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 in1973, 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 paperback edition includes a new preface by the author addressing recent cultural developments in abortion discourse and new legal threats to reproductive rights, and updated statistics throughout.

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.

Our progressive philosophy calls for more freedom and more prosperity for more people. Yet author Kevin Galalae says you can't always have more. Overpopulation is making us victims of our own triumphs over nature. Lacking a popular consensus to control population, the ruling elite have resorted to covert means. Their depopulation project has had considerable success, but at a terrible cost. "Strict secrecy and deception have been necessary to prevent the masses from discovering the bitter truth that for the past 68 years they have been the object of a silent and global offensive, a campaign of attrition that has turned the basic elements of life into weapons of mass infertility and selective death." "The birth of nearly two billion people has been prevented and the death of half a billion hurried. While these goals have been intentional, the architects of the Global Depopulation Policy have unintentionally undermined the genetic and intellectual endowment of the human species and have set back eons of natural selection." We are adding a billion people every 10 - 15 years, while consumption per person has skyrocketed - placing unsustainable demands on resources like water and fuel. The only decent alternative is voluntary population control to reduce world population. Here are the methods actually being used. - Contraception and abortion. Chemical sterilization: Flouridation, BPA-contaminated plastic and metal food packaging. Drawbacks: increase in chronic illnesses and lowering of IQ will lead to massive degeneracy in a couple generations. - The coercive one child policy -- overall a success story for China; surgical sterilization in India. - Biological: synthetic HIV virus in Africa, flu viruses, GMO crops. Lowering human fertility, while weakening the immune system to increase mortality. - Psychosocial: weakening the family, forcing women to work, high divorce rates, youth unemployment, countercultures, drug, tobacco and alcohol abuse, incarceration, accelerated urbanization. Successful in Europe where population has started to shrink. Political drawbacks: a secret state conducting genocide against its own people; sham democracy; a culture of deception. Endangering the gene pool and the ecosystem. Even so, it is more humane than the alternative of another world war to reduce numbers. Social costs: economic decline, collapse of social safety nets. Sustainable development policies don't mention the risks of covert sterilization that underpin them. "Population control as a substitute to war is the progeny of the bipolar world order that followed World War II ... they agreed to wage a demographic war on their own people, and on those within their spheres of influence, rather than risk their mutually assured destruction in a nuclear confrontation." The way forward: broad popular understanding of the issues. Yet politicians don't want to open up to a policy based on popular consensus, because that would undermine their power, which is based on manipulation. Aside from his writings, the author's efforts to awaken the world have included hunger strikes, imprisonment and legal battles.

Why has postwar Japanese abortion policy been relatively progressive, while contraception policy has been relatively conservative? The Japanese government legalized abortion in 1948 but did not approve the pill until 1999. In this carefully researched study, Tiana Norgren argues that these contradictory policies flowed from very different historical circumstances and interest group configurations. Doctors and family planners used a small window of opportunity during the Occupation to legalize abortion, and afterwards, doctors and women battled religious groups to uphold the law. The pill, on the other hand, first appeared at an inauspicious moment in history. Until circumstances began to change in the mid-1980s, the pharmaceutical industry was the pill's lone champion: doctors, midwives, family planners, and women all opposed the pill as a potential threat to their livelihoods, abortion rights, and women's health.

Clearly written and interwoven with often surprising facts about Japanese history and politics, Norgren's book fills vital gaps in the cross-national literature on the politics of reproduction, a subject that has received more attention in the European and American contexts. "Abortion Before Birth Control" will be a valuable resource for those interested in abortion and contraception policies, gender studies, modern Japanese history, political science, and public policy. This is a major contribution to the literature on reproductive rights and the role of civil society in a country usually discussed in the context of its industrial might.