In 21st century America, personhood is under daily assault, sometimes with dire consequences. Scientist, ethicist, and ordained minister Craig C. Malbon encourages the reader to consider such assaults on personhood endured by victims of abortion, ageism, Alzheimer's disease, drug addiction, mental and physical disabilities, gender, gender orientation, racism, sexual preference, identity politics, and our will-to-power over the "other." In exploring personhood status, Malbon poses difficult questions for us. Is personhood assigned as all-or-nothing, or is it a sliding scale based upon criteria arbitrarily aimed at our vulnerabilities? Does the voiceless embryo and fetus have advocates who can speak to the moral question of abortion? Is the personhood of an economically insecure pregnant woman degraded to the point where lack of access to early termination of pregnancy results in "coercive childbearing?" Does being a member of the LGBTQI+ community target one for assaults on personhood, to the extreme of being killed? In delving into the biology and psychology of assaults of "self" upon the "other," Malbon sees powerful linkages of everyday assaults on personhood to darker, profound "original sins" that are foundational to the rise of the American empire, i.e., assaults on the indigenous Native Americans and assaults derivative to the institution of slavery upon Africans, African Americans, and their descendants.

The morality of abortion has emerged at the "hot button" issue of 21 C America. Steeped in controversy since the founding of the American colonies, legalized by the decision of Roe V. Wade, abortion remains the major spiritual, political, and theological divide among a nation of 300 million. Although the battle lines between the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice camps have been drawn and fortified by good people on both sides, the author challenges all comers to enter into the thick of the abortion question. Drawing upon the embodiment argument of Beverly Wildung Harrison, the overarching need for the "in-breaking" of God afresh daily in "concrete" lives lifted up by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and an examination of a twist in the thesis of Reinhold Niebuhr (Immoral Wo/man and Moral Society), the author provokes the readers to the increased and sometimes unbearable tension of finding the voice of the "other" in our own selves. Shocking in its candid drive to seek a new path, Abortion in 21st Century America will broaden and sharpen our understanding of abortion in America.