Contested Lives:
Flynn, Eileen P
KEEPING A CIVIL TONGUE CONTESTED LIVES The Abortion Debate in an American Community Faye D. Ginsburg University of California Press, $25, 329 pp. Eileen P. Flynn The change of direction...
...Ginsburg observes that the way in which a woman interprets significant events in her life determines whether she will be prolife or prochoice...
...She describes pro-life women who are independent and who advocate many feminist goals as well as prochoice advocates who love their husbands and children and think of abortion as a compassionate alternative for pregnant women in difficult circumstances...
...Eileen P. Flynn The change of direction signaled by the U. S. Supreme Court in Webster as well as the atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding the direction the Court will take in its next term have given a renewed impetus to abortion activists...
...As long as such subjective factors as women's interpretations of their reproductive experiences dictate their attitudes toward abortion and influence the larger debate, there will continue to be widespread and deep-rooted division over this issue...
...It seems to me that if we are to get beyond this subjectivity and division we need to find a way to re-enshrine the kind of moral discourse in which people are embarrassed to propose courses of action which are replete with harm without suggesting truly proportionate reasons to justify the choices they make...
...As it turned out, Contested Lives is insightful, fair, and informative and presents a plausible theory of why women (the sole activist sex in her studies) come to one or the other kind of activism on the abortion issue...
...s they make...
...Prochoice activists, on the other hand, typically question "the confines of motherhood, usually after first birth," and experience "a 'conversion' brought about by contact with feminism and other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s," leading to a decision to advocate access to legal abortion...
...Who are these people and what motivates them...
...Contested Lives focuses on prolife and prochoice activists in Fargo, North Dakota...
...The disagreement between prolife and prochoice factions (who in Fargo always manage to be civil to one another) is over the proper place of reproduction and nur-turance in the female life cycle not, according to Ginsburg, over abstract considerations such as what constitutes the rights of the fetus or the proper role of the state...
...The book pays particular attention to the activism generated in response to the 1981 opening and subsequent day-to-day operation of an abortion clinic in Fargo, the only such facility in North Dakota...
...As an anthropologist, Ginsburg was interested in tackling an area that is ordinarily overlooked in social research: how contrasting views take shape in everyday life...
...Her inkling was that "grass-roots abortion activists tend to be overlooked and misrepresented," and she consciously undertook the task of setting the record straight...
...Faye D. Ginsburg's answers to these pressing questions make me think that any hope of forging a consensus on this issue in this country at this time is illusory...
...After listening to the stories of prolife and prochoice women, Ginsburg rejects the usual stereotypes...
...Based on their experiences of pregnancy and motherhood, prolife women are wont to assert "the primacy of reproduction and mothering for women's identity and authority" and to react against "the materialistic and individualistic trends in American culture...
Vol. 116 • November 1989 • No. 20
