The Framing of a Right to Choose: Roe v. Wade and the Changing Debate on Abortion Law

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Significant Change ◽  
Roe V Wade ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

The Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, arguably the most hotly debated in recent decades, has produced an impressive body of historical scholarship. The leading histories have focused on the evolution of the arguments and alliances that shape abortion debate today, rights-based prolife and pro-choice arguments, alliances between women's rights leaders and public health advocates, and the adoption of pro-choice positions by the Democratic Party and pro-life positions by the Republicans. This orientation is unquestionably a sensible one; rights-based arguments, in play before Roe, have come to dominate the debate after the decision. However, by emphasizing rights-based debate before the decision, the current scholarship has mostly missed a significant change in the rhetoric and coalitions on either side of the debate that was partly produced by Roe itself.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Fran Amery
Keyword(s):  
Sex Selection ◽  
Reproductive Decisions ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Abortion Politics ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

This chapter gives a brief overview of the current terrain of abortion debate in the UK, covering calls for decriminalisation as well as debates on sex-selection, disability and pre-abortion counselling. It argues that the classic image of abortion politics as a war between ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ actors cannot adequately accommodate these recent developments – nor does it fit with how abortion debates have actually unfolded in Britain historically. Instead, it offers an interpretation of abortion law as resting on a coalition between government and medical actors formed to govern women’s reproductive decisions. The chapter closes with an overview of the book.

Before Reagan: The Development of Abortion’s Partisan Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047
Author(s):  
Neil A. O’Brian
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.

Beyond Pro-life and Pro-choice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Amery
Keyword(s):  
Abortion Debate ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Medical Associations ◽  
Sex Selective Abortion ◽  
Abortion Access ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

A common misunderstanding of the Abortion Act 1967 is that it granted women the ‘right’ to access abortion. In reality, there is no such thing; the current provision of abortion in the United Kingdom rests on a system in which doctors, not women, are the arbiters of abortion access. In recent years, calls for the full decriminalisation of abortion have been given a vigour not seen before. For the first time, MPs and medical associations have moved to back decriminalisation, in line with the demands of pro-choice campaigners across the UK. But at the same time, opponents are mobilising to undermine public faith in both the Abortion Act and abortion providers. In doing so, they have tended to set aside the classic ‘right to life’ arguments, instead focusing on issues such as sex-selective abortion and disability rights. This book makes sense of today’s changed landscape of abortion debate by tracing the evolution of political and parliamentary discourse on abortion from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present. It makes the case that to understand contemporary abortion politics, it is necessary to move beyond a conceptualisation of the debate as characterised by ‘pro-choice’ versus ‘pro-life’.

scholarly journals The Relevance (and Irrelevance) of Questions of Personhood (and Mindedness) to the Abortion Debate

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kyle Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Planned Pregnancy ◽  
Don Marquis ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Judith Thomson ◽  
Fetal Personhood ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

Disagreements about abortion are often assumed to reduce to disagreements about fetal personhood (and mindedness). If one believes a fetus is a person (or has a mind), then they are “pro-life.” If one believes a fetus is not a person (or is not minded), they are “pro-choice.” The issue, however, is much more complicated. Not only is it not dichotomous—most everyone believes that abortion is permissible in some circumstances (e.g. to save the mother’s life) and not others (e.g. at nine months of a planned pregnancy)—but scholars on both sides of the issue (e.g. Don Marquis and Judith Thomson) have convincingly argued that fetal personhood (and mindedness) are irrelevant to the debate. To determine the extent to which they are right, this article will define “personhood,” its relationship to mindedness, and explore what science has revealed about the mind before exploring the relevance of both to questions of abortion’s morality and legality. In general, this article does not endorse a particular answer to these questions, but the article should enhance the reader’s ability to develop their own answers in a much more informed way.

Making Women the Subjects of the Abortion Debate: A Class Exercise that Moves Beyond "Pro-Choice" and "Pro-Life"

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
Sara L. Crawley ◽  
Rebecca K. Willman ◽  
Leisa Clark ◽  
Clare Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

On Life, Death, and Abortion

Utilitas ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-189
Author(s):  
D. W. Haslett
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Correct Solution ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Religious Dogma ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

Morally speaking, is abortion murder? This is what I am calling the ‘abortion problem’. I claim that neither pro-life nor pro-choice advocates have the correct solution; that the correct solution is instead one considered correct by relatively few people. But if this solution really is correct, then why, after years of intense debate, is this solution not more widely accepted? Many, no doubt, are precluded from accepting it by religious dogma. But others, I think, fail to arrive at a correct solution because they have been approaching the problem from the wrong theoretical framework. Or they have been approaching it without any theoretical framework at all. That is, they have no theoretical framework beyond that of merely examining their moral intuitions and, if anything is clear so far from the abortion debate, it is that intuitions alone, which differ radically from person to person, are not sufficient to solve the problem. In short: one is unlikely to arrive at the correct solution unless one starts from a sound theoretical framework. I shall, in what follows, sketch what I take to be a sound theoretical framework. Then I shall try to show what solution to the abortion problem follows from it.

scholarly journals Colonialism, Human Rights, and Abortion in Ireland

Elements ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Rachel Connelly
Keyword(s):  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
True Purpose ◽  
The Right ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

This essay explores the role of narratives in the field of the Irish abortion debate. In specific, it explores the different types of narratives that both the pro-choice and pro-life groups manipulate in order to draw support from The Irish populace. The author explains that the pro-choice groups employ political-legal narratives To argue for the right to abortion whereas historical narratives and anti-British sentiments are more commonly found within pro-life narratives. However, the true purpose of the pro-life narratives is to prevent the secularization and liberalization of Ireland's laws, thereby maintaining the patriarchy at the top of the social hierarchy. However, with the 2018 referendum on the constitutional ban on abortion resulting in a liberalization of Ireland's abortion laws, the lack of success on The pro-life end is revealed, and a possible wave of liberalization may follow to permanently shift the social hierarchy.

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