Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community, Updated edition / Edition 1

by Faye D. Ginsburg

Overview

Based on the struggle over a Fargo, North Dakota, abortion clinic, Contested Lives explores one of the central social conflicts of our time. Both wide-ranging and rich in detail, it speaks not simply to the abortion issue but also to the critical role of women's political activism.

A new introduction addresses the events of the last decade, which saw the emergence of Operation Rescue and a shift toward more violent, even deadly, forms of anti-abortion protest. Responses to this trend included government legislation, a decline in clinics and doctors offering abortion services, and also the formation of Common Ground, an alliance bringing together activists from both sides to address shared concerns. Ginsburg shows that what may have seemed an ephemeral artifact of "Midwestern feminism" of the 1980s actually foreshadowed unprecedented possibilities for reconciliation in one of the most entrenched conflicts of our times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520217355
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/01/1998
Edition description:	First Edition, With a new introduction
Pages:	359
Sales rank:	648,689
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Faye D. Ginsburg is Professor of Anthropology at New York University, where she also directs the Center for Media, Culture, and History. Her other works include (with Rayna Rapp) Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction (California, 1995).

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Updated Edition 
Preface                          
Acknowledgments                  

 1 Introduction

Part I: Abortion and the American Body Politic
 2 From the Physicians' Campaign to Roe v. Wade                 
 3 The Rise of the Right-to-Life Movement 

Part II: The Abortion Controversy in a Grass-roots
Setting
 4 The First Phase of Conflict     
 5 The Clinic Conflict             
 6 Interpretive Battlegrounds      
 7 Angles of Incidence, Angles of Reflection 

Part III: "Procreation Stories"
 8 Interpreting Life Stories      
 9 The Pro-Choice Narratives      
10 The Pro-Life Narratives        

    Part IV: Reconstructing Gender in America
    11 La Longue Duree       
    12 Conclusion            

      Epilogue: Pro-Dialogue 
      Appendix: Female Moral Reform
      Movements in America   
      Notes                  
      Bibliography           
      Index      

Editorial Reviews

Contested sides of the enduring conflict over abortion and its importance in helping determine women's place in society are presented here by Ginsburg, associate professor of anthropology at New York University. In a scholarly, historically weighted study too specialized for general readers, the author relates the present debate to the changes wrought by economic and cultural developments that engendered modern feminism, along with the impact of legal, medical and political agendas on public attitudes towards abortion. Based on interviews with a pro-life and a pro-choice abortion activist, both of whom claim to represent women's real interests, Ginsburg contends that their viewpoints are largely derived from personal values, background and experiences of transition and difficulties in their own reproductive lives. Although she maintains that activists on both sides share many common concerns, she concludes that abortion remains a challenge to the concept of female gender identity linked to nurturance and domesticity.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

By focusing on one small, localized struggle (in Fargo, N.D.) as it evolved over more than a decade, Ginsburg (anthropology, NYU) has provided an outstanding scholarly study of the abortion conflict. Her meticulous and sympathetic portrayals of the activists on both (or, as she reveals it, several) sides let her raise issues that transcend the ``pro-life versus pro-choice'' contest, and place the women, and those who would exploit their concerns, into a much broader cultural context. What began as a disputed state referendum campaign escalated into a battle over an abortion clinic, culminating in a social drama that was extended to a national audience via a TV newsmagazine. Her analysis of the role of symbols and metaphors in the propaganda , the competition among the various interest groups, and the life stories of the activists are particularly compelling. Highly recommended for serious readers and academics.-- Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Idaho

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