ABSTRACT
The attitudes of the small minority of people who devote substantial time and energy to the issue of abortion will serve as a baseline with which mass abortion attitudes can be compared. Kristin Luker, in an important study of pro-choice and pro-life activists in California, reports that these two groups differed on many characteristics other than abortion attitudes. Pro-life citizens are divided about their movement's strategy. Approximately half of pro-lifers accepted the tactics of Operation Rescue, where pro-life demonstrators placed their bodies in front of abortion clinics and tried to deter women who sought to enter for abortions. This data is from the CBS News/New York Times survey in 1989, before the publicity for Operation Rescue in Wichita, Kansas, in 1991. Among pro-choice citizens, the major cleavage is ideological, involving liberals and libertarians. To understand the difference between pro-choice libertarians and liberals, consider that government can regulate at least two distinct types of individual behavior--economic and social.
