ALMOST HUMAN: AMBIVALENCE IN THE PRO-CHOICE AND PRO-LIFE MOVEMENTS

Abstract

Scholars find that political elites are badly polarized over a large range of policy issues, but they tend to agree that the mass public is much more ambivalent. The abortion war in particular is regarded as one in which millions of ambivalent citizens are caught in the crossfire of polarized activists. Yet even abortion activists struggle to escape the very ambivalent sentiments that plague ordinary Americans. These common sentiments even exert a moderating influence on both movements in ways that are consistent with the preferences of the American public. They also suggest that liberalism may be mired in permanent conflict and ambivalence over the scope of basic human rights.

Notes

1. Activists include staffers and volunteers of pro-choice and pro-life organizations.

2. I focused my interviews on right-to-life organizations with which I was already familiar from my earlier fieldwork on Christian conservatives. Given my interest in frank responses, I thought it was important to contact individuals and groups with which I already had established some measure of trust.

3. Second-trimester abortions are usually sought for the same reasons first-trimester abortions are—they are just delayed.

4. For a sampling from the pro-choice literature see Thompson 1971; Tooley 1983; Singer 2011; and Boonin 2002. For a sampling from the pro-life literature see Lee 1996; Beckwith 2007; and Kaczor 2010.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon A. Shields

Jon A. Shields thanks Camille Cole for research assistance as well as Jeffrey Isaac, Alex Rajczi, Peter Skerry, Clyde Wilcox, and participants at the Workshop for the Study of Conservative Movements and Conservatism at the University of California, San Diego for helpful comments on earlier drafts