After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate - Hardcover

Mary Ziegler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067473677X ISBN 13: 9780674736771

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade" continues to make headlines. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate" cuts through the myths and misunderstandings to present a clear-eyed account of cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed. The grassroots activists who shaped the discussion after Roe," Mary Ziegler shows, "were far more fluid and diverse than the partisans dominating the debate today. In the early years after the decision, advocates on either side of the abortion battle sought common ground on issues from pregnancy discrimination to fetal research. Drawing on archives and more than 100 interviews with key participants, Ziegler s revelations complicate the view that abortion rights proponents were insensitive to larger questions of racial and class injustice, and expose as caricature the idea that abortion opponents were inherently antifeminist. But over time, pro-abortion and anti-abortion positions hardened into pro-choice and pro-life categories in response to political pressures and compromises. This increasingly contentious back-and-forth produced the interpretation now taken for granted that Roe "was primarily a ruling on a woman s right to choose. Peering beneath the surface of social-movement struggles in the 1970s, After Roe" reveals how actors on the left and the right have today made Roe" a symbol for a spectrum of fervently held political beliefs."

About this title

Review:

An original and compelling history that complicates our understanding of abortion politics in important ways. Ziegler has written a real insiders account rich and textured that comprehensively traces the history of social movements response to "Roe v. Wade," explaining how they developed, navigated internal tensions and external pressures, and made strategic and ideological choices and compromises. She demonstrates that the pro-life/pro-choice split was never inevitable; instead, it emerged in response to a variety of contingencies, including changing political conditions. --Sara Dubow, author of "Ourselves Unborn: Fetal Meanings in Modern America""

About the Author:

Mary Ziegler is Stearns Weaver Miller Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 067473677X
• ISBN 13: 9780674736771
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 350