Arguments in the debate over abortion can, for the most part, be categorized as aiming to provide an answer to one of two questions: “Is abortion Immoral?”, and “Should abortion be legal?” I will argue that those wishing to make arguments in support of the Pro-Choice position ought to focus on providing an answer to the legal question rather than the moral one. I will argue for two claims in support of this thesis, first, that the current state of the debate over the answer to the moral question is one of reasonable disagreement; second, if we accept David Boonin’s methodology of appealing to one’s opponent on terms that she is likely to accept, then it makes sense for the Pro-Choicer to focus on answering the legal question.

Thesis (M.A.)--Acadia University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-156). Also available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Saint Louis University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-214). Also available on microfilm and online.

Master of Arts / Department of Speech Communication, Theater, and Dance / Timothy R. Steffensmeier / This work explores the emergence and evolution of the rhetoric choice rhetoric as it pertains to contemporary American abortion politics. <Choice> is explored from an ideographic perspective, borrowing from the theoretical framework for ideographic rhetorical criticism established by Michael Calvin McGee. The analysis begins with a diachronic analysis of the emergence of the ideograph of <choice> within the law with an investigation of the written decisions in four Supreme Court cases central to the construction of the right to choose: Roe v. Wade (1973), Maher v. Roe (1977), Harris v. McRae (1980), and Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989). This investigation reveals a synchronic relationship between <choice> and another higher order ideograph, <liberty>. The criticism continues with an investigation of the usage of <choice> by pro-choice advocates in two documents published by NARAL Pro-Choice America, Choices: Women Speak About Abortion is a collection of women's narratives about their experiences obtaining an abortion, and Breaking Barriers, a guide for the development and implementation of proactive policy campaigns for pro-choice advocates. McGee's method is employed to investigate the ideographic usage of <choice> within these documents, revealing the ideographic abstraction that associates the alleged idea content of ideographs. This ideographic analysis reveals the inability of <choice> to live up to its alleged idea content as a result of the limitations inherent in the grounding of <choice> within the higher order ideograph of <liberty> and the impact of these limitations on particular populations, mainly indigent women in the United States.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This two-article, mixed-methods dissertation examines social contextual influences on donor and fundraiser behavior. It presents an extension of the Charitable Triad Model to conceptualize philanthropic behavior as a contextualized act informed by the social context shared among and between fundraisers, donors, beneficiaries, and organizations. The first article extends research on how social identity shapes donor behavior. This work finds that people are more likely to donate when they share identities, experiences, or group affiliations with beneficiaries. However, donors make philanthropic decisions in the context of multiple—and sometimes incongruent—identities. How might this complexity affect philanthropic behavior? I apply an intersectional approach to consider donors holding two simultaneous yet seemingly incongruent social identities. Using interviews analyzed with grounded theory, I examine the philanthropic journey of twenty Catholic women who donate to pro-choice organizations and identify as pro-choice activists. I uncover a common process shared by the donors as they navigate their seemingly incompatible identities. Findings reveal implications for fundraisers seeking to understand donors and for organizations that address controversial causes. The second article uses an experimental design with professional fundraisers to test how the presence of a teammate affects the performance of a common fundraising task, that of writing a charitable appeal letter. A large body of research in non-fundraising domains finds that working in a team versus alone can positively affect performance and team members’ satisfaction. Further, new research finds that fundraisers who feel like they fit with their environment have higher satisfaction and retention. However, no known research has examined the role of the social environment in fundraisers’ crafting of charitable appeals. Using person-environment-fit theory, we randomly assign fundraisers to work in a team versus alone to examine how this affects their satisfaction with the task, as well as the content of the letter produced. Results suggest implications for the management of development teams. Overall, this dissertation provides evidence-based insights to improve fundraising practice.

The mainstream abortion rights debate in the United States, its opposing factions popularly identified as pro-choice and pro-life, is reliant upon identifiable narratives of abortion's value to women and society and, alternately, its harms. This dissertation traces more than one hundred years of evolution of popular rhetoric surrounding the practice of elective termination of pregnancy in the U.S. and identifies the understandings of abortion and the women who have them which are most prominent in our culture today. This dissertation examines the ways in which women who have had abortions invoke the rhetoric of "sympathetic abortion" in making sense of their own experiences. For the pro-choice movement, young, childless women accomplish sympathetic abortions in light of factors like responsible birth control use and the pursuit of empowering life goals, while factors like existing children, previous abortions, and bad clinic experiences contradict this template. The women interviewed for this research discuss ways in which the circumstances surrounding their abortions and their individual approaches to their procedures align their reproductive choices with the sympathetic template or else point to ways in which their experiences fail this standard. Women occasionally transcend the templates of "good" and "bad" abortions and offer new meanings. This dissertation closes with a discussion of the role of women's stories in social movements and the consequences of discourse which ignores abortion experiences that fall short of the contemporary formula story.

This study begins to fill the gap in sociological literature on movements and countermovements by exploring the dynamic environment of two movement organizations. After documenting the climate of public opinion on abortion, it investigates the strategy and tactics employed by a movement to maintain that opinion and a countermovement to reverse that opinion. It relates social movements to their social environments, social change, opposition, and strategy and tactics. It illustrates the efficacy of single-issue groups in the American social and political environment. Finally, this thesis demonstrates the validity of exploratory studies by uncovering elements of social movements and countermovements that had not been previously investigated.

The purpose of the study was to investigate how Irish pro-choice organizations work in respect of free choice in relation to abortion, since abortion is illegal except when there is a substantial risk to the mother’s life. This purpose was constructed with the significance of social work as a practical profession restricted by regulations, at the same time as it is a profession to support and help deprived people. This was a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews with seven different people from five different pro-choice organizations. The interviews indicated that in Ireland abortion was a stigmatized matter, as well as taboo to talk about. The results showed that the pro- choice organizations work to provide support and information and they viewed the right to abortion as a fundamental right and that women going through crisis pregnancy should be able to access a free choice. Still, it is the stigmatizing environment as well as the existing laws that become an obstacle for accessing free choice.

No description available.

Coalitions in Northern Ireland have been organizing across the ethno-nationalist divide for decades. Yet, while empirical research has addressed challenges of, and potential for, organizing across ethnonationalism, the ways in which coalition members attend to their complex subjectivites have been overlooked. Using a critical, constructivist approach to qualitative research, this study of Alliance for Choice Belfast sheds light upon the impacts of attending to / overlooking difference and power dynamics. Data was collected through field research, semi-structured interviews and document analysis, and analysed through the lens of radical coalition building, along with theories that address the complexity of identities. The findings suggest that members of the coalition have created a depoliticized coalitional space in order to avoid conflict and unite around their campaign goal. This has had implications in terms of homogenizing womens experiences, overlooking elements of class privilege, and falling back into traditional practices of avoidance around controversial issues. / Theoretical, Cultural and International Studies in Education