ABSTRACT
James C. Mohr's Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900, led to a generation of academic and polemical writing that portrayed the efforts to outlaw abortion between 1820 and 1900 as an historical and normative aberration. The problem of taking sides is described as the haunting ambivalence that permeates the reality of the people closest to being faced with performing an abortion or feeling the necessity of obtaining one. The political scientist, Justin Buckley Dyer's admirable effort in Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning reverses the usual trend in the reductionism and obscurantism of political rhetoric. The legacy of the political conflict over abortion in particular leads to suggest what may prove in the longer run to be two ways to meet the enduring challenges posed by both sides.
