MOTHERHOOD IN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM: Critiques,Realities, and Possibilities

Common experiences of mothering offer profound critiques of maternal ethical norms found in both Christianity and Islam. The familiar responsibilities of caring for children, assumed by the majority of Christian and Muslim women, provide the basis for reassessing sacrificial and selfless love, protesting unjust religious and political systems, and dismantling romanticized notions of childcare. As a distinctive category of women's experience, motherhood may offer valuable perspectives necessary for remedying injustices that afflict mothers and children in particular, as well as for developing cross‐cultural understandings of justice in general.     

台湾地区“代孕”立法最新进展及其启示

2007年3月21日,台湾地区在广泛调研、民主决策的基础上,终于颁布实施了《人工生殖法》,使争论已久的代孕人工生殖问题与《人工生殖法》正式脱钩,另行规制;此前,《代孕人工生殖法》草案也已经出笼,拟有条件开放代孕人工生殖。相关草案对代孕者、受术夫妻、代孕中介、代孕契约、亲子关系等问题都进行了具体规定。台湾地区的立法经验对祖国大陆完善包括代孕在内的人工生殖法具有一定的借鉴意义。     

Antiabortion Rhetoric and the Undermining of Choice: Women's Agency as Causing “Psychological Trauma” Following the Termination of a Pregnancy

Historically the antiabortion movement has opposed abortions through reference to the fetus' human status. However, recently there has been a rhetorical shift whereby abortion is criticized based on its alleged negative psychological impact on women, with some authors voicing concerns related to this medicalized repertoire undermining women's capacity to act as rational decision-makers. However, no research to date has systematically analyzed how women's agency over their abortions features in antiabortion rhetoric. In this article, through a discourse analysis of interviews with 15 antiabortion supporters, I explore how psychological concepts are employed to indirectly undermine women's agency to abort. Participants construct the termination of a pregnancy as psychologically damaging when women's agency is evident (e.g., in abortions or rape-pregnancy abortions). Women's choice also appears as enforced by society, victimizing them and removing accountability over it. However, unintentional termination (e.g., miscarriage) is constructed as “natural” and psychologically harmless due to the lack of agency. Overall, the pathologization of abortion through reference to psychological trauma stemming from the exercise of agency allows antiabortionists to naturalize motherhood and oppose abortions in an “objective,” depoliticized, nonrestrictive, and prowoman manner, without explicitly disregarding women's ability to choose or breaching Western norms of autonomy and freedom of choice.