This is a presentation of the case for challenging complacency and reconsidering the extent to which British law has interpreted abortion and constructed a medical model in such a way as to place the control over access to abortion services with the medical profession. Recognizing that abortion has slipped from the political (and specifically feminist) agenda, at least in the UK, the author argues that this systematic medicalization of abortion has rendered women powerless. She acknowledges that repoliticizing abortion - and recognizing how gender affects how power is exercised over women - creates its own risks and may mean that feminists face a potentially lethal backlash. But, she maintains, the failure to do so could close down avenues of choice and control at a time when fundamentalist pressures to eliminate abortion are becoming increasingly powerful. This critique of the medical, legal and political issues surrounding abortion in the UK, reflects the changes, both insidious and profound, in the range of medical technologies available (including RU486), in case law, legal theory and feminist thinking since Keown's 1988 study Abortion, Doctors and the Law.

Strictly off limits to the public, Plum Island is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds -- and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the planet. "Lab 257" blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island in the shadow of New York City is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore.

Based on declassified government documents, in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, "Lab 257" takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations on virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly West Nile virus. The book also probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism.

"Lab 257" is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes.

In this text book Rosalind Hursthouse examines the complex questions surrounding the morality of abortion. Beginning by discussing the moral status of the foetus, she outlines and criticizes the main philosophical liberal positions on abortion, discussing alsl their bearing on the related issues of ifanticide, foetal research, surrogacy, murder and our treatment of animals. In place of the currently prevailing positions, the author offers a novel approach to these issues based on the recently revived theory of neo-Aristotelianism which emphasizes moral virtues and vices. A central element of Beginning Lives is its emphasis on the special nature of abortion: its unique relation to the facts of women's pregnancies and hence to our attitudes to childbearing, motherhood, maturity and sexual relations.

Privacy is gravely endangered in the digital age, and we, the digital citizens, are its principal threat, willingly surrendering it to avail ourselves of new technology, and granting the government and corporations immense power over us. In this highly original work, Firmin DeBrabander begins with this premise and asks how we can ensure and protect our freedom in the absence of privacy. Can-and should-we rally anew to support this institution? Is privacy so important to political liberty after all? DeBrabander makes the case that privacy is a poor foundation for democracy, that it is a relatively new value that has been rarely enjoyed throughout history-but constantly persecuted-and politically and philosophically suspect. The vitality of the public realm, he argues, is far more significant to the health of our democracy, but is equally endangered-and often overlooked-in the digital age.

The 'proactionary principle' was introduced by transhumanists. Whereas precautionaries believe that we are on the brink on environmental catastrophe because we're too willing to take risks, proactionaries believe that humans stand apart from the rest of nature by our capacity for successful risk taking. In terms of current environmental problems, therefore, solutions lie not in turning our backs on our love affair with technology but by intensifying it - through finding new energy sources or even looking at the possibility of inhabiting other worlds.
In this fascinating new book, Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska explore attitudes towards the transformation of human nature. They point out that, politically, both those on the right and the left contribute to different sides of the precautionary-proactionary debate, and argue that it will be this distinction, between caution and action, that will come to dominate the political landscape and create new political divisions.
Drawing on perspectives from both theology and biology, and completing a trilogy of works exploring 'Humanity 2.0', Fuller and Lipinska ultimately endorse the proactionary position, which supports individuals taking risks - for example with new health treatments, as they try to expand their life chances. They accept that such a risk-taking culture may result in set-backs and failures, but argue that this simply requires a new conception of the welfare state. The results may be an incredibly diverse society that will challenge our notions of tolerance, creating a world where 'traditional' humans live side by side with those who have artificial organs or have received substantial genetic modification. Humans have yet to treat all 'normal' members of Homo sapiens with proper respect and dignity and the proactionary principle opens up new challenges to our conceptions of equality. The book ends with a Manifesto that draws together the arguments to present a challenging vision for the future.

Traditional Jewish family law has persevered for hundreds of years and rules covering marriage, the raising of children, and divorce are well established; yet pressures from modern society are causing long held views to be re-examined. The Jewish Family: Between Family Law and Contract Law examines the tenets of Jewish family law in the light of new attitudes concerning the role of women, assisted reproduction technologies, and prenuptial agreements. Through interdisciplinary research combining the legal aspects of family law and contract law, it explores how the Jewish family can cope with both old and modern obstacles and challenges. Focusing on the nexus of Jewish family law and contract law to propose how 'freedom of contract' can be part of how family law can be interpreted, The Jewish Family will appeal to practitioners, activists, academic researchers, and laymen readers who are interested in the fields of law, theology, and social science.

Questions asked by Greek philosophy and science - how do we come to be? How do we grow? When are we recognizably human? - are addressed with new intensity today. Modern embryology has changed the methods of enquiry and given new knowledge. Public interest and concern are high because medical applications of new knowledge offer benefits and yet awaken ancestral fears. The law and politics are called upon to secure the benefits without realizing the fears. Philosophers and theologians are involved once again. In this volume some of the world's authorities on the subject trace the tradition of enquiry over two and a half thousand years. The answers given in related cultures - Greek, Latin, Jewish, Arabian, Islamic, Christian - reflected the purposes to be served at different times, in medical practice, penitential discipline, canon law, common law, human feeling. But the terms in which the questions were discussed were those set down by the Greeks and transmitted through the Arabic authors to medieval Europe.

Hot Topic: what does the Bible say about assisted suicide and what are the practical implications - find answers in Right To Die?: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide And End-Of-Life Care (New edition)

The case for assisted suicide can seem so compelling. Surely it can't be wrong to help desperate people to kill themselves. Don't we have a right to take our own lives in certain circumstances? There are no trite or easy answers. John Wyatt helps us to navigate the arguments with hearts and heads engaged, and above all with our Bibles open. There are practical and compassionate alternatives to assisted suicide, and as many who have gone before us have found, the end of our lives on this earth may turn out to be a strange and wonderful opportunity for growth and internal healing.

'Work hard, have fun, make history' proclaims the slogan on the walls of Amazon's warehouses. This cheerful message hides a reality of digital surveillance, aggressive anti-union tactics and disciplinary layoffs. Reminiscent of the tumult of early industrial capitalism, the hundreds of thousands of workers who help Amazon fulfil consumers' desire are part of an experiment in changing the way we all work. In this book, Alessandro Delfanti takes readers inside Amazon's warehouses to show how technological advancements and managerial techniques subdue the workers rather than empower them, as seen in the sensors that track workers' every movement around the floor and algorithmic systems that re-route orders to circumvent worker sabotage. He looks at new technologies including robotic arms trained by humans and augmented reality goggles, showing that their aim is to standardise, measure and discipline human work rather than replace it. Despite its innovation, Amazon will always need living labour's flexibility and low cost. And as the warehouse is increasingly automated, worker discontent increases. Striking under the banner 'we are not robots', employees have shown that they are acutely aware of such contradictions. The only question remains: how long will it be until Amazon's empire collapses?

In 1998, Sweden was the first country in the world to criminalise the purchase of sexual services, but not the sale of sex. The law represented a new prostitution regime that problematised power relations in prostitution as inherently gendered and hierarchical and made the male buyers of sexual services responsible for the act of prostitution. The Swedish case is critically important to the study of gendered institutional change and has been of empirical interest and global debate. Using the feminist institutionalism approach to the analysis, this study offers new insights to the Swedish case and provides a new analytical framework for micro-level analysis of institutional change that addresses the struggle for meaning, institutionalization of new gendered ideas, and the (strategic) actions of feminist actors.

Meet Chloe: passionate about midwifery and on the cusp of adulthood. As a student midwife in inner-city Leicester, Chloe finds fulfilment caring for women and families from wide-ranging backgrounds - but will her own personal challenges derail her ambitions? Having recently lost her mother, and supporting her father through addiction, Chloe must make difficult choices and reconcile her rewarding yet demanding career with loyalty for those she loves. New Walk is a profoundly moving coming-of-age story, where midwifery, birth and the decisions life throws at us combine to shape a young woman's life.

What role does ethics play in modern-day warfare? Is it possible for ethics and militarism to exist hand-in-hand? James Eastwood examines the Israeli military and its claim to be 'the most moral army in the world'. This claim has been strongly contested by human rights bodies and international institutions in their analysis of recent military engagements in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon. Yet at the same time, many in Israel believe this claim, including the general public, military personnel and politicians. Compiled from extensive research including interviews with soldiers, Eastwood unpacks the ethical pedagogy of the Israeli military, as well as soldier-led activism which voices a moral critique, and argues that the belief in moral warfare doesn't exist separately from the growing violence of Israel's occupation. This book is ideal for those interested in military ethics and Israeli politics, and provides crucial in-depth analysis for students and researchers alike.

"Ball's arguments are concise, compelling, and backed with considerable case law. This volume is highly recommended for upper-level undergraduates and above in law, philosophy, and the medical humanities interested in the 'right to die' debates. Summing up: Highly recommended." -Choice Over the past hundred years, average life expectancy in America has nearly doubled, due largely to scientific and medical advances, but also as a consequence of safer working conditions, a heightened awareness of the importance of diet and health, and other factors. Yet while longevity is celebrated as an achievement in modern civilization, the longer people live, the more likely they are to succumb to chronic, terminal illnesses. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47 years, with a majority of American deaths attributed to influenza, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. In 2000, the average life expectancy was nearly 80 years, and for too many people, these long lifespans included cancer, heart failure, Lou Gehrig's disease, AIDS, or other fatal illnesses, and with them, came debilitating pain and the loss of a once-full and often independent lifestyle. In this compelling and provocative book, noted legal scholar Howard Ball poses the pressing question: is it appropriate, legally and ethically, for a competent individual to have the liberty to decide how and when to die when faced with a terminal illness? At Liberty to Die charts how, the right of a competent, terminally ill person to die on his or her own terms with the help of a doctor has come deeply embroiled in debates about the relationship between religion, civil liberties, politics, and law in American life. Exploring both the legal rulings and the media frenzies that accompanied the Terry Schiavo case and others like it, Howard Ball contends that despite raging battles in all the states where right to die legislation has been proposed, the opposition to the right to die is intractable in its stance. Combining constitutional analysis, legal history, and current events, Ball surveys the constitutional arguments that have driven the right to die debate.

Written for a broad audience and grounded in cutting-edge, contemporary scholarship, this volume addresses some of the key questions asked about pornography today. What is it? For whom is it produced? What sorts of sexualities does it help produce? Why should we study it, and what should be the most urgent issues when we do? What does it mean when we talk about pornography as violence? What could it mean if we discussed pornography through frameworks of consent, self-determination and performance? This book places the arguments from conservative and radical anti-porn activists against the challenges coming from a new generation of feminist and queer porn performers and educators. Combining sensitive and detailed discussion of case studies with careful attention to the voices of those working in pornography, it provides scholars, activists and those hoping to find new ways of understanding sexuality with the first overview of the histories and futures of pornography.

Traditionally, our society has broadly agreed that the "good university" should teach the intellectual skills students need to become citizens who are intelligently critical of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented politicians, society, the media, and, indeed, universities themselves. The freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is increasingly restricted for fear of causing "offense." In this daring and intrepid book, which was originally withdrawn from publication by another publisher but is now proudly presented by Academica Press, the famous intelligence researcher James R. Flynn presents the underlying factors that have circumscribed the range of ideas now tolerated in our institutions of learning. Flynn studiously examines how universities effectively censor teaching, how social and political activism effectively censors its opponents, and how academics censor themselves and each other. A Book Too Risky To Publish concludes that few universities are now living up to their original mission to promote free inquiry and unfettered critical thought. In an age marred by fake news and ever increasing social and political polarization, this book makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought in our institutions of higher education.

The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at London's Stockwell tube station in 2005 raised acute issues about the operational practice, legitimacy, accountability, and policy-making regarding police use of fatal force. It dramatically exposed a policy - amounting to "shoot to kill" - which came not from Parliament, but from the non-statutory ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers). This vital and timely book unravels these complex and often misunderstood matters, and it provides a fresh and much-needed overview of the UK's firearms practice and policy in a traditionally "unarmed" police service. Drawing on international examples of police use-of-force and firearms, it questions how existing police policy has been made covertly.

Plant-based and cell-cultured meat, milk, and egg producers aim to replace industrial food production with animal-free fare that tastes better, costs less, and requires a fraction of the energy inputs. These products are no longer relegated to niche markets for ethical vegetarians, but are heavily funded by private investors betting on meat without animals as mass-market, environmentally feasible alternatives that can be scaled for a growing global population. This volume examines conceptual and cultural opportunities, entanglements, and pitfalls in moving global meat, egg, and dairy consumption toward these animal-free options. Beyond surface tensions of "meatless meat" and "animal-free flesh," deeper conflicts proliferate around naturalized accounts of human identity and meat consumption, as well as the linkage of protein with colonial power and gender oppression. What visions and technologies can disrupt modern agriculture? What economic and marketing channels are required to scale these products? What beings and ecosystems remain implicated in a livestock-free food system? A future of meat without animals invites adjustments on the plate, but it also inspires renewed habits of mind as well as life-affirming innovations capable of nourishing the contours of our future selves. This book illuminates material and philosophical complexities that will shape the character of our future/s of food.

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.

The death penalty has inspired controversy for centuries. Raising questions regarding capital punishment rather than answering them, "Questioning Capital Punishment" offers the footing needed to allow for more informed consideration and analysis of these controversies. Acker edits judicial decisions that have addressed constitutional challenges to capital punishment and its administration in the United States and uses complementary materials to offer historical, empirical, and normative perspectives about death penalty policies and practices. This book is ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes in criminal justice.

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.

"Sandel explores a paramount question of our era: how to extend the power and promise of biomedical science to overcome debility without compromising our humanity. His arguments are acute and penetrating, melding sound logic with compassion." -Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature-to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America's preeminent moral and political thinkers.

This book explores the phenomenon of suicide tourism. As more countries legally permit assisted suicide and do not necessarily bar the participation of non-residents, suicide tourism is becoming a larger and more complex global issue. The book sets out the parameters for future debate by first contextualizing the practice and identifying its treatment under international and domestic law. It then analyses the ethical ramifications, weighing up where the state's responsibilities lie, and addressing the controversial roles of accompanying persons. The book goes on to offer a sociological and cultural analysis of suicide tourism, including interviews with the various stakeholders: policy makers, assisted suicide associations, and medical and patients' organizations, in Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, and the UK. The book concludes with a summary of the legal, ethical, political, and sociological dimensions of suicide tourism.

Evil is not confined to war or to circumstances in which people are acting under extreme duress. Today it more frequently reveals itself in the everyday insensitivity to the suffering of others, in the inability or refusal to understand them and in the casual turning away of one's ethical gaze. Evil and moral blindness lurk in what we take as normality and in the triviality and banality of everyday life, and not just in the abnormal and exceptional cases.

The distinctive kind of moral blindness that characterizes our societies is brilliantly analysed by Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis through the concept of adiaphora: the placing of certain acts or categories of human beings outside of the universe of moral obligations and evaluations. Adiaphora implies an attitude of indifference to what is happening in the world - a moral numbness. In a life where rhythms are dictated by ratings wars and box-office returns, where people are preoccupied with the latest gadgets and forms of gossip, in our 'hurried life' where attention rarely has time to settle on any issue of importance, we are at serious risk of losing our sensitivity to the plight of the other. Only celebrities or media stars can expect to be noticed in a society stuffed with sensational, valueless information.This probing inquiry into the fate of our moral sensibilities will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the most profound changes that are silently shaping the lives of everyone in our contemporary liquid-modern world.

This volume is a compilation of new original qualitative and ethnographic research on pimps and other third party facilitators of commercial sex from the developed and developing world. From African-American pimps in the United States and Eastern European migrants in Germany to Brazilian cafetaos and cafetinas this volume features the lives and voices of the men and women who enable diverse and culturally distinct sex markets around the world. In scholarly, popular, and policy-making discourses, such individuals are typically viewed as larger-than-life hustlers, violent predators, and brutal exploiters. However, there is actually very little empirical research-based knowledge about how pimps and third party facilitators actually live, labor, and make meaning in their everyday lives. Nearly all previous knowledge derives from hearsay and post-hoc reporting from ex-sex-workers, customers, police and government agents, neighbors, and self-aggrandizing fictionalized memoirs. This volume is the first published compilation of empirically researched data and analysis about pimps and third parties working in the sex trade across the globe. Situated in an age of highly punitive and ubiquitous global anti-trafficking law, it challenges highly charged public policy stereotypes that conflate pimping and sex trafficking, in order to understand the lived experience of pimps and the men and women whose work they facilitate.