Abortion Regret: The New Attack on Reproductive Freedom

by J. Shoshanna Ehrlich, Alesha E. Doan

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440839849
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/15/2019
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

J. Shoshanna Ehrlich is professor in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Alesha E. Doan is associate professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration and the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Kansas.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

1 "Making Their Bodies Dens of Murder": The Physicians' 19th-Century Campaign to Criminalize Abortion 1

2 The Evolving Legal Status of Abortion 29

3 The Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the Roots of the Contemporary Abortion Regret Narrative 57

4 Beyond the Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Regret Moves from the Margins to the Center of the Anti abortion Movement 95

5 Protecting Women for Their Own Good: The Reemergence of Legal Paternalism 123

Methods Appendix 161

Notes 169

Bibliography 207

Index 211

What People are Saying About This

Karissa Haugeberg

"In this interdisciplinary study, Ehrlich and Doan reveal how the criminalization of abortion has been driven by anxieties about women’s roles in society. Their careful analysis of medical treatises and legal decisions, coupled with interviews with antiabortion crisis pregnancy center volunteers, reveals the disconnect between popular antiabortion discourses about abortion and the actual complexity of women’s lives. This engaging, well-written book explains the saliency of antiabortion politics in the United States and deserves a wide readership."

Marlene Gerber Fried

"Abortion Regret: The New Attack on Reproductive Freedom is required reading for activists, students, scholars, journalists, policy makers and anyone trying to confront the ongoing threats to reproductive rights. The book is meticulously researched and tightly argued and exceptionally accessible. Its intersectional lens and interdisciplinary analysis provide a fresh eye on the key Supreme Court decisions in Roe, Casey and Carhart, as well as a critical re-thinking of the anti-abortion movement’s strategies. Ehrlich and Doan focus on the abortion regret narrative, drawing a thread from its 19th century roots in the physicians campaign against abortion to its current iteration. Importantly, their account unmasks the racialized dynamics within the allegedly color-blind regret narrative. They show how that narrative animated the creation of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC), and through their interviews with CPC volunteers, that it continues to be the central draw. This material is a genuinely new contribution to abortion research, and the authors handle it with exquisite care. They accord respect to their interviewees, while at the same time critiquing the way their voices have been used to legitimize the narrative and expand it into the policy arena. Drawing on the expertise of CPC volunteers and other women who have experienced abortion regret, it has been systematically and strategically deployed by opponents of abortion who have successfully established it as 'scientific truth.' Despite the fact that it has been de-bunked by mainstream science, it is cited in Supreme Court briefs, state-level abortion restrictions, and has become a center-piece of anti-abortion propaganda aimed at both secular and religious audiences. This book comes at a critical moment, when the attacks on reproductive rights are escalating at a rate not seen before. Ehrlich and Doan’s insights will be a guidepost for abortion rights advocacy."