Reddit reviews The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice (Routledge Annals of Bioethics)

These are some good books that convinced me to go from pro-choice to pro-life. The first two are history books that demonstrate the universality of the pro-life movement as opposed to it often being relegated to being a conservative issue. The latter two are books that address major concerns held by pro-choice people. They're pretty academic and respectful of the other side.

• Defenders of the Unborn by Daniel K. Williams - a history of the pro-life movement before Roe, and its roots in the anti-war and progressive movements. Though it elaborates on the arguments the non-religious used to justify the preservation of the fetus. It's unfortunately a very neglected historiography and this book does a great job of chronicling the motivations driving and influences of the pro-life movement.
  
  
• After Roe by Mary Ziegler - a history of the pro-life movement after Roe.
  
  
• Defending Life by Francis Beckwith - A book with arguments for why abortion is wrong. The arguments are not at all rooted in religion and is accessible to most everyone.
  
  
• The Ethics of Abortion by Christopher Kaczor - Another great apologetics book on the morality of abortion.
  
  
  This Atlantic article article demonstrates how modern medical advances have given the pro-life movement new and important ground.
  
  If you'd like more resources, I'd be more than happy to supply more links to good resources online for pro-life arguments.

This is an outstanding book on abortion, though it's not from a Catholic perspective. Kaczor is Catholic himself, but this book argues from reason alone. It's phenomenally thorough. It's a slow, deliberate read if you're not a philosopher type, but it's not inaccessible.

Nope but here's a fantastic book against abortion:

http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Abortion-Question-Routledge-Bioethics/dp/0415884691/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

First I argue that a "woman's right to choose" implies we are talking about rights and I utterly deny this is so. We are talking about the definition of life else most pro choice people would allow the euthanization of very young children with disabilities. The arguments for the euthanization of the mentally ill infant are the same as the arguments for the euthanization of the unborn save some rhetoric on the individual's body.

I think what is at stake is whether an unborn child is a morally relevant agent. If the child is morally relevant then the mother has about as much right to choose as a landlord has to shoot a three year child on his property that doesn't understand English. IE, none. So the question is not on the rights of the women, this is rhetoric in my view. The question is "is they growing organism human?" and "do humans have rights?"

This is seen in the very real trend for pro-choice academics waking up and realizing that the implications of their moral theory imply after birth abortions are a-okay, which to common sense men represents a Reductio ad absurdum in my view for reasons I could go into.

Hell here's a good blog post on why after birth abortion is a bad idea: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5304

I go into this to show that indeed abortion is a slippery slope because the arguments that defend abortion have implications that pro choice advocates do not realize and would not endorse. Therefore either they accept after birth euthanasia or admit something is wrong with their arguments.

Now onto why I do not accept abortion:

Per Aristotle the soul of a human is his form due to the underlying metaphysics of act and potency. Things have potentials, but they also have actual states in existence. The form of a human is it's potentiality and actuality. Now, a child only exists in potentiality when he is unconvinced because nothing has made him actually exist. During conception the essence of the child is brought into existence. Similar to planted acorn the child is at that point growing and becoming and since the form of a human is implicit within his very DNA, saying he does not have such and such cells is beside the point for the same reason that an amputee or a child with autism is still a human being of moral worth. The amputee or a child with autism have an imperfect human form due to an accident of circumstance or genetic defect therefore similar to the unborn. The unborn is an actualized but imperfect form of the human and thus striking out a certain state where there is a certain clump of cells is illogical as the growth of the human form is a gradual process and thus impossible to mark out where one becomes human. Indeed this is because DNA is much like a program and just because a program has not gone into a certain state does not mean the program is not running. Therefore the unborn are not potential persons, but actual persons working through their potentials. Therefore the unborn are indeed humans. It is wrong to kill humans. Therefore is it wrong to kill the unborn.

A good volume I would endorse on the pro life position is here: http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Abortion-Question-Routledge-Bioethics/dp/0415884691/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292054024&sr=1-1#_

A good point working through act and potency with comment on abortion is here: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/05/act-and-potency.html

Wrong under all circumstances. Important book for those who are interested in the serious and hardline position against abortion.