Dr Leslie Cannold

Dr Leslie Cannold is a bio-ethicist, researcher, writer, commentator and an Honorary Fellow at the School of Philosophy, Anthropology, & Social Inquiry (PASI) at the University of Melbourne, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender and Medicine at Monash University. Leslie is a member of the ethics panel of the Infertility Treatment Authority, the statutory authority responsible for administering Victoria's Infertility Treatment Act 1995, President of Reproductive Choice Australia, a national coalition of pro-choice individuals and organisations that in early 2006 played a key role in removing the effective ban on RU486 and Spokesperson for Pro Choice Vic, a coalition of organizations and individuals committed to achieving a change to Victoria's abortion laws that maximises the reproductive rights and freedoms, fosters the dignity and respects the moral agency of women and their partners. In 2008, Leslie was appointed to the Victorian Department of Human Services Human Research Ethics Committee and a member of the Physiotherapists Registration Board. Leslie is also a member of the National Playing Healthy Council, an advisory and strategic body offering guidance on issues to do with childhood obesity.

Leslie is the author of the award-winning The Abortion Myth:Feminism, morality and the hard choices women make and more recently What, No Baby: Why women are losing the freedom to mother, and how they can get it back (which made the Australian Financial Review's top 101 books list for 2005). She has been a regular guest over the years on ABC local radio and Radio National, and since the late 1980's her views have appeared in The Age (Melbourne), the Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald Sun (Melbourne), the Courier Mail (Brisbane) and the national broadsheet The Australian. She currently writes a weekly column called Moral Maze, which appears on Sunday in the Extra section of the Sun-Herald (Sydney). In 2005, Leslie was selected as one of Australia's top 20 public intellectuals.

She is in high demand as a public speaker on issues to do with life, work, gender and ethics to community groups, professional organisations and secondary students. Leslie is also the vocalist of the Melbourne-based rock cover band Skip Skipson and the Exploding Parents.

 Leslie to Speak about Work/Life Balance at the University Western Sydney Women's Network Seminar
7 Aug 2008

Professor Janice Reid, the UWS Vice Chancellor launched the UWS Women's Network in 2007 to provide opportunities for women staff and interested community members to meet , network, learn and develop their careers.

 Womb Watching While Rome Burns
29 Jun 2008

Climate change, soaring petrol and food prices, one in seven Australian children living in poverty and catastrophic levels of violence in some indigenous communities. These are just some current issues of national importance that most Australians would see as legitimate topics for debate.

 Hating Gays is a Choice, Not a Biblical Dictate
22 Jun 2008

Their strength is waning, but there is still a depressingly large number of powerful men in the west, spread across a range of denominations, spewing raw hate and naked prejudice at gay people. All in the name of Christ.

 Feel Good, Do Good - The Merry Makers
15 Jun 2008

OK, I admit it. I cry easily. My eldest's grade 6 graduation ceremony provoked a flood. Even k.d. lang's version of Hallelujah can do it. When the face of the little fella in the Worksafe Victoria ad lights up because his Dad is safe and home, I break down in sobs.

 The Bill Henson Affair: Shame on Adults for Paranoia over Adolescence
1 Jun 2008

For a friend of mine, adolescence was no time of innocence. It was the worst and most confusing time of her life; made all the worse by the insistence of the adults she knew that the pain would be useful later.

 We Thirst for Justice, but Beware the Unforgiven
25 May 2008

What is unforgiveable? Are there some acts that cross the moral line in the sand dividing the venal from the inescapably evil? Are there some things, and some people, we cannot forgive?

 Why Parental Leave is a Moral Issue
18 May 2008

The government has ordered yet another inquiry into a paid leave scheme for working Australian parents. This one, by the Productivity Commission, follows two similar ones by HREOC and a Senate Committee in 2002. What is left to examine, for heaven's sake! It's a leave scheme, not the first signs of life on Mars.

 What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us All
11 May 2008

What does independent research, shield laws and whistleblower legislation have in common, and why should we give a rats?

 The Dubious Morality of Women
4 May 2008

My speciality area of ethics is reproductive technologies. What this means is that I spend much of my working life face-to-face with the suspicions that religious men, political leaders and journalists have about female morality.

 At 50, the Material Girl is Not to be Pitied
27 Apr 2008

Madonna turns 50 this year. Like every wheeze and fart in the entertainer's life, this one is attracting comment. From some, it sounds like this. "50? She looks 30! If she really was a taboo-breaker, she wouldn't have smooth skin and pert breasts. She'd be strutting her stuff on the cover of Vanity Fair with a wrinkled décolletage and baggy arms hanging out."

 There is an art to breaking bad news to children
20 Apr 2008

Last year, a girl at my son's school primary school - let's call her Susan - had a headache. The next day she collapsed and since then has been in a wheelchair from spinal damage caused by a benign tumour.

 We May Yet Avoid Frying from Global Warming
13 Apr 2008

You may not have heard of it, but my guess is, you will soon. Climate engineering-or global climate control-may soon be a fact of life.

 Leslie quoted in Sydney Morning Herald review of Susan Faludi's new book The Terror Dream
12 Apr 2008
 Cash is Always the Currency of Love's Labours Lost
6 Apr 2008

It's always about the money. Or is it?

 Leslie quoted in The Australian's discussion of a new crop of novels about deviant mothers
5 Apr 2008
 The Australian Pro-Choice Movement and the Struggle for Legal Clarity, Liberal Laws and Liberal Access: Two Case Studies
30 Dec 2007

In this chapter, written with Cait Calcutt (p. 41-70), Leslie analyses, and seeks to draw lessons for contemporary Australian pro-choice activists, of significant legislative changes to abortion laws in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in 1998. The chapter is part of a larger collection undertaken in phase one of the Johannesburg Initiative, an international project aimed at building capacity amongst pro-choice advocates.

 Declining Marriage Rates and Gender Inequity in Social Institutions: Towards an Adequately Complex Explanation for Childlessness
4 Dec 2007

A recent newspaper report pitted McDonald's and Birrell's explanations for Australia's below-replacement fertility against each other. In this article, Cannold presents data from qualitative research into the experience and understandings of 35 childless women aged 28 to 42.

What, no baby? What, No Baby? takes us on journey into the lives of contemporary women who plan to have it all - marriage, motherhood and work - yet have been derailed by reluctant men, insatiably demanding jobs and ever-climbing expectations of what it takes to be a "good" mother.
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The Abortion Myth book cover The Abortion Myth forges a new women-centred abortion ethic capable of preserving a woman's right to control her body and her freedom to choose or reject motherhood.
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