Susanne M. DeCrane is vice president mission integration, director of the Spiritual Care Department, and consulting ethicist of St. Joseph's Medical Center in Towson, Maryland.

• Introduction 1. Feminist Theological HermeneuticsTextual Hermeneutics: Sandra SchneidersA Feminist Ethic: Rosemary Radford RuetherAnthropology: Martha NussbaumA Proposed Feminist Hermeneutical Method 2. The Common Good in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas3. A Feminist Retrieval of the Principle of the Common GoodExperience, and the Experience of WomenAnthropologyHistorical Consequences and EmbodimentAquinas and the Common GoodThe Individual Good and the Retrieved Principle of the Common GoodJustice and the Common Good 4. Health Care in the United States and the Retrieved Principle of the Common GoodThe Changed Reality of Health Care in the United StatesU.S. Attitudes Toward Death and TreatmentHealth Care and the Common GoodSocial Values in the United StatesUS Health Care TodayWomen and Health Care in the United StatesBlack Women and Breast CancerThe Functioning of the Retrieved Principle of the Common GoodConclusion Afterword Notes

"DeCrane offers an impressive feminist ethics of the common good. Her foundations are laid carefully and her scholarship is precise. The result is a feminist hermeneutic with broad value for theological ethics, especially in a time when justice and rights must be debated cross-culturally, and human suffering hangs in the balance." - Lisa Sowle Cahill, J. Donald Monan, S.J., Professor of Theology, Boston College; "It is a pleasure to read a text which so succinctly reviews major hermeneutical positions and so clearly and carefully elucidates and critiques the Aristotelian/Thomistic understanding of the common good. Susanne DeCrane's work is an advance in feminist ethics and a superb example of a feminist methodology. DeCrane critiques and retrieves the tradition not merely for the sake of argument; in her study of the fatal effects of the exclusion of black women from the common good of adequate health care, she underlines the importance of the principle of the common good and its intrinsic connection with just policies." - Patricia Walter, associate professor of systematic theology, Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis, Missouri; "The feminist hermeneutical method creatively used to interpret the principle of the common good in the thought of Thomas Aquinas is illuminating. It has important, practical implications for health care in the U.S." - Patricia Lamoureux, professor of moral theology, St. Mary's Seminary & University, Baltimore; "Susanne M. DeCrane's generous, some may say overly generous, reading of Aquinas yields fruitful insights for promoting the common good. Useful applications to the unjust structures of U.S. health care demonstrate the promise of this approach for Christian ethics." - Mary E. Hunt, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual"