Rita J. Simon

Abortion is one of the most compelling public policy issues facing government and the public in the United States today. Most societies have enacted laws and statutes regarding abortion, and most societies have strong feelings regarding birth control and abortion. But the legal statutes and attitudes follow markedly different approaches. Simon examines how this issue is being faced in the United States, Canada, a sample of Western and Eastern European countries, Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American societies, and, among Asian countries, Japan, China, and India, along with Australia. After a brief historical introduction, Simon examines the legal statutes pertaining to abortion in the selected countries and then reviews public attitudes toward abortion based on responses to national public opinion polls. She concludes by discussing the relationships between the laws and statutes pertaining to abortion and the nations' policies vis-^D`a-vis population growth and control. Abortion is the first volume in a series that will examine major public policy issues using an explicitly comparative approach. Each will serve as a handbook for students, researchers, and scholars, containing basic empirical data and comprehensive references on the social issue or practice under examination.

Abortion is one of the most compelling public policy issues facing government and the public in the United States today. Most societies have enacted laws and statutes regarding abortion, and most societies have strong feelings regarding birth control and abortion. But the legal statutes and attitudes follow markedly different approaches. Simon examines how this issue is being faced in the United States, Canada, a sample of Western and Eastern European countries, Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American societies, and, among Asian countries, Japan, China, and India, along with Australia.After a brief historical introduction, Simon examines the legal statutes pertaining to abortion in the selected countries and then reviews public attitudes toward abortion based on responses to national public opinion polls. She concludes by discussing the relationships between the laws and statutes pertaining to abortion and the nations' policies vis-^D`a-vis population growth and control. Abortion is the first volume in a series that will examine major public policy issues using an explicitly comparative approach. Each will serve as a handbook for students, researchers, and scholars, containing basic empirical data and comprehensive references on the social issue or practice under examination.

Thirty years after it was first published, the issues raised in The Jury and the Defense of Insanity remain pertinent. Rita James Simon examines how motivated and competent juries are, how well jurors understand and follow judges' instructions, their understand-ing of expert testimony, and the extent to which their own backgrounds and experiences influence their decisions. Simon provides a rare opportunity to observe how jurors go about the process of deliberating and reaching a verdict by following them into the jury room and recording their deliberations. This pathbreaking study of jury room behavior provides compelling evidence of the effectiveness of our trial by jury system.The Jury and the Defense of Insanity was the product of an experimental study con-ducted as part of the University of Chicago Jury Project. Over 1,000 jurors were chosen to participate, not as volunteers, but as part of their regular jury duty, in two experimental trials, one on a charge of housebreaking, the other of incest. In each the insanity de-fense was raised. Court judges instructed the jurors to consider the recorded trials they were about to hear with all the care and seriousness they would give to a real criminal prosecution, and the taped recordings of their deliberations make it clear that they did just that. These recordings, along with responses to detailed questionnaires, yielded significant data, equally applicable to civil as to criminal cases. We learn their reactions to their fellow jurors; personal evaluations of the quality and effectiveness of delibera-tions; the degree to which religion, sex, social status, education, and like factors affect participation in and influence on the course of the deliberation; and the recounting of and reliance upon personal experience in seeking to reach a verdict, among other in-sights furnished by this study.This is an exact record—not a description or recollected account—of the struggle of a jury to weigh evidence and achieve a just verdict. For lawyers whose job it is to win civil and criminal cases, for behavioral scientists who study male and female reactions in their cultural environment to the circumstances that confront them, and to all who are interested in how people behave and why, in a dramatic, socially significant situation, this is a fascinating and revealing book.

The legal community traditionally has drawn unsystematically and at will on the findings of social science, sometimes with unfortunate results. The authors of this study explore this issue by focusing on the way the United States Supreme Court uses social science data in reaching its decisions. Concentrating on decisions involving abortion, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment, they show that the use of such data has increased over the last twenty years, but that the data's use by the court appears to hinge more on the judges' liberal, conservative, or long-held positions and the types of cases involved than on the objectivity or validity of the data. By offering insights into how data are used by the Supreme Court, the authors hope to show social scientists how to make their research more suitable for courtroom use and to show the legal community how such data can be used more effectively. The volume includes an overview of the kinds of research used, a list of cases in which such research was used, and a discussion of justices and how they voted on cases in which such data were used from 1972 to 1992.

From 1870 to 1900, over a half million Russian Jews came to the United States. Russian Jewish emigration had ceased by the 1920s due to the effects of the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Quota Acts, but a century later, Jews from the former Soviet Union began to emigrate in large numbers. This detailed account describes the motivations of Russian and Soviet Jews for leaving their homeland and their subsequent adjustments to life in the United States. Simon, a sociologist, provides insight into who these Jewish immigrants were and are, what they accomplished, and how they have been viewed.

This timely study analyzes the issue of adoptions that cross racial and national lines, and assesses their success and appropriateness. The book's centerpiece is a comprehensive long-term study of the transracial adoption conducted by Rita Simon and Howard Altstein, the result of twenty years of research and analysis. The authors discuss the case often made against transracial adoption and explain the laws that govern these adoptions.

Simon explores the diverse and changing roles of women over twenty-five years. Part I includes several chapters that examine the experiences and performances of women in various traditionally male-dominated professional roles: as scholars, attorneys, corrections officers, rabbis and ministers. Part II deals with immigrants and their roles as new American women. In Part III, Simon discusses the types of crimes women commit, how they are treated in the criminal justice system, women as political terrorists, and how the public regards famous women offenders. In conclusion, Simon looks at how women's changing social roles affect their personal lives and political views.

The Ambivalent Welcome describes how leading magazines and the New York Times covered and interpreted U.S. immigration policy, and public attitudes about the impact of immigrants on the American economy and social fabric. Rita J. Simon and Susan H. Alexander examine print media coverage of immigration issues from 1880, the onset of the new immigration, to the present, and find that most magazines, like most Americans, have vehemently opposed new immigrants.Part One begins with a chapter providing statistics on the number of immigrants and refugees by country of origin from 1810 to 1990, and estimates of the number of illegals who have entered the United States. Chapter 2 discusses U.S. immigration acts and summarizes the major political party platforms on immigration from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. Results of all national poll data regarding immigrants and refugees since the availability of such data (1930s) are reported in Chapter 3. Part Two discusses in detail particular magazines, including North American Review, Saturday Evening Post, Literary Digest, Harper's, Scribner's, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, Christian Century, Commentary, Commonweal, Reader's Digest, Time, Life, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, and the editorials of the New York Times. Following a summary chapter, Appendix A provides a profile of each of the magazines, including the date of its founding, its editors and publishers, circulation, characteristics of its readers, and an assessment of its influence on immigration. Appendix B describes the major American anti-immigration movements.

Adoption, Race, and Identity examines the innovative placement of nonwhite (predominantly black) adoptees with white parents. In addition to reviewing recent court decisions involving race as a factor in child custody, authors Rita Simon and Howard Altstein examine the research to date on this topic, including adoption policy and practice as carried out by some adoption agencies. Although there are a few anecdotal portraits of typical situations, the work is almost exclusively devoted to actual responses to questions about the experiences of these families based on a longitudinal study that began in 1971. The authors conclude that the majority of families and their adopted children are well integrated into society and that the adoptees now, as adolescents, do not see themselves as any less black than their in-racially raised peers.Chapters 1 and 2 examine the historical and legal background of transracial adoption. The authors discuss numbers and trends, founding social movements, agency practices, and the legal status of transracial adoption over the past forty years. They present the arguments by the National Association of Black Social Workers against the practice, and responses offered by various adoption networks. Chapter 3 details the authors' research method for the study of families and their transracial adoptees, and integrates a review of the research literature. The following chapter provides demographic and social psychological data on the 200 families involved in the study, and examines their stated reasons for adopting. Chapters 5 and 6 evaluate the responses to the study by parents and by adoptees and their siblings. Chapter 7 reviews the families' experiences from both the parents' and children's perspectives, and Chapters 8 and 9 discuss problem families and ordinary families, respectively. The work closes with an examination of alternative forms of child placement, a discussion of social policy, and suggestions for future research and practice. This study will prove valuable to social workers, adoption agencies, and scholars and practitioners in related fields.

This work is a survey of the efforts through which women have changed their place in American society from the nation's founding to the present. Examining the historical struggle for suffrage, legal and property rights, and rights in the work place, the authors show how these experiences have shaped a contemporary movement for economic, political, and social equality that has become increasingly independent and less and less likely to place women's issues second to other national concerns.The authors recount a history of women activists who repeatedly set aside their own issues in favor of others that seemed more pressing--from abolition and preserving the Union, to labor solidarity in the 1920s, and civil rights and the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. Male domination of these movements and a lack of support for women's issues have been major factors in creating the contemporary feminist philosophy of going it alone. The book is divided into three topical sections, each of which offers a historical analysis and draws on a variety of sources such as legal statutes and judicial decisions, demographic information, public opinion polls, and biographies and other narrative accounts. It is a richly documented resource for courses and research in women's studies, sociology, politics, and U.S. legal and political history.

This work is a survey of the efforts through which women have changed their place in American society from the nation's founding to the present. Examining the historical struggle for suffrage, legal and property rights, and rights in the work place, the authors show how these experiences have shaped a contemporary movement for economic, political, and social equality that has become increasingly independent and less and less likely to place women's issues second to other national concerns.The authors recount a history of women activists who repeatedly set aside their own issues in favor of others that seemed more pressing--from abolition and preserving the Union, to labor solidarity in the 1920s, and civil rights and the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. Male domination of these movements and a lack of support for women's issues have been major factors in creating the contemporary feminist philosophy of going it alone. The book is divided into three topical sections, each of which offers a historical analysis and draws on a variety of sources such as legal statutes and judicial decisions, demographic information, public opinion polls, and biographies and other narrative accounts. It is a richly documented resource for courses and research in women's studies, sociology, politics, and U.S. legal and political history.

Howard Altstein and Rita Simon are the editors of this volume which describes the experiences of foreign born adoptees and their families. Countries discussed include the United States, Canada, Norway, West Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Israel. Agency sponsored intercountry adoption (ICA) first began with the end of World War II when European orphans were adopted by American families. This book provides a brief history of intercountry adoption; specifies the rules and procedures employed in the various countries; and evaluates the pros and cons and successes and failures in the seven nations.For each country the book provides information on the number of transracial and intercountry adoptions since the end of World War II (or 1960). It discusses each country's formal statutes on transracial and intercountry adoption, and describes the organizations and/or social movements advocating such adoptions as well as those opposing them. The editors conclude with a summary, drawn from the case studies, which assesses the successes and failures of the adoption policies and experiences. Compiled by leading scholars in the adoption field, this volume is designed for use by social workers, adoption agencies, sociologists, and psychologists.

No area of criminal law has been the subject of more controversy than the insanity defense. The Insanity Defense is a clear assessment of this issue as it exists in the 1980s. It provides the reader with a basis for understanding and evaluating the legislative and judicial responses to the factors that have stirred this controversy. Because extremely complex issues are involved in the effort to formulate an insanity defense, Simon and Aaronson begin with a detailed historical overview. They discuss the necessity of expert witnesses in the actual trial and probe into the jury's role and responsibility. The authors describe the various movements that have been used to abolish the insanity defense, as well as assess the use and interpretation of the defense in other nations.

Transracial adoption is a controversial area of research and practice in child welfare. The authors, a sociologist and a social worker, have contributed much to its understanding through a series of studies that began in 1972 of white families that have adopted nonwhite (mostly black) children. This book reports on the latest phase of their research, which was based on interviews with most of the families and adoptees in the original sample. The purpose of the interviews was to explore the adoptees' racial identities and self-esteem, and the long-term effects of transracial adoption on the adoptees and their families. The authors present their findings in a clear, vivid, and coherent manner; objectively examine the issues raised by the study; and thoughtfully formulate implications for policy and practice. The study supports their major conclusion that `where no appropriate permanent inracial placement can be found for a non-white child . . . transracial adoption should be seriously considered.' A timely, unique, and sophisticated work that should be read widely by students, practitioners, and policymakers in child welfare. ChoiceReporting on the third phase of a 14-year study of transracial adoption, this volume focuses on the adoption of non-white children by white families. It includes personal interviews with 96 mothers and fathers and 218 children which help to answer questions about the long-term effects of transracial adoption on the adoptees' mental and emotional health and their racial identities. These valuable empirical data are combined with discussions of the practices of adoption agencies, recent court rulings, and alternative forms of adoption.