Fighting for Control

This week’s review uncovers Mexican women’s battle for reproductive care on both sides of the US-Mexico border from 1937 to 2009.

Posted on September 29, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands

Murillo, Lina-Maria. North Carolina, 2025
336p bibl index, 9781469682587 $99.00, 9781469682594 $29.95, 9781469682600

Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands book cover.

This well-edited, tightly focused volume centers on the beliefs and practices of birth control advocates in and around the twin border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez from 1937 to 2009, the period covering the institutional existence of freestanding birth control clinics from the opening of the first to the closure of the last. Murillo (Univ. of Iowa) focuses primarily on Chicana, other Latina, and Mexicana grassroots activists and their work for reproductive health and sexual empowerment. Their stories are interwoven with the author’s exploration of the eugenicist and racist politics of “liberal” Protestant providers in the early years and the continuing sexually repressive, patriarchal politics of the Catholic Church. Insights into how local women’s own needs and agendas changed with industrial development (maquiladoras) and migrations to and across this border are also significant. The stories of these women on the border between Mexico and the US are contextualized by discussion of the service-providing institutions that were funded and de-funded over time and changes in the national politics of reproduction and local economies in both countries. This readable study is an excellent new contribution to the field.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: M. M. Ferree, emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences
Choice Issue: Aug 2025

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