Journal articles on the topic 'Pro-life movement Abortion Abortion'

AbstractPolitical mobilizations for and against legal abortions are cyclical entities. Studies on people who joined pro-life movements in the peak of abortion protests (1980s) are relatively common but recent critical studies of right-to-life activists are almost non-existent. To address this lack of recent research, this work combines “political resource” theories and feminist scholarship to explain why certain people are involved in anti-abortion social movements. After analyzing data from the 2010–12 version of the American National Election Surveys (n = 3,860), this study concludes that pro-life activism was primarily driven by absolutist stances on abortion, the minimization of perceived sexism in society, being exposed to religious conversations about politics, and membership in explicitly political groups. The study also found that people's gender, social class, and educational levels failed to predict their pro-life political behaviors.

The battle over abortion in America is seemingly endless. The longstanding nature of the conflict is due in part to the ability of both the “pro-choice” or abortion rights movement and the “pro-life” or antiabortion countermovement to continue to organize support for many years. The pro-choice movement is particularly remarkable in that it has not only survived for more than twenty-five years, but it has grown stronger since achieving its greatest victory, legalization of abortion in 1973.

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.

Despite the growing body of research on the emotion of disgust – including its relationship to political ideology, moral judgment, matters of sex and sexuality, and death – the global reproductive rights movement has paid relatively little attention to the role disgust plays in the debate over abortion. By focusing on the right of a woman to make her own decision about an unwanted pregnancy, the pro-choice community has allowed anti-choice groups to define and frame the abortion procedure, abortion providers, and women who have abortions in terms associated with disgust. This commentary encourages further examination of what triggers disgust, its measurement, and ways of mitigating it, which could be useful for reducing abortion stigma, in future legal cases and in abortion research, advocacy, and communications.

Drawing on social-movement and sociolegal theorizing, we investigate legal-framing innovations in the briefs of reproductive-rights cause lawyers in prominent US Supreme Court abortion cases. Our results show that pro-choice activist attorneys engage in innovative women’s-rights framing when the political-legal context is more resistant to abortion rights for women, that is, when the political-legal opportunity structure is generally closed to reproductive-rights activism. We consider reproductive-rights framing in three types of pivotal abortion cases over the last half-century: challenges to limitations on public funding of abortion, challenges to regulations that include multiple restrictions on abortion access, and challenges to bans on second-trimester abortions. Our analysis proceeds both qualitatively and quantitatively, with close reading of the briefs to distill the main women’s-rights frames, a count analysis using text mining to examine use of the frames in the briefs, and assessment of the political-judicial context to discern its influence on cause-lawyer legal framing. We conclude by theorizing the importance of the broader political-legal context in understanding cause-lawyer legal-framing innovations.

This paper examines three paintings by T. Gerhardt Smith as pro-life responses to the life issues of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia: Sorrow Without Tears: Post-Abortion Syndrome, Femicidal National Organization Woman’s Planned Parentless Selfish Movement, and Killer Caduceus. After identifying foundational principles of art aesthetics from a Catholic perspective, the paper determines that Smith’s paintings are consistent with ideas enunciated in St. John Paul II’s Letter to Artists (1999).

Sujatha Jesudason and Tracy Weitz provide an empirical examination of the framing of public discourses related to assisted reproductive technology (ART) and abortion by examining two bills considered by the California legislature in “Eggs and Abortion: The Language of Protection in Legislation Regulating Abortion and Egg Donation in Debate over Two California Laws.” Jesudason and Weitz analyze the framing of two different legislative efforts: one allowing non-physician practitioners to perform non-surgical abortions and the other removing the prohibition on egg donor payment in the research setting. Jesudason and Weitz identified three different memes that were present in the discussion of these two bills: health care providers and scientists as inherently suspect, denial of women of agency through speaking about them as passive actors that things happen to, and the focus on potential harms and the need to protect women from harm. What was most compelling about their article is that they convincingly show how these themes were used as political tools by both anti-choice and pro-choice groups in California. Jesudason and Weitz note that “frames and language matter.”

AbstractFour decades after the Court's landmark decision inRoe v. Wade, the issue of abortion persists as a point of contention for elected officials. The Catholic Church has taken a leading role in the pro-life movement, putting many Catholic representatives in a difficult position as they can be cross-pressured by their party, their constituents, and their own beliefs. Given these pressures, how do Catholic legislators explain their positions on abortion? We address this question via an analysis of public statements about abortion made by Catholic representatives and senators in the 108thCongress. We examine which members comment on abortion and use automated text analysis to measure legislators' certainty and use of moral and religious terms when discussing abortion. Multivariate analysis shows that gender, ethnicity, and an interaction between a member's position on abortion and the number of Catholics in their constituency shape how Catholic legislators discuss abortion.

The victory of Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election was a victory for a new form of US political conservatism that emphasized both social and economic issues. Abortion was paramount among these new social issues, and opponents of abortion supported Reagan with the belief that he would work vigorously to overturn Roe v. Wade. Less than six months after Reagan’s inauguration, the national anti-abortion movement was vociferously condemning the President over the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. This article explores the nature of the passionate reaction to O’Connor and the fragility of the coalition that opposed her. Anti-abortionists were deeply troubled by the realization that their access and symbolic capital did not translate into influence, and were shocked that abortion was not a litmus test for their ‘pro-life President.' The article argues that the relationship between the right-to-life movement, the Reagan administration, and the Republican Party was often fraught, contested, and precarious. In Reagan’s first year in office, the place of the right-to-life movement in the new conservatism of the 1980s was remarkably uncertain.

We explore how opportunity environments, conceptualized to include political-legal and cultural components, help explain the trajectories of movement tactics and frames employed in differing contexts. Using data from interviews, newspaper accounts, and web sites, we document how opportunity environments affected the trajectory of "rescue" tactics and frames. When abortion opponents in France attempted to block access to abortion providers in order to "rescue unborn children, " the tactic and associated frames met with a different fate than in the U.S. The legal context under which abortion was available in each nation affected the use of specific direct action tactics. Also, how abortion was culturally constructed and embedded—its "cultural opportunity structure"—affected responses to rescue by pro-life activists, the media, and the countermovement.

This study explores how social movement organisations involved in the abortion debate in the Republic of Ireland attempted to appeal to men in their campaign messages before the 2018 referendum on the Eighth Amendment concerning abortion. We scrape social movement organisations’ Twitter accounts to conduct quantitative and qualitative content analyses of images and videos the organisations posted, and find evidence that social movement organisations sometimes extended their frames to men as voters. Social movement organisations evoked themes of hegemonic masculinity in their imagery and messaging, though these themes were not a large portion of overall campaign tweets and there were distinct differences in how this was done by the two organisations we study. Previous research suggests anti-abortion organisations extend their frames to incorporate ‘pro-woman’ messaging. Our research contributes by exploring the ways that frames may be extended by both anti- and pro-abortion actors to target men and mobilise masculinity in public debates over women’s rights.

This article investigates the role of the West German family planning association Pro Familia in the abortion reform of the 1960s and 1970s. It examines the question of legal abortion from the perspective of reproductive decision-making and asks who was to make a decision about having an abortion in the reform process—the woman, her doctor, or a counsellor. During the early reform suggestions of §218 in the 1960s, Pro Familia supported the West German solution of allowing legal abortion only in medical emergencies. Opinions within the organization changed as leading members witnessed legalization in Great Britain and New York. The feminist movement and the Catholic opposition to legal abortion influenced positions in the reform phase of the 1970s. Meanwhile, Pro Familia put emphasis on compulsory pregnancy crisis counselling as aid in decision-making for individual women and a tool for putting a decision into practice. Throughout the reform process, Pro Familia continued to perceive legal abortion not as way to enable women to make their own decision but as a pragmatic solution to emergencies.

This article considers the role of the Australian anti-abortion movement in the discursive practices of the worldwide pro-life franchise. It is based on in-depth interviews with key members of the moment located in four similar organizations. It examines the ways in which they perceive their cause and the ways in which they might influence both public conversations about abortion and individual pregnant women. It specifically focuses on the ways in which new medical imaging technologies are drawn upon to facilitate a renewed view of the separateness of a foetus, explores the participants’ views of motherhood and mothering, and the ways in which the abortion rate is seen as indicative of the fragmentation of contemporary society.

As the anti-abortion movement gains ground in the United States, it is important to explore the potential impact of overturning Roe v. Wade (1973) on the practice of IVF (in vitro fertilization). If the United States Supreme Court abandoned the legal right to early pregnancy terminations, it would open the door for states to enforce laws defining life to begin at conception. In all likelihood, legally establishing life to begin at conception may make IVF far less likely to be successful, significantly more expensive, more likely to result in high risk pregnancies with multiples, and more medically invasive. As the prevalence of IVF grows, this is a practice that should no longer be ignored in the political discourse on abortion. Instead, the unintended consequences of life at conception bills on the cost, availability, safety, and success rates of IVF can provide a strong argument in the toolbox of strategies for social workers lobbying against anti-abortion legislation.

The 1980s were characterized not only by Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric of ‘traditional family values’ but also by a fierce anti-abortion movement that challenged the legalization of abortion. While the women’s movement fought to preserve abortion rights and reproductive choice, an organization that originated with the 1970s women’s rights and self-help movements conceived ‘adoption’ as a moral alternative to abortion. The self-help organization Concerned United Birthparents, founded in 1976 sought the opening of records and moral recognition for ‘birthmothers’ (and later ‘birth-parents’ in general). While their emphasis on adoption as an alternative to abortion seemed to meet with President Reagan’s pro-adoption campaign and the Christian Right’s support for adoption, Concerned United Birthparents nonetheless pursued an agenda of its own, demanding respect and legitimacy for unmarried women’s reproductive decision-making. This article draws primarily on the records of Concerned United Birthparents to develop a new perspective on single women’s changing perception of their reproductive rights and choices in the 1980s. Transforming an originally conservative claim (‘adoption instead of abortion’) into individual ‘adoption rights’ and an inclusive concept of ‘choice’, Concerned United Birthparents drew on the social movements of the period. Moreover, it provided a case for liberal reproductive decision-making within an ultra-conservative political climate that challenges the assumption of an all-encompassing conservative revolution.

ABSTRACTThis article comparatively analyzes the strategies and political impact of “pro-life” and feminist movements in the struggle over abortion policy in Mexico. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, it argues that anti-abortion movements are more likely to influence policymaking in contexts where they can tap into hegemonic religious institutions’ networks and alliances and indirectly provide incumbents with legitimizing moral and financial support in exchange for restrictive reforms. Partisan contexts shape incumbents’ need for such support. Feminist activists, by contrast, have neither elite connections nor access to similar mobilization resources. To make this argument, the analysis examines pro-life and feminist movements in two Mexican states: Yucatán, where Congress passed a restrictive reform; and Hidalgo, where an identical initiative failed.

Throughout the 1970s protest against abortion was organised by two main pressure groups, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child and the LIFE organisation. This paper considers the rhetoric employed by the anti-abortion movement during this period by focusing on the campaign literature, the evidence submitted to various committees of inquiry and public statements made by leading anti-abortionists. The findings from a study of a small sample of anti-abortion protestors are also reported. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by sixty-four members of two local branches of the two national pressure groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted with local campaign activists. In the subsequent analysis the anti-abortion movement is depicted as adopting a position of cultural fundamentalism in the face of changing social mores and moral values. Protest against abortion is placed within the wider framework of moral reform. In studying the movement and its supporters use is made of the analytical distinction between assimilative and coercive reform (Gusfield, 1963).

The politics of reproduction dominate the political landscape now more than ever. One area of controversy has been informed consent statutes for abortion, which have been praised by the pro-life movement but derided by the pro-choice movement. More recently, legislatures have begun to enact informed consent statutes with respect to end-of-life decision making, an area almost as politically controversial as abortion. Like many abortion disclosure laws, some of these have been entitled “Right to Know” statutes. Yet, the supporters and opponents of each set of statutes tend not to be the same, aligning to a large extent based on their place in the culture wars over life and death.In this Article, I strive not only to show the remarkably similar critiques each side marshals but also to use these concerns to think in more nuanced ways about the goals of informed consent and whether the disclosure mandates achieve those goals. I first argue in favor of the aspirational goals of informed consent as a process that allows patients to participate in their medical decision making. While conceding the inherently political nature of abortion and end-of-life care, I also contend that the significance of decisions regarding those matters warrants, at least in theory, legislative efforts to ensure that patients have the opportunity to engage in deliberative and informed decision making.In describing and responding to the similar critiques of both sets of laws—the political bias of the statutes; the efforts to persuade, especially with non-medical information; the potential vulnerability of the targeted audience; and the interference with physician discretion—I uncover and challenge some of the presumptions about informed consent inherent in those critiques. Although information that persuades or influences is not per se problematic, I argue that disclosure of information that is inaccurate, untrue, or emotionally inflammatory harms informed consent. Even well-crafted informed consent mandates, however, are insufficient to promote truly deliberative decision making because they oversimplify the complexity of these decisions and fail to respond to the fact that informed consent is a process that requires more than simply the delivery of information; it also requires dialogue and discussion. This Article ends with suggestions for ways to try to promote such a dialogue.

AbstractThe 1972 abortion-initiative campaign in North Dakota provides an example where elites on one side of an issue were able to provide cues and get supporters to participate in an election while the other side was unable to do so. North Dakota Right to Life through the formation of branch chapters and its work with the Catholic churches became the focus of the anti-initiative campaign. Flush with resources, the NDRL made sure that its supporters turned out to such an extent that initiative voters outnumbered presidential voters in most counties. While the pro-initiative elements proved effective at getting the question on the ballot, they were unable to get their message out, let alone galvanize supporters. The result was confusion among potential supports and lower turnout rates in the most populous counties.

In the midst of extreme and dualistic religio-political debates regarding women’s sexual wellness and abortion, one begins to wonder what a new theo-ethical approach might look like which rejects overly-simplistic, harmful understandings of such crucial issues. What might it look like to truly centre women’s full human experiences, loving each other in a way that addresses harm and meets tangible needs? This article examines the complex inequitable structural and institutional realities of sexual wellness and abortion through an intersectional theo-ethical lens. The article then proceeds to suggest a new socio-religio-political ‘Pro-Love’ philosophy, undergirded by foundational theological understandings of justice-oriented love, and situated within the broad fields of Feminist, Liberation, Process, and Queer Theologies, within the Christian tradition. The suggested approach requires systematically addressing root issues affecting the lack of equitable access to sexual wellness and the racist/sexist/classist structures forcing women into under-resourced and unsafe environments, leading to high demand for abortion services.

Over the past few decades political processes recognizing and broadening sexual and reproductive rights have produced a reaction from conservative sectors seeking to block those gains. Although the Catholic Church hierarchy and some Evangelical churches have led the opposition to these rights, various sectors of civil society have begun to foment resistance to pluralist sexual politics. In Argentina self-proclaimed pro-life nongovernmental organizations have become important in the local context, using channels legitimized by contemporary democracy. While they initially devoted themselves primarily to the issue of abortion through activities associated with assistencialism and cultural impact, their actions since the 1990s have diversified, entering into the politico-institutional field and aiming at other issues associated with the country’s sexual policy. The movement and religion overlap at many levels and are separate in others. The complexity of the relationship between them requires rethinking of the normative frameworks through which progress on sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America is usually theorized. The separation of religion and politics under the paradigm of laicism can be insufficient to guarantee sexual pluralism in our societies. En las últimas décadas, los procesos políticos por el reconocimiento y ampliación de los derechos sexuales y reproductivos han generado la reacción de sectores conservadores que buscan obstaculizar dichas conquistas. Si bien la jerarquía católica y algunas iglesias evangélicas han protagonizado el rechazo a estos derechos, distintos sectores de la sociedad civil han comenzado también a activar una resistencia a las políticas sexuales pluralistas. En Argentina las organizaciones no-gubernamentales autodenominadas pro-vida han adquirido relevancia en el contexto local, utilizando los canales legitimados por la democracia contemporánea. Mientras las primeras se abocaron centralmente a la temática del aborto desde acciones asociadas al asistencialismo y al impacto cultural, a partir de los noventa sus acciones se han diversificado, entrando al campo político-institucional y orientándose a otros temas asociados a la política sexual del país. Este movimiento y la religión se superponen en muchos niveles y se separan en otros. La complejidad que reviste su relación implica repensar los marcos normativos mediante los cuales se ha solido teorizar el avance en los derechos sexuales y reproductivos en América Latina. La separación de la religión y la política bajo el paradigma de la laicidad puede resultar una estrategia insuficiente para garantizar el pluralismo sexual al interior de nuestras sociedades.

AbstractThis article looks at the political significance of the pro-choice movement in the Canadian province of Ontario. It focuses more specifically on the discursive practices of the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) and its use of law as a tool to effective change. By comparing the language of the Morgentaler judgment to that of the prochoice movement, this article attempts to explore the reference to law as a path for social change and, namely, as a site of discursive construction of norms and representations, as opposed to a simplistic definition of law as a site of power struggles.

This paper focuses on the public debate in Poland and Italy concerning the right to abortion in the contemporary rise of populist neo-conservative forces in Europe and of a global feminist movement. In both countries, the historical Catholic interference into women's reproductive rights and self-determination has been enforced by the renewed alliance of right-wing governments and pro-life groups to converge into a transnational “anti-gender war”. This represents a real backlash against women’s achievements over the last decades in terms of reproductive and sexual citizenship, which appears to be the battlefield for redefinition of western citizenship in times of global crisis. Although different genealogies, we identified a common framing of neo-conservative discourse, and of feminist claims and practices, as that of feminist strikes and social mutualism. In this perspective, we consider these practices as a normativity from below, arguing that feminist movement is addressing a new paradigm of citizenship.

The risk of death or serious injury from ‘backstreet abortions’ was an important narrative in the 20th century campaign to liberalise abortion in the UK. Since then, clinical developments have reduced the overall health risks of abortion, and international health organisations have been set up to provide cross-border, medically safe abortions to places where it is unlawful, offering advice and, where possible, supplying abortion pills. These changes mean that pro-choice campaigns in Europe have often moved away from the risks of ‘backstreet abortions’ as a central narrative when campaigning for abortion liberalisation. In contrast, in the UK, anti-abortion activists are increasingly using ideas about ‘backstreet abortions’ to resist further liberalisation. These claims can be seen to fit within a broader shift from morals to risk within moral regulation campaigns and build on anti-abortion messages framed as being ‘pro-women’, with anti-abortion activists claiming to be the ‘savers’ of women. Using a parliamentary debate as a case study, this article will illustrate these trends and show how the ‘backstreet’ metaphor within anti-abortion campaigns builds on three interconnected themes of ‘abortion-as-harmful’, ‘abortion industry’, and ‘abortion culture’. This article will argue that the anti-abortion movement’s adoption of risk-based narratives contains unresolved contradictions due to the underlying moral basis of their position. These are exacerbated by the need, in this case, to defend legislation that they fundamentally disagree with. Moreover, their attempts to construct identifiable ‘harms’ and vulnerable ‘victims’, which are components of moral regulation campaigns, are unlikely to be convincing in the context of widespread public support for abortion.

In the emerging context of hashtag feminism, this article explores the #SupportIslandWomen pro-choice initiative in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. The movement gained visibility by using the altered image of Anne of Green Gables (rogue Anne) on posters and graffiti throughout PEI and on social media. Drawing from organizational discourse theory, we analyse how rogue Anne was invoked by activists who spoke in her name, thus enacting the polyphonic nature of discourse. Our case study was built by performing non-participant observation online and by conducting a search in Canadian blogs and newspapers. First, we detail the discursive practices developed within the #SupportIslandWomen movement and underline their constitutive effects, namely, by focusing on the organizing properties of the hashtag feature. Then, we investigate the benefits and limitations of using rogue Anne as a unifying symbol and reflect on the discursive struggles that led to and were generated by her usurpation.

The article explores the relationship between emotions, collective identity and mobilisation in conservative social movements through an analysis of the World Congress of Families’ (WCF) 13th international conference, held in Verona in March 2019. WCF promotes Christian family values and brings together anti-gay, anti-feminist and anti-abortion activists, religious leaders, and politicians from around the world. We attended the congress and base our analysis on observations and theories on social movements and emotions. Both positive and negative emotions as well as symbols and metaphors were used as building blocks in the emotional work that holds this conservative movement together. In order to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms we show how passive emotions are turned into active, how the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are constructed, and how the combination of positive and negative emotions helps motivate action.

Uma posição contrária ou favorável ao aborto depende da resposta à questão bioética elementar: quando tem início a vida qualitativamente humana no feto? Adotando o princípio da inviolabilidade da vida humana como critério ético fundamental de análise, busca-se responder à pergunta sobre o status do embrião a partir da antropologia personalista de Lima Vaz. Conforme o autor, a pessoa humana é compreendida na tríplice estrutura: somática, psíquica e espiritual. Uma nova e ampla categoria de pessoa é proposta: ser humano, unidade de estrutura e relações, convocada a realizar-se pelo movimento dialético de expressão do dado somático, através das relações fundamentais com o mundo, o outro e o Absoluto, abrangendo toda a existência, desde a fecundação até a morte. O humanismo personalista de Lima Vaz oferece uma resposta filosófica contundente ao problema do aborto.ABSTRACT: A stand against or in favor of abortion depends on the answer to the elementary bioethical question: when is the beginning of the human life in a fetus? Adopting the principle of inviolability of human life as the fundamental ethical criterion of analysis and using Lima Vaz’s personalistic anthropology, we search for an answer to the question about the embryo status. According to the author, the human person is comprehended in the triple structure: somatic, psychic and spiritual. A new and broad category of person is proposed: the human being, unity of structure and relations, is called to self realization by the dialectical movement of expression from the somatic base, through the fundamental relations with the world, the other and the Absolute, including the entire existence, from fecundation until death. Lima Vaz’s personalistic humanism offers a forceful philosophical answer to the problem of abortion.

The problem of procured abortion is still very actual. The Author has continued to outline the planetary dimensions, and now refers to a statistical study of the incidence of the abortion phenomenon in the United States of America. The placing of the U.S.A in the classification of the incidence of induced abortion within thirty countries of the world is identified, in relation to the natal rate and the consistency of the population. The comparison of the statistical data of the last twenty years among the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Italy is presented. A specific examination is made for the 50 States of the USA from a statistical point of view, and as a comparative analysis of some socio-economic factors. A significant framework emerges of the analogies and differences between the various States of the USA Federation. The Author presents some ethical and social considerations, wishing for a programmed intervention that is co-ordinated and efficient to contain this “sore of the social body”, as well as the perspective that the USA, which has suffered historically from the serious problem of slavery, should spread the ideal of freedom and human dignity in the world. It is also hoped that there can be a similar movement towards a higher respect, and greater and more systematic help for the new life, as a subject for the recognition as a conceived human being with the natural right to the protection of its life, for progress in the civil and humanitarian conscience.

Social movement consequences have become an increasingly important area of study, but the current literature overlooks implementation and treats law, organizations, and culture as separate areas of inquiry. This study offers a new perspective on consequences by taking a socio-legal approach that considers how law is constructed and enacted in professional fields and how legal and professional logics intersect to influence professional decision making. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, surveys, and content analysis about the Emergency Contraceptive Pill (ECP) conflict in pharmacy, I find that professional logics largely supersede legal ones to influence decision making and that organizational positioning and perceived policy affect collective goods distribution. These forces diminish the power of pro-choice and anti-abortion laws as professionals interpret, construct, and ignore the law in daily practice. The concluding discussion emphasizes the importance of considering professionals as targets of social movement action, reconceptualizing collective goods and implementation, and using field theory as methodology.

The study examines the political thought of the pro-choice Dziewuchy Dziewuchom (Gals for Gals) movement, which was active in Poland in 2016–2018. The main goal of the analysis was to determine how the sense that one’s needs were satisfied was changing during the political activity of the Gals and to what extent these changes depended on the external stimuli provided by Polish Parliament working on two bills to tighten the anti-abortion law. The research issues were resolved using qualitative source analysis, relational content analysis and the dyad of the theoretical categories of relative deprivation (RD) and gratification (RG). The study shows that the Gals for Gals movement created an internally coherent picture of their situation. However, relative deprivation and gratification were manifested only immediately after the movement was established and on its first anniversary. The manifestations did not depend on external stimuli provided by the successive stages of the legislative processes. The manifestations of deprivation served the purpose of discursive self-legitimation of the movement, and of gratification expressed organizational success. These types of attitudes emerged during the second stage, that is after the rejection of the first bill at the second reading, when the Gals discursively self-relegitimated the movement and expressed a sense of organizational success and satisfaction of the need for social recognition. This means that the Gals were not satisfied with achieving the goals of the movement, and the efforts to neutralize relative deprivation did not motivate their political activity.

The article delves analytically into the political thought of the Polish pro-choice movement Gals for Gals which arose to oppose to the submitted draft act which was to have imposed a total ban on abortion and acted in 2016-2018. It aims to determine how Gals for Gals explained and justified their occurrence and political activity, how the strategies of this discoursive self-legitimation changed over time, and to what extent the collective identity-forming process depended on the external incentives understood as the stages of two legislative processes. In employing the written sources analysis, relational content analysis, and the typology of discoursive legitimation strategies, the research discovers that the movement made identityforming attempts directly after the mass mobilization and over the first anniversary of foundation rather than subjected the attempts to the legislative processes. The Gals’ identity constantly drew upon mostly authorization, rationalization, and remotely narrativization. Authorization dominated at the beginning, but then this strategy gave place to rationalization. Initially, the Gals focused on linking the movement to celebrities and human rights, and then consequently preserved the links to gain social support and appreciation. Rationalization armed activists with arguments against the current political situation and the planned legislation. Moralization did not enter the discourse, which reveals the absence of aspirations to build an enduring movement.

Slavery continues to be practiced in many parts of the world: not only chattel slavery but also indirect varieties (enforced child labour, prostitution, debt enslavement, etc.). Secular organisations opposed to these practices seek to provide a suitable philosophical counter to those supporting or tolerating the evils. The present paper considers natural law and neo-Kantian arguments and finds them wanting. It then looks at biblical principles and the history of the abolition of the slave trade in England and the emancipation movement in the United States (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). From this ideological and historical survey, an attempt is made to discover why Enlightenment principles, as exemplified by the French philosophes, Thomas Jefferson, and other Revolutionaries, failed to impact, whilst evangelical Christians (Granville Sharp, John Newton, Wilberforce, et al.) succeeded in their hard-won crusade to outlaw slavery. By way of conclusion, a parallel is drawn with the contemporary right-to-life movement and jurisprudent Ronald Dworkin’s position on abortion.

In my postgraduate formation during the last years of the 80’s, we had close to thirty hospital beds in a pavilion called “sépticas” (1). In Colombia, where abortion was completely penalized, the pavilion was mostly filled with women with insecure, complicated abortions. The focus we received was technical: management of intensive care; performance of hysterectomies, colostomies, bowel resection, etc. In those times, some nurses were nuns and limited themselves to interrogating the patients to get them to “confess” what they had done to themselves in order to abort. It always disturbed me that the women who left alive, left without any advice or contraceptive method. Having asked a professor of mine, he responded with disdain: “This is a third level hospital, those things are done by nurses of the first level”. Seeing so much pain and death, I decided to talk to patients, and I began to understand their decision. I still remember so many deaths with sadness, but one case in particular pains me: it was a woman close to being fifty who arrived with a uterine perforation in a state of advanced sepsis. Despite the surgery and the intensive care, she passed away. I had talked to her, and she told me she was a widow, had two adult kids and had aborted because of “embarrassment towards them” because they were going to find out that she had an active sexual life. A few days after her passing, the pathology professor called me, surprised, to tell me that the uterus we had sent for pathological examination showed no pregnancy. She was a woman in a perimenopausal state with a pregnancy exam that gave a false positive due to the high levels of FSH/LH typical of her age. SHE WAS NOT PREGNANT!!! She didn’t have menstruation because she was premenopausal and a false positive led her to an unsafe abortion. Of course, the injuries caused in the attempted abortion caused the fatal conclusion, but the real underlying cause was the social taboo in respect to sexuality. I had to watch many adolescents and young women leave the hospital alive, but without a uterus, sometime without ovaries and with colostomies, to be looked down on by a society that blamed them for deciding to not be mothers. I had to see situation of women that arrived with their intestines protruding from their vaginas because of unsafe abortions. I saw women, who in their despair, self-inflicted injuries attempting to abort with elements such as stick, branches, onion wedges, alum bars and clothing hooks among others. Among so many deaths, it was hard not having at least one woman per day in the morgue due to an unsafe abortion. During those time, healthcare was not handled from the biopsychosocial, but only from the technical (2); nonetheless, in the academic evaluations that were performed, when asked about the definition of health, we had to recite the text from the International Organization of Health that included these three aspects. How contradictory! To give response to the health need of women and guarantee their right when I was already a professor, I began an obstetric contraceptive service in that third level hospital. There was resistance from the directors, but fortunately I was able to acquire international donations for the institution, which facilitated its acceptance. I decided to undertake a teaching career with the hope of being able to sensitize health professionals towards an integral focus of health and illness. When the International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Cairo in 1994, I had already spent various years in teaching, and when I read their Action Program, I found a name for what I was working on: Sexual and Reproductive Rights. I began to incorporate the tools given by this document into my professional and teaching life. I was able to sensitize people at my countries Health Ministry, and we worked together moving it to an approach of human rights in areas of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). This new viewpoint, in addition to being integral, sought to give answers to old problems like maternal mortality, adolescent pregnancy, low contraceptive prevalence, unplanned or unwanted pregnancy or violence against women. With other sensitized people, we began with these SRH issues to permeate the Colombian Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, some universities, and university hospitals. We are still fighting in a country that despite many difficulties has improved its indicators of SRH. With the experience of having labored in all sphere of these topics, we manage to create, with a handful of colleagues and friend at the Universidad El Bosque, a Master’s Program in Sexual and Reproductive Health, open to all professions, in which we broke several paradigms. A program was initiated in which the qualitative and quantitative investigation had the same weight, and some alumni of the program are now in positions of leadership in governmental and international institutions, replicating integral models. In the Latin American Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (FLASOG, English acronym) and in the International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (FIGO), I was able to apply my experience for many years in the SRH committees of these association to benefit women and girls in the regional and global environments. When I think of who has inspired me in these fights, I should highlight the great feminist who have taught me and been with me in so many fights. I cannot mention them all, but I have admired the story of the life of Margaret Sanger with her persistence and visionary outlook. She fought throughout her whole life to help the women of the 20th century to be able to obtain the right to decide when and whether or not they wanted to have children (3). Of current feminist, I have had the privilege of sharing experiences with Carmen Barroso, Giselle Carino, Debora Diniz and Alejandra Meglioli, leaders of the International Planned Parenthood Federation – Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF-RHO). From my country, I want to mention my countrywoman Florence Thomas, psychologist, columnist, writer and Colombo-French feminist. She is one of the most influential and important voices in the movement for women rights in Colombia and the region. She arrived from France in the 1960’s, in the years of counterculture, the Beatles, hippies, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, a time in which capitalism and consumer culture began to be criticized (4). It was then when they began to talk about the female body, female sexuality and when the contraceptive pill arrived like a total revolution for women. Upon its arrival in 1967, she experimented a shock because she had just assisted in a revolution and only found a country of mothers, not women (5). That was the only destiny for a woman, to be quiet and submissive. Then she realized that this could not continue, speaking of “revolutionary vanguards” in such a patriarchal environment. In 1986 with the North American and European feminism waves and with her academic team, they created the group “Mujer y Sociedad de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia”, incubator of great initiatives and achievements for the country (6). She has led great changes with her courage, the strength of her arguments, and a simultaneously passionate and agreeable discourse. Among her multiple books, I highlight “Conversaciones con Violeta” (7), motivated by the disdain towards feminism of some young women. She writes it as a dialogue with an imaginary daughter in which, in an intimate manner, she reconstructs the history of women throughout the centuries and gives new light of the fundamental role of feminism in the life of modern women. Another book that shows her bravery is “Había que decirlo” (8), in which she narrates the experience of her own abortion at age twenty-two in sixty’s France. My work experience in the IPPF-RHO has allowed me to meet leaders of all ages in diverse countries of the region, who with great mysticism and dedication, voluntarily, work to achieve a more equal and just society. I have been particularly impressed by the appropriation of the concept of sexual and reproductive rights by young people, and this has given me great hope for the future of the planet. We continue to have an incomplete agenda of the action plan of the ICPD of Cairo but seeing how the youth bravely confront the challenges motivates me to continue ahead and give my years of experience in an intergenerational work. In their policies and programs, the IPPF-RHO evidences great commitment for the rights and the SRH of adolescent, that are consistent with what the organization promotes, for example, 20% of the places for decision making are in hands of the young. Member organizations, that base their labor on volunteers, are true incubators of youth that will make that unassailable and necessary change of generations. In contrast to what many of us experienced, working in this complicated agenda of sexual and reproductive health without theoretical bases, today we see committed people with a solid formation to replace us. In the college of medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the College of Nursing at the Universidad El Bosque, the new generations are more motivated and empowered, with great desire to change the strict underlying structures. Our great worry is the onslaught of the ultra-right, a lot of times better organized than us who do support rights, that supports anti-rights group and are truly pro-life (9). Faced with this scenario, we should organize ourselves better, giving battle to guarantee the rights of women in the local, regional, and global level, aggregating the efforts of all pro-right organizations. We are now committed to the Objectives of Sustainable Development (10), understood as those that satisfy the necessities of the current generation without jeopardizing the capacity of future generations to satisfy their own necessities. This new agenda is based on: - The unfinished work of the Millennium Development Goals - Pending commitments (international environmental conventions) - The emergent topics of the three dimensions of sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental. We now have 17 objectives of sustainable development and 169 goals (11). These goals mention “universal access to reproductive health” many times. In objective 3 of this list is included guaranteeing, before the year 2030, “universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, including those of family planning, information, and education.” Likewise, objective 5, “obtain gender equality and empower all women and girls”, establishes the goal of “assuring the universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in conformity with the action program of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Action Platform of Beijing”. It cannot be forgotten that the term universal access to sexual and reproductive health includes universal access to abortion and contraception. Currently, 830 women die every day through preventable maternal causes; of these deaths, 99% occur in developing countries, more than half in fragile environments and in humanitarian contexts (12). 216 million women cannot access modern contraception methods and the majority live in the nine poorest countries in the world and in a cultural environment proper to the decades of the seventies (13). This number only includes women from 15 to 49 years in any marital state, that is to say, the number that takes all women into account is much greater. Achieving the proposed objectives would entail preventing 67 million unwanted pregnancies and reducing maternal deaths by two thirds. We currently have a high, unsatisfied demand for modern contraceptives, with extremely low use of reversible, long term methods (intrauterine devices and subdermal implants) which are the most effect ones with best adherence (14). There is not a single objective among the 17 Objectives of Sustainable Development where contraception does not have a prominent role: from the first one that refers to ending poverty, going through the fifth one about gender equality, the tenth of inequality reduction among countries and within the same country, until the sixteenth related with peace and justice. If we want to change the world, we should procure universal access to contraception without myths or barriers. We have the moral obligation of achieving the irradiation of extreme poverty and advancing the construction of more equal, just, and happy societies. In emergency contraception (EC), we are very far from reaching expectations. If in reversible, long-term methods we have low prevalence, in EC the situation gets worse. Not all faculties in the region look at this topic, and where it is looked at, there is no homogeneity in content, not even within the same country. There are still myths about their real action mechanisms. There are countries, like Honduras, where it is prohibited and there is no specific medicine, the same case as in Haiti. Where it is available, access is dismal, particularly among girls, adolescents, youth, migrants, afro-descendent, and indigenous. The multiple barriers for the effective use of emergency contraceptives must be knocked down, and to work toward that we have to destroy myths and erroneous perceptions, taboos and cultural norms; achieve changes in laws and restrictive rules within countries, achieve access without barriers to the EC; work in union with other sectors; train health personnel and the community. It is necessary to transform the attitude of health personal to a service above personal opinion. Reflecting on what has occurred after the ICPD in Cairo, their Action Program changed how we look at the dynamics of population from an emphasis on demographics to a focus on the people and human rights. The governments agreed that, in this new focus, success was the empowerment of women and the possibility of choice through expanded access to education, health, services, and employment among others. Nonetheless, there have been unequal advances and inequality persists in our region, all the goals were not met, the sexual and reproductive goals continue beyond the reach of many women (15). There is a long road ahead until women and girls of the world can claim their rights and liberty of deciding. Globally, maternal deaths have been reduced, there is more qualified assistance of births, more contraception prevalence, integral sexuality education, and access to SRH services for adolescents are now recognized rights with great advances, and additionally there have been concrete gains in terms of more favorable legal frameworks, particularly in our region; nonetheless, although it’s true that the access condition have improved, the restrictive laws of the region expose the most vulnerable women to insecure abortions. There are great challenges for governments to recognize SRH and the DSR as integral parts of health systems, there is an ample agenda against women. In that sense, access to SRH is threatened and oppressed, it requires multi-sector mobilization and litigation strategies, investigation and support for the support of women’s rights as a multi-sector agenda. Looking forward, we must make an effort to work more with youth to advance not only the Action Program of the ICPD, but also all social movements. They are one of the most vulnerable groups, and the biggest catalyzers for change. The young population still faces many challenges, especially women and girls; young girls are in particularly high risk due to lack of friendly and confidential services related with sexual and reproductive health, gender violence, and lack of access to services. In addition, access to abortion must be improved; it is the responsibility of states to guarantee the quality and security of this access. In our region there still exist countries with completely restrictive frameworks. New technologies facilitate self-care (16), which will allow expansion of universal access, but governments cannot detach themselves from their responsibility. Self-care is expanding in the world and can be strategic for reaching the most vulnerable populations. There are new challenges for the same problems, that require a re-interpretation of the measures necessary to guaranty the DSR of all people, in particular women, girls, and in general, marginalized and vulnerable populations. It is necessary to take into account migrations, climate change, the impact of digital media, the resurgence of hate discourse, oppression, violence, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, and other emergent problems, as SRH should be seen within a framework of justice, not isolated. We should demand accountability of the 179 governments that participate in the ICPD 25 years ago and the 193 countries that signed the Sustainable Development Objectives. They should reaffirm their commitments and expand their agenda to topics not considered at that time. Our region has given the world an example with the Agreement of Montevideo, that becomes a blueprint for achieving the action plan of the CIPD and we should not allow retreat. This agreement puts people at the center, especially women, and includes the topic of abortion, inviting the state to consider the possibility of legalizing it, which opens the doors for all governments of the world to recognize that women have the right to choose on maternity. This agreement is much more inclusive: Considering that the gaps in health continue to abound in the region and the average statistics hide the high levels of maternal mortality, of sexually transmitted diseases, of infection by HIV/AIDS, and the unsatisfied demand for contraception in the population that lives in poverty and rural areas, among indigenous communities, and afro-descendants and groups in conditions of vulnerability like women, adolescents and incapacitated people, it is agreed: 33- To promote, protect, and guarantee the health and the sexual and reproductive rights that contribute to the complete fulfillment of people and social justice in a society free of any form of discrimination and violence. 37- Guarantee universal access to quality sexual and reproductive health services, taking into consideration the specific needs of men and women, adolescents and young, LGBT people, older people and people with incapacity, paying particular attention to people in a condition of vulnerability and people who live in rural and remote zone, promoting citizen participation in the completing of these commitments. 42- To guarantee, in cases in which abortion is legal or decriminalized in the national legislation, the existence of safe and quality abortion for non-desired or non-accepted pregnancies and instigate the other States to consider the possibility of modifying public laws, norms, strategies, and public policy on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy to save the life and health of pregnant adolescent women, improving their quality of life and decreasing the number of abortions (17).

Morally speaking, is abortion murder? This is what I am calling the ‘abortion problem’. I claim that neither pro-life nor pro-choice advocates have the correct solution; that the correct solution is instead one considered correct by relatively few people. But if this solution really is correct, then why, after years of intense debate, is this solution not more widely accepted? Many, no doubt, are precluded from accepting it by religious dogma. But others, I think, fail to arrive at a correct solution because they have been approaching the problem from the wrong theoretical framework. Or they have been approaching it without any theoretical framework at all. That is, they have no theoretical framework beyond that of merely examining their moral intuitions and, if anything is clear so far from the abortion debate, it is that intuitions alone, which differ radically from person to person, are not sufficient to solve the problem. In short: one is unlikely to arrive at the correct solution unless one starts from a sound theoretical framework. I shall, in what follows, sketch what I take to be a sound theoretical framework. Then I shall try to show what solution to the abortion problem follows from it.