Unborn

This challenging volume gathers a selection of the mass of material available from the major human rights instruments, from first drafts, legislative histories, and contemporary commentaries, from more recent scholarship as well as from the General Comments and Concluding Observations and Recommendations of the various treaty monitoring bodies relating to the topic of the unborn child. Contemporary reinterpretations of these documents are held up to the searchlight of historical context, including a reminder of the original purpose and meaning and the philosophical foundation of modern international human rights law.

A beautiful, pregnant woman... A handsome sleep research scientist... who falls in love with her. An incredibly sophisticated computer... who talks with... THE UNBORN "If there's going to be an occult bestseller this year, this is surely it! For 10 years I've been waiting for someone who really knows medicine to write an all-out, go-for-broke horror story and the waiting is finally over... I didn't put it down until I had turned the last page... literally wrung out and trembling." - Stephen King "THE UNBORN is marvelous... The best of its kind since ROSEMARY'S BABY." - Mary Higgins Clark

In 1633, at age eleven, Bankei Yotaku was banished from his family's home because of his consuming engagement with the Confucian texts that all schoolboys were required to copy and recite. Using a hut in the nearby hills, he wrote the word Shugyo-an, or "practice hermitage," on a plank of wood, propped it up beside the entrance, and settled down to devote himself to his own clarification of "bright virtue." He finally turned to Zen and, after fourteen years of incredible hardship, achieved a decisive enlightenment, whereupon the Rinzai priest traveled unceasingly to the temples and monasteries of Japan, sharing what he'd learned. "What I teach in these talks of mine is the Unborn Buddha-mind of illuminative wisdom, nothing else. Everyone is endowed with this Buddha-mind, only they don't know it." Casting aside the traditional aristocratic style of his contemporaries, he offered his teachings in the common language of the people. His style recalls the genius and simplicity of the great Chinese Zen masters of the T'ang dynasty. This revised and expanded edition contains many talks and dialogues not included in the original 1984 volume.

INTRODUCTION: FETAL STORIES; 1. Discovering Fetal Life, 1870s-1920s; 2. Interpreting Fetal Bodies, 1930s-1970s; 3. Defining Fetal Personhood, 1973-1976; 4. Defending Fetal Rights: 1970s-1990s; 5. Debating Fetal Pain, 1984-2007; EPILOGUE: FETAL MEANINGS; NOTES; BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Human embryos and foetuses are highly public and contested figures. Their visual images appear across a wide range of forums. They have become commercial commodities as part of the IVF industry and are the focus of intense debates regarding concepts of personhood. This book discusses these issues, drawing on social and cultural theory and research.

It is Christmas in New York when a baby is born. Named Christina Elizabeth by her parents, the baby's Essence-her life force and caretaker of her soul-feels the glorious ecstasy of belonging, knowing wholeness, and oneness with its human being now home. Meanwhile, in the same hospital precinct, a baby boy is born. Although he is safe and warm, he will sadly not know the same type of security or peaceful existence, for the boy is unwittingly involved in a tug of war-destined to be hurt and cursed by an Unborn Essence who has attached himself to the baby, determined to use his powers on an unsuspecting mind. Unfortunately as Jonathon Daniel grows older, he creates complete havoc around himself, perplexing his parents and his doctors. But what he does not know is that Christina has begun to dream about him, convinced there is something special about him. Now only time will tell if the two humans will fall in love, with help from several Essences-while the Unborn Essence watches with interest and malice. Unborn Essence shares a fantastical journey into the subconscious and spiritual that opens the mind to new possibilities as Essences work to unite souls on Earth and Unborn Essences seek to destroy them.