---
title: "Who controls our bodies? The autumn 2021 New Humanist"
date: "2021-08-19T10:17:46+01:00"
modified: "2021-08-19T10:17:46+01:00"
url: "https://newhumanist.org.uk/2021/08/19/who-controls-our-bodies-the-autumn-2021-new-humanist/"
post_id: 7200
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Who controls our bodies? The autumn 2021 New Humanist

***![2108-01-Cover](https://newhumanist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/2108-01-Cover.jpg)***

***The autumn 2021 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! [Subscribe here](/subscribe) for as little as £10 a year.***

Who controls our bodies?
========================

**Hard labour**

The risks of childbirth must be managed, but amid competing pressures, women are being denied a voice, as **Zoe Holman** discovers.

> Medical professionals and rights campaigners in wealthier nations are increasingly highlighting the obstetric violence – neglect, physical abuse or lack of respect – that too often accompanies medicalised interventions in birth.

**Adult enterprise**

A crackdown on websites used by sex workers is counter-productive and dangerous, writes **Ray Filar**.

> With the freedom to set up and market their own profiles, workers are better able to advertise independently of third parties like managers and bosses. It also makes working casually – around school hours or a disability – more possible.

**A good death**

**Jem Bartholomew** follows one woman’s fight for a dignified death. Her struggle shows why pressure is mounting to legalise assisted suicide.

> Medical professionals are now much more conservative with painkiller dosage. Some people die in immense pain, drawn out for days. “We treat dogs better,” one bereaved husband told me.

**Rewiring the brain**

Electroconvulsive therapy is working wonders for severe depression. **Alex Riley** shows why it’s time that the treatment loses its stigma.

> Morally, economically and scientifically, ECT shouldn’t be pushed into the fringes of psychiatry. It should be used as part of a standardised regimen of treatment, one that includes regular psychotherapy and antidepressants. Doing otherwise, Kellner says, is tantamount to medical malpractice.

**Q&A**

**J.P. O’Malley** talks to novelist and writer **Jonathan Franzen** about family, shame, and his controversial essay on the climate crisis.

> …because I have that privilege, I try and tell the truth about things that more cautious people might fear to weigh in on. Like the climate situation. I have nothing to lose. I write my novels, and people read them. So if the entire climate community in the US is angry at me for this essay, it doesn’t change my life at all.

***The autumn 2021 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! [Subscribe here](/subscribe) for as little as £10 a year.***

***![batley](https://newhumanist.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/batley.jpg "Protesters at Batley Grammar School, demanding the dismissal of a teacher for showing a controversial cartoon")***

### Also in this issue:

- **Samira Ahmed** on why we need statues
- Following the Batley Grammar case, **Emma Park** makes the argument for free speech in the classroom
- **Alice Bell** on the long history of links between colonialism and climate change
- As Bangladesh turns 50, **Joseph Allchin** asks what happened to the country’s founding principles of secularism
- Arthur Schopenhauer was a pessimist, but **Tom Whyman** says he offers succour for our time
- **James Robins** watches “Cruella” and asks why every baddie needs a backstory these days
- Why do people fast? Atheist **J.R. Patterson** decided to join Ramadan and find out for himself
- **Kaya Genç** surveys the life and work of Paul B. Preciado and his controversial “auto-theories”
- PLUS: Columns from **Michael Rosen**, **Laurie Taylor** and **Marcus Chown**, book reviews, the latest developments in biology, chemistry and physics; cryptic crossword and **Chris Maslanka**‘s quiz

*New Humanist is published four times a year by the Rationalist Association, a charity founded in 1885. Our journalism is fiercely independent and supported entirely by our readers. To make a deeper commitment, why not [donate to the Rationalist Association](https://www.justgiving.com/rationalistassociation)?*