From today's posting on the Witherspoon Institute, Public Discourse -
Unconventional Women: Documenting the Diversity of the Pro-Life Movement
While the book may be flawed this article is not.
Here are the five women mentioned, some of whom are known to all of us -
- Mildred Fay Jefferson (First African American to graduate from Harvard Medical School)
- Joan Andrews (Bell)
- Marjory Mecklenberg
- Juli Loesch
- Shelly Shannon
An excerpt from the article:
After decades of politicization, the pro-life movement is often portrayed as monolithic and uncooperative, but nothing could be further from the truth. In this regard, a welcome new addition to the literature is Karissa Haugeberg’s Women Against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century. By chronicling the experiences of five women who each took a unique approach to pro-life activism, Haugeberg, an assistant professor of history at Tulane University, sketches a diverse pro-life movement, debating and adopting a range of strategies, around the time of Roe v. Wade and afterward.
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The information that Haugeberg provides is both interesting and accurate. Histories of the pro-life movement often emphasize judicial rulings and electoral politics, and less has been written about other forms of pro-life activism. This is one of the first books to provide information about the history of pregnancy resource centers and of pro-life attempts to reach out to liberals and social justice groups. Furthermore, individuals who engage in unconventional forms of political activism are often ignored by historians and journalists. By chronicling the history of these women, Haugeberg’s book helps to fill a void in the existing literature.
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