A number of books have been written describing the tactics and motivations of pro-life activists. The work of Faye Ginsberg, Kristin Luker, Carol Maxwell, and others have provided important insights into the beliefs and actions of those who actively seek to limit or eliminate legal abortion in the United States. Ziad Munson's The Making of Pro-Life Activists is a welcome addition to this literature.
Munson's contribution to the analysis of pro-life activists contains a couple of unique features. First, Munson interviews activists in four different settings: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Boston, and Charleston, South Carolina. These research sites differ in religious composition, geographical location, and the extent to which abortion is an important issue in local politics. Thus, unlike the other fine works in this genre, Munson's analysis is not based on data gathered in a single (perhaps unusual) community. Second, rather than compare pro-life activists to pro-choice activists (as was done in Kristin Luker's Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood [1984]), Munson compares his activists to demographically similar non-activists in the cities in which he conducted his research.
The book has something of a loose-leaf quality; that is, individual chapters stand as independent entities, rather than providing a linear narrative to a single conclusion. In these chapters, the reader is exposed to a number of counterintuitive findings and insights.
First, Munson's interviews with pro-life activists and non-activists shows that the process of mobilization to activist is not a straightforward process of persuading someone with conservative beliefs about abortion to act on those beliefs. Rather, for most of the activists in Munson's sample, involvement precedes commitment. Activists tend to get involved in pro-life activity for reasons that are largely serendipitous, and differ from non-activists primarily because of what Munson terms “biographical availability” and “cognitive availability.” That is, people who are recruited as pro-life activists tend to be those who are at major transition points in their lives, such as going away to college, experiencing the “empty nest” that results from adult children leaving home, or making major career changes. New pro-life activists have time and energy to devote to political causes. Potential activists are “cognitively available” if they are reassessing life goals or central values. The existence of strong pro-life beliefs is often a consequence, rather than a cause, of political activity.
Second, pro-life activism is not a single phenomenon, but contains several “streams” or styles of activism. Activists in a “political-legal” stream seek to elect pro-life candidates to office, or to encourage courts to endorse the constitutionality of legislation that would restrict access to abortion. Participants in a “direct action” stream are active in attempting to dissuade women seeking abortions from entering abortion clinics. Activists who engage in an individual outreach stream seek to counsel individual women who might otherwise seek abortions, while participants in the “public outreach stream” seek to change abortion laws by changing public opinion, through educative activities such as advertising. Munson shows that pro-life activists tend to specialize in one stream or another. Participants in any given stream are likely to disparage the effectiveness, and even the motives, of activists engaged in other streams of activity.
Third, pro-life activists utilize different rhetorical and intellectual strategies in justifying their beliefs. While all the activists interviewed by Munson shared a core belief in the humanity of the fetus and that abortion, therefore, involves taking a human life, the basis for that assertion, and the consequences of that belief, differ across activists. Thus, some activists justify their pro-life beliefs with science, while others invoke religious beliefs and values. Similarly, some activists believe that the pro-life gestalt entails pro-life attitudes toward other issues (such as capital punishment) while others do not. Thus, again in contrast to Kristin Luker, Munson does not find a common issue or set of concerns that motivate pro-life activists.
Finally, the role of religion is more complex than the work of many analysts (such as myself) would suggest. Religious organizations such as denominations or congregations are not typically on the cutting edge of pro-life activism, but provide intellectual and material resources that pro-life activists and organizations can use. Further, changes in the direction or intensity of religious belief are often the result of pro-life activism. Religion, defined as either belief or organizational membership, is both an independent and a dependent variable with respect to anti-abortion activity.
This is an important book, and will be of great interest to scholars who study abortion politics in the United States, as well as those concerned with social movements generally. The results of the individual interviews will be a source of frustration to those who take seriously the “scientific” status of the social sciences. Munson's emphasis on the importance of life changes and circumstances in the mobilization of pro-life activists makes difficult the formulation of casual generalization. Munson's work is a timely reminder of the complexity of social phenomena when observed in their “natural” settings.
My only substantial criticism of this excellent book relates to the integration of the various chapters. As noted, The Making of Pro-Life Activists is a work of qualitative sociology, with a limited N (eighty-two activists and twenty-nine non-activists). It is therefore unreasonable to ask for elaborate multivariate analyses. Nevertheless, the reader is left to wonder about the relationships among the generalizations listed above. Are participants in some streams of pro-life activity more or less likely to develop distinctive rationales for their participation? Are “political/legal” participants more or less likely to use scientific reasoning to justify their pro-life stances? Are religious justifications more characteristic of those engaged in direct action?
Notwithstanding my desire to have Munson connect the dots a little more thoroughly, The Making of Pro-Life Activists represents a substantial achievement. Munson has provided a valuable addition to the literature on the politics of abortion.
