The Last Choice establishes that preemptive suicide in advanced age can be rational: that it can make good sense to evade age-related personal diminishment even at the cost of good time left. Criteria are provided to help determine whether soundly reasoned, cogently motivated,and prudently timed self-destruction can be in one's interests late in life. In our time suicide and assisted suicide are being increasingly tolerated as ways to escape unendurable mental or physical suffering, but it isn't widely accepted that suicide may be a rational choice before the onset of such suffering. This book's basic claim is that it can be rational to choose to die sooner as oneself than to survive as a lessened other: that judicious appropriation of one's own inevitable death can be an identity-affirming act and a fitting end to life. Discussion of preemptive suicide goes beyond contributing to current widespread debate about assisted suicide. It is a matter tightly interrelated with other right to die questions and one bound to become a national issue. If there are good arguments for escaping intolerable situations caused by age-related deteriorative conditions, most of those arguments will equally support avoidance of those conditions. If assisted suicide becomes more generally acknowledged and accepted, preemptive suicide will almost certainly follow. It is crucial, then, to examine whether preemptive suicide constitutes a rational option for reflective aging individuals.

Nanotechnology, clean technology, and geoengineering span the scale of human ingenuity, from the imperceptibly small to the unimaginably large. Yet they are united by a commonality of ethics that permeates how and why they are developed, and how the resulting consequences are managed. The articles in this volume provide a comprehensive account of current thinking around the ethics of development and use within each of the technological domains, and addresses challenges and opportunities that cut across all three. In particular, the collection provides unique insights into the ethics of 'noumenal' technologies - technologies that are impossible to see or detect or conceive of with human senses or conventional tools. This collection will be of relevance to anyone who is actively involved with ensuring the responsible and sustainable development of nanotechnology, geoengineering or clean technology.

This balanced approach to legal precedent and moral argument regarding the death penalty presents the evidence so readers can reach their own informed conclusions. Capital Punishment examines the debate around the death penalty, raising questions and attempting to provide an even-handed examination of this controversial practice. The authors combine analysis of important issues with excerpts from landmark legal decisions, important documents, survey results, and empirical data. The first part of the book discusses the origins of the death penalty and traces its development from antiquity to contemporary times. Detailed statistical information about capital punishment is presented and discussed, and the death penalty is considered against a constitutional backdrop with various arguments-for and against-articulated. The second part of the book consists of three appendices. The first appendix presents an annotated list of important capital-punishment cases; the second supplies a more general chronological treatment of capital punishment; and the third provides a bibliographic essay directing readers to other relevant sources of interest. A thorough and insightful treatment, Capital Punishment provides both a summary of the current state of capital punishment and a discussion of areas of continuing controversy. 15 black-and-white photos Excerpts from legal documents, court decisions, and statistical and survey data Timeline Bibliography

Civility in national and international politics is under siege. In this volume, twelve distinguished sociologists and historians from North America, Europe, and China reflect on the nature and preservation of civility in and between nation states and empires in a set of geographically and historically wide-ranging chapters. Civility protects individual self-determination and expression, promotes productive economic activity and wealth, and is central to political stability and peace within and across political communities. Yet power, always concentrated and endemic in nation states and imperial settings, poses great risks to civility. Guided by the perspective of John A. Hall, who has done more to identify and investigate the intricate relationships between states, nations, the power they hold, and civility than any other contemporary social scientist, States and Nations, Power and Civility offers a set of crisp, in-depth investigations regarding the specific mechanisms of civility and how it may be protected.

In recent decades, large-scale social changes have taken place in Europe. Ranging from neoliberal social policies to globalization and the growth of EU, these changes have significantly affected the conditions in which girls shape their lives. Living Like a Girl explores the relationship between changing social conditions and girls' agency, with a particular focus on social services such as school programs and compulsory institutional care. The contributions in this collected volume seek to expand our understanding of contemporary European girlhood by demonstrating how social problems are managed in different cultural contexts, political and social systems.

A survey of the changing and charged relationship between pornography and legislation in 20th century America. Groups battling pornography must demonstrate that the products they seek to ban are truly obscene and not legitimately protected by the First Amendment-a requirement that often leads to public debate and controversy. Author Thomas C. Mackey thoroughly examines the problems and issues in public policymaking, legal precedents, and the people behind them. After a brief historical background, Pornography on Trial surveys and analyzes the leading issues and case law on obscenity from l957 to the present. Half the book consists of documents-judicial opinions-from key cases. There are biographical sketches of key people, laws, and concepts from Judge Learned Hand and the Hicklin test to Chief Justice Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn's judicial definition of obscenity from l868. The book also includes a chronology, a table of cases, and an annotated bibliography. Four narrative chapters discuss pornography in historical context from the founding of the United States Includes a documents section with court cases, statutes, law reviews, and historical journal articles as well as a chronology of the development of free speech law

Life and health sciences and biomedical studies have developed rapidly over the last few decades raising previously unanticipated ethical concerns and questions. New and emerging technologies require novel approaches, protocols and raised awareness to ensure adequate levels of biosecurity and biosafety as well as the implementation of special measures to prevent their potential misuse or dual use. This volume brings together an international collection of prominent ethics experts in health and life sciences, with the aim of providing clear and comprehensive guidelines for the establishment of efficient ethical strategies related to current and emerging biotechnologies and health research. Important current topics in research ethics including CRISPR-Cas9 technologies, gene editing, 'big data' in healthcare and life sciences, nutrition in medicine among other topics have found their place in this volume. In addition, the volume discusses the prospects for the implementation of an international unification of ethical standards in life sciences.

This annotated work represents the first bibliography since the AIDS epidemic began to unite scientific literature about prostitutes. The annotated entries cover works on prostitutes published in English in both major and obscure bio-medical journals between 1900 and 1990, and include literature concerning the relationship between prostitutes and AIDS. Some papers published in European and Asian languages are also included. The entries were compiled from published, original papers and other types of editorial material in scientific journals, abstracts, books and chapters, doctoral dissertations, and research reports from agencies and commissions. Significant literature on the relationship between prostitution and AIDS is covered. Of the 1,440 entries, 226 are from non-English language sources. This reference work will be valuable to professionals in the medical and social sciences, law enforcement, psychology, public health, anthropology, and women's studies.

The Law and Ethics of Medicine: Essays on the Inviolability of Human Life explains the principle of the inviolability of human life and its continuing relevance to English law governing aspects of medical practice at the beginning and end of life. The book shows that the principle, though widely recognized as an historic and foundational principle of the common law, has been misunderstood in the legal academy, at the Bar and on the Bench. Part I of the book identifies the confusion and clarifies the principle, distinguishing it from 'vitalism' on the one hand and a 'qualitative' evaluation of human life on the other. Part II addresses legal aspects of the beginning of life, including the history of the law against abortion and its relevance to the ongoing abortion debate in the US; the law relating to the 'morning after' pill; and the legal status of the human embryo in vitro. Part III addresses legal aspects of the end of life, including the euthanasia debate; the withdrawal of tube-feeding from patients in a 'persistent vegetative state'; and the duty to provide palliative treatment. This unique collection of essays offers a much-needed clarification of a cardinal legal and ethical principle and should be of interest to lawyers, bioethicists, and healthcare professionals (whether they subscribe to the principle or not) in all common law jurisdictions and beyond.

"The best work by anyone on prostitution ever, Rachel Moran's Paid For fuses the memoirist's lived poignancy with the philosopher's conceptual sophistication. The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor." -Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard University Born into a troubled family, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she was driven into prostitution to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the exploitation she and others endured on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage inherent to prostitution and the inevitable estrangement from one's body. At twenty-two, Moran escaped the sex trade. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.

Sarah Conly argues that we do not have the right to have more than one child. If recent increases in global population continue, we will reduce the welfare of future generations to unacceptable levels. We do not have a right to impose on others in this way. While voluntary efforts to restrain population growth are preferable and may be enough, government regulations against having more than one child can be justified if they are necessary. Of course, government regulations have to be consistent with rights that we do hold, but Conly argues that since we do not have a right to have more than one child, government regulations are one of the methods we might use to reduce the fertility rate until we reach a sustainable population.

This book demonstrates the continuities of five centuries of European-led slavery and colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, examining calls for reparations in all three regions for what many now regard to have constituted crimes against humanity.

The Atlantic world economy emerged from the interactions of this triangular slave trade involving human chattel, textiles, arms, wine, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other goods. This is thus the story of the birth of the modern capitalist system and a Black Atlantic that has shaped global trade, finance, consumer tastes, lifestyles, and fashion for over five centuries. The volume is authored by a multi-disciplinary, pan-continental group encompassing diverse subjects.

This collection is concise and comprehensive, enabling cross-regional comparisons to be drawn, and ensuring that some of the most important global events of the past five centuries are read from diverse perspectives.

Yoshiwara is the first attempt in nearly a century to give a comprehensive and detailed account of Edo-period Japan's legendary pleasure quarter. The book begins with a brief history of prostitution in Japan and follows with a survey of the Yoshiwara from its origins in the early 1600s to shortly after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Yoshiwara society possessed for most of its history considerable glamour and surface allure, yet, at the same time, it accommodated attitudes and activities that today could only be regarded as exploitative and inhumane. Cecilia Segawa Seigle looks impartially at all aspects of Yoshiwara life, offering much information - the result of painstaking research in primary sources - that will be a revelation to readers in the West. While discussing in depth the highly specialized and idiosyncratic world of licensed prostitution, Seigle also makes the reader aware of the broader impact of this insular entertainment quarter on the manners and mores of other segments of Japanese society, both then and now. Arranged chronologically, Yoshiwara is not so much a history as a companion to studies of Edo-period literature, theatre, and the visual arts. It provides an overview of the social, cultural, and economic influences on and of this microcosm of early-modern urban Japan. An especially engaging feature of this readable text is the liberal use of anecdotes from contemporary sources. Specialists will find particularly interesting the carefully researched and clearly written exposition of the quarter's complex hierarchy and elaborate code of behavior. While always maintaining the distinction between fact and fabrication, this fascinating study seeks to delineate thetruths that lie behind the legends.

Citizen Killings: Liberalism, State Policy and Moral Risk offers a ground breaking systematic approach to formulating ethical public policy on all forms of 'citizen killings', which include killing in self-defence, abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, euthanasia and killings carried out by private military contractors and so-called 'foreign fighters'. Where most approaches to these issues begin with the assumptions of some or other general approach to ethics, Deane-Peter Baker argues that life-or-death policy decisions of this kind should be driven first and foremost by a recognition of the key limitations that a commitment to political liberalism places on the state, particularly the requirement to respect citizens' right to life and the principle of liberal neutrality. Where these principles come into tension Baker shows that they can in some cases be defused by way of a reasonableness test, and in other cases addressed through the application of what he calls the 'risk of harm principle'. The book also explores the question of what measures citizens and other states might legitimately take in response to states that fail to implement morally appropriate policies regarding citizen killings.

The urge to censor is as old as the urge to speak. From the first Chinese emperor's wholesale elimination of books to the Vatican's suppression of pornography from its own collection, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the advent of Internet troll armies, words, images and ideas have always been hunted down by those trying to suppress them. In this compelling account, Eric Berkowitz reveals why and how humanity has, from the beginning, sought to silence itself. Ranging from the absurd - such as Henry VIII's decree of death for anyone who 'imagined' his demise - to claims by American slave owners that abolitionist literature should be supressed because it hurt their feelings, Berkowitz takes the reader on an unruly ride through history, highlighting the use of censorship to reinforce class, race and gender privilege and guard against offence. Elucidating phrases like 'fake news' and 'hate speech', Dangerous Ideas exposes the dangers of erasing history, how censorship has shaped our modern society and what forms it is taking today - and to what disturbing effects.

Intended as a reference tool for college students, this book examines the origins of and controversies associated with birth control in the United States. Issues regarding access to, education about, and practice of birth control have played a pivotal role in religious, social, and political conflicts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 21st century, controversies surrounding birth control remain at the forefront of current political debates over topics as varied as women's rights, social welfare initiatives, federal healthcare funding, consumer protection and physician liability, and informed consent. Birth Control provides a historical background of premodern practices, describes birth control in the 19th-20th centuries, and discusses all currently available types of contraceptive systems, including both artificial and natural methods. The treatment of contemporary public debates on birth control addresses questions posed on practical, ethical, religious, and moral grounds, presented respectfully and in a balanced fashion. Contains 20 primary document excerpts divided into 8 thematic categories, including early birth-control manuals, essays by Margaret Sanger, papal encyclicals, federal statutes, Supreme Court cases, and executive orders from 4 presidents on the subject of birth control Provides a bibliography of sources for additional research Includes a glossary and index for quick access to information about specific topics and terms

A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture gathers diverse voices to address women's interaction with STEM fields in the context of Spanish cultural production. This volume focuses on the many ways the arts and humanities provide avenues for deepening the conversation about how women have been involved in, excluded from, and represented within the scientific realm. While women's historic exclusion from STEM fields has received increased scrutiny worldwide in recent years, women within the Spanish context have been perhaps even more peripheral given the complex socio-cultural structures emanating from gender norms and political ideologies dominant in the Spanish nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, Spanish female cultural producers have long been engaged with science and technology within the cultural realm, as expressed in literature, art, film, and other areas. Spanish cultural production offers diverse representations of the relationships between women, gender, sexuality, race, and the STEM fields. A Laboratory of Her Own studies representations of Spanish women (including non-white women) and scientific cultural production from the late nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. STEM topics include the environment, biodiversity, temporal and spatial theories, medicine and reproductive rights, neuroscience, robotics, artificial intelligence, and quantum physics. These scientific themes and other issues are analyzed in narratives, paintings, poetry, photographs, science fiction, medical literature, translation, newswriting, film, and other forms.

Since the 1970s, alarming discourses about declining fertility and the difficulties of balancing work and family have flourished in Western countries. Captured by the notion of the 'biological clock', they put women's reproductive age and the fertility decline to the centre of public and medical attention. Reproductive biomedicine constitutes a specific domain invested with hopes for technological and medical answers and a new market for fertility extension technologies, such as egg donation and social egg freezing. Addressing long-standing questions about the articulation of the biological and the social in the making of bodies and identities, this book questions the nature of reproductive ageing, a taken for granted 'fact of life' at the core of reproductive biomedicine. What is the biology of the 'biological clock' made of and how can we account for its embodied reality from a feminist perspective? Opening the black box of the biological, the book makes a way between essentialism and constructivism with the aim of accounting for its materiality, while also illuminating its political implications. By following the ontological choreographies of age-related infertility in the science and medicine of reproduction, this study explores how age materializes and documents what happens when reproduction meets ageing. Deeply transdisciplinary, it questions what is fixed about the biology of the fertility decline in a way which adds complexity to debates about the biomedicalization of reproductive ageing.

The Contemporary Legal Issues series addresses a wide variety of current, controversial legal topics. Each book gives readers a practical understanding of a particular topic, as well as sources for further information. Each title includes:
-- An overview of the topic
-- Approximately 200 comprehensive entries on concepts, court decisions, people, and organizations
-- Bibliography, table of cases, and index

Prostitution in the ancient Greek world was widespread, legal, and acceptable as a fact of life and an unavoidable necessity. The state regulated the industry and treated prostitution as any other trade. Almost every prominent man in the ancient world has been truly or falsely associated with some famous hetaira. These women, who sold their affections to the richest and most influential men of their time, have become legends in their own right. They pushed the boundaries of female empowerment in their quest for self-promotion and notoriety, and continue to fascinate us. Prostitution remains a complex phenomenon linked to issues of gender, culture, law, civic ideology, education, social control, and economic forces. This is why its study is of paramount importance for our understanding of the culture, outlook and institutions of the ancient world, and in turn it can shed new light and introduce new perspectives to the challenging debate of our times on prostitution and contemporary sexual morality. The main purpose of this book is to provide the primary historical study of the topic with emphasis upon the separation of facts from the mythology surrounding the countless references to prostitution in Greek literary sources.

In this media driven age in which private has become public we have seen the Stonewall riots, which launched the gay rights movement, Hair on Broadway with a nude cast, art from Mapplethorpe to Madonna, AIDS and safe sex campaigns, drag gone mainstream, and adolescents engaging in sexual activity at increasingly younger ages. At the same time, society continually tries to eradicate open expressions of sexuality and harass those who ignore the mandated modes of permissible sexual expression.

Taking on those who would limit sexual freedom, New Sexual Agendas challenges the notion that there are fixed sexual behaviors for men and women. This engaging collection draws on a number of disciplines including women's studies, literature, gender studies, cultural studies, history, politics, and education, sociology, and psychology. Including well known thinkers such as Jeffrey Weeks, Leonore Tiefer, and Mary McIntosh, New Sexual Agendas explores our sexual legacy, from turn-of-the-century sexologists to the inequalities of sexually invested social structures, from the rise of the Right and its portent for sexual freedoms to the myth of women as the subordinate sex. Along the way it explores the limits of trust in intimate relationships, the escalating AIDS epidemic, and the dangers of prescribed sex roles for both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.