Abortion - Social Movement

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at how a particular social movement - the pro-choice movement - was able to institute such a far-reaching change in American society. The writer points out that Roe vs. Wade served as a unifying issue for the many women's groups that formed the emerging women's movement. In addition, the writer notes that the Supreme Court decision gave groups such as the National Organization of Women (NOW) a legal platform to challenge the two major political parties regarding party policies on women's rights. The writer concludes that this greater participation signaled the growing importance of the women's vote in politics and also showed how a broad-based social movement could affect important social change.

From the Paper:

"Prior to Roe vs. Wade, abortion had been illegal in the United States. This does not mean, however, that abortions did not occur. As early as the 19th century, many American women were having risky abortions done under potentially dangerous conditions. In fact, it was the death of a woman from a botched abortion that pushed Margaret Sanger to devote her life to the campaign for contraception."
"In 1955, Planned Parenthood, the organization founded by Sanger, organized a conference called "Abortion in America." The conference discussed the restrictive state laws that continued to ban abortion and set the stage for future challenges to the constitutionality of these laws."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hull, N.E.H. and Peter Charles Hoffer . 2001. Roe v. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
• Stetson, Dorothy McBride. 2001. "US Abortion Debates, 1959 to 1998: The Women's Movement Holds On." Abortion Politics, Women's Movements, and the Democratic State: A Comparative Study of State Feminism. Dorothy McBride Stetson, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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