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"Protest and Religion: The U.S. Pro-Life Movement" published on by Oxford University Press.

Abortion is the most divisive issue in America's culture wars, seemingly creating a clear division betweenconservative members of the Religious Right and people who align themselves with socially and politicallyliberal causes. In Defenders of the Unborn, historian Daniel K. Williams complicates the history of abortiondebates in the United States by offering a detailed, engagingly written narrative of the pro-life movement's mid-twentieth-century origins. He explains that the movement began long before Roe v. Wade, and traces its fifty-yearhistory to explain how and why abortion politics have continued to polarize the nation up to the presentday.

Studies of the pro-life movement have invariably been undertaken in relation to the pro-choice movement. The stress on comparison has tended to homogenize the two sides, thus understating their internal differences. This article extends beyond an analysis bounded by a movement―countermovement dichotomy. Based on ethnographic data and on the Italian case, it considers several questions that arise from revealing the intramovement divisions at various levels. First, there are tensions relating to the relationship between orthodoxy and institutionalized politics: how far, if at all, should there be doctrinal compromises in exchange for influence over public policy? Secondly, the conflicts over modes of action. In this respect, should protests be visible in public spaces, and if so how? These two issues govern the tense relationship between the Movimento per la Vita and more radical groups. Thirdly, the issue that divides the Movimento itself; the ongoing dialogue over the attitude to be taken towards contraception, and thus sexuality. At the heart of these intramovement struggles is the definition of what a 'real' pro-life movement is, and how a 'real' pro-life movement should mobilize. This article reveals a complex and highly fragmented image of the pro-life movement that, like every social movement of a certain size, is heterogeneous in its demographic composition, objectives and strategies. To show this complexity, the article adopts an emic approach that does not limit itself to a reading of conservative movements through the eyes of progressive movements.

Studies of the pro-life movement have invariably been undertaken in relation to the pro-choice movement. The stress on comparison has tended to homogenize the two sides, thus understating their internal differences. This article extends beyond an analysis bounded by a movement―countermovement dichotomy. Based on ethnographic data and on the Italian case, it considers several questions that arise from revealing the intramovement divisions at various levels. First, there are tensions relating to the relationship between orthodoxy and institutionalized politics: how far, if at all, should there be doctrinal compromises in exchange for influence over public policy? Secondly, the conflicts over modes of action. In this respect, should protests be visible in public spaces, and if so how? These two issues govern the tense relationship between the Movimento per la Vita and more radical groups. Thirdly, the issue that divides the Movimento itself; the ongoing dialogue over the attitude to be taken towards contraception, and thus sexuality. At the heart of these intramovement struggles is the definition of what a 'real' pro-life movement is, and how a 'real' pro-life movement should mobilize. This article reveals a complex and highly fragmented image of the pro-life movement that, like every social movement of a certain size, is heterogeneous in its demographic composition, objectives and strategies. To show this complexity, the article adopts an emic approach that does not limit itself to a reading of conservative movements through the eyes of progressive movements.

Within nearly every town in the United States, the most prevalent form of pro-life advocacy lives unregulated in strip malls, medical buildings, buses, and small office complexes. The crisis pregnancy center evangelical movement encompasses more volunteers, volunteer hours, and organizations than all other forms of pro-life activism in the United States combined.1 With free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, in conjunction with free materials and parenting classes, pro-life pregnancy centers are playing an increasingly crucial role in the debate around abortions. Pregnancy centers are regularly affiliated with evangelical Christian networks and national pro-life groups, who advertise services using neutral medical language to the public and images to present themselves as comprehensive health centers. The majority of centers are part of an evangelical pro-life movement, which designed their strategy under the assumption that meeting the material, emotional, and spiritual needs of pregnant people with unwanted pregnancies will convince them to forgo their abortion desires. In many ways, crisis pregnancy centers are the pro-life movement. These pro‐life clinics are an important venue for the debate around reproductive health, yet academic scholars, politicians, doctors, and ordinary people know little about these influential political mechanisms. CPCs do not provide or refer for abortion or contraception; however, they publicize in ways that give the appearance that they provide abortions, without disclosing their biased religious nature and limitations of their family-planning services.