Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice - Softcover

Rudy, Kathy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807004278 ISBN 13: 9780807004272

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1997

Synopsis

Entering the moral worlds of Catholicism, the evangelical Protestantism of the Operation Rescue movement, feminism, and the classical liberalism expressed in modern medicine, Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice brilliantly illuminates the little-understood religious and philosophical aspects of the abortion issue. Rudy reveals how each community's beliefs about abortion are connected to its deeply held values and concerns, and offers an alternative that would obviate the unproductive, divisive, and sometimes violent abortion debate we have today.

About this title

About the Author:

KATHY RUDY is an assistant professor of ethics and women's studies at Duke University. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

From Publishers Weekly:

Rudy, a feminist who worked with the Catholic left and joined the United Methodist Church in adulthood, was herself an unwanted pregnancy, given up by her biological mother to her Catholic adopted parents. Currently assistant professor of ethics and women's studies at Duke University, she has written a scholarly, opinionated critique of the abortion controversy. She faults the overwhelmingly white, narrowly focused pro-choice movement for failing to address broad concerns: the difficulty low-income women experience when seeking safe, legal abortions; the need for universal access to childcare, birth control and health care; and freedom from sterilization abuse. Noting that, with prenatal testing, the abortion of defective fetuses has become virtually mandatory, she supports women's right "to choose to have babies that are 'defective' or nontraditional." The Christian church, Rudy maintains, could transcend the polarized abortion debate by using the age-old ethical methodology known as casuistry, which in effect means gauging the moral nature of each abortion by a woman's specific circumstances. In her final chapter, Rudy advocates the repeal of all abortion laws, a step she believes would allow each community to work out its own norms and practices. All rights: Beacon Press.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0807004278
• ISBN 13: 9780807004272
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224