Contemporary Abortion Politics Ii—experience and Practice

What is the abortion rate in the United States and how has it changed in recent years? After 1990, the number and rate of abortions declined every year for about a decade and a half, but recently, the number of abortions nationally has...

Population Issues and Reproductive Politics

What is the state of population growth in the United States today, and how is it affected by immigration? According to the 2010 census, the US population has grown 9.7 percent (adding about 27 million people, including about 13 million immigrants) during the past...

Fetuses

Has the fetus always been the focus of anti-abortion concerns? Anti-abortion campaigns in the illegal era focused on a number of issues, from protecting women against life-endangering abortifacients and procedures; to the threatening association of abortion, illicit sexuality, and degraded chastity; to errant husbands,...

Teenage and Single Pregnancy in the United States

How have attitudes about single and teenage pregnancy changed since World War II? Once again, as with so much of reproductive politics, the question immediately and urgently touches upon race and class. Between about 1945 and 1970, with many institutions still widely enforcing...

Religion and Reproduction

What ideas have structured religious thinking about reproductive policy? Neither the Old nor the New Testament contains language specifically addressing contraception or abortion. Yet Judaism and Christianity—as well as other religions—have long taken positions on these matters based on interpretations of inspired texts....

The Legal Context

Why are reproductive issues governed variously by state laws, federal laws, and court decisions? The United States Constitution created a governing system known as federalism, under which the states and the national government share powers. The Constitution is specific about which powers the...

Feminism and Reproductive Politics

Why is feminism so important to reproductive politics, and vice versa, in the United States? Over the course of American history, questions about female fertility have typically been dealt with in ways that eclipsed the interests of women, individually and as members of...

Historical Questions

When and why was abortion criminalized in the United States? Since reproduction is a biological process, it is often perceived as timeless. But this process takes place within social contexts that shape and reshape its meaning, as ideas about sexuality, gender, race, class,...

Language and Frameworks

When did Americans adopt the language of “choice” and “right to life”? During the late 1960s and early 1970s, advocates of legal abortion used the term “rights,” much more frequently than “choice,” to refer to what they were trying to achieve. However, choice...

Global Reproductive Health and us Programs and Politics

What is USAID’s family-planning program? The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent federal agency that provides economic, developmental, and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States. USAID’s family-planning programs reside within...