Immovable Laws, Irresistible Rights

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Same-sex partnerships. Pregnancy through in vitro fertilization. Ending one's own life in dignity. All are deemed inherently wrong by the standards of natural law ethics, but for many people they represent legitimate life choices that are morally right. Now a leading feminist critic of the natural law tradition explores the ongoing confrontation between natural law and moral rights to argue that rights constitute a more solid grounding for ethics in human affairs - and for feminist thought. In this volume, Christine Pierce's important essays - including the celebrated ""Natural Law Language and Women"" - expand, reflect, and refine this central controversy. Reaching back to Aristotle and Aquinas and drawing on modern papal encyclicals and Supreme Court cases, Pierce demonstrates that the natural law tradition, with its doctrine of a supposed hierarchy of natural purpose, has served to mystify women's nature and thereby justify restricting women to a predetermined social stratum. Addressing issues that concern not only feminism but legal theory as well, she defends her views on equality and universalization against a growing postmodern critique and presents rights theory as an alter

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