Making the Best of Semen
Prospects for Law and Regulation
Will be published approx. on 2. December 2025
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-1-4798-3291-0 (ISBN)
Description
Argues that regulation of the substance that creates life and spreads harm is crucial in a post-Roe America
Controls on sexual reproduction are so familiar. Check out any authority over human lives - religious, medical, sociopolitical, familial, psychological - and you'll find teachings about what people must, shouldn't, may, and may not do with their reproductive organs. In this landscape of control, one active participant has been escaping its share of deserved attention. Semen is the quintessential hazardous substance, a fluid that delivers unique benefit along with unique risk, but until now nobody has set out to control it.
In Making the Best of Semen Anita Bernstein sets out to manage a significant fluid that calls for much more attention that it receives. The benefits and harms that semen delivers when it travels onto mucosa are not only extraordinary: they also lie within the reach of regulation. Bernstein lays out the problem of unmentionability that shields semen from controls and documents the upheavals for which this substance is responsible. As the first book to broach regulation of semen, Making the Best of Semen focuses on the rendering of good things that semen regulation could furnish.
Controls on sexual reproduction are so familiar. Check out any authority over human lives - religious, medical, sociopolitical, familial, psychological - and you'll find teachings about what people must, shouldn't, may, and may not do with their reproductive organs. In this landscape of control, one active participant has been escaping its share of deserved attention. Semen is the quintessential hazardous substance, a fluid that delivers unique benefit along with unique risk, but until now nobody has set out to control it.
In Making the Best of Semen Anita Bernstein sets out to manage a significant fluid that calls for much more attention that it receives. The benefits and harms that semen delivers when it travels onto mucosa are not only extraordinary: they also lie within the reach of regulation. Bernstein lays out the problem of unmentionability that shields semen from controls and documents the upheavals for which this substance is responsible. As the first book to broach regulation of semen, Making the Best of Semen focuses on the rendering of good things that semen regulation could furnish.
Reviews / Votes
"From Genesis Chapter 38 to fertility fraud, this book details law and society's strange enduring relationship with what she calls the "unmentionable": semen. Bernstein has written the rare book that is personal and scholarly, provocative and at times laugh-out-loud funny." - I. Glenn Cohen, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard Law School"Anita Bernstein is a brilliant, audacious, and original thinker. With clarity, wit, and rigor, she transforms what law has long ignored into a subject of urgent significance. Making the Best of Semen is sharp, surprising, and absorbing - a masterclass in legal imagination." - Bridget Crawford, University Distinguished Professor, Pace University
"A tour de force on the substance no one likes to talk about, but which is essential for human survival: semen. Everything you wanted to know, and didn't want to know, about this fascinating, dangerous, but life-giving substance is found between these covers." - Jonathan Herring, author of Law Through the Life Course
"In Making the Best of Semen, Anita Bernstein's original and plainly sensible argument for controlling ejaculate unmasks this substance as disease-making, death-inducing, and the actual cause of every unplanned pregnancy in history. I'm convinced: Controlling men's bodies is the up-stream answer to eradicating abortion!" - Jennifer Baumgardner, multi-media feminist and writer-in-residence at Smith College
"A fascinating, sometimes uncomfortable, and absolutely necessary exposure of a primary actor in society and policy that has remained protected and concealed for too long. Bernstein's book offers important history and context for understanding current health law, as well as providing an image of more egalitarian and safer potential regulations." - Francesca Laguardia, Montclair State University
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
3 b/w images
Dimensions
Height: 162 mm
Width: 238 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
576 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4798-3291-0 (9781479832910)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
12/2025
NYU Press
€27.49
Available for download
Person
Anita Bernstein is Anita and Stuart Subotnick Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School and the author of many books, including Questions and Answers: Torts, now in its third edition, The Common Law Inside the Female Body, and Marriage Proposals: Questioning a Legal Status.