After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate. By Mary Ziegler. Harvard University Press; 367 pages; $39.95 and £29.95.
WHEN America comes to pick its next president one thing is sure: the two candidates will take opposing views of a 40-year-old lawsuit. As the country has become more tolerant of homosexuality, abortion has been left standing as the prime insignia of affiliation in the culture wars that have raged for decades. One Republican contender, Scott Walker, intends to sign a bill in Wisconsin banning abortion after 20 weeks, with no exceptions made even in cases of rape or incest. Another, Rick Perry, has presided over the closing of most of the abortion clinics in Texas. The arguments on both sides have become wearily familiar. Mary Ziegler’s book on Roe v Wade, the 1973 case in which the Supreme Court struck down state bans on abortion, resurrects the strange ancestry of the pro-life and pro-choice camps, which, in reality, are anything but.
Arguments over whether a mother should have the right to terminate the fetus she is carrying and, if so, at what stage in the...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1GjebSB
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