Based on a non-consequentialist ethical theory, this book critically examines the prevalent view that if a fetus has the moral standing of a person, it has a right to life and abortion is impermissible. Most discussion of abortion has assumed that this view is correct, and so has focused on the question of the personhood of the fetus. Kamm begins by considering in detail the permissibility of killing in non-abortion cases which are similar to abortion cases. She goes on to consider the case for the permissibility of abortion in many types of pregnancies, including ones resulting from rape, voluntary pregnancy, and pregnancy resulting from a voluntary sex act, even if the fetus is considered a person. This argument emerges as part of a broader theory of creating new people responsibly. Kamm explores the implications of this argument for informed consent to abortion; responsibilities in pregnancy that is not aborted, and the significance of extra-uterine gestation devices for the permissibility of abortion.

For the past forty years, prominent pro-life activists, judges and politicians have invoked the history and legacy of American slavery to elucidate aspects of contemporary abortion politics. As is often the case, many of these popular analogies have been imprecise, underdeveloped and historically simplistic. In Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning, Justin Buckley Dyer provides the first book-length scholarly treatment of the parallels between slavery and abortion in American constitutional development. In this fascinating and wide-ranging study, Dyer demonstrates that slavery and abortion really are historically, philosophically and legally intertwined in America. The nexus, however, is subtler and more nuanced than is often suggested, and the parallels involve deep principles of constitutionalism.

Red Families v. Blue Families identifies a new family model geared for the post-industrial economy. Rooted in the urban middle class, the coasts and the "blue states" in the last three presidential elections, the Blue Family Paradigm emphasizes the importance of women's as well as men's workforce participation, egalitarian gender roles, and the delay of family formation until both parents are emotionally and financially ready. By contrast, the Red Family Paradigm--associated with the Bible Belt, the mountain west, and rural America--rejects these new family norms, viewing the change in moral and sexual values as a crisis. In this world, the prospect of teen childbirth is the necessary deterrent to premarital sex, marriage is a sacred undertaking between a man and a woman, and divorce is society's greatest moral challenge. Yet, the changing economy is rapidly eliminating the stable, blue collar jobs that have historically supported young families, and early marriage and childbearing derail the education needed to prosper. The result is that the areas of the country most committed to traditional values have the highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates, fueling greater calls to reinstill traditional values.
Featuring the groundbreaking research first hailed in The New Yorker, this penetrating book will transform our understanding of contemporary American culture and law. The authors show how the Red-Blue divide goes much deeper than this value system conflict--the Red States have increasingly said "no" to Blue State legal norms, and, as a result, family law has been rent in two. The authors close with a consideration of where these different family systems still overlap, and suggest solutions that permit rebuilding support for both types of families in changing economic circumstances.
Incorporating results from the 2008 election, Red Families v. Blue Families will reshape the debate surrounding the culture wars and the emergence of red and blue America.

Winner of the Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor's Book Award 2012

Winner of the 2011 Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology

Why, despite evidence to the contrary, does the narrative of the negative consequences of teenage pregnancy, abortion and childbearing persist? This book argues that the negativity surrounding early reproduction is underpinned by a particular understanding of adolescence. It traces the invention of "adolescence" and the imaginary wall that the notion constructs between young people and adults. Macleod examines the entrenched status of "adolescence" within a colonialist discourse that equates development of the individual with the development of civilisation, and the consequent threat of degeneration that "adolescence" implies.

Many important issues are explored, such as the invention of teenage pregnancy and abortion as a social problem; issues of race, culture and tradition in relation to teenage pregnancy; and health service provider practices, specifically in relation to managing risk. In the final chapter, an argument is made for a shift from the signifier "teenage pregnancy" to "unwanted pregnancy."

Using data gathered from studies worldwide, this book highlights central issues in the global debate concerning teenage pregnancy. It is ideal for academics, and students of health psychology, women s studies, nursing and sociology, as well as practitioners in the fields of youth and social work, medicine and counselling."

Updated to include the 2007 decision Gonzales v. Carhart, this volume provides all of the major Supreme Court decisions on abortion--as well as many majority, dissenting, and plurality opinions--carefully edited for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in a variety of disciplines. In his introductory essay, Shapiro sets these cases in political, historical, and philosophical context, and gives the reader a sense of what the main issues in the constitutional law of abortion are likely to be in the future.

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.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"Nelson presents the tip of the iceberg of the history of the involvement of women of color, specifically, African-American women and Latinas in the movements for rights."--"Conscience"

"This book is an important contribution to the growing reexamination of the women's health movement. This is a useful book, an interesting book, a book that tells our history."--"Politics, Social Movements, and The State"

While most people believe that the movement to secure voluntary reproductive control for women centered solely on abortion rights, for many women abortion was not the only, or even primary, focus.

"A valuable contribution."
--"Feminist Collections"

Jennifer Nelson tells the story of the feminist struggle for legal abortion and reproductive rights in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s through the particular contributions of women of color. She explores the relationship between second-wave feminists, who were concerned with a woman's right to choose, Black and Puerto Rican Nationalists, who were concerned that Black and Puerto Rican women have as many children as possible "for the revolution," and women of color themselves, who negotiated between them. Contrary to popular belief, Nelson shows that women of color were able to successfully remake the mainstream women's liberation and abortion rights movements by appropriating select aspects of Black Nationalist politics--including addressing sterilization abuse, access to affordable childcare and healthcare, and ways to raise children out of poverty--for feminist discourse.

With an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court, and several states with only one abortion clinic, many reproductive rights activists are on the defensive, hoping to hold on to abortion in a few places and cases. This spirited book shows how we can start winning again. Jenny Brown uncovers a century of legal abortion in the U.S.-until 1873-the century of illegal abortion that followed, and how the women's liberation movement of the 1960s really won abortion rights. Drawing inspiration and lessons from that radical movement, the successful fight to make the morning-after pill available over the counter, and the recent mass movement to repeal Ireland's abortion ban, Without Apology is an indispensable guide for organizers today. Brown argues that we need to stop emphasizing rare, tragic cases and deferring to experts and pollsters, and get back to the basic ideas that won us abortion in the first place: Women telling the full truth of their own experience, arguing to change minds, and making abortion and birth control a keystone demand in the movement for women's freedom.

We know it simply as "the pill," yet its genesis was anything but simple. Jonathan Eig's masterful narrative revolves around four principal characters: the fiery feminist Margaret Sanger, who was a champion of birth control in her campaign for the rights of women but neglected her own children in pursuit of free love; the beautiful Katharine McCormick, who owed her fortune to her wealthy husband, the son of the founder of International Harvester and a schizophrenic; the visionary scientist Gregory Pincus, who was dismissed by Harvard in the 1930s as a result of his experimentation with in vitro fertilization but who, after he was approached by Sanger and McCormick, grew obsessed with the idea of inventing a drug that could stop ovulation; and the telegenic John Rock, a Catholic doctor from Boston who battled his own church to become an enormously effective advocate in the effort to win public approval for the drug that would be marketed by Searle as Enovid. Spanning the years from Sanger's heady Greenwich Village days in the early twentieth century to trial tests in Puerto Rico in the 1950s to the cusp of the sexual revolution in the 1960s, this is a grand story of radical feminist politics, scientific ingenuity, establishment opposition, and, ultimately, a sea change in social attitudes. Brilliantly researched and briskly written, The Birth of the Pill is gripping social, cultural, and scientific history.

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.

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 referendum to overturn Ireland's near-total abortion ban in 2018 stands as one of the most remarkable political events of recent times. The campaign to repeal the 8th amendment succeeded not only in challenging centuries of religious and patriarchal dogma, but in signalling a major transformation in Irish society itself. After Repeal explores both the campaign and the implications of the referendum result for politics, identity and culture today. Bringing together a range of international perspectives, this collection transcends geographical and disciplinary boundaries while exploring themes including activism, artwork, social movements, law, media, democratic institutions, and reproductive technologies. This work looks beyond the Irish context and to the future, offering unique insight into the wider struggle for reproductive justice around the world.

On April 16, 1972, ten thousand people gathered in Central Park to protest New York's liberal abortion law. Emotions ran high, reflecting the nation's extreme polarization over abortion. Yet the divisions did not fall neatly along partisan or religious lines-the assembled protesters were far from a bunch of fire-breathing culture warriors. In Defenders of the Unborn, Daniel K. Williams reveals the hidden history of the pro-life movement in America, showing that a cause that many see as reactionary and anti-feminist began as a liberal crusade for human rights. For decades, the media portrayed the pro-life movement as a Catholic cause, but by the time of the Central Park rally, that stereotype was already hopelessly outdated. The kinds of people in attendance at pro-life rallies ranged from white Protestant physicians, to young mothers, to African American Democratic legislators-even the occasional member of Planned Parenthood. One of New York City's most vocal pro-life advocates was a liberal Lutheran minister who was best known for his civil rights activism and his protests against the Vietnam War. The language with which pro-lifers championed their cause was not that of conservative Catholic theology, infused with attacks on contraception and women's sexual freedom. Rather, they saw themselves as civil rights crusaders, defending the inalienable right to life of a defenseless minority: the unborn fetus. It was because of this grounding in human rights, Williams argues, that the right-to-life movement gained such momentum in the early 1960s. Indeed, pro-lifers were winning the battle before Roe v. Wade changed the course of history. Through a deep investigation of previously untapped archives, Williams presents the untold story of New Deal-era liberals who forged alliances with a diverse array of activists, Republican and Democrat alike, to fight for what they saw as a human rights cause. Provocative and insightful, Defenders of the Unborn is a must-read for anyone who craves a deeper understanding of a highly-charged issue.

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.

With events and movements such as #MeToo, the Gender Equality UN Sustainable Development Goal, the Irish and Chilean abortion policy changes, and the worldwide Women's March movement, women's rights are at the top of the global public agenda. Yet, countries around the world continue to debate if and how women should have access to reproductive rights, and specifically abortion. This book provides the most comprehensive comparative review of this topic to date. How are reproductive rights produced? This book analyzes three spheres of influence on abortion policymaking: civil society, national government, and international bodies. It engages scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate students in social sciences, law, gender studies, and development and sustainability studies. With insights into the influence of intergovernmental bodies, international health organizations, state-level political representatives, and religious civil society players, this book will be of interest to policymakers, organizations and individuals concerned with influencing reproductive policy.

A new understanding of the slow drift to extremes in American politics that shows how the anti-abortion movement remade the Republican Party "A timely and expert guide to one of today's most hot-button political issues."-Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A sober, knowledgeable scholarly analysis of a timely issue."-Kirkus Reviews "[Ziegler's] argument [is] that, over the course of decades, the anti-abortion movement laid the groundwork for an insurgent candidate like Trump."-Jennifer Szalai, New York Times The modern Republican Party is the party of conservative Christianity and big business-two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the anti-abortion movement helped to forge and later upend this alliance. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain power in the GOP by changing how campaign spending-and the First Amendment-work. The anti-abortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in U.S. politics and persuaded conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ultimately, the campaign finance landscape that abortion foes created fueled the GOP's embrace of populism and the rise of Donald Trump. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics-and explains how it had everything to do with the strange intersection of right-to-life politics and campaign spending.

During its first two years of publication, Philosophy & Public Affairs contributed to the public debate on abortion a set of remarkable and brilliant articles which examine the basic philosophical issues posed by this controversial subject: whether the fetus is a person, whether it has a right to life, whether a woman has a right to decide what happens in and to her body, whether there is an ethical connection between abortion and infanticide, whether there is any point after conception where it is possible to draw the line beyond which killing is impermissible. These five essays, together here for the first time in a single volume, offer radically differing points of view; they provide the best sustained discussion of these philosophical issues available anywhere. Contents: Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion"; Roger Wertheimer, "Understanding the Abortion Argument"; Michael Tooley, "Abortion and Infanticide"; John Finnis, "The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion"; and Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Rights and Deaths."

First edition, Winner of the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize, American Public Health Association With an emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation explores the long and unsettled history of eugenics in the United States. This expanded second edition includes shocking details demonstrating that eugenics continues to inform institutional and reproductive injustice. Alexandra Minna Stern draws on recently uncovered historical records to reveal patterns of racial bias in California's sterilization program and documents compelling individual experiences. With the addition of radically new and relevant research, this edition connects the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies.

*A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021* 'Raw, tender and urgent' Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater 'Irreducible. Once read, it will never be forgotten' Helen Mort, author of Division Street This is the story of an abortion. The days and hours before the first visit to the clinic and the weeks and months after. The pregnancy was a mistake and the narrator immediately arranges a termination. But a gulf yawns between politics and personal experience. The polarised public debate and the broader cultural silence did not prepare her for the physical event or the emotional aftermath. She finds herself compulsively telling people about the abortion (and counting those who know), struggling at work and researching the procedure. She feels alone in her pain and confusion. Part diary, part prose poem, part literary collage, Larger than an Orange is an uncompromising, intimate and original memoir. With raw precision and determined honesty, Lucy Burns carves out a new space for complexity, ambivalence and individual experience. 'Lucy Burns' writing on choice and its aftermath is boldly innovative, achingly human, and powerfully vulnerable' Dr Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women 'Rapturous, engrossing and beautifully impossible' Holly Pester, author of Comic Timing

Most arguments for or against abortion focus on one question: is the fetus a person? In this provocative and important book, David Boonin defends the claim that even if the fetus is a person with the same right to life you and I have, abortion should still be legal, and most current restrictions on abortion should be abolished. Beyond Roe points to a key legal precedent: McFall v. Shimp. In 1978, an ailing Robert McFall sued his cousin, David Shimp, asking the court to order Shimp to provide McFall with the bone marrow he needed. The court ruled in Shimp's favor and McFall soon died. Boonin extracts a compelling lesson from the case of McFall v. Shimp-that having a right to life does not give a person the right to use another person's body even if they need to use that person's body to go on living-and he uses this principle to support his claim that abortion should be legal and far less restricted than it currently is, regardless of whether the fetus is a person. By taking the analysis of the right to life that Judith Jarvis Thomson pioneered in a moral context and applying it in a legal context in this novel way, Boonin offers a fresh perspective that is grounded in assumptions that should be accepted by both sides of the abortion debate. Written in a lively, conversational style, and offering a case study of the value of reason in analyzing complex social issues, Beyond Roe will be of interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields, and to anyone interested in the debate over whether government should restrict or prohibit abortion.