Pro-Life Activists in America: Meaning, Motivation, and Direct Action

by Carol J. C. Maxwell

This book offers a oral history of pro-life direct activism in America from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Through the stories of leaders and followers, men and women, Catholics and evangelicals, Carol Maxwell explores the complex beliefs and desires that gave rise to this activism, sustained, and eventually undid it. She offers a unique view of the minds of individual protestors and an important account of the direct action movement--as its initial commitment to Ghandian non-violence was broken down by the lethal acts that accompanied its end.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Erin Matson]

The author shares in the appendix that her sample “included the only non-white individual anyone remembered participating in St. Louis’s sit-ins ... [and additionally] ... only one self-identified African American, a man, regularly demonstrated at clinics during my two years of fieldwork.” This tidy paragraph on “sex and ethnicity” concludes: “Since St. Louis is 51 percent African American, the preponderance of white activists is noteworthy.”

Why, then, did she never explore race, experience with racial diversity, and attitudes about race in the preceding 249-page study, which often ran in circles like an imperfect runner changing lanes and straying back to the originals every so often?

While I am glad to have read this book, she could and should have analyzed more — particularly when sharing non-racial demographic fears among radical anti-abortion men on issues such as age, caretaking, and Social Security — but failed to do so.

On another note, I will continue sitting with this quote, relevant not just to those studied but also progressive social movements on the other side of the spectrum, including my own:

“They could not build their base of support while maintaining their identity, and they could not sustain a movement without a sufficient base of support.”

[Sarah]

this book was very insightful. It discussed the reasons why people participated in pro-life direct action (which basically means sit ins at the abortion clinics) there were times when I thought the author was analyzing too much, that people simply wanted to save babies – and there weren't deep personal reasons, but what the author came up with was very interesting. She described the differences between the reasons men and women got involved, and the different ways that they looked at activism. One thing to note was that 60% of the activists were women, which goes against the common perception that the majority of pro-lifers active in the movement are men. The book gave in-depth analysis of the reasons why people became active in rescuing and the reasons why they left activism. One thing that came out of the study is that all of the pro-lifers were religious, though some are motivated by secular reasoning more than religious reasoning. Catholics and Protestants were both represented in the samples.