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Abortion as a moral problem has roots in a traditional religious-based morality that, before the contemporary abortion conflict, constituted a blend of concerns for sexual morality and the sanctity of motherhood. Although the moral force of these concerns eroded somewhat as women's social status underwent an irrevocable transformation, traces still remain of these concerns in the tensions around the meanings of motherhood that permeate much of the abortion conflict. Thus the opposition to abortion, although currently mobilized most overtly around fetal life, captures an amalgam of larger social concerns that broaden the social base of the opposition movement from religious leaders who derive their position from a theological perspective to grassroots activists, many of whom are women, who find justification for their opposition in the circumstances of their own personal and political lives.

The contemporary movement against abortion emerged out of Catholic opposition to the reform movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s but has since expanded to include a range of religious congregations and groups with more or less strong ties to organized religion. Initially mobilized under the rubric of Right to Life, this opposition formulated its objection to abortion around the loss of human life and, once Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, mounted a vigorous campaign with a multi-institutional focus aimed at (a) undermining public support for women's right to choose, (b) making it increasingly difficult for women to obtain abortion, and (c) once again outlawing abortion. The emphasis on fetal life, in conjunction with a vision of the abortion-seeking woman as freely choosing abortion, has contributed to the "clash of absolutes" that now defines much of the contemporary abortion conflict. In this view, which is quite specific to the U.S. case, abortion is wrong precisely because it involves the deliberate destruction of the most innocent of human lives by a woman who claims it is her right to do so. Thus, from the perspective of the pro-life movement, the relationship between the fetus and the woman sustaining it is potentially adversarial, and, accordingly, the ultimate solution to the problem lies not in efforts to reduce women's abortion needs but instead in prohibition and moral instruction.

Although Roe v. Wade still stands, its foundation has eroded, through the courts of law as well as the court of public opinion, by the many challenges launched by this opposition, even if the extreme end of the pro-life position--that abortion is tantamount to murder and hence always wrong--has attracted relatively few adherents among the public at large. Nevertheless, given the emphasis on fetal life, even the expansion of a right to abortion in cases of pregnancy that result from rape or incest is met with tension and ambivalence in some pro-life circles, where sympathy for a woman's suffering is outweighed by concerns for the fetus. When carrying a pregnancy to term would threaten a woman's life or health, the life of the fetus is pitted against the life and well-being of the mother. A similar tension, albeit with very different ingredients, accompanies violent protest tactics, especially the murder of abortion providers in the name of the pro-life cause. While most mainstream pro-life groups distance themselves from such extreme tactics, the moral dilemma they reveal--whose life is more important and why--is central to the definition of abortion as a social problem.

Bibliography:

1) Burns, Gene. 2005. The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.

2) Ferree, Myra Marx, William Anthony Gamson, Jurgen Gerhards, and Dieter Rucht. 2002. Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.

3) Ginsburg, Faye D. 1989. Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

4) Luker, Kristin. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

5) Mohr, James C. 1978. Abortion in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

6) Reagan, Leslie J. 1997. When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and the Law in the United States, 1867-1973. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

7) Staggenborg, Suzanne. 1991. The Pro-choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.

8) Tribe, Laurence H. 1990. Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes. New York: Norton.

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