Abortion Politics

Ziad Munson

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780745688794, 9780745688787
• eBook ISBN: 9780745688824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Abortion has remained one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in the United States for over four decades. Americans are more divided today than ever over abortion, and this debate colors the political, economic, and social dynamics of the country.

This book provides a balanced, clear-eyed overview of the abortion debate, including the perspectives of both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. It covers the history of the debate from colonial times to the present, the mobilization of mass movements around the issue, the ways it is understood by ordinary Americans, the impact it has had on US political development, and the differences between the abortion conflict in the US and the rest of the world. Throughout these discussions, Ziad Munson demonstrates how the meaning of abortion has shifted to reflect the changing anxieties and cultural divides which it has come to represent.

Abortion Politics is an invaluable companion for exploring the abortion issue and what it has to say about American society, as well as the dramatic changes in public understanding of women's rights, medicine, religion, and partisanship.

1
Introduction

Todd Akin was running to represent Missouri in the US Senate in 2012. A former IBM salesman and steel mill manager, Akin had a quarter century of experience as a politician, serving twelve years in the Missouri House of Representatives, then another twelve years in the US House of Representatives. His campaign for the next step in his long political career, to become a US Senator, was going well. He was running as a conservative Republican in a state that had increasingly voted for Republican candidates in recent elections. He had the strong support of the conservative Tea Party movement and national conservative groups who were spending millions of dollars on his behalf. His opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, was considered one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents in the nation.

Just over two months before the election, Akin was interviewed by local Fox Network affiliate KTVI in St. Louis, during which host Charles Jaco asked him about his abortion views: “What about in the case of rape? Should it be legal or not?” Akin, who had been an activist in the pro-life movement even before his political career, repeated his longstanding position that abortion should be illegal even when a pregnancy is the result of rape. In explaining this position during the interview, he suggested both that some women may falsely claim rape to obtain an abortion and that female physiology made pregnancy as a result of rape extremely rare. “If it’s a legitimate rape,” Akin said, “the female body has ways … to shut that whole thing down.”

His remarks set off a national firestorm of controversy. Critics, particularly in the pro-choice movement, pointed out, correctly, that the idea women are unlikely to become pregnant as a result of rape is a myth. In fact, the chance of sexual intercourse leading to pregnancy is the same whether the intercourse is the result of rape or consensual sex (Holmes et al. 1996). Moreover, they saw Akin’s distinction between legitimate and illegitimate rape claims as perpetuating the dangerous myth that false rape claims are common. Research shows that the majority of rapes are never reported, and only between two percent and eight percent of rape charges are false (Lonsway, Archambault, and Lisak 2009). On the other side, Akin supporters, particularly in the pro-life movement, stood by his candidacy and his specific comments about abortion. Missouri Right to Life, the state affiliation of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), repeatedly came to Akin’s defense, saying that his words were being “misinterpreted” and that the central point of Akin’s remarks was that all unborn children should be protected (Keller 2012). Former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee dismissed Akin’s words as the “verbal gaffe” of a “principled pro-life advocate” (Holt 2012).

The incident generated national political controversy, as politicians, commentators, pundits, editorial pages, journalists, bloggers, and scholars all debated the implications of Akin’s words and the larger debate over abortion. The discussion tied the abortion debate to a myriad different concerns. At issue was medical science, as people debated beliefs about fertility under different conditions. At issue was the problem of sexual assault, as people debated legal definitions and the boundaries of consent. At issue was partisanship, and the implications the incident might have for the fortunes of the two political parties and control of the US Senate. At issue were questions of morality, and whether there were such things as “good” and “bad” abortions. At issue was gender, as the question was raised of whether men and women had an equal right to make policy that impacted reproductive rights. These many debates caused Akin’s political fortunes to collapse, and he lost the election to Senator McCaskill, garnering only 39 percent of the vote in the same election that fellow Republican Mitt Romney received almost 54 percent of the Missouri vote for President.

A year later, a much different controversy centered on abortion. This time it revolved around the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell was a longtime advocate for abortion rights, even before the 1973 Supreme Court decisions legalized the procedure. He opened the Women’s Medical Clinic in 1979 to provide abortion and other services in the Philadelphia area, particularly to poor and minority women. Over time, however, his work evolved out of activism and medical practice into a multi-million-dollar business that conducted illegal abortions in unsanitary conditions, provided better care to white women than minority women, and on several occasions killed newborns after they had been delivered alive. The Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Board of Medicine, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Presbyterian Medical Center had all seen evidence over the years that something was wrong at Gosnell’s clinic, but none of them did much to stop Gosnell’s activities or alert authorities (Friedersdorf 2013).

The case once again made abortion the headline of national news and sparked rounds of controversy. Pro-life activists argued that Gosnell and the filthy conditions of his clinic were a window into the reality of abortion nationwide. David O’Steen, the executive director of the NRLC, argued that the case “helped more people realize what abortion is really about” (Associated Press 2013). The case, he said, “once again reminds us that the purpose of each abortion, no matter how it is performed, is to deliberately and brutally take at least one innocent human life” (National Right to Life Committee 2011). Gosnell and his clinic, pro-lifers told the public, were just like every other abortion provider. Pro-life organizations as well as conservative groups also criticized the lack of media coverage of Gosnell and his trial. Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, from Tennessee, accused the media of a “cover-up” (Viebeck 2013), and many conservative commentators, particularly on blogs and online social media, argued that journalists were deliberately staying away from the trial because it portrayed abortion in a negative light. Pro-choice organizations such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women (NOW) also condemned Dr. Gosnell and his crimes. But they argued that his clinic and approach were an aberration. Moreover, they blamed Gosnell’s crimes on the pro-life movement and the increased obstacles it placed in front of women seeking the procedure. “Kermit Gosnell is the result of anti-choice attacks on women,” said one message distributed by NARAL on social media (Howley 2013).

Like the national controversy generated the year before by Representative Akin’s comments on rape and abortion, the Gosnell murder trial generated debate that went far beyond the criminal fall of one physician. It raised some of the same issues, including issues of medical science, gender, partisanship, and whether there are moral distinctions to be drawn between “good” and “bad” abortions. But it raised additional concerns. At issue were inequality and racial prejudice, as Gosnell was widely reported to treat white women differently (and much better) than racial minorities. The role of the media and whether or not the majority of journalists and news outlets were taking sides in the abortion debate was also an issue. These were early echoes of what would become a national political obsession in the 2016 presidential race, with its swirl of fake news and accusations of media bias. Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder in May 2013 after a trial lasting more than a month. He agreed to give up all appeals of his conviction and serve a life sentence in prison in exchange for not facing the death penalty.

These are just two, relatively minor, examples of the hundreds of times in recent years that the longstanding national debate over abortion has bubbled to the surface of public consciousness. Abortion has remained one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in the United States for more than four decades. Americans are more divided today than ever over abortion, and the debate colors the political, economic, and social dynamics of the country. In the first three months of 2017 alone, the New York Times’ opinion pages included sixty-eight separate pieces that mentioned the abortion issue – an average of a piece every two out of three days. Abortion formed the main focus of fifteen of these articles, more than one a week. Every year, both the pro-life and pro-choice movements spend tens of millions of dollars and millions more volunteer hours engaged in the controversy. Perhaps most importantly, the terms that have come to describe the two sides of the debate, “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” have become meaningful dimensions of cultural identity for many Americans.

As the Akin and Gosnell examples illustrate, however, controversy over abortion is always controversy about much more than just abortion. By debating abortion, people also debate questions of race, gender, sexuality, morality, partisanship, medical science, crime, and the media. Such issues are not raised alongside the abortion issue; they are a part of the abortion issue. Abortion has come to have layered meanings that touch on all these questions, as well as additional ones about religion, immigration, commercialization, and the role of government in the lives of everyday Americans.

The central argument of this book follows from such observations: the abortion debate is, and always has been, defined by the changing connections between the issue and other social and cultural divides in the American social fabric. From changing attitudes toward women, racial minorities, religion, and government, to technological and medical advancements, the development of the abortion controversy is embedded in the many other layers of conflict and change in society. The abortion debate is, in the end, a surprisingly empty vessel into which movements, politicians, and regular Americans have poured their anxieties and concerns. This book explores the (very long) history of the abortion debate in the United States. It shows how the pro-life and pro-choice movements were formed, how the issue has evolved, and the impact of the battle over abortion on politics and society. In doing so, it reveals the many ways abortion has been defined and redefined to meet the interests and concerns of different constituencies.

How This Book is Different

The books written about abortion over the last several decades would fill most library shelves many times over. But many of them are not about the abortion debate as much as they are a part of that debate. They are written from the perspective of one side or the other, often by people who are themselves activists in the pro-life or pro-choice movements. They often offer both information and insight about the controversy. But ultimately their goal is to persuade readers of either the rightness or wrongness of abortion, with the history, facts, and analyses of their volumes filtered by that larger goal. A classic example written by passionate pro-life activists is Why Not Love Them Both? (Willke and Willke 1997), a book that first appeared in the late 1960s and went through a series of editions and name changes over the more than thirty years it was in print. A more recent example by pro-choice activists is Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism (Baird-Windle and Bader 2001). The perspectives of such books are evident in the titles themselves. Many others make their central goal less clear, but nonetheless focus primarily on mobilizing support for one side or the other. Unlike such books, this one does not take a side on abortion. It instead uses the language and tools of social science to explain the interplay of the pro-choice and pro-life movements in the development of the abortion debate.

A great deal of careful social science research avoids these kinds of biases. But scholars have blind spots of their own. A chief problem in the academic study of the abortion debate is that many social scientists treat “liberal” and “conservative” social movements differently. Scholars see them as caused by different forces and being subject to different dynamics. They are thus typically studied apart from one another, and far more attention is given to liberal movements than to conservative ones. In the case of the abortion debate, this means there are many excellent books on either the pro-choice movement or pro-life movement, but relatively few about both.

This book will question whether the pro-choice and pro-life movements fit so neatly into the categories of “liberal” and “conservative” and thus can be treated separately. The history of the abortion debate shows that the relationship of the two sides to American politics has varied over time. It also shows how movements on different sides of the political spectrum can be analyzed using the same conceptual tools. The pro-life and pro-choice movements have very different political goals and are composed of very different organizations, people, and sets of resources. But they are nonetheless subject to the same political, cultural, social, and organizational dynamics. This book addresses both sides of the abortion debate. It focuses on how both the pro-life and pro-choice movements, as well as the interaction between the two, have changed over time.

Abortion has been studied carefully by thousands of scholars, over many decades, and in fields ranging from embryology to philosophy, history to public policy, literature to economics, not to mention sociology, political science, and related fields. The amount of work available about abortion is, from the perspective of any given reader, essentially unlimited. Like any book, this one cannot possibly cover everything that is written. But it does touch on all these various areas, and citations in the text have been carefully chosen to steer the reader toward key texts and original research that will allow further exploration of abortion politics.

The Terms of the Abortion Debate

Before delving into any substantive or sustained discussion of the battle over abortion, some of the key terms must be defined. Both movements have made the terminology surrounding abortion part of the controversy itself, and some terms are frequently misunderstood as a result. I will refer to the people, groups, and organized efforts to reduce, restrict, or end legalized abortion procedures as the “pro-life movement,” and the equivalent efforts to protect or expand access to legalized abortion as the “pro-choice movement.” These names emerged in the 1970s, when the controversy over abortion became a widespread public issue. Prior to that time, the pro-choice movement was first called the abortion movement, and later the abortion rights movement (Staggenborg 1994: 188). The pro-life movement was known first as the right-to-life movement, and later the anti-abortion movement.

In using the terms pro-life and pro-choice, I ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Social Movements series
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Making of the Abortion Controversy
• 3 The Dynamics of the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Movements
• 4 Public Attitudes and Beliefs about Abortion
• 5 The Impact of Abortion on American Politics
• 6 American Exceptionalism
• 7 Stability and Change in Abortion Politics
• References
• Index