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Scarlet A

The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Ordinary Abortion

by Katie Watson

Narrator Coleen Marlo

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Length 7 hours 39 minutes

Language English

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Summary
About the author
About the narrator

Although Roe v. Wade identified abortion as a constitutional right forty-five years ago, it still bears stigma—a proverbial scarlet A. Millions of Americans have participated in or benefited from an abortion, but few want to reveal that they have done so. Approximately one in five pregnancies in the U.S. ends in abortion. Why is something so common, which has been legal so long, still a source of shame and secrecy? Why is it so regularly debated by politicians, and so seldom divulged from friend to friend?

In public discussion, both proponents and opponents of abortion's legality tend to focus on extraordinary cases. This tendency keeps the national debate polarized and contentious, and keeps our focus on the cases that occur the least. Professor Katie Watson focuses instead on the cases that happen the most, which she calls "ordinary abortion." Scarlet A gives the reflective listener a more accurate impression of what the majority of American abortion practice really looks like. It explains how our silence around private experience has distorted public opinion, and how including both ordinary abortion and abortion ethics could make our public exchanges more fruitful.

Politics & Economy Science & Technology Health Nonfiction Social Science Medicine

Katie Watson is an award-winning professor who has taught bioethics, medical humanities, and constitutional law for fifteen years at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. She has been elected a Board member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Chair of the Ethics Committee and Board member of the National Abortion Federation, and Bioethics Advisor to and Member of the National Medical Council of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 2017, she began practicing law again, and she now splits her time between Northwestern and the ACLU of Illinois, where she is Senior Counsel for the Women's and Reproductive Rights Project.

Coleen Marlo is an accomplished actor and multi-award-winning audiobook voice artist and producer. In 2010 she was named Audiobook Narrator of the Year by Publishers Weekly, and she won the Audie Award for Literary Fiction in 2011. During her distinguished career, she has been nominated twice for Audie Awards by the Audio Publishers Association, has won numerous Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, and has been an AudioFile Earphones Award winner. Additionally, she has been honored with many starred audio reviews by Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Coleen is a member of the prestigious Actors Studio and taught acting for ten years at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Furthermore, she is a proud founding member of Deyan Institute of Voice Artistry and Technology. Coleen can be found on the Web at coleenmarlo.blogspot.com and on Facebook at ColeenMarloAudiobook.