Book Review: Ziad Munson, Abortion Politics
| Author | Boleslaw Z Kabala |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929918824007 |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(2) NP3 –NP5
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
824007PSW0010.1177/1478929918824007Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2019
Commissioned Book Review
Abortion Politics by Ziad Munson. Medford,
MA: Polity Press, 2018, $64.95, 159p, ISBN
9780745688787
Ziad Munson has written extensively on the
subject of abortion. Abortion Politics is his sec-
ond book. It begins with two infamous exam-
ples of how the issue affects politics: Todd
Akin’s unsuccessful run for the US Senate in
2012 with his controversial statements regard-
ing women, rape and abortion; and the trial of
Dr Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion pro-
vider. These cases and arresting statistics of
prevalence of the abortion issue in our media
and society get the reader hooked.
The author skillfully uses social science to
describe the interactions of the pro-choice and
pro-life movements. In Chapter 2, he reminds
us that initially, abortion before quickening, that
is, before a mother could feel the foetus move,
was legal and a private matter in the United
States. Many readers should be surprised to
learn that the driving force behind first crimi-
nalizing the abortion in the end of nineteenth
century and then de-criminalizing it a century
later were medical doctors and the American
Medical Association.
In Chapter 3, Munson discusses develop-
ment, interactions and diversity of the pro-life
and pro-choice movements. Chapters 4, 5 and 6
methodically cover the politics of abortion,
arguing that different opinions on the subject
define voters’ identities. He also looks at the
similarities and differences in the role abortion
played in America and the world. Chapter 7 is
especially interesting for seeking to connect
aspects of the abortion debate to questions of
race, class, partisanship, birth control and capi-
tal punishment. However, with no bold predic-
tions about the rapidly shifting frontlines, the
sections ‘Where Are We Going’ and ‘What This
All Means’ are anticlimactic.
Although Munson mostly manages to keep
his promise not to take side on abortion (p. 6),
he drops his guard every now and then. For
example, sounding like unapologetic MA
Warren (1973), who flippantly asserts that get-
ting abortion is as morally neutral as getting a
haircut, Munson wonders (p. 118): ‘After all,
we do not have large social movements mobi-
lizing around … heart-bypass surgery or vasec-
tomies’. Yes, but none of them eliminate a
genetically unique organism that in pro-life
view is a human being and in pro-choice view
has the potential to be one.
Munson’s coverage of the stand on abortion
by the Catholic Church, the pro-life move-
ment’s driving force, is based mainly on a social
history of the abortion abolition campaign
(Jacoby, 1998) seen through the pro-choice
lens, while it should have been based on
Catholic sources. The two-millennium long
trend within the Church to ban abortion from
conception does not seem to get a fair hearing.
Clear about protection of a foetus and embryo,
the first-century Epistle of Barnabas (‘You shall
not slay the child by abortions. You shall not kill
what is generated’, Barnabas 19.5) is not men-
tioned. Neither is the third Marian doctrine that
Mary was free of sin ‘in the first instant of her
conception’ nor are the crucial papal
encyclicals.
This is a relatively short book, but it packs a
lot of information. The author could easily have
doubled its length. The small book size is both
its strength and a weakness: Munson’s treat-
ment is more accessible, but important topics
had to be left out. Aiming at presenting the ‘his-
tory of the abortion debate’ in the United States
(p. 5), the book is missing two such topics: the
analysis of the Roe v. Wade (1973) decision,
including the reasoning behind it, and alterna-
tive defences of legal abortion and associated
counterarguments.
Roe relies on a privacy rationale. Why does it
matter for abortion politics? The answer is foetal
personhood, if legally recognized, sidesteps not
only Roe’s privacy justification but also the
To continue reading
Request your trial