Birth Control and Controlling Birth

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss Itthem ": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by of women is neither sought nor listened to. The men. So often the input and perspectives that women bring to the privileged insights consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by W omen" (EIR TAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some.

Contenu

Reproductive Technologies: The Birth of a Women-Centered Analysis.- Ethics of Contraceptive Development and Deployment.- Historical Styles of Contraceptive Advocacy.- Ethical Problems in Government-Funded Contraceptive Research.- Value Conflicts in Biomedical Research into Future Contraceptives.- Status of Contraceptive Technology Development.- Women-Controlled Research.- Woman-Controlled Birth Control: A Feminist Analysis of Natural Birth Control.- Response.- Response.- Response.- Contraceptives Discussion.- Depo-Provera and Sterilization Abuse.- Depo-Provera and Sterilization Abuse Overview.- Depo-Provera: Some Ethical Questions about a Controversial Contraceptive.- The Depo-Provera Weapon.- Response.- Sterilization Abuse and Hispanic Women.- Concluding Remarks.- Depo-Provera and Sterilization Abuse Discussion.- Childbirth.- Childbirth Overview.- Section 1: Childbirth Technologies.- Man-Midwifery and the Rise of Technology: The Problem and Proposals for Resolution.- The Electronic Fetal Monitor in Perinatology.- Drugs, Birth, and Ethics.- Benefits and Risks of Electronic Fetal Monitoring.- Response.- Ethical Issues in Childbirth Technology.- Childbirth Technologies Discussion.- Section 2: Social Control of Childbirth.- A Report on Birth in Three Cultures.- Community Alternatives to High Technology Birth.- Contrasts in the Birthing Place: Hospital and Birth Center.- Ethical Issues Relating to Childbirth as Experienced by the Birthing Woman and Midwife.- Midwives in Many Settings.- A Native American Response.- An Obstetrician's Perspective.- Response.- Policymaking and Projections.- Policymaking and Projections Overview.- Forces Impacting on the Policymaker.- Response.- C/SEC: A Special-Interest Interpersonal Group Brings about Change.- The Ethicist in Policymaking.- Appendix: Action Possibilities, Margaret A. Kohn.- Notes and References.- Biographies.