Explores the historical roots of controversies over abortion, fetal personhood, miscarriage, and maternal mortality. On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, asserting that the Constitution did not confer the right to abortion. This ruling, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, was the culmination of a half-century of pro-life activism promoting the idea that fetuses are people and therefore entitled to the rights and protections that the Constitution guarantees. But it was also the product of a much longer history of archaic ideas about the relationship between pregnant people and the fetuses they carry. In Policing Pregnant Bodies: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America, historian Kathleen M. Crowther discusses the deeply rooted medical and philosophical ideas that continue to reverberate in the politics of women's health and reproductive autonomy. From the idea that a detectable heartbeat is a sign of moral personhood to why infant and maternal mortality rates in the United States have risen as abortion restrictions have gained strength, this is a historically informed discussion of the politics of women's reproductive rights. Crowther explains why pro-life concern for fetuses has led not just to laws restricting or banning abortion but also to delaying or denying treatment to women for miscarriages as well as police investigations of miscarriages. She details the failure to implement policies that would actually improve the quality of infant life, such as guaranteed access to medical care, healthy food, safe housing, and paid maternity leave. We must understand the historical roots of these archaic ideas in order to critically engage with the current legal and political debates involving fetal life.

A fresh consideration of the enduring tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, showing its continuing post-medieval influence. The tradition of the seven deadly sins played a considerable role in western culture, even after the supposed turning-point of the Protestant Reformation, as the essays collected here demonstrate. The first part of the book addresses such topics as the problem of acedia in Carolingian monasticism; the development of medieval thought on arrogance; the blending of tradition and innovation in Aquinas's conceptualization of the sins; the treatment of sin in the pastoral contexts of the early Middle English Vices and Virtues and a fifteenth-century sermon from England; the political uses of the deadly sins in the court sermons of Jean Gerson; and the continuing usefulnessof the tradition in early modern England. In the second part, the role of the tradition in literature and the arts is considered. Essays look at representations of the sins in French music of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries; in Dante's Purgatorio; in a work by Michel Beheim in pre-Reformation Germany; and in a 1533 play by the German Lutheran writer Hans Sachs. New interpretations are offered of Gower's "Tale of Constance" and Bosch's Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins. As a whole, the book significantly enhances our understanding of the multiple uses and meanings of the sins tradition, not only in medieval culture but also in the transition from the medievalto the early modern period. RICHARD G. NEWHAUSER is Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe; SUSAN J. RIDYARD is Professor of History and Director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium,The University of the South, Sewanee. Contributors: Richard G. Newhauser, James B. Williams, Kiril Petkov, Cate Gunn, Eileen C. Sweeney, Holly Johnson, Nancy McLoughlin, Anne Walters Robertson, Peter S. Hawkins, CarolJamison, Henry Luttikhuizen, William C. McDonald, Kathleen Crowther.

The story of Adam and Eve, ubiquitous in the art and literature of the period, played a central role in the religious controversies of sixteenth-century Europe. This is the first book to explore stories about Adam and Eve in German Lutheran areas and to analyze their place in Lutheran culture and identity. Kathleen Crowther examines Lutheran versions of the story of Adam and Eve in bibles, commentaries, devotional tracts, sermons, plays, poems, medical and natural history texts, and woodcut images. Her research identifies how Lutheran storytellers differentiated their unique versions of the story from those of their medieval predecessors and their Catholic and Calvinist contemporaries. She also explores the appeal of the story of Adam and Eve to Lutherans as a means to define, defend and disseminate their distinctive views on human nature, original sin, salvation, marriage, family, gender relations and social order.

The story of Adam and Eve, ubiquitous in the art and literature of the period, played a central role in the religious controversies of sixteenth-century Europe. This is the first book to explore stories about Adam and Eve in German Lutheran areas and to analyze their place in Lutheran culture and identity. Kathleen Crowther examines Lutheran versions of the story of Adam and Eve in bibles, commentaries, devotional tracts, sermons, plays, poems, medical and natural history texts, and woodcut images. Her research identifies how Lutheran storytellers differentiated their unique versions of the story from those of their medieval predecessors and their Catholic and Calvinist contemporaries. She also explores the appeal of the story of Adam and Eve to Lutherans as a means to define, defend and disseminate their distinctive views on human nature, original sin, salvation, marriage, family, gender relations and social order.