Explore the vast range of titles available.

Abortion is--and always has been--an arena for contesting power relations between women and men. When in 1973 the Supreme Court made the procedure legal throughout the United States, it seemed that women were at last able to make decisions about their own bodies. In the four decades that followed, however, abortion became ever more politicized and stigmatized.Abortion afterRoe chronicles and analyzes what the new legal status and changing political environment have meant for abortion providers and their patients. Johanna Schoen sheds light on the little-studied experience of performing and receiving abortion care from the 1970s--a period of optimism--to the rise of the antiabortion movement and the escalation of antiabortion tactics in the 1980s to the 1990s and beyond, when violent attacks on clinics and abortion providers led to a new articulation of abortion care as moral work. As Schoen demonstrates, more than four decades after the legalization of abortion, the abortion provider community has powerfully asserted that abortion care is a moral good.

Abortion Care as Moral Work brings together the voices of abortion providers, abortion counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians to discuss how and why providing abortion care is moral work. The collection offers voices not usually heard as clinicians talk about their work and their thoughts about life and death. In four subsections--Providers, Clinics, Conscience, and The Fetus--the contributions in this anthology explore the historical context and present-day challenges to the delivery of abortion care. Contributing authors address the motivations that lead abortion providers to offer abortion care, discuss the ways in which anti-abortion regulations have made it increasingly difficult to offer feminist-inspired services, and ponder the status of the fetus and the ethical frameworks supporting abortion care and fetal research. Together these essays provide a feminist moral foundation to reassert that abortion care is moral work.

Abortion is - and always has been - an arena for contesting power relations between women and men. When in 1973 the Supreme Court made the procedure legal throughout the United States, it seemed that women were at last able to make decisions about their own bodies. In the four decades that followed, however, abortion became ever more politicized and stigmatized. Abortion after Roe chronicles and analyzes what the new legal status and changing political environment have meant for abortion providers and their patients. Johanna Schoen sheds light on the little-studied experience of performing and receiving abortion care from the 1970s - a period of optimism - to the rise of the antiabortion movement and the escalation of antiabortion tactics in the 1980s to the 1990s and beyond, when violent attacks on clinics and abortion providers led to a new articulation of abortion care as moral work. As Schoen demonstrates, more than four decades after the legalization of abortion, the abortion provider community has powerfully asserted that abortion care is a moral good.

Abortion Care as Moral Work brings together the voices of abortion providers, abortion counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians to discuss how and why providing abortion care is moral work. The collection offers voices not usually heard as clinicians talk about their work and their thoughts about life and death. In four subsections--Providers, Clinics, Conscience, and The Fetus--the contributions in this anthology explore the historical context and present-day challenges to the delivery of abortion care. Contributing authors address the motivations that lead abortion providers to offer abortion care, discuss the ways in which anti-abortion regulations have made it increasingly difficult to offer feminist-inspired services, and ponder the status of the fetus and the ethical frameworks supporting abortion care and fetal research. Together these essays provide a feminist moral foundation to reassert that abortion care is moral work.

[...]a woman's ability to obtain an abortion depended on her financial resources, turning a right into a privilege. [...]anti-abortion legislators proposed laws to limit women's access to abortion, imposed rules and regulations to prevent clinics from opening their doors, and made operating an abortion clinic cumbersome and expensive. [...]around the country, a vocal and aggressive wing of the anti-abortion movement organized protests in front of abortion clinics, targeting clinic staff and the women who sought their services.

This article traces the establishment of abortion clinics following Roe v Wade. Abortion clinics followed one of two models: (1) a medical model in which physicians emphasized the delivery of high quality medical services, contrasting their clinics with the back-alley abortion services that had sent many women to hospital emergency rooms prior to legalization, or (2) a feminist model in which clinics emphasized education and the dissemination of information to empower women patients and change the structure of women’s health care. Male physicians and feminists came together in the newly established abortion services and argued over the priorities and characteristics of health care delivery. A broad range of clinics emerged, from feminist clinics to medical offices run by traditional male physicians to for-profit clinics. The establishment of the National Abortion Federation in the mid-1970s created a national forum of health professionals and contributed to the broadening of the discussion and the adoption of compromises as both feminists and physicians influenced each other's practices.

This article traces the history of moral arguments for abortion care. Prior to the legalization of abortion, clergy members and physicians who participated in the Clergy Consultation Service constructed a clear moral framework for abortion as they referred women to underground abortion services. With the legalization of abortion in 1973, supporters of legal abortion turned from arguments that articulated the morality of abortion to language that emphasized women’s privacy and rights. Moral arguments receded to the background, to be taken up by anti-abortion activists who argued that abortion was immoral. With the rise of the religious right, the stigma surrounding abortion increased significantly. Fearing that ending their pregnancy was immoral, patients frequently struggled with their abortion decision. Beginning in the 1990s, abortion clinics began to address questions of foetal life and death head-on. By doing so, they offered patients the opportunity to explore topics previously considered too politically sensitive—questions concerning the value of life, the meaning of foetal death, religious beliefs, and frameworks as they related to the abortion decision. Patients and abortion providers asserted that their decisions were moral decisions and drew on their religious beliefs to guide their choices in favour of abortion.

Reproductive decision-making has been highly contested in Western countries and can thus serve as an illustration through which to trace changing norms, values, family concepts and gender roles. This special issue investigates public debates regarding legal abortion and women’s changing options for decision-making in the US, Germany, Sweden and Ireland as well as transnational abortion travels since the 1960s. After gaining the right to abortion, women have had to contend with a political and legislative backlash that has threatened to undermine access to abortion care. While women have not been perceived as responsible decision-makers, they have vigorously claimed the right to make their own reproductive decisions. The introduction to this special issue proposes a comparative approach to analyse the impact that political shifts since the 1960s have had on reproductive policies and women’s access to abortion. We follow the similarities and differences in national policies, legal frameworks, moral codes, and individual agency in different Western countries.