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Dollars for Life
The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment
2 of 2 copies available
"A sober, knowledgeable scholarly analysis of a timely issue." —Kirkus Reviews
The modern Republican Party is the party of conservative Christianity and big business—two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the anti-abortion movement helped to forge and later upend this alliance. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain power in the GOP by changing how campaign spending—and the First Amendment—work. The anti-abortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in US politics and persuaded conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ultimately, the campaign finance landscape that abortion foes created fueled the GOP's embrace of populism and the rise of Donald Trump. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics—and explains how it had everything to do with the strange intersection of right-to-life politics and campaign spending.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 16, 2022 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798765054970
- File size: 279630 KB
- Duration: 09:42:33
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from June 20, 2022
Legal historian Ziegler (Abortion and the Law in America) offers a lucid and meticulous account of how anti-abortion activists and conservative Christians have transformed the Republican Party in the 50 years since Roe v. Wade. She traces the evolution of anti-abortion tactics from pressing for the recognition of fetal rights under the 14th Amendment in the 1960s and ’70s, to whittling away at Roe’s protections through the passage of state laws and pressuring Republican candidates to make stronger anti-abortion commitments. Ziegler also shows how “right to life” organizations got involved in overturning campaign finance regulations, contending that their efforts against soft money limits, donation privacy restrictions, and blocks to issue advocacy helped prioritize their agenda and rewrite the American political landscape. The career trajectory of conservative lawyer James Bopp—who went from lead attorney for the National Right to Life Committee, to vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, to filing lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 election—buttresses Ziegler’s arguments about how the anti-abortion movement has helped foster political partisanship while undermining faith in the country’s democratic institutions. Full of insightful analysis and revelatory details about the tactics and goals of anti-abortion activists, this is a timely and expert guide to one of today’s most hot-button political issues.
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