This thesis examines the growth of organized opposition to abortion in the United States, and charts the fortunes of the right-to-life movement at a national level during the 1970s and 1980. Anti-abortionists emerged as a social movement in response to changes in the law, and after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision they struggled to present themselves as a coherent lobby group. The 1970s were thus a time of fluidity and experimentation, as right-to-lifers contemplated different approaches and argued over how best to end legalized abortion. Activists engaged in legislative efforts, political lobbying, and education initiatives, all the while teasing out what exactly it meant to be opposed to abortion. The movement at this time rejected the ideas of absolutists and instead aimed to be as broadly representative of American society as possible. Rather than clearly aligning themselves with the Left or the Right side of politics, the movement pursued a politics of moderation. / This status quo was challenged, however, by the resurgence of conservatism in the late 1970s. As the social conservatives of the so-called “New Right” began to intervene in the abortion debate, right-to-lifers found themselves having to respond to a worldview that spoke only in terms of absolutes. After Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency in 1980, anti-abortionists needed to negotiate a political landscape in which they ostensibly had access to power and yet were repeatedly disappointed by the action (or inaction) that came from the White House. This thesis contends that in the 1980s, the relationship between right-to-lifers, the “New Right,” and the Reagan administration was often marked by disappointment and compromise. As the decade drew on, right-to-life leaders increasingly tempered the types of demands they made of the White House and of Republicans in general, and this climate eventually meant that the kinds of activists that rose to prominence within the movement were conservative and the ideas they espoused absolutist.

This thesis looks to explore the musical Cabaret through a critical, historical and political lens, with particular focus on Sally Bowles, questioning the creation and agency of this character in contrast with the political and societal values of various productions. Using a socio-political analysis, this thesis discusses the important relationship between politics and theater, using the pro-choice abortion movements of the 1960's as a way to understand Sally Bowles as a complex device for political and social commentary.

When it comes to the politics of victimhood, existing academic accounts contend that conservative politics and ideology have largely been defined by a backlash against discourses of victimization. In this respect, North American conservatism is seen as embodying an anti-victimist approach – one where progressive claims of victimhood are represented as the result of an impaired character rather than as the result of systemic cultural and legal discrimination. However, while this literature accurately captures many characteristics of conservative ideology, it risks overlooking the ways that conservative proactively engage with the politics of victimhood and victim arguments. This dissertation offers an examination of the discursive significance of the “victim” in contemporary conservative politics and ideology through an analysis of three realms of conservative politics in Canada: (1) the men’s rights movement, (2) the anti-abortion movement, and (3) the Conservative Party of Canada. Drawing on the results of a large-scale critical discourse analysis and the participant observation of over a dozen conservative events in Canada, this dissertation contends that the debate over the politics of victimhood is not a battle between anti-victim conservative and pro-victim progressives. Rather, contemporary Canadian conservatives are increasingly makers of victim politics – rather than its critics – challenging many academic assumptions made about both conservative ideology and discourse in Canada, as well as the larger politics of victimhood in North America.

Literature, particularly institutional approaches, emphasizes that parliamentary systems like Canada have avoided controversial morality policy issues including - and perhaps especially - abortion. This, however, fails to account for historical and contemporary developments in Canadian abortion policy and politics at the federal level. More specifically, it fails to adequately conceptualize how governments engage with abortion in practice, such as with the introduction of the omnibus bills in the 1960s and C-43 in 1989, as well as the increasing use of abortion as a political weapon in election campaigns and party politics. Using framing theory and the concepts of politicisation and depoliticisation, this dissertation fills this gap by unpacking how Canada’s federal governments have managed abortion policy and politics from 1966 to 2019, both in discourse and in concrete actions in parliament. More precisely, the federal government's evolving discourses (stories) and actions on the abortion issue were examined through sources that span the 1960s up to 2019, including parliamentary transcripts (Hansard), parliamentary committee transcripts (Evidence) and reports, cabinet documents, and interviews. This dissertation presents an original typology to facilitate a more dynamic understanding of (de)politicisation. It categorizes politicising and depoliticising movements according to how actors use the dimensions of time, space, and capacity to delay, defer and establish limits to their agency in depoliticising procedural action or discourse, or to emphasize an issue on the agenda, claim jurisdiction or responsibility, and establish authority and capability in politicising procedural action or discourse. This yields a more dynamic understanding of how governments have managed the abortion issue over time, demonstrating how governments and their representatives have used - often simultaneously - both politicising and depoliticising actions and discourses. This management, which may be intended to dampen controversy, can also result in uneasy and even contradictory discourses and actions that may generate new sources of conflict. Capturing this dynamism affirms that governments do not simply "avoid" or "engage" with abortion, but that their positions are unsteady and often contradictory, moving back-and-forth - often simultaneously - in their efforts to manage the issue. Using this typology, this dissertation maps out the evolving discourses and approaches through which the federal government approached abortion over time. It argues that, through the 1960s to 1980s, the government approached abortion as a policy problem that required a legislative solution. Beginning in the 1990s and becoming more prominent in the 2000 election and thereafter, the government began using abortion as a political weapon, which served to demarcate Liberal Party values against conservative parties, and vice versa. This dissertation contributes by expanding (de)politicisation theory through its typology, creating a means to analyse the complex and interactive relationship between (de)politicisation, as well as contributing a Canadian case study to the primarily British and Eurocentric depoliticisation literature. This dissertation also bridges the gap between morality policy literature and (de)politicisation, which may be fruitful for additional study into how political actors manage morality policy issues. Empirically, this dissertation offers a comprehensive history of Canada's federal policy and politics of abortion over the past half century, documenting the significant shifts in the discourses and approaches of federal governments on this contentious issue.