1. Tatalovich, Raymond and Daynes, Byron W., The Politics of Abortion: A Study of Community Conflict in Public Policy Making (New York, 1981),Google Scholar and Luker, Kristin, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley, 1984)Google Scholar, are particularly useful. See also Frobock, Fred M., Abortion: A Case Study in Law and Morals (Westport, CT, 1983)Google Scholar; Rodman, Hyman, Sarvis, Betty, and Bonar, Joy Walker, The Abortion Question (New York, 1987)Google Scholar, is a useful survey by three pro-choice supporters.

2. Thus Garraty's, JohnThe American Nation: A History of the United States, 5th ed. (New York, 1983), 765Google Scholar, notes that “abortion raised difficult legal and moral questions.” He discusses them briefly, then drops the subject. Bailyn, Bernard et al., The Great Republic: A History of the American People, 3d (Lexington, MA, 1985)Google Scholar, has scattered and passing references; Risjord, Norman K., America: A History of the United States (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985), 898Google Scholar, gives a brief and inaccurate account of the Roe v. Wade decision and discusses its impact in a line or two.

3. Tatalovich and Daynes, Politics, 42.

4. Callahan, Daniel, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Grisez, Germain, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities and the Arguments (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Burtchaell, James T., Rachel Weeping and Other Essays on Abortion (Kansas City, 1982)Google Scholar; Cohen, Marshall et al., eds., The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar; Callahan, Sidney and Callahan, Daniel, Abortion: Understanding Differences (New York, 1984).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Of use to all students of the subject are the annual volumes beginning with Abortion Bibliography for 1970 (Troy, NY, 1972)Google Scholar and continuing up to Abortion Bibliography for 1985 (Troy, NY, 1988).Google Scholar

5. Noonan, John, ed., The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, MA, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Connery, John, Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar; Gorman, Michael J., Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World (Downers Grove, IL, 1982)Google Scholar; Quay, Eugene, “Justifiable Abortion: Medical and Legal Foundations,” Georgetoum Law Journal 49:2–3 (Winter 1960–Spring 1961), 447–520Google Scholar; Huser, Roger, The Crime of Abortion in Canon Law (Washington, D.C., 1942)Google Scholar; Dellapenna, Joseph W., “The History of Abortion: Technology, Morality and Law,” University of Pittsburgh Law Review 40 (Spring 1979), 359–428.Google Scholar

6. Mohr, James C., Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy (New York, 1978), 160–70Google Scholar. See also Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “The Abortion Movement and the AMA, 1850–1880,” Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985), 217–44.Google Scholar

7. For a critical view from a pro-life perspective, see Dellapenna, Joseph, “Abortion and the Law,” in Horan, Dennis et al., eds., Abortion and the Constitution: Reversing Roe v. Wade Through the Courts (Washington, D.C., 1987), 137–58Google Scholar. For a very sharp dissent from a pro-choice perspective, see Kristin Luker, Abortion, 11–39, who rejects the view that a moral concern for the value of fetal life was an important consideration for doctors; she stresses instead their drive for professional power. Her dismissal of Mohr's view, and that of Carl Degler (see below, note 9), is not persuasive. For examples of the use of Mohr's work, see Tatalovich and Daynes, Politics, 16–23.

8. Means, Cyril, “The Law of New York Concerning Abortion and the Status of the Fetus, 1664–1968: A Case of Cessation of Constitutionality,” New York Law Forum 14:3 (1968), 441–515Google Scholar; Sauer, R., “Attitudes to Abortion in America, 1800–1973,” Population Studies 28:1 (1974), 53–67Google Scholar; Grossberg, Michael, Governing the Hearth (Chapel Hill and London, 1985).Google Scholar

9. Degler, Carl, “Abortion: Women's Last Resort,” in At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York, 1980), 227–48.Google Scholar

10. Luker, Abortion, 65. See also Mohr, James C., “The Historical Character of Abortion in the United States Through World War II,” in Sachdev, Paul, ed., Perspectives on Abortion (Metuchen, NJ, 1985), 3–14.Google Scholar

11. It is, says James Mohr, “not at all easy to explain”; Abortion in America, 256.

12. Merton, Andrew H., Enemies of Choice: The Right To Life Movement and Its Threat to Abortion (Boston, 1981), 57–58.Google Scholar

13. Jain, Sagar C. and Sending, Steven W., North Carolina Abortion Law, 1967: A Study in Legislative Process (Chapel Hill, NC, 1968)Google Scholar; Jain, Sagar C. and Hughes, Steven, California Abortion Act, 1967: A Study in Legislative Process (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969)Google Scholar; Jain, Sagar C. and Gooch, Laurel, Georgia Abortion Act, 1968: A Study in Legislative Process (Chapel Hill, NC, 1972)Google Scholar; Steinhoff, Patricia G. and Diamond, Milton, Abortion Politics: The Hawaii Experience (Honolulu, 1977)Google Scholar. Also informative is the account by a leading pro-choice activist: Lader, Lawrence, Abortion II: Making the Revolution (Boston, 1973)Google Scholar. Some information on Michigan in the late 1960s and early 1970s can be found in Davis, Nanette J., From Crime to Choice: The Transformation of Abortion in America (Westport, CT, 1985).Google Scholar

14. On the Washington referendum there is Fujita, Bryon N. and Wagner, Nathaniel N., “Referendum 20—Abortion Reform in Washington State,” in Osofsky, Howard J. and Osofsky, Jay D., eds., The Abortion Experience (New York, 1973), 232–61Google Scholar. For some coverage of developments in this period, see also Krason, Stephen M., Abortion: Politics, Morality and the Constitution (Lanham, MD, 1984).Google Scholar

15. Tatalovich and Daynes, Politics of Abortion, 61–62.

16. Luker, Abortion, 112–13. Even a book such as Sara Evans's Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York, 1979)Google Scholar casts little light on the subject; it contains five passing references to it.

17. Luker, Abortion, 117–18. Emphasis in the original.

18. Starr, Paul, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York, 1982), 391–93.Google Scholar

19. Judith Blake, “The Abortion Decisions: Judicial Review and Public Opinion,” in Edward Manier, William Liu, and David Solomon, eds., Abortion: New Directions for Policy Studies (Notre Dame, 1977), 51–82.

20. Mary Ann Lamanna, “Social Science and Ethical Issue: The Policy Implications of Poll Data on Abortion,” in Sidney Callahan and Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Understanding Differences, 1–23,8; Gillespie, Michael, Vergert, Elisabeth Ten, and Kingma, Johannes, “Secular Trends in Abortion Attitudes: 1975–1980–1985,” Journal of Psychology 122:4, (1988), 323–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh and C. Allen Haney, “Abortion Attitudes in the United States: Continuities and Discontinuities,” in Sachdev, ed., Perspectives, 163–77; Arney, William Ray and Trescher, William H., “Trends in Attitudes Toward Abortion, 1972–1975,” Family Planning Perspectives 8:3 (May/June 1976), 117–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Lamanna, “Social Science,” 9–10. See also Blake, Judith, “Negativism, Equivocation and Wobbly Assent: Public ‘Support’ for the Pro-choice Platforms on Abortion,” Demography 18:3 (August 1981), 309–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Supreme Court's Abortion Decision and Public Opinion in the United States,” Population and Development Review 3 (1977), 45–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Clearly for many, abortion was a logical extension of the birth-control movement. For others, however, it represented a new turn. While the literature on the history of birth control has little to say directly about abortion, it does provide us with an understanding of at least some of the psychological and institutional framework within which the abortion reform movement developed. See Kennedy, David M., Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven, 1970)Google Scholar; Reed, James, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. While all of these books touch on abortion, it is peripheral to their main focus.

The link between birth control and abortion is partly legal as well; the case of Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 saw state restrictions on contraceptive information cut down on grounds of a “right to privacy,” which became a central theme in Roe v. Wade. Those looking for evidence of discontinuity between the movements might note that it was not until 1969 that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America endorsed the removal of abortion from criminal law and its provisions as a regular medical service. New York Times, 31 October 1969, 17.

23. Judith Blake, “The Abortion Decisions,” 81.

24. For the correlates of abortion attitudes, see Blake, Judith and Pinal, Jorge H. Del, “Predicting Polar Attitudes Toward Abortion in the United States,” in Burtchaell, James T., ed., Abortion Parley (Kansas City, 1980), 27–56Google Scholar; Baker, Ross K., Epstein, Laurily K., and Forth, Rodney, “Matters of Life and Death: Social, Political and Religious Correlates of Attitudes on Abortion,” American Politics Quarterly 9:1 (January 1981), 89–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Legge, Jerome S., Jr., “The Determinants of Attitudes Toward Abortion in the American Electorate,” Western Political Quarterly 36:3 (1983), 479–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Krishna Singh and Peter Leahy, “Contextual and Ideological Dimensions of Attitudes Toward Discretionary Abortion,” Demography 15:3 (August 1978), 381–88; Harris, Richard J. and Mills, Edgar W.“Religion, Values and Attitudes Toward Abortion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 24:2 (June 1985), 137–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benin, Mary Holland, “Determinants of Opposition to Abortion,” Sociological Perspectives 28:2 (April 1985), 199–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Peterson, Larry and Mauss, Armand, “Religion and the ‘Right to Life’: Correlates of Opposition to Abortion,” Sociological Analysis 37 (1976), 243–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mclntosh, William, Alston, Letitia, and Alston, Jon, “The Differential Impact of Religious Preference and Church Attendance on Attitudes Toward Abortions,” Review of Religious Research 20:2 (Spring 1979), 195–213;Google Scholar; Williams, Dorie Giles, “Religion, Beliefs About Human Life and the Abortion Decision,” Review of Religious Research 24:1 (September 1982), 40–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rhodes, A. Lewis, “Religion and Opposition to Abortion Reconsidered,” Review of Religious Research 27:2 (December 1985), 158–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Szafran, Robert F. and Clagett, Arthur, “Variable Predictors of Attitudes Toward the Legalization of Abortion,” Social Indicators Research 20 (1988), 271–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hertel, Bradley R. and Hughes, Michael, “Religious Affiliation, Attendance and Support for ‘Pro-Family’ Issues in the United States,” Social Forces 65:3 (March 1987), 858–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. For the argument that abortion is a class issue, see Skerry, Peter, “The Class Conflict over Abortion,” The Public Interest 53 (Summer 1978), 69–84.Google Scholar

26. Tatalovich and Daynes discuss Skerry's thesis and find it plausible, Politics of Abortion, 123–29; Luker, Abortion, 194–97, talks of the class differences among abortion activists.

27. Blake, “Predicting Polar Attitudes,” 41–44, for example.

28. Rubin, Eva R., Abortion, Politics and the Courts: Roe v Wade and Its Aftermath (Westport, CT, 1982)Google Scholar; Noonan, John T., A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the Seventies (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Milbauer, Barbara, The Law Giveth: Legal Aspects of the Abortion Controversy (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Wardle, Lynn P. and Wood, Mary Anne Q., A Lawyer Looks at Abortion (Provo, UT, 1982)Google Scholar. There is also a chapter of legal analysis in Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Abortion and Women's Choice: The State, Sexuality and Reproductive Freedom (New York, 1984), 302–25Google Scholar. See also Garfield, Jay and Hennessey, Patricia, Abortion: Moral and Legal Perspectives (Amherst, MA, 1984).Google Scholar

29. Woodward, Bob and Armstrong, Scott, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (New York, 1979), 165–77Google Scholar; 182–89; 229–40.

30. Tatalovich and Daynes, Politics of Abortion; Jaffe, Frederick, Lindheim, Barbara, and Lee, Philip R., Abortion Politics: Private Morality and Public Policy (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, give a pro-choice account of the post-Roe controversy; Fimian, Charles, “The Effects of Religion on Abortion Policy-Making: A Study of Voting Behavior in the U.S. Congress, 1976–1980” (Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University, 1983)Google Scholar, is useful.

31. Jaffe et al., Abortion Politics; Rubin, Abortion: Politics and the Courts; Nolen, William, The Baby in the Bottle: An Investigative Review of the Edelin Case and Its Larger Meanings for the Controversy over Abortion Reform (New York, 1978)Google Scholar. For a study of one extreme manifestation of the abortion conflict, see David C. Nice, “Abortion Clinic Bombings as Political Violence,” American journal of Political Science 32:1 (1988), 178–85.

32. Luker, Abortion; Granberg, Donald, “Comparison of Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Activists: Their Values, Attitudes and Beliefs,” Population and Environment 5:2 (Spring 1982), 75–94Google Scholar; “The Abortion Activists” Family Planning Perspectives 13:4 (July/August 1981), 157–63; Donald Granberg and Donald Denney, “The Coathanger and the Rose,” Society (May/June 1982), 39–46; Falik, Marilyn, Ideology and Abortion Policy Politics (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. Granberg, Donald, “Pro-Life or Reflection of Conservative Ideology? An Analysis of Opposition to Legalized Abortion,” Sociology and Social Research 62:3 (April 1978), 414– 29Google Scholar, and “Family Size Preferences and Sexual Permissiveness as Factors Differentiating Abortion Activists,” Social Psychology Quarterly 45:1 (1982), 15–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that a conservative approach to personal morality, rather than a pro-life attitude, underlies right-to-life commitment. McCutcheon, Allan L., “Sexual Morality, Pro-Life Values and Attitudes Toward Abortion,” Sociological Methods and Research 16:2 (November 1987), 256–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds this an inadequate explanation. Jelen, Ted G., “Respect for Life, Sexual Morality and Opposition to Abortion,” Review of Religious Research 25:3 (March 1984), 220–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, found denominational differences, with Catholics opposed on pro-life grounds and fundamentalists opposed on grounds of sexual morality. In “Charges in the Attitudinal Correlations of Opposition to Abortion, 1977–1985,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 27:2 (1988), 211–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Jelen found a convergence by 1985 in the views of the two groups. Recruitment to abortion movements is examined in Staggenborg, Suzanne, “Life-Style Preferences and Social Movement Recruitment: Illustrations from the Abortion Conflict,” Social Science Quarterly 68:4 (1987), 779–97Google Scholar, and Himmelstein, Jerome, “The Social Basis of Antifeminism: Religious Networks and Culture,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25:1 (1986), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ginsburg, Faye, “The Baby Politic: The Defense of Sexual Restriction by Anti-Abortion Activists,” in Vance, Carole S., ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston, 1984), 173–88Google Scholar, and Conover, Pamela Johnston and Gray, Virginia, Feminism and the New Right: Conflict over the American Family (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. Other studies include Marksonr, Stephen L.“Normative Boundaries and Abortion Policy: The Politics of Morality,” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 2 (1982), 21–33Google Scholar; Fried, Amy, “Abortion Politics as Symbolic Politics: An Investigation into Belief Systems,” Social Science Quarterly 69:1 (1988), 137–54Google Scholar; Peter J. Leahy, David A. Snow, and Steven K. Worden, “The Antiabortion Movement and Symbolic Crusades: Reappraisal of a Popular Theory,” Alternative Lifestyles 6:1 (Fall 1983), 27–47; Faye Ginsburg, “Procreation Stories: Reproduction, Nurturance and Procreation in Life Narratives of Abortion Activists,” American Ethnologist 14:4 (1987), 623–36. Ginsburg, Conover, and Gray have theses compatible with Luker's, although less well researched and not as strongly argued.

33. Luker, Abortion, 193.

34. Falik, Ideology, 31–39.

35. Groups such as Feminists for Life (the existence of which she mentions on p. 113) are obviously difficult to fit into this thesis. Although they are relatively small, they play a prominent role in events such as the National Right to Life Committee's annual meetings. Sweet, Gail Grenier, ed., Pro-Life Feminism (Toronto, Ontario, and Lewiston, NY, 1985)Google Scholar, is a useful introduction to their thinking. My own interviews with several dozen pro-life leaders do not tend to lend much weight to Luker's thesis. Neitz, Mary Jo, “Family, State and God: Ideologies of the Right to Life Movement,” Sociological Analysis 42:3 (1981), 277–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also provide evidence of ideological diversity in the pro-life movement.

36. Merton, Enemies of Choice, and Paige, Connie, The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, Where They Get Their Money (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. For a devastating critique of Merton's book, see James Kelly, “Turning Liberals into Fascists: A Case Study of the Distortion of the Right-To-Life Movement,” Fidelity 6:8 (July/August 1987), 17–22. Kelly, a sociologist who is preparing his own study of the pro-life movement, compares Merton's conclusions with the actual contents of one of the interviews taped by Merton and finds, “It was as though he had not listened to his own taped interviews when he sat down to write his book.” Spitzer, Robert J., The Right to Life Movement and Third Party Politics (New York, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Leahy, Peter James, “The Anti-Abortion Movement: Testing a Theory of the Rise and Fall of Social Movements” (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1975).Google Scholar

37. A useful study is Suzanne Staggenborg's “Coalition Work in the Pro-Choice Movement: Organizational and Environmental Opportunities and Obstacles,” Social Problems 33:5 (June 1986), 374–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. There is, for example, no mention of Americans United For Life, one of the oldest pro-life groups, and one which, through its Legal Defense Fund, plays a crucial role in presenting the pro-life view in court.

39. A document that gives some extraordinary insight into these struggles is a pamphlet by New York pro-lifer Arlene Doyle entitled “Do You Need Permission to Save an Unborn Child?” (Commack, NY, 1977). It specifically puts these struggles into the context of a dichotomy between “authoritarian” and “coalition” leadership.

40. The emergence of Operation Rescue, which came to widespread public attention in 1988, exacerbated this conflict. Operation Rescue staged massive demonstrations in a number of cities aimed at blocking acsess to abortion clinics. While it went out of its way to stress its peaceful and nonresisting approach, the national Right to Life Committee feared that this willingness to break the law would undermine pro-life educational and political efforts. NRL News, the official voice of NRL, refused to carry any stories regarding these activities. Andrews's, JoanYou Reject Them, You Reject Me: The Prison Letters of Joan Andrews (Manassas, VA, 1988)Google Scholar provides an account of her beliefs regarding peaceful direct action and of her prison experiences in Florida. Her treatment during the three years she spent in prison provoked widespread outrage among pro-lifers and helped create support for Operation Rescue. For a discussion of the controversy within pro-life circles about Operation Rescue, see Jones, E. Michael, “Abortion Mill Rescue: Are Sit-Ins the Answer?” Fidelity 6:8 (JulyAugust 1987), 28–37.Google Scholar

41. See Dave Andrusko, ed., To Rescue the Future: The Pro-Life Movement in the 1980's (Toronto, 1983), especially 3–55.

42. The line of analysis which stretches back to Robert Michel's “iron law of oligarchy” might be useful in this context. A work with useful applications to the abortion controversy is Jo Freeman's “Resource Mobilization and Strategy: A Model for Analyzing Social Movement Organizations Actions,” in Zald, Mayer and McCarthy, John, The Dynamics of Social Movements (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 167–89.Google Scholar

43. See the articles by pro-lifers Mary Meehan and David O'Steen in Commonweal, 23 March 1984, attacking and defending, respectively, the pro-life activities of the Catholic bishops. Brenda D. Hofman's “Political Theology: The Role of Organized Religion in the Anti-Abortion Movement,” Journal of Church and State 28 (1985), 225–47, is a sketchy survey, as is Tamney, Joseph B., “Religion and the Abortion Issue,” in Johnson, Stephen D. and Tamney, Joseph B., eds., The Political Role of Religion in the United States (Boulder, CO, 1986), 159–80.Google Scholar

44. The movement of fundamentalists to a pro-life position shows up clearly in the public-opinion polls. See Blake and Del Pinal, “Predicting Polar Attitudes,” 55.

45. Raymond Tatalovich and Byron W. Daynes, “The Limits of Judicial Intervention in Abortion Politics,” The Christian Century, 6–13 January 1982, 16.

46. The symposium papers are reprinted with an account of the ensuing discussion in Steiner, Gilbert Y., ed., The Abortion Dispute and the American System (Washington, D.C., 1983).Google Scholar

47. Vinovskis, Maris A., “Abortion and the Presidential Election of 1976: A Multivariate Analysis of Voting Behavior,” in Schneider, Carl and Vinovskis, Maris, eds., The Law and Politicss of Abortion (Lexington, MA, 1980), 184–205Google Scholar; Michael Traugolt and Maris Vinovskis, “Abortion and the 1978 Congressional Elections,” Family Planning Perspectives 12:5 (September/October 1980), 238–46; John E. Jackson and Maris Vinovskis, “Public Opinion, Elections, and the ‘Single Issue’ Issue,” in Steiner, ed., The Abortion Dispute, 64–81.

48. Steiner, Gilbert Y., The Futility of Family Policy (Washington, D.C., 1981)Google Scholar, says (p. 60), “Veteran members of Congress not given to hyperbole have described the abortion issue as being harder than any other decision they have faced.” He quotes several congress men, including Senator Bob Packwood, who says “abortion is the most divisive basic issue I have run across in my experience.”

For the pro-life argument that abortion has been a significant election issue, see Sandra Faucher, “The Best Kept Secret,” and David O'Steen and Darla St. Martin, “Single Issue Politics and the Double Standard: The Case of the Pro-Life Movement,” in Dave Andrusko, ed., To Rescue the Future. It should be noted that interviews with voters after the 1988 presidential election indicated that “the No. 1 issue [was] abortion cited by nearly a third of voters interviewed by ABC News. And those who cited abortion went for Bush” USA Today, 9 November 1988, 3A.

49. For example, Feminists for Life and Pro-Lifers for Survival (an antiabortion, antinuclear group). Sojoumers magazine has acted as a voice for their beliefs. See also Neitz, , “Family, State and God,” and Levicoff, Steven, Building Bridges: The Pro-life Movement and the Peace Movement (Eagleville, PA, 1982).Google Scholar

50. This came out clearly during the furor over Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court in 1981. Senator Barry Goldwater supported her nomination vigorously, despite pro-life opposition; in turn, James Hitchcock argued that “important elements in the Republican Party as a whole are pro-abortion” and maintained that they were the “country club set,” whose “main interests are economic.” James Hitchcock, “Another Betrayal,” National Catholic Register 30 August 1981, 4.

51. Connie Paige's The Right to Lifers stresses the connection and attempts to document it.

52. Gilbert Steiner, The Futility of Family Policy, 51.

53. Brigitte Berger and Peter L. Berger, The War over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (New York, 1983), 29.

54. This fear is clear in Archibald Cox, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government(New York, 1976), chap. 5, “Constitutionalism and Politicization,” 99–118. He argued that the Court in Roe v. Wade “failed to establish the legitimacy of the decision,” 113. He earlier argued that “the power of the Supreme Court to command acceptance and support” rested on a “sufficiently widespread conviction that it is acting legitimately,” 104–5.

55. It is relevant here to cite Richard John Neuhaus's claim that “in American public life today, abortion law is the single most fevered and volatile question that inescapably joins religion and politics,” The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, 1984), 27.Google Scholar

The furor during the 1984 election over the church-state relations question was fueled most heavily by the abortion question. The literature on this is vast: see, for example, Charles Krauthammer's “The Church-State Debate,” The New Republic 17/24 September 1984, 15–18.

56. The impact of the abortion issue on the ERA is hard to measure but is clearly substantial. Right-to-life groups insisted that an ERA which had not been rendered “abortion neutral” was unacceptable. For a clear statement of their concerns about the possible impact of the ERA on the abortion issue, see Professor John T. Noonan's testimony before the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee, 24 January 1984. It is reprinted as “ERA: Equal Rights for Abortion?” in Human Life Review 10:2 (Spring 1984), 29–46. See also Bolce, Louis et al., “ERA and the Abortion Controversy: A Case of Dissonance Reduction,” Social Science Quarterly 67:2 (June 1986), 299–314Google Scholar. Mansbridge, Jane J., Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago, 1986)Google Scholar, argues that the use of state ERA's to argue in the courts for abortion funding “severely hurt the cause of the ERA in the unratified states,” 128. Her book contains a useful discussion of this issue.

57. Wilke, J. C., Abortion and Slavery: History Repeats (Cincinnati, 1984)Google Scholar; Burtchaell, Rachel Weeping, 239–87. A scholarly study which makes an interesting parallel of the two movements is Milton C. Sernett, “The Efficacy of Religious Participation in the National Debates over Abolitionism and Abortion,” Journal of Religion 64 (1984), 205–20.

58. Hardin, Garrett, Mandatory Motherhood: The True Meaning of “Right to Life”; (Boston, 1974), 9–14.Google Scholar

59. Jaffe et al., Abortion Politics, 165–84; the theme is echoed by Richard Polenberg, “The Second Victory of Anthony Comstock?” Society 19:4 (May/June 1982), 32–38.

60. Burtchaell, Rachel Weeping, 141–238; William Brennan, The Abortion Holocaust: Today's Final Solution (St. Louis, 1983).

61. Gloria Steinem, “If Hitler Were Alive, Whose Side Would He Be On? in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York, 1983), 305–26.Google Scholar

62. For example, Kraditor's, AileenMeans and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834–1850 (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

63. Friedman, Lawrence, Gregarious Saints (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

64. Glendon, Mary Ann, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (Cambridge, MA, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Potts, Malcolm, Diggery, Peter, and Peel, John, Abortion (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar; Francome, Colin, Abortion Freedom: A Worldwide Movement (London, 1984)Google Scholar; Gentles, Ian, The Law and Abortion: An International Study (Toronto, 1986)Google Scholar, is useful but does not focus on the abortion controversy as such but rather on illegal abortion rates, the effects of restrictive laws, etc.

65. Sources on the Canadian abortion debate include Alphonse de Valk, Morality and Law in Canadian Politics: The Abortion Controversy (Montreal, 1974)Google Scholar; Valk, Alphonse de, “Abortion Politics: Canadian Style,” in Sachdev, Paul, ed., Abortion: Readings and Research (Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar; Collins, Larry, “The Politics of Abortion: Trends in Canadian Fertility Policy,” Atlantis 7:2 (Spring 1982), 2–20Google Scholar, and Collins, Anne, The Big Evasion: Abortion, The issue That Won't Go Away (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar. For a view of Canadian society as deferential, see Friedenberg, Edgar Z., Deference to Authority: The Case of Canada (White Plains, NY, 1980).Google Scholar

66. In contrast, Roe v. Wade did not have majority public support and was regarded by many as illegitimate. See Tatalovich and Daynes, Politics of Abortion, 101. For its galvanizing effect on pro-lifers, see Luker, Abortion, 144.

67. Marsh, David and Chambers, Joanna, Abortion Politics (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Francome, Abortion Freedom, also has some interesting material on England. A fascinating comparison of the West German Federal Constitution Court's abortion decision of 1975 with Roe v. Wade is made by Donald P. Kommers, “Abortion and the Constitution: The Cases of the United States and West Germany,” in Manier et al., Abortion: New Directions for Policy Studies 83–116. Richard Stith, “New Constitutional and Penal Theory in Spanish Abortion Law,” American Journal of Comparative Law 35:3 (1987), 513–58. Lovenduski, Joni and Outshoorn, Joyce, The New Politics of Abortion (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Sachdev, Paul, International Handbook on Abortion (New York, 1988).Google Scholar

68. Berger and Berger, 75. See also MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, 1981).Google Scholar

69. Note that the leading organizations of the respective viewpoints are the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the National Right to Life Committee. The “rights” approach to issues is so deeply embedded in American thought that many appear incapable of conceiving of an alternative approach. Glendon, Abortion and Divorce, 39, notes that “prolife and pro-choice activists, along with the United States Supreme Court, share several familiar premises and terms about individuals and rights.…. Thus the two seemingly irrevocably opposed positions are actually locked within the same intellectual framework.”

70. From a radical pro-choice feminist perspective, see Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: for other views which seek to move beyond a conventional liberal analysis, see Callahan and Callahan, eds., Abortion, Understanding Differences, especially Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Reflections on Abortion, Values and the Family,” 47–72; Sandra Harding, “Beneath the Surface of the Abortion Dispute,” 203–24; and Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Abortion, Autonomy and Community,” 261–76. See also Stanley Hauerwas, “Abortion: Why the Arguments Fail,” in Burtchaell, Abortion Parley, 325–52. For an attempt to transcend the “rights” approach by a pro-choice exponent, see Goldstein, Robert D., Mother-Love And Abortion: A Legal Interpretation (Berkeley, 1988)Google Scholar. Also see Davis, From Crime to Choice. The Canadian philosopher George Grant saw Roe v. Wade as a major crisis in liberal justice: see English-Speaking Justice (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar. For an incisive analysis of Grant's book, see William Mathie, “Reason, Revelation and Liberal Justice: Reflections on George Grant's Analysis of Roe v Wade,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 19:3 (September 1986), 443–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar