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Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Author: Jennifer Holland

University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2020, pp. 324

Account of the growth of the grassroots campaign against legalised abortion in the US. Whilst other socially conservative movements have lost young activists, the pro-life movement has successfully recruited more young people to its cause. Jennifer Holland explores why abortion dominates conservative politics. She studied anti-abortion movements in four US western states since the 1960s and argues that activists made foetal life feel personal to many Americans. Pro-life activists persuaded people to see themselves in the pins, images of embryos, and dolls and made the fight against abortion the primary day-to-day issue for social conservatives. Holland concludes that the success of the pro-life movement derives from the borrowed logic and emotional power of leftist activism.