From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Another good reason not to vote for Bush
Organization: LLNL
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 08:15:35 GMT


In article <1992Aug17.053622.19477@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:
:  [followups to talk.abortion,alt.politics.bush]

:el: Elizabeth G. Levy

:el: A stronger observation would be that the majority of the anti-choice 
:el: people are male.

:  I doubt that. Seems to me, based on what I've seen and read, is that it's
:  about 50/50. I'm sure plenty of surveys and polls will back me up. Also,
:  you have to remember that the extreme pro-choice position, like the ex-
:  treme anti-choice position, is not the most prevalent position, it's some-
:  where in-between. Parental notification, waiting periods, and so on, don't
:  seem to bother most Americans.

	The thought of such things, yes, but when it actually comes to
trying to get one...

	As to the actual content of the pro-choice and anti-abortion
movements, there are plenty of women on both sides. But when one looks
at who's calling the shots, on the pro-choice side it is a mixed-sex
group, while on the anti-abortion side it is mostly men. To quote one
abortion-clinic defender's slogan (_The Humanist_ Jul/Aug 1992):

	4-6-8-10, why are all your leaders men?

	They also had this slogan concerning one such leader:

	2-4-6-8, Tucci doesn't ovulate!

	Another such zinger:

	Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!

	A good study of the social backgrounds of the two sets of
female activists is Kristin Luker's book on the subject. She surveyed
a random sample of those who committed a significant amount of time
each week to being an activist; for the anti-abortion side, she looked
at those who spent more than 10 hours a week, while for the pro-choice
side, she looked at those who spent more than 5 hours a week (it was
difficult for her to find pro-choicers who spent more than 10 hours a
week).

	On the pro-choice side, she found that the activists are
mostly careerists, fairly educated, and with little taste for
organized religion (Not only those professing agnosticism/atheism, but
also those professing a "personal" religion were well represented).
This profile would seem to match the pro-choicers in talk.abortion
pretty well.

	On the anti-abortion side (which KL calls pro-life, probably
to be fair), she found that the activists are mostly housewives, often
with only a high-school education, and who are often practicing
Catholics, even in some cases, converts. In talk.abortion, there is
only one female anti-abortionists of any persistence, and she is (not
surprisingly) a Catholic; though she departs from KL's profile by
having a career.

	KL connects each side's position to broader lifestyle issues.
On the pro-choice side, it is the desire to control how many children
one has, and a concern about being in control of one's destiny. On the
anti-abortion side, it is the view that one must have whatever
children one gets pregnant with; these housewives see abortion and
birth control (except for Vatican Roulette :-) as a rejection of
motherhood, which they take as a rejection of their fundamental
identity, and take very personally.