The Abortion Debate

"Examines the debate over abortion, discussing both the pro-life and pro-choice sides of the argument, the history and laws on abortion in the United States, and finding a middle ground on the issue"--Provided by publisher.

Abortion is a woman's health concern and a complex moral dilemma everywhere. It is now also one of the most intractable social and political problems of our time. This book provides the first account of the abortion controversy globally. It examines how this issue is being played out beyond the established western liberal democracies and how the Catholic Church and other groups engage it worldwide. The questions addressed in this scholarly and readable work are of paramount significance for the future management of this dispute.

First published in 1991. Over the last twenty-five years or so, the debate on abortion has not moved any closer to resolution in either the United States or Canada. The courts, the legislatures, the pulpits, the classrooms, the hospitals and clinics and the media have provided the forums for this on-going struggle. Two groups of activists have dominated the debate. The opponents of abortion, who are referred to as anti-abortion or pro-life, advocate restrictive policies on abortion while the pro-choice groups direct their attempts to creating a permissive policy that allows a woman to make her own decision. The anti-abortion advocates and the pro-choice advocates alike have learned the skills and developed the strategies to advance their own positions. Whatever legal and public policy gains are made by one side are often countered by moves from their opponents. There is available a vast amount of material related to the topic of abortion. From the extensive and diverse literature, this book draws a collection of relevant materials primarily representing aspects of the sociological, philosophical, religious and legal aspects of the abortion issue. Its purpose is to serve as a source bode for those interested in seeing how the abortion debate has been conducted within the recent past. The book also serves as a reference work for further study.

Based on the struggle over a Fargo, North Dakota, abortion clinic, Contested Lives explores one of the central social conflicts of our time. Both wide-ranging and rich in detail, it speaks not simply to the abortion issue but also to the critical role of women's political activism. A new introduction addresses the events of the last decade, which saw the emergence of Operation Rescue and a shift toward more violent, even deadly, forms of anti-abortion protest. Responses to this trend included government legislation, a decline in clinics and doctors offering abortion services, and also the formation of Common Ground, an alliance bringing together activists from both sides to address shared concerns. Ginsburg shows that what may have seemed an ephemeral artifact of "Midwestern feminism" of the 1980s actually foreshadowed unprecedented possibilities for reconciliation in one of the most entrenched conflicts of our times.

In the decade after the 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion, advocates on both sides sought common ground. But as pro-abortion and anti-abortion positions hardened over time into pro-choice and pro-life, the myth was born that Roe v. Wade was a ruling on a woman’s right to choose. Mary Ziegler’s account offers a corrective.

Examines historic and contemporary legal decisions regarding abortion, on both the state and federal levels.

Entering the moral worlds of Catholicism, the evangelical Protestantism of the Operation Rescue movement, feminism, and the classical liberalism expressed in modern medicine, Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice brilliantly illuminates the little-understood religious and philosophical aspects of the abortion issue. Rudy reveals how each community's beliefs about abortion are connected to its deeply held values and concerns, and offers an alternative that would obviate the unproductive, divisive, and sometimes violent abortion debate we have today.