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Prompted by the ever‐increasing cesarean rate, this paper considers the interpretive disjunct between two significant strands of feminist analysis that have arisen in the last four decades as a consequence of the phenomenon of medicalized birth. In contrast to the dominant paradigm of bioethical "Principalism," both modes of analysis, understood as "the critique of industrialized labor" and "the critique of idealized labor," are attentive to the way in which social discourses inform bioethical deliberation and practice, but significantly diverge in the nature of their accounts. The "industrialization critique" understands the culture of medical intervention to be impelled by an "obstetric desire" to appropriate women's reproductive potency, whereas the "idealization critique" relates new mothers' "low childbirth satisfaction" to a pernicious normative ideal propagated by the natural childbirth movement. This paper will explore the anatomy of both critiques and interrogate their fidelity to the phenomenological insight of the body as chiasm between material and ideal. I will argue that while the insights of the idealization critique are well grounded, we must exercise caution about the critique's tendency to reductively understand the embodied experience of labor as entirely discursively produced, a gesture that risks re‐performing the dematerialization of women often effected through obstetric intervention itself.

Although transnational surrogacy has received much criticism owing to racial and class issues, the U.S. media portrays domestic surrogacy with overwhelming positive languages by employing specific narrative frameworks. Accompanying this shift, it is not so surprising that the number of gestational carrier cycles have skyrocketed from 727 to 3,423 over the last decade. (Note 1) In particular, increase in the number of gay and single men looking for surrogacy has yielded more controversies. This paper asks the following questions: How does the documentary Made in Boise present surrogacy in the context of a broader debate over feminist and LGBT's positions? How are gay parents used in the altruism narrative framework to downplay exploitation of surrogacy? By providing insight into the intricate economic and power relationships between surrogate and a new emerging group of intended parents, my case study prompts broader questions such as: How to best document the most authentic narratives of the surrogates? How can feminist and LGBT scholars reconcile their viewpoints over surrogacy? These are pertinent questions concerning exploitation and coercion in the industry, thus influencing future feminists' studies on reproductive technology and politics.

International audience ; This article focuses on the multilayered changes in the lives of Palestinian women over the years of the first and second Intifadas. On the one hand, women have become far more actively involved in politics, with a Women's Charter being drafted and legislation concerning women's rights being put on the political agenda. At the same time, the political shift from a Fatah- to a Hamas-dominated government has shifted understandings of whether the state should be secular or Islamist. Paradoxical developments by which Hamas has, on the one hand, fostered women's education and job training opportunities, but, on the other, insisted on women's subordinate legal status, are reflected within the Islamist women's movement. The article discusses the decline in power of the leftist and secular political forces, and the resulting political conflicts between the earlier secular feminist movement and the more recent `Islamist feminism'.

This article focuses on the multilayered changes in the lives of Palestinian women over the years of the first and second Intifadas. On the one hand, women have become far more actively involved in politics, with a Women's Charter being drafted and legislation concerning women's rights being put on the political agenda. At the same time, the political shift from a Fatah- to a Hamas-dominated government has shifted understandings of whether the state should be secular or Islamist. Paradoxical developments by which Hamas has, on the one hand, fostered women's education and job training opportunities, but, on the other, insisted on women's subordinate legal status, are reflected within the Islamist women's movement. The article discusses the decline in power of the leftist and secular political forces, and the resulting political conflicts between the earlier secular feminist movement and the more recent `Islamist feminism'.

An examination of the recent controversy between Larry Kohlberg (eg, Essays on Moral Development, Vol. II, The Psychology of Moral Development, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984) & Carol Gilligan (eg, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U Press, 1982) on the issue of women's moral development, focusing on Kohlberg's definition of the privileged object domain of moral philosophy & psychology. It is argued that the strong distinction between justice & the good life, as relied on by Kohlberg in his critique of Gilligan, is untenable, for it repeats the unexamined distinction between the private & the public realms in modern practical philosophy since Thomas Hobbes. This distinction leads to a privatization of women's lives & concerns, & to their exclusion from the domain of moral theory. While not wanting to eliminate the distinction between justice & the good life, the public & the private altogether, an argument is made for a model of "communicative need interpretations" through which these distinctions can be negotiated & established in such a way as not to lead to women's a priori exclusion from the moral domain. Modified AA

This theoretical inquiry has explored the political, social, and ethical controversy surrounding the government's push to mandate the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for adolescent girls. This vaccine has the potential of preventing cancer, specifically cervical cancer. There is a growing debate in this country whether this new HPV vaccine, Gardasil®, should be added to the list of school-mandated vaccines. Karen Houppert (2007) has stated that this particular "vaccine protects girls and women from cervical cancer and genital warts caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV)" (p. 17). So, what is the controversy? It all started with the fact that this vaccine is the first immunization produced to prevent cancer caused by a sexually transmitted disease (STD). There are several U.S. politicians that want to make the HPV vaccine a compulsory vaccine. Because an STD causes this disease there is a debate, according to Houppert, "by compassionate conservatives and abstinence-only hardliners who object to mandating the vaccine since the disease was the result of a lifestyle decision" (p.17). On the other hand, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), "Gardasil® has proven 100% effective in preventing the four strains of HPV that are responsible for most cases of cervical cancer"(Manning, 2007, p. 11). So why not mandate it for adolescent girls? This question was explored further in this work using bioethical feminist theory as a theoretical framework. This study was grounded in the works of Rosemarie Tong and Susan Sherwin.