Best Selling Books by Jessica Buchanan

A harrowing and heart-wrenching memoir of humanitarian aid worker Buchanan''s kidnapping by Somali land pirates, her three months in captivity, her rescue by the Navy SEALs, and her husband''s extraordinary efforts to help bring her home.

The Lives of Others: Discover the Hidden Lives of Some of Our Favorite Atria Authors Socrates boldly proclaimed “the unexamined life is not worth living.” At Atria, we think that the examined life is worth sharing. With that in mind, we present The Lives of Others, a free collection of excerpts from some inspiring memoirs by Atria’s award-winning authors. Selections include: Badluck Way by Bryce Andrews Impossible Odds by Jessica Buchanan There’s More to Life Than This by Theresa Caputo Bird of Paradise by Raquel Cepeda The Girl by Samantha Geimer The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande Fields of Grace by Hannah Luce What If . . . by Shirley MacLaine Out with It by Katherine Preston By Some Miracle I Made it Out of There by Tom Sizemore

In 2011, while on a routine mission for her organization in Somalia, Jessica Buchanan made one seemingly small decision that would change the trajectory of her life. She ignored her intuition, and by doing so, silenced her voice. As a result, she spent ninety-three days as a hostage to pirates who demanded 45 million dollars for her freedom. On January 25, 2012, Jessica was successfully rescued by SEAL Team Six. While Jessica''s story is unique, her practice of self-abandonment is not. She has spent the last decade learning how to repair her relationship with her intuition, and through the hard work of reclaiming her voice, Jessica has continued to climb her way out of the desert of self-abandonment to the mountaintop of self-love. Deserts to Mountaintops, birthed from Jessica''s healing journey, is an anthology of twenty-two women''s unique accounts of their own desert to mountaintop experiences. Empowering stories of survival, tenacity, and resilience highlight these women''s incredible ability to finally choose themselves. By reclaiming their voice, they show us how to stand in our own infinite power, reminding us why we are here, what we can do, and who we can become.

This thesis frames the abortion debate by dividing the pro-life position into two premises: that the government must protect human beings’ right to life, and that an unborn human organism is a human being. It briefly describes the proposition that the unborn are moral persons. It then proceeds to examine philosophical, legal, and practical objections to the first premise, concluding that if the unborn are established as human beings, the government must uphold their right to life. While this thesis is intended to argue in favor of restricting elective abortion, it does not put forth an opinion on what should be considered an elective abortion or how restrictions should be enforced. Abortion’s moral status is not subjective; the government can and should legislate it. An unborn human being has the right to live in dependence on its mother, and abortion is not justified by the right to bodily autonomy or self-defense. The Roe v. Wade opinion provided weak support for a constitutional right to abortion. The Court has recognized its insufficient reasoning, and the case is no longer controlling law. Prohibiting abortion does not confer an affirmative duty to aid beyond the bounds of what is appropriate in law. While abortion is treated as a cultural panacea, its societal benefits are vastly overstated. Any positive impact of abortion cannot overcome the government’s duty to protect human rights. Like slavery, abortion is an unsalvageable institution that must end.