Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?: Abortion, Neonatal Care, Assisted Dying, and Capital Punishment (Sociology Re-Wired) - Hardcover

Ekland-Olson, Sheldon

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11 ratings by Goodreads

9780415892469: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?: Abortion, Neonatal Care, Assisted Dying, and Capital Punishment (Sociology Re-Wired)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415892465 ISBN 13: 9780415892469

Publisher: Routledge, 2011

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Issues of Life and Death such as abortion, assisted suicide, capital punishment and others are among the most contentious in many societies. Whose rights are protected? How do these rights and protections change over time and who makes those decisions? Based on the author’s award-winning and hugely popular undergraduate course at the University of Texas, this book explores these questions and the fundamentally sociological processes which underlie the quest for morality and justice in human societies. The Author’s goal is not to advocate any particular moral "high ground" but to shed light on the social movements and social processes which are at the root of these seemingly personal moral questions.

This book is also broken down into four smaller How Ethical Systems Change volumes:

Abortion and neonatal care: www.routledge.com/9780415504492/

Lynching and capital punishment: www.routledge.com/9780415505192/

Eugenics, the Final Solution, and Bioethics www.routledge.com/9780415501620/

Tolerable Suffering and Assisted Dying: www.routledge.com/9780415505161/

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About the Author:

Sheldon Ekland-Olson is the Audre and Bernard Centennial Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, where he served as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Executive Vice President and Provost. He is the winner of numerous teaching awards, and one of his classes was once listed among the 10 Hottest Courses in the Nation. His previous publications include The Rope, The Chair and the Needle, Texas Prisons, and Justice Under Pressure.

Review:

'...a gripping, lucid account of the legal, medical, and ethical history behind brutally difficult social decisions concerning who has the right to decide whether someone should live or die, and what reasons count as acceptable. Using a fresh narrative approach free of both abstraction and polemics, Ekland-Olson provides compelling stories of landmark cases that crystallized thought and motivated social movements to deal with ethical concerns associated with abortion, the preservation of life for desperately incurable infants, legal reforms to sterilize 'defective' human beings, medical experiments on vulnerable people, eugenics legislation to improve the health of the fittest, assisted dying, the occurrence of terrible post-Civil War lynchings, and the mottled history of capital punishment in the US...This volume includes a detailed table of contents, key quotations throughout, and an excellent bibliography. It should be read and discussed widely, for both its content and approach. Summing Up: Highly recommended.'
―S. A. Mason, Concordia University in CHOICE, May 2012

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