Reproductive Technologies and the Law:

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Commentary on Treatment of Infertile Couples Using Reproductive Technologies: A Complex Matrix

The impact of the reproductive technologies upon infertile couples who require them is both ubiquitous and profound. There is a confluence of issues that co-exist for women and men who use reproductive technologies which creates a complex matrix for both the analytically informed social work clinician and those seeking infertility treatment. The unique merger of life stage issues, identity issues, cultural pressures, and responses to the physical and emotional demands of the necessary technologies, serves to amplify the intensity of encounters in this analytic triad. Consideration of attachment theory while utilizing intersubjective systems theory provides a system of treatment which offers comfort and a place to mourn the multiple losses of repetitive failures of attempts to conceive.

Moral Schemas in Articulation and Intuition: How Religious People Evaluate Human Reproductive Genetic Technologies

As new and more effective human reproductive genetic technologies (RGTs) rapidly develop, religious voices remain an important part of public discussion about the moral standing of such technologies. Here, we compare how individuals from different religious traditions evaluate disease RGTs (detecting genetic diseases in vitro) when compared to enhancement RGTs, allowing parents to select features of a child. Findings are gleaned from analysis of 270 interviews with individuals from 23 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious organizations, with supporting data from a national survey of more than 10,000 Americans. We find that respondents engage in clearly defined discursive moral reasoning to evaluate the propriety of disease RGTs while moral intuitions manifest themselves in responses to enhancement RGTs. We argue that schemas provide resources for moral discourses while also shaping moral intuitions expressed through emotions. Our results have implications for how religious people respond to new technologies when their institutional and denominational structures do not have readily discernable moral frameworks to guide responses.     

Older Motherhood and the Changing Life Course in the Era of Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Midlife, once a focus of particular interest to gerontologists because of its implications for later life, has recently received little attention. But as new reproductive technologies have expanded in the United States, motherhood is occurring at older ages. While older motherhood is not a new social practice, what is unique is that an increasing number of women are becoming pregnant through technological means, often for the first time, at the end of their reproductive cycle. These women can be understood as part of a new middle age, engaging in new life course possibilities that respond to changing social, cultural, physical, and economic realities, and potentially extending much later in the life course. Drawing on interviews with 79 couples, we utilize symbolic interactionist conceptualizations of identity and stigma to consider how women negotiate the shifting social identities associated with older motherhood. We conclude that older motherhood will be one phenomenon contributing to an enduring change in views of what constitutes old age, and that it will be seen as occurring much later in the life course.     

The Power of Information:

This article explores the interactions of African-American foster parents with child welfare agencies. Data from the 1980 Survey of Foster Parents in Eight States were used in assessing the information exchange patterns between two groups of foster parents-traditional and extended-and child welfare workers. Findings show that traditional foster parents request and receive more information about general agency policies and services as well as the role of foster parenting than the extended types of foster families. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of recruitment and differences in expectations child welfare workers and foster parents have about the role and function of foster parents and the delivery of services in the child welfare field. Empowerment strategies are recommended to increase the power of foster parents, especially among related foster parents.     

Asking for a Child: The Refashioning of Reproductive Space in Post-War Northern Vietnam

In the mid-1980s, population movement, wartime male mortality, and changing notions of marriageability converged to create a radically different marital terrain than that previously encountered by Vietnamese women. Finding themselves without suitable marriage prospects a small number of single women asked men they would not marry to get them pregnant. This paper focuses on three elements that contributed to this refashioning of reproductive space: the women's post-war experiences that prompted them to ‘ask for a child’, state policies that provided a different dynamic for bearing children out of wedlock, and the manner in which the Women's Union sought to provide social acceptance for women who ‘asked for a child’. As a result of the women's agency and the state's decision to incorporate single mothers into society a new reproductive space was forged in which ideologies of motherhood, family, and reproduction took on new meaning in post-war northern Vietnam.     

The Determinants of Parenthood: Power and Responsibility

The conception of parental adaptation in termsof the complexity of the balance between the parent'sresponsibility and the infant's power is presented. Amethod based on this conception is proposed as a way to describe and assess parentaladaptation. The adaptational view is compared with theclinical approach to parenthood, and its advantages forthe detection of parental vulnerability and earlyintervention in the parent infant relationship isillustrated. In addition, the conception of parentalresponsibility, in terms of the parent's evaluation ofthe balance between his/her responsibility and theinfant's power, is compared with the conception of thelegal approach which views parental responsibility interms of accountability and the parent's duties andrights. The evolving change in the societal view of parental responsibility, brought about bythe Children Act, requires a shift in theconceptualization of parenthood such as the one proposedby the adaptational conception. This could constitute abridge between the helping professions and the legalapproaches.     

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services:

This article analyzes the constitutional significance of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989). The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court has two prominent features. First, the Court upheld the restrictions on the right of women to abort by devaluing the provisions of the challenged Missouri law. It is suggested that these provisions are far more significant than the Court majority acknowledged, and that their significance became apparent soon after the Court's resolution of the case. Second, the Court's approach to resolving Webster suggests a reconceptualizing of fundamental rights questions wherein state action jurisprudence has been turned upside down and compelling state interest analysis has been eschewed. While Roe v. Wade (1973) was not overruled in Webster, it appears that the contemporary Court's approach to operationalizing the right of choice is unlikely to restrict the power of the states to regulate in this area.     

The Power of Sum: An Accountability Sistah Circle

Duoethnography offers the narratives of first-generation Black women scholars who created a virtual community as a transformative safe space for peer mentorship and scholarship. Framed through a womanist epistemological lens, our narratives provide insight about challenges and triumphs of navigating the academy from female scholars of African descent. Unique to this chronicle, the development of an Accountability Sistah Circle in 2012 became an organic transformative community for personal and professional growth. Through the components of this model, which can be implemented with others living in the margins, we uncovered our authentic voices, shared resources, expanded social capital, and developed a ritual that provided a safety shield around us and ultimately helped enhance our academic fortitude.     

The Power of Peer Support: The Development of the Empowerment Center

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the events and influences that led to the author’s contribution to the development of a mental health consumer-run organization, The Empowerment Center in Mount Vernon, NY. The author traces some events that influenced him personally and the evolution of the Empowerment Center from an organization that provided advocacy services (to those with mental health problems who were hospitalized) and community-based support services to people in mental health recovery, to an organization focusing on economic empowerment and economic development for the community of those in recovery. The transition of the Empowerment Center into an organization focused on economic empowerment underscores the importance of economic independence for people in recovery and the consumer-run organizations that support them. The Empowerment Center endeavors to demonstrate that mental health consumer-survivors can take control of their economic health as well as their physical and mental health.     

Gambling Technologies: Prospects for Problem Gambling

Technology his always played a role in the development of gambling practices and will continue to play a critical role in the development of increased gambling opportunities (e.g., internet gambling). Although technological advance his long been associated with improved gambling opportunities, there is little written in the literature explicitly pointing out this link and its implications for problem gamblers. This paper therefore reviews this situation and examines the technological implications of situational and structural characteristics paying particular attention to slot machine gambling as there has been more empirical work on this type of gambling than any other technological form. The impact of technology on the sociability of gambling is also examined followed by a more speculative evolution of internet gambling as an area of potential concern.     

The Power of Demonstrations

People take to the streets for several reasons. Advancing their demands to the authorities is an obvious one. Establishing communication channels among participants and thus helping to buttress a collective identity is another, latent one. Both combined express the power of protest. In what follows, I focus on the group-integrative function of protest. First, I conceptualize the notion of ritual and import it to the field of collective action. Then, I illustrate my argument by analyzing the extraordinary level of protest in the Basque Country. Mass protest rituals performed by a radical nationalist actor allow its participants to visualize themselves in movement and thus create and reinforce enduring bonds of solidarity. Occasionally, the argument about the relevance of a ritualized physical gathering might be extended to other revolutionary movements which push and threaten to transcend the limits of the system, be it because they substantially alter its morphology, because they challenge its foundational values, or both. Owing to the generalized disapproval these groups engender in wider society, revolutionary movements are in greater need of preserving group boundaries. Protest rituals are an important, sometimes essential, way of accomplishing such a task.