ABSTRACT
C. Everett Koop has stood at the center of two of the most heated controversies in American politics, perhaps the most heated outside of the areas of economic and defense policy: the controversies over abortion and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). What has befallen Koop as a result of the positions he has taken on the abortion and AIDS issues is a measure of their importance for the American political community. The debates over these problems have not been simple, straightforward clashes between Right and Left; they have gone on not only between liberals and conservatives but also among the various factions of liberalism and conservatism. As Koop makes clear in his writings on the subject, the abortion issue raises the question of the beginnings of the American political community. Koop traces his opposition to abortion to his evangelical Christian religious beliefs.
