drastically curtailing unintended pregnancies using currently available methods.

How we see this picture—as recommendation, prediction, utopian fantasy, totalitarian plot, hypothetical conjecture, or realistic solution—depends to a great degree on which of thirteen problematic assumptions we maintain, assumptions Battin works to identify and challenge. Taking on sensitive topics like abortion and rape and religious issues around contraception, she shows how a fully informed, nonideological approach could defuse much of the friction such issues tend to generate. Also, in her attention to male contraception and the asymmetry of female and male reproductive control, she pulls in the 50 percent of the human race—those with Y chromosomes—largely left out of discussions of reproductive health. Sex and the Planet, finally, takes a global view, inviting us to consider a possible—even plausible—reproductive future.

Host or Publisher The King's English Bookshop