This is a true story that you will embrace with your heart and intellect. Get ready to go into the prison cell of a biological father and son's journey of restoration and deliverance. This memoir will keep you on the edge of your seat. Expecting more insight of what will happen next in the lives of these two men that lived for four years and a half in prison, building their relationship, through very tumultuous, and scurrilous times that eventually turned into learning experiences in which promoted humility, peace, joy and a greater camaraderie amongst these two, father and son. Allow this compendium, to take you into a place of realization of the shortcomings in your own lives and the need to be persistent in obtaining better relationships and more understanding about one another.

Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary was abandoned for more than twenty years after closing its doors in 1971. Perrott's photographs capture the spirit of this awesome building in haunting black and white.

She went from being ABANDONED, to saving abandoned babies. Poignant, brutally honest and triumphant; Blessed to Have Been Abandoned is the true story of Monica Kelsey, the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes. Follow Monica's story as she discovers the secrets of her painful beginnings, the painful journey of her birth mother, wrestling with being abandoned as an infant, yet being given the gift of an amazing forever family. Watch as Monica's personal struggle births the vision for a national organization that is saving the lives of abandoned infants across the United States. A heart wrenching yet ultimately victorious story, Blessed to Have Been Abandoned will take you through the pain, struggle, valleys and mountain tops of Monica's life, all of these pointing to the amazing hand of God. A testimony to God's faithfulness and His plan and purpose, this book will encourage your own heart and help you find purpose through pain and we trust it will bring Glory to God, the Author of each one of our complicated, messy and inspiring journeys. "Monica Kelsey's Blessed to Have Been Abandoned: The Story of the Baby Box Lady is an uplifting inspirational story of how one woman answered God's call on her life, transforming her difficult beginning into a mission to protect the most vulnerable among us in her home state and beyond. It's exactly the kind of story we need. Highly recommended!" -J.J. Hebert, #1 bestselling author

The story of the rise of prisons and development of prison systems in the United States has been studied extensively in scholarship, but the experiences of female inmates in these institutions have not received the same attention. Historically, women incarcerated in prison, jails, and reformatories accounted for a small number of inmates across the United States. Early on, they were often held in prisons alongside men and faced neglect, exploitation, and poor living conditions. Various attempts to reform them, ranging from moral instruction and education to domestic training, faced opposition at times from state officials, prison employees, and even male prison reformers. Due to the consistent small populations and relative neglect the women often faced, their experiences in prison have been understudied. This collection of essays seeks to recapture the perspective on women’s prison experience from a range of viewpoints. This edited collection will explore the challenges women faced as inmates, their efforts to exert agency or control over their lives and bodies, how issues of race and social class influenced experiences, and how their experiences differed from that of male inmates. Contributions extend from the early nineteenth century into the twenty-first century to provide an opportunity to examine change over time with regards to female imprisonment. Furthermore, the chapters examine numerous geographic regions, allowing for readers to analyze how place and environment shapes the inmate experience.

In the thirty-five years since China instituted its One-Child Policy, 120,000 children—mostly girls—have left China through international adoption, including 85,000 to the United States. It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. While there is some truth to this, it does not tell the full story—a story with deep personal resonance to Kay Ann Johnson, a China scholar and mother to an adopted Chinese daughter. Johnson spent years talking with the Chinese parents driven to relinquish their daughters during the brutal birth-planning campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, with China’s Hidden Children, she paints a startlingly different picture. The decision to give up a daughter, she shows, is not a facile one, but one almost always fraught with grief and dictated by fear. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country’s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese parents would have raised their daughters despite the cultural preference for sons. With clear understanding and compassion for the families, Johnson describes their desperate efforts to conceal the birth of second or third daughters from the authorities. As the Chinese government cracked down on those caught concealing an out-of-plan child, strategies for surrendering children changed—from arranging adoptions or sending them to live with rural family to secret placement at carefully chosen doorsteps and, finally, abandonment in public places. In the twenty-first century, China’s so-called abandoned children have increasingly become “stolen” children, as declining fertility rates have left the dwindling number of children available for adoption more vulnerable to child trafficking. In addition, government seizures of locally—but illegally—adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages. The image of the “unwanted daughter” remains commonplace in Western conceptions of China. With China’s Hidden Children, Johnson reveals the complex web of love, secrecy, and pain woven in the coerced decision to give one’s child up for adoption and the profound negative impact China’s birth-planning campaigns have on Chinese families.

Abandoned is an oral history of the Pro-Life movement, and a plea for protection of the innocent children threatened by abortion.