Women from remarkably diverse religious, social, and political backgrounds made up the rank-and-file of anti-abortion activism. Empowered by--yet in many cases scared of--the changes wrought by feminism, they founded grassroots groups, developed now-familiar strategies and tactics, and gave voice to the movement's moral and political dimensions. Drawing on oral histories and interviews with prominent figures, Karissa Haugeberg examines American women 's fight against abortion. Beginning in the 1960s, she looks at Marjory Mecklenburg's attempt to shift the attention of anti-abortion leaders from the rights of fetuses to the needs of pregnant women. Moving forward she traces the grassroots work of Catholic women, including Juli Loesch and Joan Andrews, and their encounters with the influx of evangelicals into the movement. She also looks at the activism of evangelical Protestant Shelley Shannon, a prominent pro-life extremist of the 1990s. Throughout, Haugeberg explores important questions such as the ways people fused religious conviction with partisan politics, activists' rationalizations for lethal violence, and how women claimed space within an unshakably patriarchal movement.

"Now with a new afterword by the author"--Back cover.

Weaving together analyses of archival material, news coverage, and interviews conducted with journalists from mainstream and partisan outlets as well as with activists across the political spectrum, Deana A. Rohlinger reimagines how activists use a variety of mediums, sometimes simultaneously, to agitate for - and against - legal abortion. Rohlinger's in-depth portraits of four groups - the National Right to Life Committee, Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, and Concerned Women for America - illuminates when groups use media and why they might choose to avoid media attention altogether. Rohlinger expertly reveals why some activist groups are more desperate than others to attract media attention and sheds light on what this means for policy making and legal abortion in the twenty-first century.

Bad products are recalled every day: the Ford Pinto, faulty tires, dangerous prescription pills, contaminated lettuce. If a product is found to pose even a modest risk to those who use it, you can bet it will soon be pulled from the market. . . . Unless that product is abortion.

Defending Life is arguably the most comprehensive defense of the pro-life position on abortion - morally, legally, and politically - that has ever been published in an academic monograph. It offers a detailed and critical analysis of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as arguments by those who defend a Rawlsian case for abortion-choice, such as J. J. Thomson. The author defends the substance view of persons as the view with the most explanatory power. The substance view entails that the unborn is a subject of moral rights from conception. While defending this view, the author responds to the arguments of thinkers such as Boonin, Dworkin, Stretton, Ford and Brody. He also critiques Thomson's famous violinist argument and its revisions by Boonin and McDonagh. Defending Life includes chapters critiquing arguments found in popular politics and the controversy over cloning and stem cell research.

Argues that abortion is a common part of a woman's reproductive life and should not be vilified, but instead accepted as a moral right that can be a force for social good.

After forty years of protest and debate, we all know one thing for certain about abortion: it’s a women’s issue, right? Wrong, says Brian Fisher in his groundbreaking book Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women. In it he reveals long-forgotten or never-known facts to show that abortion is very much a man’s concern—and it’s part of a long and tragic pattern of men oppressing women. Which is why the original author of the Equal Rights Amendment, feminist Alice Paul, called abortion the “ultimate exploitation of women.” Fisher shows that a select group of compassionate men led the way in the nineteenth century to pass laws strengthening the criminalization of abortion—and worked with feminists of that era to do so. But it was men, not women, who drove the campaign that led to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling giving women an unqualified right to end the lives of their unborn children. So what’s in it for men? As feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon observes, abortion “does not liberate women; it frees male sexual aggression.” Abortion is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for men with non-committal sex lives. Another agenda is at work as well. Men use abortion to advance their racist, eugenic, and population control dreams and schemes, as Fisher shows, citing their own words. If men gave us abortion, men can end it as well. Fisher outlines why and how, and he urges men to take up the task with courageous women. He lays out a five-point plan for men to “with humility, faithfulness, and relentless perseverance, commit our time, resources, energy, heart, and testimony to ending abortion in America for the sake of women, men, and the family.”