Author: Pamela E. Oliver
Company: University of Wisconsin - Madison

Abortion Frames & Ideology
Sources: Kristen Luker, Suzanne Staggenborg, Myra Marx Ferree
Why talk about abortion
•	Competing systems of meaning
•	Changing understandings through time & place
•	Language and meanings evolve in social & political context

Traditional understandings
•	“Quickening” = mother can feel pregnancy. The woman determines. Traditional definition.  Pregnancy uncertain before quickening, little traditional opposition to “curing” stopped menstruation
•	People understood facts of pregnancy, but saw embryo before quickening as potential life, not a person
•	Abortion before quickening was either ignored, or treated as a misdemeanor
•	Evidence that abortions were common in early 19^th century, roughly 1/5 to 1/3 of all pregnancies
Catholic teaching & childbirth
•	Catholic abortion doctrine grounded in childbirth debates
•	Childbirth was life threatening.  If labor was stalled, had to cut open (and kill) the mother to save the child, dismember and extract (kill) the child to save the mother, or let both die “naturally.”
•	Catholic Church held (still holds) that two natural deaths were morally preferable to one murder, banned all procedures that would kill an embryo, especially including those that would save the mother’s life.
19^th century abortion laws
•	Passed in opposition to Catholic Church, as they permitted abortion to save a mother’s life
•	Broad public consensus that embryo should be sacrificed if necessary to save mother’s life
•	Result of physician campaigns after 1847 by American Medical Association
•	Physicians did not claim abortion was “murder” as then all abortion would be wrong (as Catholics argued)
•	Physicians argued instead that only physicians (not the women themselves) could determine which abortions were “necessary.”
1900-1960
•	Doctors regulate abortion, applying radically different standards, not regulating each other but protecting their right to decide
•	Prevalence of abortion varied by as much as 55 times from place to place
•	Doctors thought other doctors mostly agree with them
–	Catholic doctors thought only abortions to save mother’s life were being performed
–	Liberal constructionists thought they were the mainstream
1900-1960
•	Estimates that 1/5 to ¼ of married women had had abortions, that 90% of premarital pregnancies were aborted
•	10-20% of pregnancy-related deaths were from abortions
•	Most abortions were illegal: self-induced or non-physician
•	Abortions to save mother’s life became very rare.  Strict constructionists thought they would fade away entirely
•	People avoided discussing abortion, but because it was tied to sexuality, especially unmarried
1962 Sherri Finkbine case
•	Married, 4 children
•	Taking Thalidomide, which deforms fetuses
•	Doctor advises abortion, seemed an obvious case of necessity.  Clear medical indication.
•	Told her story to the newspaper to warn other women
•	Big fight: worst case for Catholics.  Kill the baby to save it from itself.
•	She gets the abortion in Sweden under its restrictive law; fetus is horribly deformed, not viable.
•	Her case reveals the huge gulf of meaning among doctors
Early 1960s
•	After Finkbine, doctors realized they did not agree with each other, stopped trusting each other
•	Each side wanted laws to codify what they thought should be done
•	“Facing each other across a chasm”
•	Rubella epidemic: obvious “medical necessity” for one side vs. worst possible case on the other, save fetus from itself
•	Liberalized laws passed in the context of these intense debates
•	Women as women NOT the relevant actors: debates among physicians, lawyers, clergy (male)
Mid-1960s - 1972
•	Female reformers angry at male concessions, radicalize, want repeal of all abortion laws
•	Women’s movement begins to adopt the issue
•	Zero Population Growth & others advocate on population restriction grounds
•	Abortion referral services; help women get safe or legal abortions
•	About a dozen Protestant churches support reform or repeal of abortion laws; many clergy doing abortion counseling
Jan 22, 1973: Roe v Wade
•	Struck down all abortion laws
•	Those who filed briefs in favor of the laws were overwhelmingly Catholic
•	Those who filed against strict abortion laws represented a broad spectrum of secular organizations
•	The 1973 decision essentially framed abortion as a church-state issue, said abortion restrictions were encoding a particular religious belief
Luker: The two sides
•	Anti-abortion (pro-life) women were mostly Catholic, deeply religious, at home with children.  Many had a premarital pregnancy legitimated by marriage.  Took for granted an embryo was a person, did not know anybody who disagreed.  Shocked by the Roe decision, reported self-mobilizing
•	Pro-abortion (pro-choice) women had jobs, saw pregnancy as a threatening crisis in life, parenting requires investment, you have to be ready.  See no alternative to abortion if contraception fails, although contraception should be used.
Luker: Pro-Life Beliefs 
•	Personhood is embryo is “obvious,” unquestioned; cannot imagine anyone thinking otherwise.
•	Women & men are different
–	Women’s role as mother is sacred
–	Control over fertility degrades women’s role
•	God controls fertility, wrong to interfere in God’s scheme. 
•	Sex is sacred & for procreation, recreational sex is profane & wrong
–	Sex is moral ONLY if it can produce children
–	Contraception is immoral
•	Morality is definite rights & wrongs, rules
Luker: Pro-life Life Experiences
•	Parent is something you become automatically, silly to take classes or prepare; little self-doubt about quality of mothering
•	Had extensive experience with unplanned pregnancy
–	If unmarried, legitimated by marriage
–	“Learned” that even if you are unhappy about pregnancy, you come to love the child
–	Lived lives which accommodated unexpected children, no appreciation for lives which children would disrupt
•	Foolish & wrong to make detailed life plans that depend on fertility control; woman’s life should accommodate children
Luker: Pro-Choice Beliefs
•	Women have many roles besides mother
•	Sex is valued outside of procreation
•	Contraceptives should be used & effective
–	Wrong to use abortion as birth control, should be a back-up to contraceptive failure  
–	Disapproved of women who had repeated abortions
•	Embryo as potential person with gradually increasing moral weight.  Can be sacrificed to meet needs of woman, but wrong to bring it into existence when there is an alternative
•	Morality is situation ethics, weigh rights and wrongs under general principles, worry whether the decision was right
Luker: Pro-Choice Life Experiences
•	Women have jobs
•	Uncontrolled fertility disrupts careers, threat of pregnancy is excuse for job discrimination
–	Unexpected pregnancy as a major life crisis
•	Mothering as not automatic, something you have to work at to do well
–	High standards for parenting 
–	Should not do it if you are not ready
–	Worried about the quality of their mothering, took classes & read books to prepare
•	Saw adoption as not moral: turning a potential into a person but then not caring for it.
Framing
•	Anti-abortion becomes pro-life  
–	Crystallize their view, life begins at conception
–	Embryo/Fetus has full rights of personhood
•	Pro-abortion becomes pro-choice
–	Crystallize their view, need for women to make moral decisions
–	“A woman and her doctor” echoes older medical control, builds alliances
–	Woman needs to balance rights & needs of herself with those of the potential embodied in the fetus
Counter-framing
•	Pro-life characterizes pro-choice as calling for abortion for “convenience”
–	Especially outraged by “women’s control over own bodies” rhetoric
–	Sees abortion as a slippery slope that devalues the weak and powerless
•	Pro-choice views pro-life as devaluing women except as vessels for babies & as hypocritical
–	Especially outraged at trivializing the impacts & costs of pregnancy on a woman
–	Tell stories of “pro-life” supporters/activists who get abortions for themselves/daughters (“mine is necessary”)
1980s
•	Pro-life is joined by conservative Protestants, becomes increasingly radical in the face of losses, clinic demonstrations, bombings.
•	Pro-choice loses early rounds which provide restrictions on public funding, availability etc.  Is constantly on the defensive.
•	Issue polarizes.
•	Actual availability of abortion declines markedly; few clinics; little funding
•	Political energy in the 1980s as abortion is linked to anti-ERA and anti-feminism generally in Republican Party strategy to link “moral” issues to conservatism
1989 Webster
•	Supreme Court permits restrictions on abortions, although does not entirely overturn Roe
•	With abortion rights threatened for middle-class women, pro-choice Republican women threaten to split the party
•	This is when anti-gay issues become THE banner “moral” issue for Republicans . . . 
•	Ongoing political battles as the issue is tangled up in partisan politics
Ongoing division of opinion
•	Hard for either side to capture the middle, people who approve of abortion in general but not as unqualified right of a woman to have an abortion for “casual” reasons
•	All but a tiny minority favor abortion to save the life of the mother, for rape or incest, or deformity. Pro-life cannot yield on these without compromising its core beliefs
•	A majority are uncomfortable with the moral/ethical implications of unrestricted right to abortion.  If pro-choice yield on restrictions and reviews, these create a way to effectively prevent abortion
German alternatives (Ferree)
•	[West] German law sees the fetus as a person & clearly prohibits unrestricted abortion
–	This view is tied to human rights concerns after Naziism and is not questioned
–	Acknowledges that the dependency of the fetus on the mother creates a special situation
–	But the mother is also recognized as a person whose needs deserve consideration 
•	East Germany permitted unrestricted access to abortion, but attempted to discourage it to promote fertility

•	German Feminists did not challenge the personhood of the fetus, but instead argued for protecting the fetus by “working with” the mother instead of against her
–	Common agreement on both sides of desirability of counseling for a woman unhappy about a pregnancy
–	Any normal, healthy woman in good circumstances should want to have a child
–	If a woman cannot be persuaded to want to bear a child, then she obviously “needs” an abortion 
–	“Necessary” abortions are provided free through national health insurance
–	In practice, although abortion is not viewed positively, it is available to anyone who insists she needs it
–	and the government will pay for it
Germany: Focus on social conditions
•	Focus on making it more possible for a woman to choose to bear a child
–	Child subsidies, generous work leave so having a child is not costly 
–	Why do unmarried pregnant college women all “choose” abortion if that choice is free?
–	East German example: living conditions while in college made it a good time to have a child.  Free housing, free child care.  East German women often had children while young & unmarried; married later
•	Pro-life groups in US do try to help pregnant women, but focus is on short-term personal help or adoption, not broader social supports for children