The Abortion Debate In The United States And Canada

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A cross-cultural analysis of the abortion issue in the United States and Canada. The book focuses on: the judicial, legislative and executive branches; public opinion and interest groups; federal agencies; and the roles of subnational authorities and the health care sectors.

When journalists, academics, and politicians describe the North American anti-abortion movement, they often describe a campaign that is male-dominated, aggressive, and even violent in its tactics, religious in motivation, anti-women in tone, and fetal-centric in arguments and rhetoric. Are they correct? In The Changing Voice of the Anti-Abortion Movement, Paul Saurette and Kelly Gordon suggest that the reality is far more complicated, particularly in Canada. Today, anti-abortion activism increasingly presents itself as “pro-women”: using female spokespersons, adopting medical and scientific language to claim that abortion harms women, and employing a wide range of more subtle framing and narrative rhetorical tactics that use traditionally progressive themes to present the anti-abortion position as more feminist than pro-choice feminism. Following a succinct but comprehensive overview of the two-hundred year history of North American debate and legislation on abortion, Saurette and Gordon present the results of their systematic, five-year quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis, supplemented by extensive first-person observations, and outline the implications that flow from these findings. Their discoveries are a challenge to our current assumptions about the abortion debate today, and their conclusions will be compelling for both scholars and activists alike.

This edited collection examines various aspects of the explosive abortion issue in the United States and Canada. In both countries, decisions of the national supreme court have made access to legal abortion easier than had previously been the case. This volume looks at the aftermath of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. and Morgantaler v. Regina in Canada. Individual chapters deal with the rhetoric of public discourse, public opinion at the mass level, political reasoning on the part of religious and pro-life activists, and the role of religion in political socialization on the abortion issue. Methodologically, the volume includes survey research, content analysis, participant observation, and political theory. The list of contributors includes some of the leading political scientists and sociologists working in the field.

In The Changing Voice of the Anti-Abortion Movement, Paul Saurette and Kelly Gordon suggest that anti-abortion activism increasingly presents itself as pro-women," employing rhetorical tactics to present the anti-abortion position as more feminist than pro-choice feminism."

"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.

Since Roe v. Wade, abortion has continued to be a divisive political issue in the United States. In contrast, it has remained primarily a medical issue in Britain and Canada despite the countries’ shared heritage. Doctors and Demonstrators looks beyond simplistic cultural or religious explanations to find out why abortion politics and policies differ so dramatically in these otherwise similar countries. Drew Halfmann argues that political institutions are the key. In the United States, federalism, judicial review, and a private health care system contributed to the public definition of abortion as an individual right rather than a medical necessity. Meanwhile, Halfmann explains, the porous structure of American political parties gave pro-choice and pro-life groups the opportunity to move the issue onto the political agenda. A groundbreaking study of the complex legal and political factors behind the evolution of abortion policy, Doctors and Demonstrators will be vital for anyone trying to understand this contentious issue.