The American abortion debate: culture war or normal discourse?

This paper investigates whether James Hunter's culture war thesis is an apt characterization of the American abortion debate. The author focuses on three arguments central to Hunter's analysis: 1) that the abortion debate involves two paradigmatically opposed world views; 2) that debate about abortion, since it involves moral discourse, is structurally different than other political debates; and 3) that the new alignments in abortion politics are culturally significant. Examining existing research in each of these three domains, the author finds that the debate over abortion is more complex than suggested by Hunter. World views of pro-life and pro-choice activists, for example, share a commitment to some overlapping values; the argumentative structure of abortion discourse has a pattern rather similar to that of political debate more generally, and new alignments on abortion, such as that between the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, do not displace historically embedded differences in symbolic resources and cultural orientation. As suggested by the author, it may be more helpful, therefore, to think of the abortion debate as an ongoing public conversation about America's cultural tradition and how it should be variously expressed in contemporary laws and practices.

The survival of the pro-choice movement

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.

The abortion battle: the Canadian scene

In January 1988 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country's archaic abortion law on the ground that it imposed arbitrary delays and unfair disparities in access to abortion across the country. Since then, the conservative government of Canada has made a few attempts to introduce a new abortion policy, but it did not get passed in the parliament because the revised bills failed to protect women's right to 'life, liberty, and security of the person' within the meaning of the Canadian Charter. Canada has been without an abortion law for over four years and there has been a wide range of provincial policies and confusion in the country. Despite the legal vacuum, Canadian women are not frenziedly having abortions. However, the militancy of the anti-abortion groups has steadily intensified with continued assault on a woman's right to make reproductive choices. Since no law, short of banning abortions altogether, is going to satisfy abortion opponents, the abortion battle will rage on in Canada.