The Framing of the Right to Choose: Roe v. Wade and the Changing Debate on Abortion Law
Mary Ziegler, 27 Law & Hist. Rev. 281 (2009)
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Part I of this article develops an account of the mainstream population control movement in the years immediately before Roe. As part of this inquiry, Part I examines several of the most important population control organizations and considers the role they played in the abortion debate before 1973. By studying the internal papers of the most important organizations in the campaign for legalized abortion, NARAL, NOW, and Planned Parenthood, Part II reviews the changing strategies and rhetoric of the campaign for legalized abortion. Part III studies the decline of anti-population control arguments made by religious and other organizations opposed to abortion. Some members of the African-American community were significantly more likely to support abortion after Roe was decided and population control arguments about abortion were marginalized.
