The Audacity of Inez Burns
Dreams, Desire, Treachery, and Ruin in the City of Gold

Inez Burns was adored by the desperate women who sought her outand loathed by the power-hungry men who plotted to destroy her.During a time when women risked their lives with predatory practitioners lurking in back alleys, Inez and her team of women, clad in crisp, white nurses uniforms, worked night and day in her elegantly appointed clinic, performing fifty thousand of the safest, most hygienic abortions available during a time when even the richest wives, Hollywood stars, and mistresses had few options when they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy.In Desperate Measures, Stephen G. Bloom reveals a jagged slice of lost American history. From Inezs riveting tale of glamour and tragedy, he has created a brilliant, compulsively readable portrait of an unforgettable woman during a moment when Americas pendulum swung from compassion to criminality by punishing those who permitted women to control their own destinies.