Abortion remains a controversial contemporary social issue, spawning disparate and strongly held opinions among the American public. Pro-life activists play a central role in opposing abortion, mobilizing a disinterested public to public activism, and collectively working to restrict abortion access. This study focused on pro-life activism in Mississippi, the state with the most restrictive laws governing abortion, abortion clinics, and abortion doctors. Contrary to previous studies and media portrayals that homogenize pro-life activists and public pro-life activism, I find that diversity, rather than consensus, characterizes Mississippi pro-life activists who engage in public activism and direct action to stop abortion. Specifically, this study focuses on the diversity in turning points that propel activists into public activism, the multivalent ways activists construct abortion as a moral problem, and the ways activists create and use strategies of action to disseminate their worldviews and to stop abortion.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Louisville, 2003. / Department of Sociology. Vita. "December 2003." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-46).

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This dissertation explores women's activism in the anti-abortion movement in the United States, from the 1960s through the close of the twentieth century. I study the transformation of the movement, from its origins in the Catholic Church in the 1960s, to the influx of evangelical Christians into the movement in the early 1980s. My primary sources include organizational records, personal papers, newspapers, legal documents, and oral histories. I analyze women's roles within the movement and the religious contexts that influenced their ideology and informed their choice of tactics. Anti-abortion activism provided a forum for many religiously conservative women to engage in public debates, shape public policy, and protest publicly. First, I examine the relationships between women who established national anti-abortion organizations with those women who participated in grassroots activism. I suggest that evangelical Protestant women were more likely to hold leadership positions in the mainstream movement because most leaders in the evangelical grassroots wing of the movement enforced a patriarchal organizational structure. On the other hand, progressive Catholic women had considerably more influence in the grassroots organizations they formed apart from the Roman Catholic Church. Second, I address how women responded to the rise of the New Right and the subsequent influx of evangelical Christians into the movement. I trace the history of violence in the history and suggest that women had prepared the movement to accept the radicalism of evangelical Christians by the 1980s. By focusing on women, I seek to reveal the contradictions between religiously conservative ideas about proper gender roles that many women in the movement espoused and the actual work they performed as activists.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1988. / Abstract lacking from microfiche. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-160).

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 97 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1997. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-112).

Thesis (M.A.)--Acadia University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-122). Also available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.