Australian author of Defiant Birth to make June 20 book-tour stop at School of Law

Australian author of Defiant Birth to make June 20 book-tour stop at School of Law

Australian author and journalist Melinda Tankard Reist will speak in Minneapolis on her new book, Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics, as part of an international book-launch tour. 

Two contributors from the Twin Cities, University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor Lisa Schiltz along with local author Amy Kuebelbeck, author of Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby's Brief Life, will attend the book launch.

The event will take place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 20, at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, 1101 Harmon Place. Her Minneapolis appearance is a stop on the book tour that also is taking her to Rome, London, Washington, D.C. and New York.

In Defiant Birth, Tankard Reist retells the moving and courageous stories of 19 women who continued their pregnancies despite pressure to terminate from doctors, family members and social expectations.

Some of the women tell of grave misdiagnoses. Others tell of life-changing experiences, discovering the joy and love in children considered unworthy of life. Others offer support and hope even to families whose unborn children are diagnosed with fatal conditions.

Schiltz is the mother of a son diagnosed prenatally with Down’s syndrome. Kuebelbeck is the mother of a son diagnosed prenatally with a fatal heart condition. Both Schiltz and Kuebelbeck will speak at the event.

Tankard Reist says Defiant Birth challenges widespread medical, and often social, aversion to less-than-perfect pregnancies or genetically different babies.

 “Prenatal screening may appear to give pregnant women more power but often it actually takes choices away,” says Tankard Reist.

Tankard Reist will be introduced by Steven Calvin, M.D., associate professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women's Health and co-chair of the Program in Human Rights in Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School.