The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy

by Harold J. Morowitz, James S. Trefil, James Trefil

Book Overview

In The Facts of Life, Harold Morowitz and James Trefil, two distinguished scientists and science writers, examine what modern biology can contribute to our understanding of the abortion debate. Sensitive to the myriad ethical and religious arguments beyond the realm of science that swirl around abortion, the authors focus on one crucial question--when does a fetus acquire "humanness," that quality that sets us apart from all other living things. While...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195090462
• ISBN13: 9780195090468
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A really good book

This book is a good tool for persons that are going through the hard time of having to make a decision in whether to have an abortion or not....It is also really good for students or profesionals doing in research of this subject... It gives the reader a complete new point of view in the abortion controversy: The Scientifical One...

Facts the Pro-Life side needs but will ignor

Morowitz and Trefil (M & T I shall call them), two teachers at Geo Mason Univ started this short monograph as a friend of the court brief for one of the many abortion cases to reach the Supreme Court, so that the justices might have scientifically accurate and factual information to work with in some of their decisions. When Justice O'Connor made her famous statement to the effect that Roe v. Wade was a decision which was being overtaken by scientific advances in neonatology which were making survival of ever more immature infants possible, she did not have available reliable information of the sort M & T have put forth in this small gem of a book. I have been involved in providing abortion in my Ob/Gyn practice for a very long time and have made a serious and ongoing effort to educate both the public and my medical colleagues about the abortion controversy since 1984. One of the most difficult things for the average layperson, and even for physicians, to get a handle on has been exactly why 24 weeks gestational age of the fetus should make such a difference in the abortion debate. M & T have done everyone except for the militant anti-abortion fundamentalists a tremendous service by bringing together most of the scientific knowledge which bears on fetal development as it pertains to the higher functons of the central nervous system and newborn survival. As they state in the introduction to The Facts of Life, while the two sides in the abortion controversy will never admit to the validity of the conclusions drawn by the other side, we should at least have accurate information upon which to draw those conclusions. Morowitz and Trefil had done us a true service by providing much valuable information. wfh

Science Versus Conservative Christian Assertions

I see that a conservative Christian discovered the book, or this reference to it, and was afraid of what they encountered. Unfortunately for him, or her, this book is valuable precisely because it reveals the gaping fallacies in the antiabortion argument, and how its so-called "natural law" theory falls afoul of empirical verification of embryological development, which they always selectively cite. Pro-choice readers, buy this book!! I

Rigorous Scientfic Defence of Reproductive Choice

This book is one of the classics of the modern pro-choice movement, and ranks alongside Petchesky's socialist-humanist philosophical defence of reproductive freedom, and Beverly Harrison's pro-choice theological dissection of anti-abortion moral and theological premises. Trefil and Morowitz argue that anti-abortionists are seriously scientifically flawed in their argument that prenatal development is autonomous and independent from women's bodies and social context, and do so in a rigorous manner. This book is a must-have for any informed pro-choice reader, although no amount of critical scientific detail can convince the neo-Aristotleans of the anti-abortion movement.