Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade continues to make headlines. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate cuts through the myths and misunderstandings to present a clear-eyed account of cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed. The grassroots activists who shaped the discussion after Roe, Mary Ziegler shows, were far more fluid and diverse than the partisans dominating the debate today. In the early years after the decision, advocates on either side of the abortion battle sought common ground on issues from pregnancy discrimination to fetal research. Drawing on archives and more than 100 interviews with key participants, Ziegler's revelations complicate the view that abortion rights proponents were insensitive to larger questions of racial and class injustice, and expose as caricature the idea that abortion opponents were inherently antifeminist. But over time, "pro-abortion" and "anti-abortion" positions hardened into "pro-choice" and "pro-life" categories in response to political pressures and compromises. This increasingly contentious back-and-forth produced the interpretation now taken for granted-that Roe was primarily a ruling on a woman's right to choose. Peering beneath the surface of social-movement struggles in the 1970s, After Roe reveals how actors on the left and the right have today made Roe a symbol for a spectrum of fervently held political beliefs.

The term "reproductive politics" was coined by feminists in the 1970s to describe contemporary Roe v. Wade-era power struggles over contraception and abortion, adoption and surrogacy, and other satellite issues. Forty years later, questions about reproductive rights are just as complex--and controversial--as they were then. Focusing mainly on the United States, Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know(r) explores the legal, political, religious, social, ethical, and medical dimensions of this hotly contested arena.
Tracing the historical roots of reproductive politics up through the present, Rickie Solinger considers a range of topics from abortion and contraception to health care reform and assisted reproductive technologies. Solinger tackles some of the most contentious questions up for debate today, including the definition of "fetal personhood," and the roles poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights. The answers she provides are informative, balanced, and sometimes quite surprising.
Offering a wide range of information in an accessible and engaging manner, Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know(r) orients readers and provides the knowledge necessary to follow the debates in this important and continually evolving field.
What Everyone Needs to Know(r) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Pres

The right to life is a core human right which has not yet received the detailed legal analysis that it requires. This book provides detailed, critical analysis of the controversial human right to life and, in particular, assesses the weight of conflicting interests which could and/or should serve to override the right. This contemporary study of the right to life focuses on the legal, as well as ethical, issues raised by the value of life in modern day society. It seeks to analyze the development, meaning and value of the fundamental human right to life in the context of its conflicts with other competing interests. The book begins with an overview of the right to life in which the concept of life itself is first analyzed, before both the right and its legal protection and enforcement are subjected to historical, philosophical and comparative analysis. The remainder of the book identifies, and assesses the merits of, various competing interests. These comprise armed conflict; prevention of crime; rights of others; autonomy; quality of life; and finite resources.
The right to life is unusual in having potential application to so many of today's ethically controversial questions. This new work investigates specific topics of current political, legal and ethical concern such as the right to life during international conflicts, the role of lethal force in law enforcement, the death penalty, the right to life of a foetus in the context of legalized abortion, and the significance of quality of life and autonomy issues in respect of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

When addressing the factors shaping HIV prevention programs in sub-Saharan Africa, it is important to consider the role of family planning programs that preceded the epidemic. In this book, Rachel Sullivan Robinson argues that both globally and locally, those working to prevent HIV borrowed and adapted resources, discourses, and strategies used for family planning. By combining statistical analysis of all sub-Saharan African countries with comparative case studies of Malawi, Nigeria, and Senegal, Robinson also shows that the nature of countries' interactions with the international community, the strength and composition of civil society, and the existence of technocratic leaders influenced variation in responses to HIV. Specifically, historical and existing relationships with outside actors, the nature of nongovernmental organizations, and perceptions of previous interventions strongly structured later health interventions through processes of path dependence and policy feedback. This book will be of great use to scholars and practitioners interested in global health, international development, African studies and political science.

Birth controlled analyses the world of selective reproduction - the politics of who gets to legitimately reproduce the future - through a cross-cultural analysis of three modes of 'controlling' birth: contraception, reproductive violence and repro-genetic technologies. It argues that as fertility rates decline worldwide, the fervour to control fertility, and fertile bodies, does not dissipate; what evolves is the preferred mode of control. Although new technologies like those that assist conception or allow genetic selection may appear to be an antithesis of other violent versions of population control, this book demonstrates that both are part of the same continuum. All population control policies target and vilify women (Black women in particular), and coerce them into subjecting their bodies to state and medical surveillance; Birth controlled argues that assisted reproductive technologies and repro-genetic technologies employ a similar and stratified burden of blame and responsibility based on gender, race, class and caste. To empirically and historically ground the analysis, the book includes contributions from two postcolonial nations, South Africa and India, examining interactions between the history of colonialism and the economics of neoliberal markets and their influence on the technologies and politics of selective reproduction. The book provides a critical, interdisciplinary and cutting-edge dialogue around the interconnected issues that shape reproductive politics in an ostensibly 'post-population control' era. The contributions draw on a breadth of disciplines ranging from gender studies, sociology, medical anthropology, politics and science and technology studies to theology, public health and epidemiology, facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue around the interconnected modes of controlling birth and practices of neo-eugenics. -- .

First full-length study of attitudes to abortion in the early medieval west. When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queenfound herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the "dark ages" in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across anumber of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Lecturer in Early Medieval European History, University of Edinburgh.

Abortion is a contentious issue in social life but it has rarely been subjected to careful scrutiny in the social sciences. While the legalization of abortion has brought it into the public domain, it still remains a sensitive topic in many cultures, often hidden from view and rarely spoken about, consigned to a shadowy existence. Drawing on reports gathered from hospital settings and in-depth interviews with women who have had abortions, Luc Boltanski sets out to explain the ambiguous status of this social practice. Abortion, he argues, has to remain in the shadows, for it reveals a contradiction at the heart of the social contract: the principle of the uniqueness of beings conflicts with the postulate of their replaceable nature, a postulate without which no society would achieve demographic renewal. This leads Boltanski to explore the way human beings are engendered and to analyze the symbolic constraints that preside over their entry into society. What makes a human being is not the foetus as such, ensconced within the body, but rather the process by which it is taken up symbolically in speech - that is, its symbolic adoption. But this symbolic adoption presupposes the possibility of discriminating among embryos that are indistinguishable. For society, and sometimes for individuals, the arbitrary character of this discrimination is hard to tolerate. The contradiction is made bearable, Boltanski shows, by a grammatical categorization: the "project" foetus - adopted by its parents, who use speech to welcome the new being and give it a name - is juxtaposed to the "tumoral" foetus, an accidental embryo that will not be the object of a life-forming project. Bringing together grammar, narrations of life experience and an historical perspective, this highly original book sheds fresh light on a social phenomenon that is widely practised but poorly understood.

The Ethics of Pregnancy, Abortion and Childbirth addresses the unique moral questions raised by pregnancy and its intimate bodily nature. From assisted reproduction to abortion and 'vital conflict' resolution to more everyday concerns of the pregnant woman, this book argues for pregnancy as a close human relationship with the woman as guardian or custodian. Four approaches to pregnancy are explored: 'uni-personal', 'neighborly', 'maternal' and 'spousal'. The author challenges not only the view that there is only one moral subject to consider in pregnancy, but also the idea that the location of the fetus lacks all inherent, unique significance. It is argued that the pregnant woman is not a mere 'neighbor' or helpful stranger to the fetus but is rather already in a real familial relationship bringing real familial rights and obligations. If the status of the fetus is conclusive for at least some moral questions raised by pregnancy, so too are facts about its bodily relationship with, and presence in, the woman who supports it. This lucid, accessible and original book explores fundamental ethical issues in a rich and often neglected area of philosophy in ways of interest also to those from other disciplines.

This book examines how legislators have juggled their passions over abortion with standard congressional procedures, looking at how both external factors (such as public opinion) and internal factors (such as the ideological composition of committees and party systems) shape the development of abortion policy. Driven by both theoretical and empirical concerns, Scott H. Ainsworth and Thad E. Hall present a simple, formal model of strategic incrementalism, illustrating that legislators often have incentives to alter policy incrementally. They then examine the sponsorship of abortion-related proposals as well as their committee referral and find that a wide range of Democratic and Republican legislators repeatedly offer abortion-related proposals designed to alter abortion policy incrementally. Abortion Politics in Congress reveals that abortion debates have permeated a wide range of issues and that a wide range of legislators and a large number of committees address abortion.

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.

Using a wide range of prosecution and trial records, along with more recent newspaper coverage of court proceedings, this book furnishes a fascinating insight into the relationship between the law, sex, and society in modern Scotland. Case studies of sex-related offences, including abortion, bestiality, brothel-keeping, child sexual assault, and wilful HIV transmission, reveal how far the legal process both reflected and reinforced contemporary moral panics and how far it was shaped by the interplay between law officers and forensic experts, by the prejudices of the local community and civic leaders, and by Scotland's distinctive legal and moral identity. The law in practice is seen to have sustained important norms of sexual behaviour and masculinity along with an enduring double moral standard with respect to female sexuality. This volume thus affords a remarkable new perspective on the sexual behaviours and ideologies of Scottish society across the twentieth century and into the new millennium.

What are the contemporary issues in abortion politics globally? What factors explain variations in access to abortion between and within different countries? This text provides a transnationally-focused, interdisciplinary analysis of trends in abortion politics using case studies from around the Global North and South. It considers how societal influences, such as religion, nationalism and culture, impact abortion law and access. It explores the impact of international human rights norms, the increasing displacement of people due to conflict and crisis and the role of activists on law reform and access. The book concludes by considering the future of abortion politics through the more holistic lens of reproductive justice. Utilising a unique interdisciplinary approach, this book provides a major contribution to the knowledge base on abortion politics globally. It provides an accessible, informative and engaging text for academics, policy makers and readers interested in abortion politics.

Rather than providing a global solution to the problem of abortion -to abort or not to abort-this volume sheds light on different but equally critical dimensions of abortion in global debate and practice. The aim is to elaborate on different value systems and policies in order to empower individuals to make well-informed decisions about abortion guided by moral reflection. The twenty one chapters of this volume are written by distinguished scholars in each of the religious and non-religious schools of thought, offering an exhaustive survey of the differing religious and legal views on abortion within the international community. The contributors present authoritative discussions in favor of or against abortion based on their perspectives and practices. As a result, the content of this book provides a foundational platform for better understanding, meaningful dialogue, and tolerance on a social issue which has divided individuals, philosophers, theologians, policy makers, and legislators within and across societies for centuries.

The Catholic Church has always opposed abortion, but--contrary to popular belief--not always for the same reasons. This tightly argued, historically grounded study sets out to demonstrate that a "pro-choice" stance, now held by a significant minority of Catholics, is as fully justified by Catholic thought as an antiabortion view. A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion argues that the current Catholic antiabortion stance is justified neither by modern embryology nor by ancient church teachings. Combining up-to-date information on fetal development with a thorough grasp of the works of the church's early thinkers (such as Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas), Daniel A. Dombrowski and Robert Deltete expose crucial contradictions between the early and the modern Church's views of abortion.

The book examines the history of abortion and contraception in Modern Greece from the time of its creation in the 1830s to 1967, soon after the Pill became available. It situates the history of abortion and contraception within the historiography of the fertility decline and the question of whether the decline was due to adjustment to changing social conditions or innovation of contraceptive methods. The study reveals that all methods had been in use for other purposes before they were employed as contraceptives. For example, Greek women were employing emmenagogues well before fertility was controlled; they did so in order to 'put themselves right' and to enhance their fertility. When they needed to control their fertility, they employed abortifacients, some of which were also emmenagogues, while others had been used as expellants in earlier times. Curettage was also employed since the late nineteenth century as a cure for sterility; once couples desired to control their fertility curettage was employed to procure abortion. Thus couples did not need to innovate but rather had to repurpose old methods and materials to new birth control methods. Furthermore, the role of physicians was found to have been central in advising and encouraging the use of birth control for 'health' reasons, thus facilitating and speeding fertility decline in Greece. All this occurred against the backdrop of a state and a church that were at times neutral and at other times disapproving of fertility control.

Caroline Bancroft History Prize 2021, Denver Public Library Armitage-Jameson Prize 2021, Coalition of Western Women's History David J. Weber Prize 2021, Western History Association W. Turrentine Jackson Prize 2021, Western History Association Tiny You tells the story of one of the most successful political movements of the twentieth century: the grassroots campaign against legalized abortion. While Americans have rapidly changed their minds about sex education, pornography, arts funding, gay teachers, and ultimately gay marriage, opposition to legalized abortion has only grown. As other socially conservative movements have lost young activists, the pro-life movement has successfully recruited more young people to its cause. Jennifer L. Holland explores why abortion dominates conservative politics like no other cultural issue. Looking at anti-abortion movements in four western states since the 1960s-turning to the fetal pins passed around church services, the graphic images exchanged between friends, and the fetus dolls given to children in school-she argues that activists made fetal life feel personal to many Americans. Pro-life activists persuaded people to see themselves in the pins, images, and dolls they held in their hands and made the fight against abortion the primary bread-and-butter issue for social conservatives. Holland ultimately demonstrates that the success of the pro-life movement lies in the borrowed logic and emotional power of leftist activism.

This book features opening arguments followed by two rounds of reply between two moral philosophers on opposing sides of the abortion debate. In the opening essays, Kate Greasley and Christopher Kaczor lay out what they take to be the best case for and against abortion rights. In the ensuing dialogue, they engage with each other's arguments and each responds to criticisms fielded by the other. Their conversational argument explores such fundamental questions as: what gives a person the right to life? Is abortion bad for women? What is the difference between abortion and infanticide? Underpinned by philosophical reasoning and methodology, this book provides opposing and clearly structured perspectives on a highly emotive and controversial issue. The result gives readers a window into how moral philosophers argue about the contentious issue of abortion rights, and an in-depth analysis of the compelling arguments on both sides.

Undivided Rights, with a new introduction, presents a fresh and textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities and activism of women of colour in the foreground. This book raises tough questions about inclusion, identity politics and the future of women's organising, while offering a way out of the limiting focus on 'choice'. Undivided Rights articulates a holistic vision for reproductive freedom. It refuses to allow human rights to be divided up and parcelled into isolated boxes.

Conservative and progressive religious groups fiercely disagree about issues of sex and gender. But how did we get here? Melissa J. Wilde shows how today's modern divisions began in the 1930s in the public battles over birth control and not for the reasons we might expect. By examining thirty of America's most prominent religious groups-from Mormons to Methodists, Southern Baptists to Seventh Day Adventists, and many others-Wilde contends that fights over birth control had little do with sex, women's rights, or privacy. Using a veritable treasure trove of data, including census and archival materials and more than 10,000 articles, statements, and sermons from religious and secular periodicals, Wilde demonstrates that the push to liberalize positions on contraception was tied to complex views of race, immigration, and manifest destiny among America's most prominent religious groups. Taking us from the Depression era, when support for the eugenics movement saw birth control as an act of duty for less desirable groups, to the 1960s, by which time most groups had forgotten the reasons behind their stances on contraception (but not the concerns driving them), Birth Control Battles explains how reproductive politics divided American religion. In doing so, this book shows the enduring importance of race and class for American religion as it rewrites our understanding of what it has meant to be progressive or conservative in America.

Civil Dialogue on Abortion provides a cutting-edge discussion between two philosophy scholars on each side of the abortion debate. Bertha Alvarez Manninen argues for her pro-choice view, but also urges respect for the life of the fetus, while Jack Mulder argues for his pro-life view, but recognizes that for the pro-life movement to be consistent, it must urge society to care more for the vulnerable. Coming together to discuss their views, but also to seek common ground, the two authors show how their differing positions nevertheless rest upon some common convictions. The book helps to provide a way forward for a divide that has only seemed to widen the aisle of public discourse in recent years. This engaging book will prove essential reading for students across multiple disciplines, including applied ethics, medical ethics, and bioethics, but will also be of interest to students of religious studies and women's studies.

Bioethical Prescriptions collects F.M. Kamm's articles on bioethics, which have appeared over the last twenty-five years and which have made her among the most influential philosophers in this area. Kamm is known for her intricate, sophisticated, and painstaking philosophical analyses of moral problems generally and of bioethical issues in particular. This volume showcases these articles - revised to eliminate redundancies - as parts of a coherent whole. A substantive introduction identifies important themes than run through the articles. Section headings include Death and Dying; Early Life (on conception and use of embryos, abortion, and childhood); Genetics and Other Enhancements (on cloning and other genetic technologies); Allocating Scarce Resources; and Methodology (on the relation of moral theory and practical ethics).

Transnational surrogacy - the creation of babies across borders - has become big business. Globalization, reproductive technologies, new family formations and rising infertility are combining to produce a 'quiet revolution' in social and medical ethics and the nature of parenthood. Whereas much of the current scholarship has focused on the US and India, this groundbreaking anthology offers a far wider perspective. Featuring contributions from over thirty activists and scholars from a range of countries and disciplines, this collection offers the first genuinely international study of transnational surrogacy. Its innovative bottom-up approach, rooted in feminist perspectives, gives due prominence to the voices of those most affected by the global surrogacy chain, namely the surrogate mothers, donors, prospective parents and the children themselves. Through case studies ranging from Israel to Mexico, the book outlines the forces that are driving the growth of transnational surrogacy, as well as its implications for feminism, human rights, motherhood and masculinity.

How do individuals change their behavior when abortion access increases? In this innovative book, economist Phillip Levine uses economic analysis to consider this question, comparing abortion to a form of insurance. Like insurance, he contends, abortion provides protection from downside risk. A pregnant woman who would otherwise give birth to an unwanted child has the option to abort. On the other hand, the availability of this option may increase the likelihood of a pregnancy in the first place.

In a very restrictive abortion environment, few women would choose to have an abortion; legalizing abortion would reduce unwanted births. But if abortion becomes readily available, it may cause individuals to increase their sexual activity and/or reduce their use of contraception, Levine contends. Women will become pregnant more frequently, but will abort those pregnancies. Therefore, these abortions will not reduce unwanted births.

Levine's analysis suggests that the manner in which individuals change their behavior depends on the extent to which abortion is accessible. He supports these assertions using data from both the United States and Eastern Europe, comparing areas that have restricted access to abortion services with those that have liberalized access. Using sound economic analysis, "Sex and Consequences" goes beyond the ideological arguments that frequently dominate the abortion debate, lending a new perspective to this controversial subject.