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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 for as little as £10 a year.
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
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