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This chapter examines the history and contemporary experience of Native American Indians, and the contribution of Native philosophies and religious practices to the question of population growth. It discusses reproductive rites, such as puberty ceremonies, and reproductive wrongs, such as the banning of religious practices in the Indian country. It emphasizes the importance of Native perspectives to dialogues on global issues and the validity of indigenous practices and philosophies in the study of religion. It also examines the rights and responsibilities of the American Indians, including the right to freedom of religion and indigenous women's reproductive freedom. The Native Women for Reproductive Rights Coalition, for instance, has created an “Agenda for Reproductive Rights” that reflects traditional Native religious values and articulates the rights of Native women to family planning, contraception, and abortion.

This chapter explores theories about how laws and organizations influence each other. First, the chapter explores the purpose of tort laws and the goals of the tort reform movement and uses them to define provider-friendly and patient-friendly tort regimes. An analysis of the effects of tort laws on obstetric malpractice lawsuits illustrates that, contrary to expectations, the rate of lawsuits is higher in states where tort reforms have reduced healthcare providers’ liability risk. The chapter then uses reproductive justice theory to examine reproductive health laws that govern contraception, abortion, midwifery, prenatal substance use, and fetal rights. These laws define fetus-centered and woman-centered reproductive rights regimes.

This chapter analyzes the effect of reproductive regimes on VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), midwife-attended birth, and homebirth. Many hospitals have formal or de facto bans on VBAC, even though 60–80% of women who attempt a VBAC will have a successful vaginal birth. Providers have increasingly restricted VBAC since July 1999, but forcing a woman to have major abdominal surgery (or any medical procedure) without her consent is a violation of her civil rights. An analysis of how state-level reproductive rights laws affected the odds of VBAC reveals that VBAC is less likely in fetus-centered regimes with restrictive abortion laws, especially after June 1999. Midwife-attended birth and out-of-hospital birth are also less likely in fetus-centered regimes. Taken together, these results point in the same direction: fetus-centered reproductive rights regimes constrain pregnant women’s ability to make reproductive decisions about birth, not just abortion.

In virtually no other developed country are issues like abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and sexual education as controversial as in America. People in almost all other Western nations tend to share the liberal-moderate view of these questions. Few share the Christian fundamentalist position that represents a major side of America’s culture wars. Even though the vast majority of Americans are devout Christians, religion ironically divides them far more than Europeans. America is exceptionally polarized by rival understandings of faith, secularism, family values, gender roles, and sexuality. According to conventional wisdom, religious polarization in America reflects a clash between believers and non-believers. In reality, the divide is mainly among people of faith, as atheists or agnostics remain a limited proportion of the U.S. population. While nearly three-quarters of Americans identify as Christian, their churches are often at odds on basic issues like whether the Bible should be interpreted literally. The chapter particularly analyzes the ultra-traditionalist values prevalent in conservative America and demonstrates how unusual they are in the developed world.

This chapter uses a birth story to explore ideas of risk and to contrast obstetric and midwifery approaches to pregnancy and birth. It defines the concept of reproductive regimes, and specifically tort regimes and reproductive rights regimes. The chapter outlines the research methods of the study and the organization of the book.

This chapter explores the use of electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) as a prime example of technology fetishism. EFM is not evidence based, but most maternity care providers routinely use it. Obstetricians say that they use EFM to defend themselves against liability, and malpractice attorneys often fetishize the paper strips that the EFM produces as “evidence.” At the same time, an analysis demonstrates that EFM is more common in tort reform states that limit providers’ liability risk, which contradicts the idea that providers use it to reduce legal risk. The chapter then explores institutional motivations for EFM use, including scheduling, workload, and profit benefits. These institutional priorities can undermine patients’ rights, quality of care, and informed consent, which are issues of reproductive justice. This chapter then explores the effects of reproductive rights laws on EFM, finding that more fetus-centered laws encourage more EFM, while EFM is less common in states that protect women’s reproductive rights.

This roundtable paper will demonstrate that the most central issue in questions of heritage involves changing perception of newborn human life. How does our definition of what comes before us change when the essence of what we are shifts with historical circumstances? In addition, this paper will demonstrate how professors can use research to “professionalize” undergraduates, a proposition that can seem easy in fields like nursing and yet becomes more difficult in English literature and can, at times, turn the broad and complex benefits of the study of literature into a “job training” to become efficient and literate office assistants. However, by engaging our undergraduates early and deeply in research, we professionalize them in a way that does not reduce it to job training. We broaden their horizons and connections, teach them to think deeply and imaginatively, and expose them to the potential of their curiosity. In sum, early exposure to research exponentially expands their abilities, endows them with confidence and allows them to imagine their lives and professions outside narrow frames of geography, age, or class that would limit their professional potential.