Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice [Paperback]

Kathy Rudy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 1997

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.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Using as a springboard the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe's discussion of intentionality, Rudy (ethics and women's studies, Duke Univ.) holds that it is not only the morality of abortion that is a matter of dispute but the very nature of abortion itself. She first examines four communities?liberals, the Roman Catholic Church, evangelical Christians, and feminists-who view abortion within a context and therefore differently. She then maps out an argument that would get beyond the pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy and calls for the issue to be handled within these respective communities in ways they find comfortable. While not everyone would agree with her views, Rudy does bring some rationality into an often venomous debate. Recommended for most collections.?Augustine J. Curley, O.S.B., Newark Abbey, N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (July 31, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807004278
• ISBN-13: 978-0807004272
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rudy Gets Pro-Choice Catholicism Badly Wrong, June 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice (Paperback)

I appreciate what Kathy Rudy is trying to do with this book, but I wonder if it isn't based on a romantic communitarian myth about the essential unity of all women if only we could get right- wing women to change their minds about abortion.

I am a pro-choice Catholic woman,and I really have to ask why she didn't bother to have a look at the work of Catholics for a Free Choice or the WomenChurch movement before she made inaccurate generalisations about faith and feminism. For the record, pro-choice Catholicism is not coeval with liberal Catholicism, no what Rudy believes. I think most pro-choice Catholics would prefer an ethics of open communitarianism and preferential option for the poor and oppressed. Indeed, it is the paradox between anti-abortion social policies that leave women bleeding and dying from backstreet abortions and the call to serve the poor and oppressed that drives most pro-choice Catholics I know. As far as the comments about intellectual disability goes too, Rudy needs to have a closer look at the exact nature of some forms of foetal disability that render viability impossible. I wish Rudy and Faye Ginsburg would wake up. Romantic communitarianism will not help women. Practical solutions will, including a more just society for reproductive choice to occur in.