The ABC TV series The Bionic Woman, created by Kenneth Johnson, was a 1970s pop culture phenomenon. Starring Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, the groundbreaking series follows Jaime's evolution from a young woman vulnerable to an exploitative social order, to a fierce individualist defying a government that sees her as property. Beneath the action-packed surface of Jaime's battles with Fembots, themes such as the chosen family, technophobia, class passing, the cyborg, artificial beings, and a growing racial consciousness receive a sophisticated treatment. This book links the series to precedents such as classical mythology, first-wave feminist literature, and the Hollywood woman's film, to place The Bionic Woman in a tradition of feminist ethics deeply concerned with female autonomy, community, and the rights of nonhuman animals. Seen through the lens of feminist philosophy and gender studies, Jaime's constantly changing disguises, attempts to pass as human, and struggles to accept her new bionic abilities offer provocative engagement with issues of identity. Jaime Sommers is a feminist icon who continues to speak to women and queer audiences, and her struggles and triumphs resonate with a worldwide fanbase that still remains enthralled and represented by The Bionic Woman.

Drawing on postmodernist analyses, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries presents a feminist investigation into the marginalization of women within western discourse that denies female moral agency and embodiment. With reference to contemporary and historical issues in biomedicine, the book argues that the boundaries of both the subject and the body are no longer secure. The aim is both to valorise women and to suggest that 'leakiness' may be the very ground for a postmodern feminist ethic. The contribution made by Leaky Bodies and Boundaries is to go beyond modernist feminisms to radically displace the mechanisms by which women are devalued. The anxiety that postmodernism cannot yield an ethics, nor advance feminist concerns is addressed. This book will provide invaluable reading for those studying feminist philosophy, cultural studies and sociology.

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than reproduction. Feminism & Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction aims to counterbalance this one-sided approach. A breakthrough volume of original essays authored by leading figures in bioethics and feminist theory, it moves beyond reproduction and nursing, taking bioethics into new territory. The book starts with an investigation of the relationship between feminism and bioethics and introduces different approaches to the problem. Chapters stress the importance of liberal feminism which prefers feminist over feminine analysis, integrate the experience of women of color, draw from the women's self-help movement, and apply feminist standpoint theory. In the second part of the book, contributors view various bioethical problems from a feminist perspective: euthanasia, AIDS, the definition of health, doctor-patient communication, the Human Genome Project, the conduct of biomedical research, and health care reform. They examine the pros and cons of the application of gender and feminism to bioethics. This provocative volume is bound to change and broaden the way bioethicists, students, patients, and the public consider bioethical issues.

No other cluster of medical issues affects the genders as differently as those related to procreationcontraception, sterilization, abortion, artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and genetic screening. Rosemarie Tong s approach to feminist bioethics serves as a catalyst to bring together different feminist voices in hope of actually doing something to make gender equity a present reality rather than a mere future possibility."

Direct outcome of a meeting sponsored by the International Association of Bioethics in 1992--Preface.

The essays next look at abortion from a variety of angles. One contends that killing fetuses is not murder; others emphasize the moral importance of access to abortion. Purdy considers the conflicting interests of women and men regarding abortion, and argues against requiring a husband's consent. The book concludes with a consideration of new reproductive technologies and arrangements, including the controversial issue of surrogacy, or contract pregnancy. Throughout, Purdy combines traditional utilitarianism with some of the most powerful insights of contemporary feminist ethics. Her provocative essays create guidelines for approaching new topics and inspire fresh thinking about old ones.

Diprose argues that the usual approaches to ethics perpetuate the mechanisms that subordinate women, and argues for a new ethics of sexual difference which better locates the mechanisms of discrimination and the means to subvert them.