Explore the vast range of titles available.

Retailers Choice Award winner, 2012 Abby Johnson quit her job in October 2009.That simple act became a national news story because Abby was the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who, after participating in an actual abortion procedure for the first time, walked down the street to join the Coalition for Life.

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.

Books on abortion (other than collections of readings) typically express and defend a particular position. This book gives both sides, as evenly and objectively as possible; it gets to the heart of each position, the core idea which animates it. It then leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind. It is an introduction to the issue, not only to the basic positions on the issue. Despite being brief, it contains careful analyses and discussions of many topics often not found at all in other works. The treatment is thorough and detailed, but succinct. Understanding Abortion: From Mixed Feelings to Rational Thought is aimed at all people who want a better understanding of what the two sides on this issue are really saying, and what reasons they give for their position. Many people assume that this issue is an interminable one, with “no clear answers”; a purely emotional debate that cannot be addressed by the use of reasoned arguments. The book shows that this is not the case.

How do people become activists for causes they care deeply about? Many people with similar backgrounds, for instance, fervently believe that abortion should be illegal, but only some of them join the pro-life movement. By delving into the lives and beliefs of activists and nonactivists alike, Ziad W. Munson is able to lucidly examine the differences between them. Through extensive interviews and detailed studies of pro-life organizations across the nation, Munson makes the startling discovery that many activists join up before they develop strong beliefs about abortion—in fact, some are even pro-choice prior to their mobilization. Therefore, Munson concludes, commitment to an issue is often a consequence rather than a cause of activism. The Making of Pro-life Activists provides a compelling new model of how people become activists while also offering a penetrating analysis of the complex relationship between religion, politics, and the pro-life movement. Policy makers, activists on both sides of the issue, and anyone seeking to understand how social movements take shape will find this book essential.

Changing Unjust Laws Justly is the first book to address systematically the practical, legal, and ethical problems that are encountered in well-intentioned attempts to restrict abortion. It will be of considerable interest not only to political, legal, and moral philosophers, but also to lawmakers and the pro-life movement generally.

Abstract Gender and sexuality have become a focal point of the political divide in Latin America. In many countries, religious actors, political leaders, pro-life and pro-family nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among others, have come together to promote a neoconservative shift in contemporary regional politics. Despite the constant public presence of religious actors and their long-standing influence on public policies in the region, recent challenges to sexual and reproductive rights have come from a field in transformation. The anti-abortion mobilization shows important signs of adaptation and mutation on different fronts – networks, alliances, strategies, and frameworks. Finally, this process of renovation has led to the expansion of this dispute towards a broader anti-gender alliance, and the increasing importance of legal strategies and tools by anti-abortion actors is remarkable. The transformations in the anti-abortion field were globally put into action after the conservatives’ defeat in the UN Conference in Cairo, and they also interacted with different local processes, in response to the relational dynamics between movement and countermovement. However, we can see important convergences among Latin-American cases. Drawing on evidence from case studies of countries in the region, this article analyses the main characteristics of contemporary anti-abortion activism in Latin America. It identifies significant commonalities among the cases and raises the hypotheses that shifts in the composition of the anti-abortion networks, in mobilization strategies and frames are inserted in a trend that has been transnationally diffused and subject to different processes of vernacularization. This article ultimately calls attention to the need for more empirical research to address the regional dynamics of transnational actors, diffusion processes, and local adaptations. Resumo Gênero e sexualidade tornaram-se um foco de polarização política na América Latina. Em muitos países, atores religiosos, líderes políticos e organizações não governamentais (ONGs) “pró-vida” e “pró-família”, entre outros, uniram-se para promover uma mudança neoconservadora na política regional contemporânea. Apesar da constante presença pública de atores religiosos e de sua influência de longa data nas políticas públicas da região, os ataques recentes aos direitos sexuais e reprodutivos vêm de um campo em transformação. A mobilização antiaborto mostra importantes sinais de adaptações e mutações em diferentes frentes – em redes, alianças, estratégias e enquadramentos. Finalmente, esse processo de renovação levou à expansão do próprio campo de disputa para um campo ampliado da aliança antigênero, sendo digna de nota a importância crescente de estratégias e ferramentas legais para atores antiaborto. As transformações no campo do antiaborto foram colocadas em marcha globalmente com a derrota dos conservadores na Conferência da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) no Cairo e interagiram com diferentes processos locais, respondendo às dinâmicas relacionais entre movimento e contramovimento. De qualquer modo, observamos convergências importantes entre os casos latino-americanos. A partir de evidências de alguns estudos de caso de países na região, este artigo analisa as principais características do ativismo antiaborto na área e identifica os pontos comuns entre os casos, levantando a hipótese de que as mudanças atuais na composição das redes antiaborto, suas estratégias de mobilização e enquadramentos indicam uma tendência difundida transnacionalmente, embora sujeita a diferentes processos de vernacularização. O texto, em última instância, chama a atenção para a necessidade de mais pesquisa empírica para acessar as dinâmicas regionais de atores transnacionais, processos de difusão e adaptações locais.

In 2019, anti-abortion activists started the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn (SCFTU) initiative, aiming to pass local ordinances outlawing abortion within city or county limits across Texas. In this article, I examine the SCFTU initiative in Texas to explain the role of social control in anti-abortion strategy and the broader implications of this type of activism in relation to mainstream pro-life and the more extreme abortion abolitionist aims. To understand these mechanisms of social control, I employ a framework drawn from literature on social control and abortion mobilities. The article argues that the SCFTU initiative offers a space for anti-abortion activists to build power at a local level and to develop new ways to undermine and criminalize reproductive rights. The most serious implication of the strategy is that this type of activism clearly recognizes that abortion bans are difficult to enforce, signaling a turn toward a more authoritarian frameworks such as the model introduced by abortion abolitionists.

Using controversy over abortion as a lens through which to compare the political process and role of the media in these two very different democracies, this book examines the contest over meaning that is being waged by social movements, political parties, churches and other social actors. Abortion is a critical battleground for debates over social values in both countries, but the constitutional premises on which arguments rest differ, as do the strategies that movements and parties adopt and the opportunities for influence that are open to them. By examining how these debates are conducted and by whom in light of the normative claims made by democratic theorists, the book also offers a means of judging how well either country lives up to the ideals of democratic debate in practice.

In this important study of the abortion controversy in the United States, Kristin Luker examines the issues, people, and beliefs on both sides of the abortion conflict. She draws data from twenty years of public documents and newspaper accounts, as well as over two hundred interviews with both pro-life and pro-choice activists. She argues that moral positions on abortion are intimately tied to views on sexual behavior, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual.

Players and Arenas brings together a diverse group of experts to examine the interactions between political protestors and the many strategic players they encounter, such as cultural institutions, religious organizations, and the mass media—as well as potential allies, competitors, recruits, and funders. Discussing protestors and players as they interact within the arenas of specific social contexts, the essays show that the main constraints on what protestors can accomplish come not from social and political structures, but from other players with different goals and interests. Through a careful treatment of these situations, this volume offers a new way to approach the role of social protest in national and international politics.