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"Joffe takes us from the most private aspects of sexuality into the arena of public policy and state regulation." â€"Carroll Smith-Rosenberg"The author convincingly argues that the Federal Government, the feminist movement and the New Right fail to adequately address the often wrenching conflicts faced daily by birth control and abortion workers. [These conflicts] have spurred many family planning workers to construct and implement a wholly unauthorized vision of family planning policy, one that melds pure ideology with the complicated truths of individuals' social and sexual lives

Resisting both physical attacks and widespread policy proscriptions, mission-driven abortion care providers continue working to help their patients.

This January marked the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. In ways not anticipated by the coalition of physicians and feminist health activists who fought to legalize abortion in the years leading up to Roe, the abortion conflict remains the most divisive issue in American domestic politics. More than any other issue, the abortion war symbolizes the still contested concerns originally brought forward by second-wave feminists in the late 1960s—the changing relationship between the genders, the place of women in the public sphere, the legitimacy of sexual activity separated from procreation. What have been the benefits and costs of this landmark Supreme Court decision?

Katha Pollitt, longtime columnist for The Nation and one of the country's leading political commentators, was recently interviewed by sociologist Carole Joffe. The interview offers Pollitt's views on such subjects as the state of the feminist movement, academic feminism, the 2012 elections, and sociology.

This January marked the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. In ways not anticipated by the coalition of physicians and feminist health activists who fought to legalize abortion in the years leading up to Roe, the abortion conflict remains the most divisive issue in American domestic politics. More than any other issue, the abortion war symbolizes the still contested concerns originally brought forward by second-wave feminists in the late 1960s -- the changing relationship between the genders, the place of women in the public sphere, the legitimacy of sexual activity separated from procreation. What have been the benefits and costs of this landmark Supreme Court decision? Adapted from the source document.

"We've got to keep our patients safe, and our doctors out of jail." The speaker is a physician who performs abortions at a large clinic on the West Coast. Her remarks come at a professional meeting attended by many abortion providers, just days after the Supreme Court announced its decision on Gonzales v. Carhart ("Carhart II"), which upheld a ban passed by Congress on so-called "partial birth abortion," or the procedure doctors call "intact D&E" (also referred to sometimes as "intact dilation and evacuation," or "D&X," for "extraction").Normally, physicians at professional conferences don't strategize how to keep out of jail. (The ban provides for a two-year jail term and a $250,000 fine for those convicted of performing this procedure.) Normally, moreover, one does not expect to see Congress or the Supreme Court privilege its own judgments about appropriate medical practice over that of the most relevant professional associations of doctors involved in a particular branch of medicine, in this case abortion care. (Indeed, the only ob/gyn in the Senate, Tom Coburn [R-OK] is an antiabortion zealot who is on record as favoring the death penalty for "abortionists and other people who take life.") To no avail, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Planned Parenthood, and the National Abortion Federation, the leading professional association of abortion providers, spoke out forcefully against this ban.

Critically examines the congressional ban on "partial birth abortion" or "intact dilation & extraction" & the US Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the ban. The legal & medical implications of this decision are explored, & what it means for abortion rights & other reproductive justice supporters is considered, particularly in terms of what might happen after the Bush administration leaves power. D. Edelman

Progressive men and women have found it extremely difficult to address issues of reproductive and sexual behavior-abortion, above all. Reproductive politics, in left circles, is not just about fighting the antiabortion movement or right-wing sexual conservatives for the hearts and minds of "Middle America," though there is plenty of that. Mirroring in some ways other gender struggles after the emergence of second wave feminism, there is a long history of reproductive rights activists striving to make such issues legitimate on the left. (Indeed, 0such struggles go back to the early twentieth century, when Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger fought a mostly losing battle to persuade their left-wing contemporaries to take seriously the campaign for legalizing birth control). And within the contemporary reproductive freedom movement itself—composed as it is of large mass membership organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), Planned Parenthood, the Feminist Majority, and numerous smaller grassroots groups, only some of which identify as "progressive"—there is hardly unanimity as to how best frame positions on abortion.

Addresses the lack of consensus within the reproductive rights community regarding how abortion should be understood. On the left, discomfort with abortion arises from the potential political costs concomitant with too closely associating with it. What is seen, is that progressives generally avoid abortion whenever possible. Support for abortion can best be bolstered by viewing it as one part of the mosaic of reproductive & sexual rights & services. Not situating the support for abortion thusly affords the opposition much room to maneuver. Some attention is given to the April 2004 for March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC, as reflective of the broadened, mosaic vision. The implications of the 2004 presidential election outcomes for the reproductive movement are discussed in a postscript, along with the lack of coherence in the signal sent by voters with respect to the notion of moral values. J. Zendejas