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"Pro choice movement"
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The making of pro-life activists
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.
eBook
Plea for an Emic Approach Towards ‘Ugly Movements’: Lessons from the Divisions within the Italian Pro-Life Movement
Studies of the pro-life movement have invariably been undertaken in relation to the pro-choice movement. The stress on comparison has tended to homogenize the two sides, thus understating their internal differences. This article extends beyond an analysis bounded by a movement―countermovement dichotomy. Based on ethnographic data and on the Italian case, it considers several questions that arise from revealing the intramovement divisions at various levels. First, there are tensions relating to the relationship between orthodoxy and institutionalized politics: how far, if at all, should there be doctrinal compromises in exchange for influence over public policy? Secondly, the conflicts over modes of action. In this respect, should protests be visible in public spaces, and if so how? These two issues govern the tense relationship between the Movimento per la Vita and more radical groups. Thirdly, the issue that divides the Movimento itself; the ongoing dialogue over the attitude to be taken towards contraception, and thus sexuality. At the heart of these intramovement struggles is the definition of what a ‘real’ pro-life movement is, and how a ‘real’ pro-life movement should mobilize. This article reveals a complex and highly fragmented image of the pro-life movement that, like every social movement of a certain size, is heterogeneous in its demographic composition, objectives and strategies. To show this complexity, the article adopts an emic approach that does not limit itself to a reading of conservative movements through the eyes of progressive movements.
Journal Article
The politics of abortion rights in the 2022 United States midterm election: Lessons for fledgling democracies around the world
The United States government, under President Donald Trump, retreated from its traditional role as an exemplar of democracy, defender of press freedom and the rule of law but embraced conspiracy theories, virulent anti-Semites, and authoritarian regimes worldwide. Today, democracy is in crisis and is under assault and in retreat globally. The 2022 United States midterm election has come and is now history with many unexpected outcomes. The three impactful issues during the campaign that produced many upsets were abortion rights, election denialism, and threats to democracy. This editorial examines the history of abortion rights in the United States, the impacts of the Dobbs vs. Jackson ruling on the 2022 midterm election, the threats of election deniers to global democracy, the global status of reproductive health rights, and the lessons of abortion ban for burgeoning democracies worldwide.
Journal Article
Explaining the Dynamics between the Women's Movement and the Conservative Movement in the United States
We examine the causes of movement and countermovement mobilization, focusing specifically on the effect that the national movements have on each other by responding directly to mobilization and indirectly through their policy successes. We discuss the mechanisms by which national movements respond to each other, and we examine the influence of political parties and social, political, and economic changes for women. We analyze these relationships using a Poisson Autoregressive (PAR(p)) estimator, which is uniquely designed to model both the time dependence and the count distributions, on quarterly time series of feminist, anti-feminist, pro-choice, and anti-abortion events. Results show that movements and countermovements respond to each other and that anti-feminist movements mobilize in response to national policy change and societal change. The results suggest that many quantitative analyses of women's movements may be misspecified and that feminist mobilization does not always abate during conservative backlash.
Journal Article
Shaping abortion discourses: democracy and the public sphere in Germany and the United States
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.
eBook
Analysing Contemporary Women's Movements for Bodily Autonomy, Pluriversalizing the Feminist Scholarship on the Politics of Respectability
We began this project intending to theorise the respectability politics within the Irish Repeal (pro-choice) movement through the lenses of postcolonial and Black feminism, and through the experiences of members of Pinjra Tod, a movement seeking the right to mobility for Indian women students. Instead, we found ourselves excavating the inextricable links between respectability politics and the representational politics of academic knowledge production (Cruz in Collins-White et al 2015) in relation to Irish Women's Studies and the racialised politics of representation in the Repeal campaign. Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland with her husband on a work visa, died tragically in 2012 from septicaemia. This was due to being denied the proper procedures following a miscarriage as a result of an Irish Constitutional Amendment in 1983 deeming abortion illegal in any circumstance. Her death galvanised a turning point in the Irish women's movement, which led to a national campaign that successfully repealed that Amendment. In fact, she literally became 'the face' of the movement--one that remained racially and intersectionally 'tone-deaf' at best, wilfully exclusionary at worst. Our attention thus hovered on this problematique and necessitated a collaborative, dialogic 'working through' of these entanglements. This article presents the substance and outcome of a method of 'pluriversal convocation' that arose from this process. This method coaxed insights into the ongoing Eurocentricism and respectability politics within white western feminism that undermine praxis by promoting 'diversification without doing the work of diversity'. And it illuminated the transformative opportunities created by Black feminist and Indian postcolonial practices of 'wilful connectedness', which has, in turn, generated a basis on which we are cultivating a decolonising feminist praxis.
Journal Article
The Battle Over Abortion Rights in Brazil’s State Arenas, 1995-2006
This article proposes a relational approach to the study of abortion law reform in Brazil. It focuses on the interaction of pro-choice and anti-abortion movements in different state arenas and political contexts. It details the emergence of a strategic action field on abortion during the Brazilian re-democratization process and the National Constituent Assembly. We offer analysis on pro-choice and anti-abortion mobilization in state arenas—mainly in the executive and legislative powers—during the two terms of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), 1995–1998 and 1999–2002, and the first term of President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), 2003–2006. We then map political resources for mobilization, such as legislative bills, public policy norms, and judicial decisions, and track legal continuities and changes. Finally, we analyze anti-abortion reaction, which was consolidated through an increased conservative presence in congress after 2006, and discuss how the abortion debate has migrated from congress to the Supreme Court and the public sphere.
Journal Article
Shaping Abortion Discourse
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.
eBook
Beating hearts
How can someone who condemns hunting, animal farming, and animal experimentation also favor legal abortion, which is the deliberate destruction of a human fetus? The authors of Beating Hearts aim to reconcile this apparent conflict and examine the surprisingly similar strategic and tactical questions faced by activists in the pro-life and animal rights movements.
Beating Heartsmaintains that sentience, or the ability to have subjective experiences, grounds a being's entitlement to moral concern. The authors argue that nearly all human exploitation of animals is unjustified. Early abortions do not contradict the sentience principle because they precede fetal sentience, andBeating Hearts explains why the mere potential for sentience does not create moral entitlements. Late abortions do raise serious moral questions, but forcing a woman to carry a child to term is problematic as a form of gender-based exploitation. These ethical explorations lead to a wider discussion of the strategies deployed by the pro-life and animal rights movements. Should legal reforms precede or follow attitudinal changes? Do gory images win over or alienate supporters? Is violence ever principled? By probing the connections between debates about abortion and animal rights,Beating Heartsuses each highly contested set of questions to shed light on the other.
eBook