Defending Life

Cambridge University Press has posted the frontmatter (acknowledgments, table of contents, introduction) and part of chapter 1 from Frank Beckwith's forthcoming book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice. If you can handle an intellectual workout and you're a defender of protecting the unborn, you need to read this book. And if you aren't--well, you also should read this book! Here's the publisher's description:

Defending Life is arguably the most comprehensive defense of the pro-life position on abortion – morally, legally, and politically — that has ever been published in an academic monograph. It offers a detailed and critical analysis of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood as well as arguments by those who defend a Rawlsian case for abortion choice, such as J. J. Thomson. The author defends the substance view of persons as the view with the most explanatory power. The substance view entails that the unborn is a subject of moral rights from conception. While defending this view, the author responds to the arguments of thinkers such as Boonin, Dworkin, Stretton, Ford, and Brody. He also critiques Thomson’s famous violinist argument and its revisions by Boonin and McDonagh. Defending Life includes chapters critiquing arguments found in popular politics and the controversy over cloning and stem cell research.