This article reviews two recent works on the family, Michael W. Austin's 'Conceptions of Parenthood: Ethics and the Family', and Brenda Almond's 'The Fragmenting Family'. The first examines several alternative conceptions of parenthood, ultimately arguing for an umbrella notion of "stewardship," where genetic connections are neither necessary nor sufficient for parenthood. Almond instead argues for the importance of genetic relationships, decrying contemporary institutions and practices that she sees as undermining or weakening them. These include contraception, working mothers, daycare, divorce, and gay parenting. Her ideal is the 50s family with working husbands, with women at home caring for their genetic children. Yet, the social conditions that led to such families have disappeared, for better and for worse.

Hormonal emergency contraception (EC) is engendering fierce moral disagreement that is bleeding over into politics and policy. This paper considers Catholic positions on this issue, as they are the fullest and best developed. Its most extreme opponents, such as representatives of the Vatican, hold that EC is an abortifacient that should be banned. Moderates like Sulmasy believe that it should be available to women who have been raped when a negative pregnancy test suggests that fertilization has not yet taken place, and liberals, like Catholics for Free Choice, believe that it should be available to all women regardless of its mode of action. These positions depend in part on underlying philosophical presuppositions about when valuable life begins and scientific assumptions about how EC works. I argue that there are good reasons for rejecting the criterion of fertilization, and that the best current evidence strongly suggests that EC has no post-fertilization effects. These points by themselves undermine key objections to EC. I also show that none of the remaining considerations are sufficiently compelling to warrant overriding women's right to exercise religious, moral, and political agency in preventing undesired pregnancies.

The Religious Right movement maintains that only sexual activity open to reproduction is morally acceptable, and that violating this imperative violates God's will. Religious progressives and secular humanists deny these positions, arguing instead that the moral quality of sex is determined by how its participants treat each other. However, religious progressives (but not secular humanists) continue to believe that religion has some authority in ethics. This paper shows why no such arguments are successful, and concludes that any compelling case against the Religious Right sexual ethic and in support of a humane one must be based in secular ethics.

The Religious Right is using every means to impose its restrictive view of sexual and reproductive rights on everyone under the umbrella of a so-called culture of life (CL). The CL prohibits the direct killing of innocents (but not, apparently, letting them die), and requires that all sexual activity be open to procreation, thus restricting access to abortion and contraception. All this is alleged to be based on God's will and to constitute the only objective morality. But there is no epistemological basis for this claim, the strictures are inconsistent, and the rules create unnecessary misery. Those most at risk from the sexual strictures are women, children, and gay men. The risks are greatly magnified in third world countries because of poverty and lack of access to even the most basic health care. Yet, the Bush administration is doing everything in its power to impose the CL on such countries by means of its foreign policy and aid programs.