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Immense positive change has taken place in English people's sexual and emotional lives. This is reflected in changing family forms and greater acceptance of sexual variation of all kinds. These changes were propelled forward by the transformation of pregnancy from an uncontrollable risk to a freely chosen product of sexual activity. There are many women throughout the globe who do not have access to adequate maternity care and contraception, and neo-liberal economic measures are eroding the improvements in people lives made possible by the political and social agitation of earlier generations. Acknowledging positive change in the past should give confidence to those who seek change in the future.

The evolution is charted, through adjudication, of the rules governing sex equality in European Community (EC) law. The first section, ‘The Normative Structure’, provides an overview of the Treaty of Rome rules and secondary legislation that constitute the domain of sex equality, while the second examines how Art. 141 (which provides that male and female workers shall receive equal pay for equal work) evolved once it had been constitutionalized by the European Court of Justice. Section III, ‘Judicialization: The Court and the Legislator’, focuses on the relationship between the Court, its case law on sex equality, and the production of directives by the EC legislator; the impact is also briefly discussed of the Court's rulemaking on national judicial and legislative processes; topics included are indirect discrimination, occupational pensions, pregnancy and maternity rights. In the fourth section, ‘Adjudicating Sex Equality Law’, an analysis is made of the aggregate data on litigation and adjudication in the field, focusing on how precedent‐based lawmaking has organized the development of this area. The conclusion addresses a range of theoretical issues.

Cases illustrating variables relevant to decisions involving teenage pregnancy and motherhood, confidentiality, female genital surgery, and eating disorders are presented. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors relevant to the cases are discussed from an egalitarian perspective that addresses the nondominance of minors as well as their capacity for moral agency. A conception of parentalism as an antidote to paternalism and maternalism is proposed.

Cases illustrating variables relevant to women’s choices about contraception, sterilization, and abortion are presented. With regard to abortion, these include duration of gestation, condition of the fetus, methods of termination, availability and cost of the procedure, medical risks to the woman or potential child, capacity for parenting, responsibilities based on relationships to others, and different positions about the moral status of the fetus. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors are discussed from an egalitarian perspective that privileges women’s standpoint vis-à-vis men’s not only on grounds of nondominance but also on grounds that women, not men, are directly affected by pregnancy.

This chapter introduces the technical term “malady” as a genus term that includes as species: diseases, disorders, injuries, allergies, illnesses, etc., and can be taken as meaning that something is wrong with the person. It provides a definition of malady that includes the following features: it is a condition of the individual, it involves significantly increased risk of suffering nontrivial harms, and there is no distinct sustaining cause. The role of abnormality in the defining malady and some difficult cases such as pregnancy, short stature, old age, and various genetic conditions are discussed.

An examination is made of the impact of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the institutional evolution of European Union sex equality policy, following the provision in the Treaty of Rome (Art. 119 EEC, now Art. 141) that men and women would receive equal pay for equal work – a provision aimed at protecting businesses from unfair competition. This same provision now bestows a positive right on individuals throughout the Member States, and is a judicially enforceable right that remains the backbone of an ever-expanding European social-justice policy. Over time, strategic action on the part of litigants and their lawyers and the ECJ’s judicial rule-making capacity has constructed a supranational space in which women can not only demand the right to equal pay but can also receive protection as pregnant workers. This dynamic process is the focus of the analysis presented, and involves an examination of three basic mechanisms of institutional evolution: the process by which self-interested private litigants and their lawyers are able to activate the European Union (EU) legal system through the Art. 177 (now Art. 234) procedure (which allows national individuals to invoke EU law before national courts); the ECJ’s authoritative interpretation of Art. 119 (focusing on how it became directly effective in national legal systems); and the feedback effects of this judicial rule-making in terms of how the litigation environment has been changed, and the EU and national-level policy consequence. In particular, the latter are traced through the development of EU pregnancy and maternity rights.

This essay considers some of the experiences of pregnancy from the pregnant woman’s viewpoint. Drawing on diaries and literature as well as phenomenological reflection on the pregnant experience, it seeks to let women speak in their own voices. Section I describes some aspects of bodily existence unique to pregnancy. The pregnant subject is shown as decentered, split, or doubled in several ways. Section II reflects on the encounter of the pregnant subject with the institutions and practices of medicine. It argues that within the present organization of these institutions and practices, women usually find such an encounter alienating in several respects.

This chapter explores the legal challenges that workplace pregnancy posed in the 1970s and 1980s. Debates about workplace pregnancy revived clashes about difference and equality that had vexed the women's movement for decades. Paradoxically, pregnancy, a badge of difference, served as a springboard to advances in equal rights. As that happened, the new direction in pregnancy policy underscored the doom of single-sex protective laws. The most enduring steps in shaping pregnancy policy were the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (PDA), which barred discrimination against pregnant workers; the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), which offered up to twelve-week unpaid leaves to employees in larger enterprises for family and medical emergencies; and the Johnson Controls decision of 1991, which barred fetal protection regulations as a form of sex discrimination.

Based on an anthropological study of the childbearing experiences in the United States, this chapter examines the importance and meaning of fetal ultrasound imaging, or sonograms, for the American middle class. Expectant parents in the United States consume fetal images as “baby pictures.” Sonographers compose fetal images using portraiture conventions. This chapter explores this seeing itself as a cultural and social practice that is shaped by expectations and experiences surrounding kinship and personhood.

This essay is a historical and philological investigation of reproduction as it was understood in ancient Near East societies. It explores the differences in embryology as conceived by various cultures in the ancient Near East (primarily among the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Israelites) and their points of similarity. Embryological theories run the gamut from “high” science, with truths still accepted, to superstitions that said that female fetuses were carried on their mother’s left sides, required a longer pregnancy, and drained their mothers’ strength more than did male fetuses.

This chapter presents a detailed description of a mizuko kuyō ritual performed at a convert Zen monastery in Oregon. It then proceeds to a full analysis of the ritual. Numerous changes can be seen in the process of adapting these rituals from a Japanese to an American convert context. Among the most important is the addition of sewing circles, wherein participants manufacture offerings for their mizuko and express their feelings about abortion and other pregnancy losses. The ritual is reoriented along psychological and vaguely Protestant lines, changing it from a rite to benefit fetal ghosts to an exercise in self-healing for the mother.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on childbirth in the U.S. It shows that the pregnancy/childbirth process has been culturally transformed into a male-dominated initiatory rite of passage through which birth women are taught about the superiority and necessity of the relationship between science, technology, patriarchy, and institutions. It contends that the salvation of society which seeks to deny women their power as birth-givers will arise from the women who, nevertheless, give that society birth.

This chapter describes what is known about the sexual behavior of American young adults, beginning with the prevalence of virginity and discussion of primary reasons offered for it. Serial monogamy, however, appears to be the central narrative of American heterosexual behavior. The chapter describes the average number of sexual partners that unmarried young adults report, highlighting how men and women “remember” their sexual pasts differently. Next the chapter outlines the role of oral sex in emerging adults’ lives and relationships — what it means, how its meaning has changed since adolescence, how popular it is, and what men and women think of giving and receiving it, followed by a discussion of anal sex and its rising — though more limited — prevalence. The chapter concludes with discussions of young adults’ contraceptive usage patterns, experiences of pregnancy scares, and the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections among them.

This chapter examines Socrates' account of the aim of eros. At different points in his speech, Socrates specifies three aims of eros: the good, reproduction in beauty, and immortality. This chapter argues that those three aims are, in fact, related under the more general desire for eudaimonia, the everlasting happiness characteristic of the divine. The desire for eudaimonia is the telos, the true end of all erotic striving. According to Socrates, we desire a good whose possession we believe to constitute that state, and one which can be had in an enduring way. The desire to reproduce in a beautiful environment is the characteristic activity of this desire for the good, because productive activity is the mortal approximation to the divine state. The reason why the desire for eudaimonia manifests itself in creative activity in the presence of beauty is because this is the distinctively mortal way in which it can achieve a share of divine happiness.

This chapter explores school-based pregnancy prevention practices and programs currently in use in schools across the nation. It identifies programs and program components that have been evaluated and demonstrated to be effective in modifying adolescent sexual behavior and preventing adolescent pregnancy. It provides guidance for assessing program goodness-of-fit to the needs and values of the local school and community, and for planning and carrying out programs demonstrated effective in school settings. A bibliography of resources provides program specifics and contact information for locating programs that have been demonstrated to be effective.

This chapter explains why the health and survival chances of the fetus are so important in developed economies today, since late-fetal is often higher than infant mortality, and it establishes the need to provide a full account of how fetal health and obstetric knowledge have changed during the past centuries. The chapter also argues the case for taking an inter-disciplinary approach (medical and demographic history combined); of considering long-term changes in practice and experience; and making comparisons between the priorities and approaches adopted in different countries.