The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States

Description

Why have legislative initiatives occurred on such controversial issues as contraception and abortion at times when activist movements had demobilized and the public seemed indifferent? Why did the South - currently a region where anti-abortion sentiment is stronger than in most of the country-liberalize its abortion laws in the 1960s at a faster pace than any other region? Why have abortion and contraception sometimes been framed as matters of medical practice, and at other times as matters of moral significance? These are some of the questions addressed in The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States. Based on archival and sociological research, and speaking to issues in the study of culture, social movements, and legal change, The Moral Veto examines what the history of controversies over such morally charged issues tells us about cultural pluralism in the United States.

Gene Burns is an award-winning teacher and associate professor of public affairs at James Madison College, of Michigan State University. A sociologist by training, he is the author of The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993. He has written articles on social movements, revolutions, and the politics of religion in the American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Sociology of Religion, and other journals.

"...this is a book that can be read with profit by all serious students of its topics." --Keith Cassidy, The Journal of American History "Contraceptive laws and abortion policy are subject to a 'moral veto' unless the framing on the issue is palatable to moderate-middle citizens. So argues Gene Burns in his examination of how, why, and when both contraceptive laws and abortion policies were reformed...by federal court decisions." -Laura R. Woliver, SIGNS "Burns sheds new light on seemingly well-covered territory. Drawing on extensive archival research on the contraception and abortion debates, Burns convincingly illustrates that social movements can be their own biggest obstacles with it comes to concrete political success." Mobilization Deana A. Rohlinger, Florida State University