A Tale of Two Surrogates explores the complicated emotional, medical, legal, and ethical issues surrounding assisted reproduction. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research conducted by a sociologist and an anthropologist, this book presents, in an accessible graphic novel format, the intertwined stories of two fictional women who decide to become gestational surrogates. It immerses the reader in the worlds of Jenn, from California, and Dana, from Tel Aviv, as they deci...

Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal clai...

A provocative and deeply important study of women’s lives, women’s choices—and an ‘unspoken taboo’—that questions the societal pressures forcing women into motherhoodWomen who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely talk about the possibility that the opposite might also be true—that women who have children might regret it. Drawing on years of research interviewing women from a variety of socioec...

Science and technology force us to ask some of the most challenging and unprecedented ethical questions in the world today. These issues encompass what it means to be human, how we relate to others and our world, and how we find meaning in life. How we can find a shared ethics for an interdependent world? In her 2006 CBC Massey Lectures, ethicist and McGill University professor Margaret Somerville tackles some of the most contentious issues of our times, and proposes a brilliant new kind o...

A Harvard-trained obstetrician-gynecologist, prominent blogger, and author of the classic How Your Baby Is Born delivers a timely, important, and sure to be headline-making expose that shines a light on the natural parenting movement and the multimillion-dollar industry behind it.The natural parenting movement praises the virtues of birth without medical interference, staunchly advocates breastfeeding for all mothers, and hails attachment parenting. Once the exclusive province of t...

Pro-life Christians, take heart: the pro-life message can compete in the marketplace of ideas-provided Christians properly understand and articulate that message. Too many Christians do not understand the essential truths of the pro-life position, making it difficult for them to articulate a biblical worldview on issues like abortion, cloning, and embryo research.The Case for Life provides intellectual grounding for the pro-life convictions that most evangelicals ...

If you need help having a baby, reproductive technology can supply the answer. But it also raises a host of questions that won’t arise until after the child is born: What will you say to “Where did I come from?” when the answer includes a donor or surrogate? Will knowing the truth about how you conceived make your child love you less? Will having a baby with someone else strain your relationship with your spouse or partner? What will grandparents, family members, friends, and cowo...

The debate on the status and legality of cannabis continues to gain momentum. Here, personal anecdotes combined with academic and scientific reports combine to sharpen some of the fascinating philosophical issues associated with cannabis use.A frank, professionally informed and playful discussion of cannabis usage in relation to philosophical inquiryConsiders the meaning of a ‘high’, the morality of smoking marijuana for pleasure, the slippery slope to more dangerou...

A provocative and debate-inspiring book which explores the pressure, politics, philosophy and culture of motherhood in today’s society.Motherhood has changed. For several decades there has been tension between traditional ideas and modern values of mothering. For years the trend was away from the constraints which bound down our own mothers and towards liberating women. But in the 1980s and 1990s the momentum has shifted into sharp reverse.Mother of All Myths documents the ...

Books on abortion (other than collections of readings) typically express and defend a particular position. This book gives both sides, as evenly and objectively as possible; it gets to the heart of each position, the core idea which animates it. It then leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind. It is an introduction to the issue, not only to the basic positions on the issue. Despite being brief, it contains careful analyses and discussions of many topics often not found at all in o...

Frank Browning takes us into human gender geographies around the world, from gender-neutral kindergartens in Chicago and Oslo to women's masturbation classes in Shanghai, from conservative Catholics in Paris fearful of God and Nature to transsexual Mormon parents in Utah. As he shares specific and engaging human stories, he also elucidates the neuroscience that distinguishes male and female biology, shows us how all parents' brains change during the first weeks of parenthood, and finally h...

The use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) is on the rise in our culture as an alternative for couples facing infertility issues and single women desiring to have children. Is it right – morally, ethically, biblically – to engage this new technology? Are there some aspects of ART that are more acceptable than others? Outside the Womb: The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies addresses the whole issue of “making life”, providing valuable information, both theologically and sc...