Full Description
An indispensable resource for students, scholars, and activists concerned about current attacks on abortion rights, this book offers an unmatched account of the emergence, consolidation, and consequences of the antiabortion movement's paternalistic abortion regret narrative.
Abortion Regret explores the emergence and consolidation of the antiabortion movement's paternalistic efforts to "protect" women from abortion regret. It begins by examining the 19th-century physician's campaign to criminalize abortion and traces the contours of the women-protective abortion regret narrative through to the 21st century. Based on interviews, textual analysis of primary sources, and a content analysis of state antiabortion policy from 2010-2015, the authors argue that the contemporary rise of the abortion regret narrative has armed the antiabortion movement with a unifying and compelling strategy to oppose abortion through a woman-centered approach.
In addition to covering the historical origins of our nation's criminal abortion laws, the book covers topics that include the origins and growth of crisis pregnancy centers, including recent efforts provide perinatal hospice services; an analysis of leading Supreme Court decisions on abortion; the emergence of the "pro-woman/pro-life" antiabortion platform, including its deeply religious roots; the infiltration of this position into the political and legal spheres in the guise of a secular rationale for limiting access to abortion; and an evidence-based rejoinder to the position that abortion harms women.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
ONE "Making Their Bodies Dens of Murder": The Physicians' 19th-Century Campaign to Criminalize Abortion
TWO The Evolving Legal Status of Abortion
THREE The Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the Roots of the Contemporary Abortion Regret Narrative
FOUR Beyond the Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Regret Moves from the Margins to the Center of the Antiabortion Movement
FIVE Protecting Women for Their Own Good: The Reemergence of Legal Paternalism
Methods Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
