|
|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > Abortion
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.
A star debater at school, Norman Haire had always wanted to be an
actor. Forced to study medicine, he followed his other passion:
saving the world from sexual misery. When he arrived in London in
1919 he was a poor Jewish outsider from Australia. By 1930 he had a
flourishing gynaecology practice in Harley Street, a
chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and a country house. His parties were
attended by the medical, intellectual and cultural elite. As a
prominent sexologist and a campaigner for birth control, Haire took
a leading role in the world's first international conference on
birth control in 1922 and organised, with Dora Russell, the World
League for Sexual Reform's highly successful 1929 Congress in
London. He lectured in America, Germany, France and Spain, and
wrote and edited many accessible books on sex education. In 1940
Haire returned to Australia where he attracted a loyal following,
but was also hounded by the security service. The ABC Board was
censured in parliament for choosing him as the key speaker in a
population debate, and his weekly advice column in the magazine
Woman was strongly opposed by the Catholic Church. Peter Coleman
called Haire 'one of Australia's most famous freethinkers and sex
reformers'. This biography pays a tribute to this tenacious,
humane, witty, innovative and brave man's contribution to birth
control, sexology and human rights history.
This text provides a careful examination of "mizuko kuyo", a
Japanese religious ritual for aborted foetuses. Popularized during
the 1970s, when religious entrepreneurs published frightening
accounts of foetal wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers
ritual attonement for women who, sometimes decades previously,
chose to have abortions.;In its exploration of the complex issues
that surround this practice, the text takes into account the
history of Japanese attitudes towards abortion, the development of
abortion rituals, the marketing of religion and the nature of power
relations in intercourse, contraception and abortion. Although
abortion in Japan is accepted and legal and was commonly used as
birth control in the early postwar period, entrepreneurs used
images from foetal photography to mount a surprisingly successful
tabloid campaign to promote mizuko kuyo. Adopted by some
religionists as an economic strategy, it was rejected by others on
doctrinal, humanistic and feminist grounds.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in Roe v. Wade that the
U.S. Constitution protects a woman's decision to terminate her
pregnancy. In Doe v. Bolton, a companion decision, the Court found
that a state may not unduly burden the exercise of that fundamental
right with regulations that prohibit or substantially limit access
to the means of effectuating the decision to have an abortion.
Rather than settle the issue, the Court's rulings since Roe and Doe
have continued to generate debate and have precipitated a variety
of governmental actions at the national, state, and local levels
designed either to nullify the rulings or limit their effect. These
governmental regulations have, in turn, spawned further litigation
in which resulting judicial refinements in the law have been no
more successful in dampening the controversy. Although the primary
focus of this book is legislative action with respect to abortion,
discussion of the various legislative proposals necessarily
involves an examination of the leading Supreme Court decisions
concerning a woman's right to choose. This book also summarizes
laws on abortion in selected European countries which shows diverse
approaches to the regulation of abortion in Europe. A majority of
the surveyed countries allow abortion upon the woman's request in
the early weeks of pregnancy, and allow abortion under specified
circumstances in later periods.
It seems unthinkable that citizens of one of the most powerful
nations in the world must risk their lives and livelihoods in the
search for access to necessary health care. And yet it is no
surprise that in many places throughout the United States, getting
an abortion can be a monumental challenge. Anti-choice politicians
and activists have worked tirelessly to impose needless
restrictions on this straightforward medical procedure that, at
best, delay it and, at worst, create medical risks and deny women
their constitutionally protected right to choose. Obstacle Course
tells the story of abortion in America, capturing a disturbing
reality of insurmountable barriers people face when trying to
exercise their legal rights to medical services. Authors David S.
Cohen and Carole Joffe lay bare the often arduous and unnecessarily
burdensome process of terminating a pregnancy: the sabotaged
decision-making, clinics in remote locations, insurance bans,
harassing protesters, forced ultrasounds and dishonest medical
information, arbitrary waiting periods, and unjustified procedure
limitations. Based on patients' stories as well as interviews with
abortion providers and allies from every state in the country,
Obstacle Course reveals the unstoppable determination required of
women in the pursuit of reproductive autonomy as well as the
incredible commitment of abortion providers. Without the efforts of
an unheralded army of medical professionals, clinic administrators,
counselors, activists, and volunteers, what is a legal right would
be meaningless for the almost one million people per year who get
abortions. There is a better way-treating abortion like any other
form of health care-but the United States is a long way from that
ideal.
In Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the
Constitution protects a woman's decision whether or not to
terminate her pregnancy. In a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the
Court held further that a state may not unduly burden a woman's
fundamental right to abortion by prohibiting or substantially
limiting access to the means of effectuating her decision. Instead
of settling the issue, the Court's decisions kindled heated debate
and precipitated a variety of governmental actions at the national,
state and local levels designed either to nullify the rulings or
hinder their effectuation. These governmental regulations have, in
turn, spawned further litigation in which resulting judicial
refinements in the law have been no more successful in dampening
the controversy. This book offers an overview of the development of
abortion law from 1973 to the present. Beginning with a brief
discussion of the historical background, the book analyses the
leading Supreme Court decisions over the past 34 years, emphasising
particularly the landmark decisions of Roe v. Wade and others. This
book consists of public documents which have been located,
gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index,
selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.
With Latin America home to some of the most draconian bans on
abortion in the world, abortion rights is one of the most
controversial and hotly contested topics in Latin American politics
today. The author explores the ways in which key actors-from
politicians to grassroots activists to the global
community-participate and shape strategies in the ongoing debate.
The author sheds new light on the dire situation of Latin American
women facing unwanted pregnancies, and on the interactions between
the state and its most vulnerable members of society.
How do people become activists for causes they care deeply about?
Many people with similar backgrounds, for instance, fervently
believe that abortion should be illegal, but only some of them join
the pro-life movement. By delving into the lives and beliefs of
activists and nonactivists alike, Ziad W. Munson is able to lucidly
examine the differences between them.
Through extensive interviews and detailed studies of pro-life
organizations across the nation, Munson makes the startling
discovery that many activists join up before they develop strong
beliefs about abortion--in fact, some are even pro-choice prior to
their mobilization. Therefore, Munson concludes, commitment to an
issue is often a consequence rather than a cause of activism.
"The Making of Pro-life Activists" provides a compelling new model
of how people become activists while also offering a penetrating
analysis of the complex relationship between religion, politics,
and the pro-life movement. Policy makers, activists on both sides
of the issue, and anyone seeking to understand how social movements
take shape will find this book essential.
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.
Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the
human fetus? Must the law of abortion presume an answer to the
question of when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late
abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? These are just
some of the questions this book sets out to address. With an
extended analysis of the moral and legal status of abortion, Kate
Greasley offers an alternative account to the reputable arguments
of Ronald Dworkin and Judith Jarvis Thomson and instead brings the
philosophical notion of 'personhood' to the foreground of this
debate. Structured in three parts, the book will (I) consider the
relevance of prenatal personhood for the moral and legal evaluation
of abortion; (II) trace the key features of the conventional debate
about when personhood begins and explore the most prominent issues
in abortion ethics literature: the human equality problem and the
difference between abortion and infanticide; and (III) examine
abortion law and regulation as well as the differing attitudes to
selective abortion. The book concludes with a snapshot into the
current controversy surrounding the scope of the right to
conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision.
"Liberty and Sexuality" is a definitive account of the legal and
political struggles that created the right to privacy and won
constitutional protection for a woman's right to choose abortion.
Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that
established that right, grew out of not only efforts to legalize
abortion but also out of earlier battles against statutes that
criminalized birth control. When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965, in
Griswold v. Connecticut, voided such a prohibition as an outrageous
intrusion upon marital privacy, it opened a previously unimagined
constitutional door: the opportunity to argue that a woman's access
to a safe, legal abortion was also a fundamental constitutional
right. Garrow's essential history details both the unheralded
contributions of the young lawyers who filed America's first
abortion rights cases and also the inside-the-Supreme Court
deliberations that produced Roe v. Wade. In this updated and
expanded paperback edition, Garrow also traces the post-Roe
evolution of abortion rights battles and the wider struggle for
sexual privacy up through the 25th anniversary of Roe in early
1998.
In this important study of the abortion controversy in the United
States, Kristin Luker examines the issues, people, and beliefs on
both sides of the abortion conflict. She draws data from twenty
years of public documents and newspaper accounts, as well as over
two hundred interviews with both pro-life and pro-choice activists.
She argues that moral positions on abortion are intimately tied to
views on sexual behavior, the care of children, family life,
technology, and the importance of the individual.
In the wake of Texas enacting a bill to deny abortions after 6
weeks, Loved and Wanted shines a light on motherhood and the right
to choose. For readers of Educated and Hillbilly Elegy. In 2017,
after becoming unexpectedly pregnant, Christa Parravani requested a
termination. With two children already to care for and a history of
ectopic pregnancies, she was worried she would not be able to find
adequate medical care. However, when she asked for help, her doctor
refused. The only doctor who would perform an abortion made it
clear that this would be illicit, not condoned by her colleagues or
their community. In exploring her own choice, or rather in
discovering her lack of it, Christa reveals the desperate state of
female healthcare in contemporary America, and examines her own
reckoning with life, death and choice.
The landmark case Roe v. Wade redefined family: it is now
commonplace for Americans to treat having children as a choice. But
the historic decision also coincided with widening inequality, an
ongoing trend that continues to make choice more myth than reality.
In this new and timely history, Matthiesen shows how the effects of
incarceration, for-profit healthcare, disease, and poverty have
been worsened by state neglect, forcing most to work harder to
maintain a family.
'A provocative and important book that every pro-choice advocate
should read.' Sinead Kennedy, Coalition to Repeal the 8th Amendment
When it comes to abortion, today's liberal climate has produced a
common sense that is both pro-choice and anti-abortion. The public
are fed an unchanging version of what the abortion choice entails
and how women experience it. While it would prove highly unpopular
to insist that all pregnant women should carry their pregnancy to
term, the idea that abortion could or should be a happy experience
for women is virtually unspeakable. In this careful and intelligent
work, Erica Millar shows how the emotions of abortion are
constructed in sharp contrast to the emotional position occupied by
motherhood - the unassailable placeholder for women's happiness.
Through an exposition of the cultural and political forces that
continue to influence the decisions women make about their
pregnancies - forces that are synonymous with the rhetoric of
choice - Millar argues for a radical reinterpretation of women's
freedom.
It seems unthinkable that citizens of one of the most powerful
nations in the world must risk their lives and livelihoods in the
search for access to necessary health care. And yet it is no
surprise that in many places throughout the United States, getting
an abortion can be a monumental challenge. Anti-choice politicians
and activists have worked tirelessly to impose needless
restrictions on this straightforward medical procedure that, at
best, delay it and, at worst, create medical risks and deny women
their constitutionally protected right to choose. Obstacle Course
tells the story of abortion in America, capturing a disturbing
reality of insurmountable barriers people face when trying to
exercise their legal rights to medical services. Authors David S.
Cohen and Carole Joffe lay bare the often arduous and unnecessarily
burdensome process of terminating a pregnancy: the sabotaged
decision-making, clinics in remote locations, insurance bans,
harassing protesters, forced ultrasounds and dishonest medical
information, arbitrary waiting periods, and unjustified procedure
limitations. Based on patients' stories as well as interviews with
abortion providers and allies from every state in the country,
Obstacle Course reveals the unstoppable determination required of
women in the pursuit of reproductive autonomy as well as the
incredible commitment of abortion providers. Without the efforts of
an unheralded army of medical professionals, clinic administrators,
counselors, activists, and volunteers, what is a legal right would
be meaningless for the almost one million people per year who get
abortions. There is a better way-treating abortion like any other
form of health care-but the United States is a long way from that
ideal.
Challenging Reproductive Control and Gendered Violence in the
Americas: Intersectionality, Power, and Struggles for Rights
utilizes an intersectional Chicana feminist approach to analyze
reproductive and gendered violence against women in the Americas
and the role of feminist activism through case studies including
the current state of reproductive justice in Texas, feminicides in
Latin America, raising awareness about Ni Una Mas and
anti-feminicidal activism in Ciudad Juarez, and reproductive rights
in Latin America amidst the Zika virus. Each of these contemporary
contexts provides new insights into the relationships between and
among feminist activism; reproductive health; the role of the
state, local governments, health organizations, and the media; and
the women of color who are affected by the interplay of these
discourses, mandates, and activist efforts.
Anyone who wants to understand how abortion has been treated
historically in the western legal tradition must first come to
terms with two quite different but interrelated historical
trajectories. On one hand, there is the ancient Judeo-Christian
condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong warranting
retribution; on the other, there is the juristic definition of
"crime" in the modern sense of the word, which distinguished the
term sharply from "sin" and "tort" and was tied to the rise of
Western jurisprudence. To find the act of abortion first identified
as a crime in the West, one has to go back to the twelfth century,
to the schools of ecclesiastical and Roman law in medieval Europe.
In this book, Wolfgang P. Muller tells the story of how abortion
came to be criminalized in the West. As he shows, criminalization
as a distinct phenomenon and abortion as a self-standing criminal
category developed in tandem with each other, first being
formulated coherently in the twelfth century at schools of law and
theology in Bologna and Paris. Over the ensuing centuries, medieval
prosecutors struggled to widen the range of criminal cases
involving women accused of ending their unwanted pregnancies. In
the process, punishment for abortion went from the realm of
carefully crafted rhetoric by ecclesiastical authorities to
eventual implementation in practice by clerical and lay judges
across Latin Christendom. Informed by legal history, moral
theology, literature, and the history of medicine, Muller's book is
written with the concerns of modern readers in mind, thus bridging
the gap that might otherwise divide modern and medieval
sensibilities.
Winner of the 2010 Keller-Sierra Book Prize, Western Association of
Women Historians "In Fit to Be Tied, Rebecca Kluchin impressively
navigates a critical period in the history of reproductive health
in America. The book is very innovative in a subtle and understated
way: Kluchin is one of the first historians of gender and medicine
to provide a sophisticated framework for mapping the sterilization
practices of the pre-World War II period into the post-Roe V. Wade
culture." -Bulletin of the History of Medicine "A welcome addition
to the history of sexuality, birth control, medicine, and politics
in the U.S. The writing is compelling, and the story Kluchin tells,
particularly of forced sterilizations, is harrowing. Highly
recommended." -Choice "In Fit to be Tied, historian Rebecca Kluchin
offers a thoroughly researched, nuanced analysis of sterilization,
reproductive rights, and what she calls 'neo-eugenics.' An
important and powerful book that fills a critical gap in the
literature on postwar reproductive rights." -American Journal of
Human Biology "Kluchin has added an important contribution to the
history of sterilization." -Journal of American History "Kluchin
should be congratulated for her highly readable, well-researched
study of this important, but largely neglected aspect of postwar
women's health history. This book makes a valuable contribution to
the literature on women's studies, social policy, and the history
of medicine and public health." -Molly Ladd-Taylor, York University
Rebecca M. Kluchin is an assistant professor of history at
California State University, Sacramento.
|
You may like...
Won by Love
Norma McCorvey
Paperback
R404
R382
Discovery Miles 3 820
|