Abortion in the American Imagination : Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940 /
Abortion is one of the most contentious issues in contemporary American politics, yet since Roe v. Wade the terms of the debate have remained fairly static. The early decades of the twentieth century, however, saw the emergence of a new rhetoric surrounding abortion and a proliferation of novels, sh...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New Brunswick, New Jersey :
Rutgers University Press,
[2014]
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| Summary: | Abortion is one of the most contentious issues in contemporary American politics, yet since Roe v. Wade the terms of the debate have remained fairly static. The early decades of the twentieth century, however, saw the emergence of a new rhetoric surrounding abortion and a proliferation of novels, short stories, plays and films that dealt with the issue. Canonized writers like William Faulkner, Langston Hughes and Edith Wharton, as well as many now forgotten popular writers, incorporated the possibility of abortion in their plots. Newspapers printed stories of abortion scandals, Hollywood obsessed over whether abortion should be represented in film and abortion occupied the minds of clergy, doctors and journalists. What had been spoken of only in euphemisms became the focus of a heated and often sensationalized debate, but the terms of that debate were still unstable. This book uses a wide archive of writings to explain the development of abortion rhetoric in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, a period that crucially shaped the way we discuss the issue today. The book argues that as discussions about abortion entered the public sphere they became entangled with liberal American ideals of individuality, autonomy, and self-responsibility. By tracing how anti-abortion rhetoric was used to demarcate the contours of the American citizen, the author constructs a genealogy of abortion rhetoric in America. |
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| Item Description: | "American Literatures Initiative." |
| Physical Description: | xi, 188 pages ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780813565309 (hardback) 0813565308 (hardback) 9780813565293 (pbk.) 0813565294 (pbk.) |