A Critical Introduction to the Ethics of Abortion addresses some of the most prominent and influential arguments to the abortion debate. These include the Being a Person verses Functioning as a Person Argument, women's rights vis-a-vis the rights of the foetus, personhood as an essentially contested concept, and a virtue ethics approach. Also covered are central bioethical issues concerning prenatal screening, stem cell research and cloning. Based on a critical assessment of the evidence, the book offers an impartial view and draws on the importance of critical thinking and the logic of argumentation. Providing an overview of the legal history of abortion in the United States, it discusses five of the most influential Supreme Court cases on abortion law during the past fifty years and examines the current state of abortion law, politics and the main trends. Presenting a balance between ethical concepts, views and arguments, A Critical Introduction to the Ethics of Abortion is an up-to-date introduction to the choice of abortion illustrating the importance of evidence, clear thinking and good arguments for supporting one's ethical beliefs.

"A worthwhile addition to the public health literature". -- Health Values

This timely, nonpartisan volume examines the social, legal, religious, and moral implications of abortion.

'There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies's achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story . . . The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love.' - Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labour? When does chance become choice? And when does fact become fiction? A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political, experiences a family can have: to have a child, and conversely, the decision not to have a child. A woman's first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain, leaving her and her husband, a writer, reeling. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests - and questions that reverberate down the years. This spare, supple narrative chronicles the flux of parenthood, marriage, and the day-to-day practice of loving someone. As challenging as it is vulnerable, as furious as it is tender, as touching as it is darkly comic, Peter Ho Davies's new novel is an unprecedented depiction of fatherhood.

A heartbreaking, soul-baring novel about the repercussions of choice from the award-winning author of The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes.

When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labour? When does chance become choice? And when does fact become fiction?

A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political, experiences a family can have: to have a child, and conversely, the decision not to have a child. A woman's first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain, leaving her and her husband, a writer, reeling. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests - and questions that reverberate down the years.

This spare, supple narrative chronicles the flux of parenthood, marriage, and the day-to-day practice of loving someone. As challenging as it is vulnerable, as furious as it is tender, as touching as it is darkly comic, Peter Ho Davies's new novel is an unprecedented depiction of fatherhood.

He presided over 61,000 abortions--one of which was suffered by his then-girlfriend--and directed the largest abortion clinic in the world. He had helped to legalize abortion in the first place.
One day, he had a change of heart. One day, he found God.
At the drop of a hat, an abortion doctor renounced his profession--and his atheism--for pro-life advocacy and Christianity.
In the most shocking revelations ever expressed in an autobiography, one man unveils his entire life story, detailing countless events--from his gruesome abortion procedures to his conversion and involvement in "The Silent Scream."
Discover one man's incredible journey from death to life in Bernard Nathanson's "The Hand of God."

'Priestdaddy caused a sensation when it hit bookshelves in 2017' Vogue 'Glorious' Sunday Times 'Laugh-out-loud funny' The Times 'Extraordinary' Observer 'Exceptional' Telegraph 'Electric' New York Times 'Snort-out-loud' Financial Times 'Dazzling' Guardian 'Do yourself a favour and read this memoir!' BookPage WINNER OF THE THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOUR The childhood of Patricia Lockwood, the poet dubbed 'The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas' by The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and arnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and found a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI, despite already having a wife and children. When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity - and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact. 'Destined to be a classic . . . this year's must-read memoir' Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club 'Irrepressible . . . joyous, funny and filthy . . . Lockwood blows the roof off every paragraph' Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine 'Beautiful, funny and poignant. I wish I'd written this book' Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy 'A revelatory debut . . . Lockwood's prose is nothing short of ecstatic . . . her portrait of her epically eccentric family is funny, warm, and stuffed to bursting with emotional insight' Joss Whedon 'Praise God, this is why books were invented' Emily Berry, author of Dear Boy and Stranger, Baby

`It is a woman's right. It is the expression of her autonomy to claim uncompromising power over her own body and the determination of her own future. It is overcoming motherhood as a biological destiny.' `Pela Vida das Mulheres' was the chant that Brazilians took to the streets to fight for reproductive rights. Just like those protests, this book is a call to action for activists and lawmakers around the world. For over two years, Camila Cavalcante travelled around Brazil meeting women who have had or who have witnessed illegal abortions. She photographed fifty women who shared their stories with her. The collection of portraits is both deeply personal and deeply political. Cavalcante uses the naked female form to challenge the dangerous reproductive laws of Brazil. She exposes her body and identity on behalf of these women in an act of solidarity, as well as subversion. Within this context, For the Lives of All Women/Pela Vida das Mulheres is an act of rebellion in itself.

Articulating Life's Memory offers a unique view of the history of abortion in early America. Nathan Stormer's work moves beyond general histories of medicine, science, and women; it provides specific insight into how the earliest medical writings on abortion served to create cultural memory. Nineteenth-century medical texts presented the act of abortion as a threat to the carefully circumscribed concepts of nation and race. Stormer analyzes a wealth of literature (and illustrations) from the period to explore the rhetorical techniques that led early Americans to presume that abortion put the integrity of all of American culture at risk. The book's first part provides a layered context for understanding medical practices within the rhetoric of memory formation and sets early antiabortion efforts within the wider framework of nineteenth-century biopolitics and racism. In Part II of the study, Stormer examines the substance of the memory constituted by these early medical practices. Making a major contribution to the study of rhetoric, Articulating Life's Memory will be invaluable to scholars researching reproductive rights and feminist and cultural histories of medicine.

This book describes what homelessness is like for women and the extent to which female homelessness is gender-based. It tells what their lives are like and what their point of view is, both towards themselves and mainstream society. Because female homelessness is a serious social problem and is still poorly understood, the author describes the world of these women not only as an exercise in cultural analysis, but also with the intention of providing understanding which may help to improve their situation or alleviate their problems.

This book reframes the Irish abortion narrative within the history of women's reproductive health and explores the similarities and differences that shaped the history of abortion within the two states on the island of Ireland. Since the legalisation of abortion in Britain in 1967, an estimated 200,000 women have travelled from Ireland to England for an abortion. However, this abortion trail is at least a century old and began with women migrating to Britain to flee moral intolerance in Ireland towards unmarried mothers and their offspring. This study highlights how attitudes to unmarried motherhood reflected a broader cultural acceptance that morality should trump concerns regarding maternal health. This rationale bled into social and political responses to birth control and abortion and was underpinned by an acknowledgement that in prioritising morality some women would die.

Interview with Allan Carlson

In an ironic twist, American evangelical leaders are joining mainstream acceptance of contraception. Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873-1973, examines how mid-twentieth-century evangelical leaders eventually followed the mainstream into a quiet embrace of contraception, complemented by a brief acceptance of abortion. It places this change within the context of historic Christian teaching regarding birth control, including its origins in the early church and the shift in arguments made by the Reformers of the sixteenth century. The book explores the demographic effects of this transition and asks: did the delay by American evangelicals leaders in accepting birth control have consequences?

At the same time, many American evangelicals are rethinking their acceptance of birth control even as a majority of the nation's Roman Catholics are rejecting their church's teaching on the practice. Raised within a religious movement that has almost uniformly condemned abortion, many young evangelicals have begun to ask whether abortion can be neatly isolated from the issue of contraception. A significant number of evangelical families have, over the last several decades, rejected the use of birth control and returned decisions regarding family size to God. Given the growth of the evangelical movement, this pioneering work will have a large-scale impact.

This revised and updated edition of the 2016 bestselling work sets out the moral arguments for a woman's right to decide the future of her pregnancy. Drawing on traditions of philosophical and sociological thinking, it presents the case for recognizing autonomy in personal, private decision-making about reproductive intentions. Further, it argues that to prevent a woman making this decision according to her own values is to undermine the essence of her humanity. The author explores how true respect for human life and regard for individual conscience demands that we support a woman's right to decide, and that support for her right to terminate her pregnancy has moral foundations and ethical integrity. This second edition features a foreword by US abortion provider and reproductive justice advocate Dr. Willie Parker, as well as additional chapters that consider the rights of doctors and nurses to withdraw from abortion provision on grounds of conscience. Furedi also surveys the rapidly changing landscape of the abortion debate, including the rights of women in the aftermath of Trump's presidency; debates, politics and religion in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and the differing levels of provision across Europe.

In this brave and devastatingly beautiful anthology, the illustrious poet and editor Aracelis Girmay gathers complex and intimate pieces that illuminate the nuances of personal and collective histories, analyses, practices, and choices surrounding pregnancy. Featuring the brilliant voices of writers such as Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, and more, this book is a lighthouse-a tool and companion-for those navigating pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, birth, loss, grief, and love. In So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, pieces range from essays to poems to interviews, with a broad entanglement of various themes, from many different perspectives including Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and more. At a time when people are becoming more and more limited in their choices surrounding pregnancy and abortion, this record is increasingly urgent and indispensable.

1.1 Goals 1.1.1 I have two main goals in this book. The first is to give an account of the moral significance of merely possible persons - persons who, relative to a particular 1 circumstance, or possible future or world, could but in fact never do exist. I call that account Variabilism. My second goal is to use Variabilism to begin to address the problem of abortion. 1.1.2 We ought to do the best we can for people. And we consider this obligation to extend to people who are, relative to a world, existing or future. But does it extend to merely possible people as well? And, if it does, then does it extend to making things better for them by way of bringing them into existence? If we say that surely it doesn't, does that then mean that our obligation to do the best we can for people does not, after all, extend to the merely possible - that the merely p- sible do not matter morally? But if the merely possible do not matter morally, then doesn't that mean that it would be permissible for us to bring them into miserable existences - and even obligatory to do just that - in the case where bringing the merely possible into miserable existences creates additional wellbeing for existing 1 References to merely possible persons and, later on, to persons who do exist - existing persons

Examining the changing pluralities of contemporary abortion debate in Britain, this innovative and important book shows why it is necessary to move beyond an understanding of abortion politics as characterised in binary terms by 'pro-choice' versus 'pro-life'. Amery traces the evolution of political and parliamentary discourses from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present day, and argues that the current provision of abortion in Britain rests on assumptions about medical authority over women's reproductive decision-making which are unsustainable. She explores new arguments around sex-selective abortion, disability rights, pre-abortion counselling and the push for decriminalization, and radically reconceptualizes the debate to account for these new battlegrounds in abortion politics.

Merle Hoffman's life story is riveting. A former classical pianist, a self-made millionaire, and a feminist who found her life's work providing abortions, she has been a fearless crusader for women's right to choose.

Over the years, Hoffman has used her entrepreneurial spirit to build one of the most comprehensive women's medical centers in the country. In 1971 (two years before the "Roe v. Wade" Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion nationally), Hoffman founded Choices, an abortion clinic in New York. As a medical provider, she pioneered "patient power," encouraging women to participate in their own health care decisions. And going against even her own expectations for her life after fifty, she adopted a child and writes about her experience as a mother.

Whether addressing the murder of abortion providers like Dr. George Tiller or challenging women to understand their own power over their bodies and the language used to wield such power, Merle Hoffman has been on the front lines of the feminist movement, a fierce warrior in the battle for choice.

Merle Hoffman is an award-winning journalist, activist, and women's health care pioneer. In 1971, she founded Choices, one of the first ambulatory abortion centers, which has become one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive women's medical facilities in the United States. She is also the publisher of On the Issues, an online feminist magazine.

Birth control offers women the opportunity to prevent pregnancy, plan and space their births, or have no births at all. And yet, in the United States, half of all pregnancies remain unintended, and access to birth control is beset by inequities in education, access, and coverage. Research indicates that women are familiar with the range of contraceptive methods available today. But the persistently high rates of unintended pregnancy, combined with common dissatisfaction and discontinuation, suggest that women's contraceptive needs continue to be unmet. Birth Control: What Everyone Needs to Know will offer more than a user's guide to available means of contraception: it will examine how supported family-planning infrastructure impacts society as a whole. Through reviews of policy, scientific literature, and supplemental interviews with women, it will uncover women's concerns and apprehensions about contraception, as well as the ways birth control empowers women and increases access to educational and professional opportunities. It will provide an overview the history of birth control, the risks and benefits of contraception, the role of menstruation, and the future of birth control. The goal of this book is to provide accurate, unbiased scientific information about contraception in the context of women's lived experiences and the realities of how individuals make decisions about birth control.

Todays society demands physical perfection from all and regards medical and scientific technologies as saviours to be embraced whatever the cost. To have a child who has been diagnosed with a disability is deemed not just unnecessary, but careless and even immoral. This book tells the courageous stories of women who continued their pregnancies despite intense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations. These women were told they shouldnt have their babies because of a perceived imperfection in the child, or because their own disabilities do not fit within the parameters of what a mother should be. In the face of silent disapproval and open hostility, they have confronted the stigma of disability and had their children anyway. Some of the writers tell of grave misdiagnosis, others of life-changing experiences, discovering the joy and love in children considered unworthy of life.

The Abortion Act 1967 may be the most contested law in UK history, sitting on a fault line between the shifting tectonic plates of a rapidly transforming society. While it has survived repeated calls for its reform, with its text barely altered for over five decades, women's experiences of accessing abortion services under it have evolved considerably. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, this book explores how the Abortion Act was given meaning by a diverse cast of actors including women seeking access to services, doctors and service providers, campaigners, judges, lawyers, and policy makers. By adopting an innovative biographical approach to the law, the book shows that the Abortion Act is a 'living law'. Using this historically grounded socio-legal approach, this enlightening book demonstrates how the Abortion Act both shaped and was shaped by a constantly changing society.

In this brave and devastatingly beautiful anthology, the illustrious poet and editor Aracelis Girmay gathers complex and intimate pieces that illuminate the nuances of personal and collective histories, analyses, practices, and choices surrounding pregnancy. Featuring the brilliant voices of writers such as Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, and more, this book is a lighthouse-a tool and companion-for those navigating pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, birth, loss, grief, and love. In So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, pieces range from essays to poems to interviews, with a broad entanglement of various themes, from many different perspectives including Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and more. At a time when people are becoming more and more limited in their choices surrounding pregnancy and abortion, this record is increasingly urgent and indispensable.

Winner of the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language Although Roe v. Wade identified abortion as a constitutional right 45 years ago, it still bears stigma-a proverbial scarlet A. Millions of Americans have participated in or benefited from an abortion, but few want to reveal that they have done so. Approximately one in five pregnancies in the US ends in abortion. Why is something so common, which has been legal so long, still a source of shame and secrecy? Why is it so regularly debated by politicians, and so seldom divulged from friend to friend? This book explores the personal stigma that prevents many from sharing their abortion experiences with friends and family in private conversation, and the structural stigma that keeps it that way. In public discussion, both proponents and opponents of abortion's legality tend to focus on extraordinary cases. This tendency keeps the national debate polarized and contentious, and keeps our focus on the cases that occur the least. Professor Katie Watson focuses instead on the cases that happen the most, which she calls "ordinary abortion." Scarlet A gives the reflective reader a more accurate impression of what the majority of American abortion practice really looks like. It explains how our silence around private experience has distorted public opinion, and how including both ordinary abortion and abortion ethics could make our public exchanges more fruitful. In Scarlet A, Watson wisely and respectfully navigates one of the most divisive topics in contemporary life. This book explains the law of abortion, challenges the toxic politics that make it a public football and private secret, offers tools for more productive private exchanges, and leads the way to a more robust public discussion of abortion ethics. Scarlet A combines storytelling and statistics to bring the story of ordinary abortion out of the shadows, painting a rich, rarely seen picture of how patients and doctors currently think and act, and ultimately inviting readers to tell their own stories and draw their own conclusions.

The routinization of non-invasive prenatal genetic testing (NIPT) raises urgent questions about disability rights and reproductive justice. Supporters defend NIPT on the grounds that genetic information about the fetus helps would-be parents make better family planning choices. Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice challenges that assessment by exploring how NIPT can actually constrain pregnant women's options. Prospective parents must balance a complicated array of factors, including the familial, social, and financial support they can reasonably expect to receive if they choose to carry a disabled fetus to term and raise after birth, causing many pregnant women to "choose" termination. Focusing on the US, the book explores the intent and effects of prenatal screening in connection to women's bodily autonomy and disability rights, addressing themes at the intersection of genetic medicine, policymaking, critical disabilities studies, and political theory. Knight and Miller shift debates about reprogenetics from bioethics to political practice, as well as thoroughly critiquing the neoliberal state and the eugenic technologies that support it. Providing concrete suggestions for reforming medical practice, welfare policy, and cultural norms surrounding disability, this book highlights sites of necessary reform to envision how prospective parents can make truly free choices about prenatal genetic testing and selection abortion.

Relationships, sex, pregnancy, and abortion are among the topics discussed with engaging frankness by sixteen women in this collection of oral histories. Our Choices: Women s Personal Decisions About Abortion presents readers with the opportunity to understand the abortion choice in a way that statistics and abstract debate cannot. The accounts show how pregnancy and abortion are inextricably tied together in the complicated social and psychological lives of men and women. By exploring the women s feelings about becoming pregnant unintentionally and the circumstances surrounding that occurrence, the stories reveal much about how men and women communicate with each other about sex, the effect of pregnancy and abortion on relationships, and how a woman s upbringing has shaped her knowledge and attitudes regarding sex and abortion.Our Choices: Women s Personal Decisions About Abortion includes stories of both legal and illegal abortions from the 1950s through the 1980s. The women included represent a variety of socioeconomic, cultural, and religious backgrounds, reminding readers that any woman can potentially be faced with the decisions surrounding unintended pregnancy and abortion. The issues raised cover the trauma of an illegal abortion, abortion versus adoption, abortion following rape, abortion as a medical procedure, and the role of family and partner support.Women who are considering abortion or who have had an abortion in the past will gain a deeper understanding of this complex and private experience; their partners, families, and friends will be better equipped to provide help and support. Professionals, including counselors and health care providers, will want to read this engrossing book and refer their clients to it. Students in women s studies and health care programs, policymakers, ethicists, and others with an interest in women s issues will find the book enlightening. It should be read by anyone wishing a more complete knowledge of abortion and the vast array of issues it encompasses.Our Choices: Women s Personal Decisions About Abortion can be sold in family planning clinics to clients, used in pregnancy counseling training, and retained for reference by both public libraries and family planning clinics, reproductive rights organizations, universities, and women s centers.