Sorry for the inconvenience but I have lost interest in the concept. Thank you for providing the copy though. I look forward to reading some more titles of yours. Thanks!

I'm afraid this book is the kind of so-caled scholarship that has given gender studies a bad name. While it's known that women have been an important part of the pro-life movement, this book seems to hold in contempt the women it is portraying. It uses only the barest shred of objective language to describe them and their activities. And by choosing to depict many of these activities by only focusing on the ones that are contrary to the author's opinions, they avoid other activities of the same type that did less objectionable work.

Instead of objective language the reader gets the politically-charged language of gender politics.

While there should be histories of the pro-life movement that don't neglect the violet and often criminal activities of things like Operation Rescue, they should be objective at the very least, Then the reader can decide what to think.

If you want to read something unbiased and an example of great contemporary history, get a cop of Daniel Williams' Defending the Unborn.

Why are some women pro-choice and others pro-life? Put another way, why are some anti-abortion, others pro-abortion? Wait, that’s a loaded question: nobody is “pro” abortion except Hitler, eugenicists, and misogynists who want sons, not daughters … right?

Words matter. In America, we’re free to form our own opinions, but who is truly free of bias? It’s wired into us, gut vs head, a preconceived opinion or prejudice, often based on instinct and evolution. Bias may be favorable or unfavorable, pro or con. To be biased is natural, but to be unbiased requires conscious effort and evidence. Therefore, when dozens of reviewers praise a scholar’s book on a controversial subject as “unbiased,” my expectations are a little high.
How objective and “unbiased” is the research of Karissa Haugeberg?

Haugeberg, an assistant professor at Tulane University, specializes in the history of American women, politics, medicine, and religion. “Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century” is her dissertation on the history of women anti-abortion activists in the United States. “Most of the women profiled here shaped the American antiabortion movement not through leadership in conventional groups but instead as members of grassroots organizations,” she writes.

While scientific, philosophical, religious, and political views on abortion vary widely, among women and men alike, Haugeberg’s focus is on zealots of a particular moral persuasion, “most of them white, middle-class, Christian women” (see chapter one, footnote 1). The title implies that “Moral Reform” is a primary motivation of antiabortion activists.

Perhaps the key word here is “activists.” Just as not all Muslims are terrorists, not all “antiabortion activists” approve of vandalizing or bombing clinics, assassinating abortion providers, invading a woman’s privacy, guilt-tripping, manipulating, or spreading misinformation. Haugeberg’s thesis, it seems, focuses on a very small number of “key” women who made an impact on public discourse, popular viewpoints, and even laws—mostly in unsavory ways.

While two to three times as many women participated in crisis pregnancy volunteerism than in clinic protests (Mary Meehan, “Challenging the Stereotype: the Other Right-to-Lifers,” Commonweal, 1980), Haugeberg includes this only as a footnote [2] in chapter one.

Haugeberg spends most of Chapter 5, “Women and Lethal Violence in the Antiabortion Movement,” on women who use Biblical references to justify vandalism and violence against abortion clinics and staff. The vast majority of pro-lifers oppose such tactics, so the attention Haubeberg gives women like Shelly Shannon seems disproportionate. Zealots who’d murder doctors like George Tiller represent “Respect for Life” advocates, and Christianity, about as much as Taliban terrorists manifest the principles of Islam. Just as millions of good Muslims may go unnoticed in America, just as countless good deeds never get reported because bad news is what sells, millions of pro-life women go unnoticed if they’re not strident, rude, judgmental, or in your face.

The “most popular form of antiabortion activism” today “hides in plain sight,” Haugeberg writes. Those who work at nonprofit Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) “believe they can persuade pregnant women not to have abortions if they supply them with information about the negative physical and psychological consequences of the procedure and offer resources to enable them to carry their pregnancies to term.” Worse yet, according to Haugenberg, the information they present is biased, wrong, or totally bogus. See “Chapter 2: The Invention of Postabortion Syndrome” for a bias that’s hiding in plain sight. “Postabortion syndrome,” Haugeberg asserts, is “a pseudopsychological diagnosis.” How does she establish this “fact?” Only two reports are cited: footnote [20], Major et al., “American Psychological Association Report”; Charles, et al., “Abortion and Long-Term Mental Health Outcomes,” 436-50).

This is what I’ve read: “Emotional and psychological effects following abortion are more common than physical side effects and can range from mild regret to more serious complications such as depression.”*

While some women worked to "enshrine the rights of fetuses,"Haubenberg writes, grassroots activists spread narratives, "written anonymously and reprinted widely," to serve as cautionary tales of the supposed harm women may suffer as a side effect of abortion.

Haugeberg writes: “Historian Rickie Solinger has observed that anti-abortionists’ construction of ‘postabortion syndrome,’ a pseudopsychological diagnosis to describe a woman’s anguish after having had an abortion, influenced the way ordinary American women regarded the procedure.” She goes on to say that “Independent university researchers, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association firmly disavowed a causal link between abortion and the onset of psychological distress.” [20]

Her research overlooks numerous studies to the contrary. “No matter your philosophical, religious, or political views on abortion, the fact of the matter is, the actual experience can affect women not only on a personal level but can potentially have psychological repercussions,” according to a 2010 article in Psychology Today. “Post Abortion Stress Syndrome (PASS) is the name that has been given to the psychological aftereffects of abortion, based on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” While this term has not been accepted by the American Psychiatric Association or the American Psychological Association, “Believing that PASS exists does not mean that one does not believe in a woman's right to choose; it simply means that one believes in supportive and constructive counseling around the trauma symptoms.” (Susanne Babbel Ph.D., “Post Abortion Stress Syndrome (PASS) - Does It Exist?”, Oct 25, 2010, www.psychologytoday.com).
Does it matter if women are not warned of the possible side effects of a medical procedure? According to the Feminists for Life website, “an increasing number of women struggle from the profound emotional and psychological consequences of abortion.”

Haugeberg devotes less attention to positive efforts of pro-lifers. Far more pages are devoted to anti-abortion vandalism and terrorism than, for example, Feminists for Life of America.
Established in 1972, Feminists for Life of America is a nonsectarian, nonpartisan, grassroots organization. Abortion is a “reflection that our society has failed to meet the needs of women.” Their goal is eliminating the root causes that drive women to abortion, namely, lack of practical resources and support. Not Christian Fundamentalism, not submission to men, but "core feminist values of nondiscrimination, nonviolence and justice for all" motivate Feminists for Life.

Along with many of those pregnancy crisis centers “hiding in plain sight,” Feminists for Life programs focus on providing resources women need, without judgment, without guilt-tripping, without coercing women into keeping babies they cannot afford to raise. While some argue that to focus on fetal rights is to ignore a pregnant woman's needs, these feminists focus on meeting the needs of women. Their website has links to dozens of resources, but this kind of activism apparently doesn't fit Haubenberg's narrative.

Very few pro-lifers condone graphic photos of aborted fetuses, especially posted in public for people of all ages to see. Showing an ultrasound of the fetus in the womb to patients at abortion clinics is said to persuade many not to go through with terminating the pregnancy, but I haven’t checked the latest statistics on that. (No, you won't find them in this book.) To me, it’s an honest representation of what that “blob of tissue” is doing inside a woman’s body. Yes, it’s much easier to make the decision to terminate, if one does not see the little fingers and toes as the “blob” swims in the dark recesses of the amniotic sac.

Informed consent is about making sure people know what they’re doing before they undergo a medical procedure. Opposition to it reminds of something I’ve heard from vegans:
“The ethics of veganism isn’t just about avoiding cruelty to animals, it’s also about not exploiting them or taking something that is theirs, for human gain,” says Rachida Brocklehurst, founder and editor of online vegan magazine TheGreenV.com. “…let's face it, when you remind your omnivorous friend that the steak they're eating once had a face, they don't want to think about it. The majority of people don't want to know that their lifestyle choices cause suffering to animals, because humans, as a whole, are animal lovers - yet don't connect what's in a field with what's on their plate, and what happened in between.”

(*"The Emotional Side Effects Many Women Experience After An Abortion," September 3, 2016, americanpregnancy.org / unplanned-pregnancy/abortion-emotional-effects/ lists these sources:
Adler, Nancy., et al (1990). "Psychological Responses after Abortion." Science, 248(4951), 41-4.
Zolese, G. & Blacker, C. (1992). "The Psychological Complications of Therapeutic Abortion." British Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 742-9.
Gilchrist, A., et al. (1995). "Termination of Pregnancy and Psychiatric Morbidity." British Journal of Psychiatry, 167(2), 243-8.
More than five years ago, BJP published these findings: women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be directly attributable to abortion. (The British Journal of Psychiatry, Aug 2011, 199 (3) 180-186. )

NOTE: Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of "Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century" by Karissa Haugeberg

Women against Abortion traces the history of women in the American anti-abortion movement by exploring the actions and writings of those who shaped the trajectory of the largest moral reform movement of the late twentieth century. This story begins in the late 1960s, with Marjory Mecklenburg’s work to shift antiabortion leaders’ attention from the rights of fetuses to the needs of pregnant women. It extends into the 1970s and 1980s, with the grassroots work of Juli Loesch and Joan Andrews, two Catholic women whose activism and leadership coincided with the influx of evangelical Protestants into the prolife movement. It concludes in the 1990s with Shelley Shannon, an evangelical Protestant who emerged as one of the most prominent pro-life extremists of the late twentieth century.

This is definitely not a light read, but it's one that I wanted to complete, quite frankly, because I don't think I've ever seen another book in any book store written on this subject. Haugeberg takes a very objective standpoint, not offering personal opinion or injecting apparent bias into this commentary on the prolife movement. This was one of the things I appreciated most about Haugeberg's work, because it opens the door up for more audiences to be able to read this book, without having to endure any obvious slant by the author.

While I learned many important details about the anti-abortion movement from this book, the two things I was delighted and shocked to learn would be the following. I've taken the liberty to blockquote these directly from the manuscript I was given, so you can also learn alongside me:

"For older women, for many women who followed Catholic prohibitions against birth control, and for some of those who could not afford to attend college, the pill posed a threat to a social order that had shaped their lives. For many of these women, motherhood was the identity that mattered most: their ideas about sex, work, and personal fulfillment often hinged on their ability to nurture and sustain families. They worried that contraception and abortion, which made motherhood optional, would devalue their decision to stay at home to raise families."


~

"Between 1978 and 2015, antiabortion activists killed eleven people and attempted to kill another twenty-six. They committed 185 arsons and 42 bombings and vandalized clinics 1,534 times."


While the first quote opened my eyes to a way of thinking I had never encountered before, the second quote made me feel sick to my stomach. Perhaps I am just ignorant, but I had never heard those numbers and facts before, and I definitely should have.

In short, Women against Abortion was a very informative read on the largest moral reform movement of the 20th century. Some of the information that I learned, I will definitely be using again in future discussions and debates. Thank you to Net Galley, Karissa Haugeberg for her impressive research, and the publisher for providing me with my digital copy for a fair and honest review.

I read Women Against Abortion because I am genuinely interested in the topic of women involved in the pro-life movement. Especially because people usually complain that the pro-life movement consists mostly of "old, often even unmarried men that tell women what they can and can't do with their reproductive organs", I was very intrigued to learn about the women that want to fight abortion.

In Women Against Abortion, Karissa Haugeberg decided to portray four different women that were anti-abortion activists in three different decades. By doing that, she also focuses on three different forms of anti-abortion activism. I think that this is a very good idea because it allows to learn about the different forms and roles that women had (and probably still have) in the movement without having to remember all the names of the people involved. And Haugeberg uses these examples to point out other important issues as well, for example that the police and the FBI refused to see attacks on abortion clinics as performed by a larger group and to call extreme forms of anti-abortion activism terrorism. It's already said in the title that the book covers only the twentieth century, but there's also a short part in the conclusion that talks about the twenty-first century and recent events.

It is obvious that she has done extensive research on that topic (and not just from the huge list of resources at the end of the book, it's visible throughout the whole book). She also interviewed the women she portrayed , which I really liked. Her style of writing is understandable and accessible. I think the book is also very balanced and it didn't come across as biased. She for sure finds some drastic descriptions for some extreme actions (e.g. deception or terrorism), but I think these are appropriate for the things she describes.

I would recommend this book to anybody who's interested in the abortion debate, no matter if you're pro-life, pro-choice or somewhere inbetween. It was very interesting to learn about the women's motivations and how far the will to fight abortion took some of them.

Women Betraying Women

Until the late 1960s, anti-abortion was a white male Christian enclave. Women began to enter the fray at that time, and became radicalized. They brought passion and zeal, and also exaggeration, lies, vandalism, firebombing, harassment, threats, stalking and murder to the effort. They portrayed themselves as being called by God. They worked with groups called Army of God or Lambs of Christ, and moved from state to state avoiding prosecution and jail sentences. At the peak, they committed four figures of criminal incidents a year in the USA. They were for all intents and purposes, American terrorists.

Karissa Haugeberg has summarized the period, focusing on the lead characters who drove it. Every decade had its prominent figures. They were white, Christian women, Catholic in the early days, and evangelicals later. The one exception in Women Against Abortion was Mildred Jefferson, a black woman, who maintained that abortion was a tool to eliminate blacks. The other featured women are Joan Edwards, whose career spanned nearly twenty years, Juli Loesch, Shelley Shannon, who will finally be released from prison next year, Myrna Shaneyfelt, and Marjory Mecklenburg, the earliest activist. Her Crisis Pregnancy Centers now blanket the country. From her position in government she would routinely lie about the risks of abortion, saying for example, that 50% of women die from it. (The truth is that childbirth in the US has 25 times the risk of death.) She also helped invent “post-abortion syndrome”, a horrible disease that does not exist.

Haugeberg says Crisis Pregnancy Centers are staffed by volunteer female evangelicals. They tend to have no medical staff, but the volunteers dress in scrubs. They give ordinary drugstore pregnancy tests to worried women, and then delay the results while they show them horrific videos. They have been known to lie about the results, in an effort get the women past the time limit for an abortion. They have been known to immediately call the emergency contact to snitch on her. And they actually offer no help – no funding, no medical assistance, no classes. They have often named themselves to appear to be abortion services. Their manual tells them things like “At no time do you need to tell them what test you are doing.” They are there to prevent abortion at all costs, and that is all. With that accomplished, the woman and the baby are on their own. Haugeberg says the centers are “straightforwardly deceitful”.

The book is a nice balance of history and characters. The result is a poster child of a totally dysfunctional healthcare and morals system.

David Wineberg

I picked this book up as a pro-life feminist curious what this book would say about other women in the cause. Would it mention Feminists for Life of America? Would it mention more recent groups such as New Wave Feminists? How would it depict the pro-life movement as a whole? I was greatly disappointed on all fronts. It was a struggle to finish the book, but I figured I needed to in order to give it a fair hearing.

This book profiles several pro-life women who were most active in the 70’s and 80’s. It does seem to try to give a fair depiction of the women’s motives. The author does seem to have a slight admiration (maybe?) for pro-life liberal activists such as Juli Loesch. But that’s about the only nice things I can say about her tone. Frankly, I think it’s a joke that so many Amazon reviewers called this book unbiased. I’m not sure if we all read the same book. I’m not surprised to find connections between this author and Planned Parenthood.

The book concentrates on two parts of the pro-life movement in which she says women were most influential: the growth of crisis pregnancy centers and anti-abortion vandalism and terrorism. She has nothing positive to say about crisis pregnancy centers. She depicts crisis pregnancy centers as manipulative liars. She depicts those who worked to interfere with abortion clinics’ operations as vandals, trespassers, and criminals. A large part of this book is a profile of Shelley Shannon, the woman who attempted to kill late-term abortionist George Tiller in 1993.

Feminists for Life of America is only mentioned in a couple of sentences. Almost all she says about them is that the aforementioned Juli Loesch was a founding member. Feminists for Life, a pro-woman, pro-life organization that pre-dates Roe v. Wade really deserved to have a more prominent place in a historical work discussing the role of women in the pro-life movement.

The only other compliment I can give to this book is that I did learn some things I didn’t know about the women who were involved in the movement before me. The depiction of events is accurate, even if her biased interpretation leaves much to be desired. If you can get past the tone and language, the substance of the book is pretty factual. She clearly did her research, but she failed to leave her strong pro-choice opinions at the door. I would love to see a book like this that is truly unbiased. I would love to see a book that talks about helping women in addition to some of the darker stuff.

I got the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review through my membership in Netgalley. Thank you University of Illinois Press! I wish I had more positive things to say.