State Building, Health Policy, and the Persistence of the American Abortion Debate

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 311-338

  Silverberg, Helene ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84937263222     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898030600006047     Document Type: Article

References (133)

1. U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional Record, 9 October 1979, 27536.
2. Laurence Tribe, Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (New York, 1990).
3. Rebecca Cook and Bernard Dickens, “A Decade of International Change in Abortion Laws: 1967–1977,” American Journal of Public Health 68 (July 1978): 637–644
4. idem, “International Developments in Abortion Laws: 1977–1988,” American Journal of Public Health 78 (October 1988): 1305–1311
5. Stanley K. Henshaw, “Induced Abortion; A Worldwide Review, 1990,” Family Planning Perspectives 22 (March-April 1990): 76–89.
6. For an evaluation of recent abortion politics in Western Europe, see Joni Lovenduski and Joyce Outshoorn, eds., The New Politics of Abortion (London, 1986)
7. Drude Dahlerup, ed., The New Women's Movement: Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA (London, 1986), part 1.
8. See, for example, Tribe, The Clash of Absolutes
9. Ronald Dworkin, Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom (New York, 1993)
10. Roger Rosenblatt, Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind (New York, 1992).
11. Earlier formulations that emphasize gender-related issues include Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984)
12. Faye Ginsburg, Contested Lives (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989).
13. See, for example, Mary Ann Glendon, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).
14. This is also the position of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. See New York Times, 16 June 1993, 1, 22.
15. See, for example, Gilbert Y. Steiner et al., eds., The Abortion Dispute and the American System (Washington, D.C., 1983).
16. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, chap. 3
17. James C. Mohr, Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy (New York, 1978)
18. Carroll Smith Rosenberg, “The Abortion Movement and the AMA, 1850–1880,” in Carroll Smith Rosenberg, ed., Disorderly Conduct (New York, 1985), 217–244.
19. Glendon, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law, 40.
20. Byron W. Daynes and Raymond Tatalovich, “Presidential Politics and Abortion, 1972–1988,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 22 (Summer 1992): 545.
21. See, for example, Lovenduski and Outshoorn, eds., The New Politics of Abortion
22. Keith Hindell and Madeleine Simms, Abortion Law Reformed (London, 1971)
23. David Marsh and Joanna Chambers, Abortion Politics (London, 1981)
24. Paul Sachdev, ed., International Handbook on Abortion (New York, 1988)
25. Eva Maleck-Lewy, “Between Self-Determina-tion and State Supervision; Women and the Abortion Law in Post-Unification Germany,” Social Politics 2 (Spring 1995): 62–75.
26. Steven Jonas, David Banta, and Michael Enright, “Government in the Health Care Delivery System,” in Steven Jonas, ed., Health Care Delivery in the United Stales (New York, 1977), 297–298.
27. On the Children's Bureau and the Sheppard-Towner Act, see Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
28. Edwin Witte, The Development of the Social Security Act (Madison,Wise., 1962), 173–189
29. Richard Polenberg, Reorganising Roosevelt's Government: The Controversy over Executive Reorganization, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), chap. 9
30. William Pemberton, Bureaucratic Politics: Executive Reorganization During the Truman Administration (Columbia, Mo., 1979), 53–60, 116–20, 150–52.
31. Jonas, Health Care Delivery in the United States, 297.
32. Rufus E. Miles, The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (New York, 1974).
33. The best discussion of the postwar politics of health insurance is Monte Poen, Harry S. Truman Versus the Medical Lobby: The Genesis of Medicare (Columbia, Mo., 1979).
34. See also Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York, 1982), 280–289.
35. Frank J. Thompson, Health Policy and the Bureaucracy: Politics and Implementation (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), chap. 6.
36. Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, book 2, chap. 2
37. Beth Steven, “Blurring the Boundaries: How the Federal Government Has Influenced Welfare Benefits in the Private Sector,” in Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1988).
38. Thompson, Health Policy and the Bureaucracy, chap 2
39. Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 348–51; 375–77.
40. Thompson, Health Policy and the Bureaucracy, 30–38, 187–97
41. Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 338–347.
42. Donald T. Critchlow, “Birth Control, Population Control, and Family Planning: An Overview,” Journal of Policy History 7, no. 1 (1995), 8–9.
43. David Rothman, “A Century of Failure: Health Care Reform in America,” Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law 18 (Summer 1993): 273–277.
44. Charlotte F. Muller, “Health Insurance for Abortion Costs: A Survey,” Family Planning Perspectives 2 (October 1970): 12–20. In many cases, abortion coverage was broader than state law since most group policies did not restrict their benefit to in-hospital procedures.
45. Theodore Marmor, The Politics of Medicare (Chicago, 1973)
46. Martha Derthick, Policymaking for Social Security (Washington, D.C., 1979)
47. James Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C., 1968), chap. 7.
48. Thompson, Health Policy and the Bureaucracy, 115–21. The Medical Services Administration also administered more than fifty different activities with separate legislative authority in 1970.
49. See Philip R. Lee, “Do We Need a Department of Health?” in Douglass Cater and Philip R. Lee, eds., Politics of Health (New York, 1972), 18.
50. Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, World Population Crisis: The United States Responds (New York, 1973), chap. 6
51. Critchlow, “Birth Control, Population Control, and Family Planning,” 10–11. Kennedy did, however, quietly endorse federally sponsored basic research in the area of human reproduction.
52. On Hellman, see “A Tribute: Louis M. Hellman (1980–1990),” Family Planning Perspectives 12 (January-February 1991): 36–37.
53. Piotrow, World Population Crisis, 141–142.
54. U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Health, Family Planning and Population Research, 1970, 91st Cong., 1st and 2d sess. (Washington, D.C., 1970).
55. A legislative history of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act can be found in U.S. Code: Congressional and Administrative News, 91st Cong., 2d sess., vol. 3, pp. 5068–5082.
56. See also U.S. Congress, 91st Cong., 2d sess., House Rpt. No. 91–1472.
57. U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Health, Family Planning and Population Research, 1970, 91st Cong., 1st and 2d sess. (Washington, D.C., 1970)
58. Richard Lincoln, “S.2108: Capitol Hill Debates the Future of Population and Family Planning,” Family Planning Perspectives 2 (January 1970): 6–12.
59. Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, chaps. 2, 4.
60. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood., chap. 4
61. Claudia Dreifus, ed., Seizing Our Bodies: The Politics of Women's Health (New York, 1977).
62. By the fall of 1970, there were five cases before the Supreme Court, more than twenty cases in the lower federal courts, and many more in the courts of eleven states. Raymond Tatalovich and Byron Daynes, The Politics ofAbordon (New York, 1981), 24–28.
63. For the best history of Roe, see David J. Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe (New York, 1994).
64. Lawrence Lader, Abortion II: Making the Revolution (Boston, 1973), 69.
65. John T. Noonan, A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the Seventies (New York, 1979), 104–105
66. Alissa Rubin, “Clinton's Funding Ban Repeal May Leave States in Charge,” Congressional Quarterly, 3 April 1993, 839–840
67. Daynes and Tatalovich, “Presidential Politics and Abortion,” 59
68. New York Tones, 13 April 1973, 20.
69. Joseph Califano, Governing America: An Insider's Report from the White House and the Cabinet (New York, 1981), 86–87.
70. The text of Roe can be found in Leslie Friedman Goldstein, ed., The Constitutional Rights of Women, rev. ed. (Madison, Wise., 1988), 336–347.
71. See also Rhonda Copelon, “From Privacy to Autonomy,” in From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom (Boston, 1990), 35.
72. “Abortion: Campaign to Upset Supreme Court Ruling,” Congressional Quarterly, 10 November 1973, 2974.
73. U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, Abortion, Part 2, 93d Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, D.C, 1976), 4.
74. Abortion., 125–134.
75. “Hearings Air Abortion Controversy,” Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1974, 430.
76. “Abortion: Campaign to Upset Supreme Court Ruling,” Congressional Quarterly, 10 November 1973, 2973–2976
77. “Abortion: Should Constitution Be Amended?” Congressional Quarterly, 3 May 1975, 917–922
78. “Constitutional Convention Sought on Abortion Ban,” Congressional Quarterly, 1 July 1978, 1677–1679
79. Frederick Jaffe, Barbara Lindheim, and Philip Lee, Abortion Politics: Private Morality and Public Policy (New York, 1981), chap. 9.
80. The strongest case for this view can be found in Thomas B. Littleton, The Politics of Population Control (Notre Dame, Ind., 1977). Littleton points out that after Nixon's attack on the report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, which supported increased funding for family planning and legalized abortion, Hellman announced that HEW would, unless ordered to do otherwise by the White House, continue to support family planning services regardless of age and marital status. The order never came. Littleton, 62–63, 143. Nor did Nixon order DHEW to discontinue funding Medicaid abortions.
81. David Weinberg, “Family Planning and the American States,” in Elihu Bergman, ed., Population Policymaking in the American States (Lexington, Mass., 1974), 75–99.
82. This has become one of the most prominent feminist criticisms of Roe v. Wade. See, for example, Catharine MacKinnon, “Privacy v. Equality: Beyond Roe v. Wade,” in Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 93–102.
83. Shep Melnick, Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights (Washington, D.C., 1994), 278–279.
84. Craig and O'Brien, 112–113
85. Congressional Almanac, 1973, 489–490.
86. Quoted in Craig and O'Brien, 109.
87. Craig and O'Brien, 110.
88. “Congress Votes 33-Billion in Labor-HEW Funds,” Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1974, 97, 106,108
89. Craig and O'Brien, 110–117.
90. The text of Harris v. McRae (1980) is reprinted in Goldstein, ed., The Constitutional Rights of Women, 439–440.
91. See, for example, MacKinnon, “Privacy v. Equality,” in MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified
92. Frances Olsen, “Unraveling Compromise,” Harvard Law Review 103 (1989)
93. Cass Sunstein, “Neutrality in Constitutional Law (With Special Refrence to Pornography, Abortion, and Surrogacy),” Columbia Law Review 92 (1992).
94. “Federal Health Programs,” Congressional Quarterly, 9 June 1973,1464–1465
95. “Health Insurance: Prospects for Passage Dim,” Congressional Quarterly, 20 July 1974, 1861–1868
96. “Congress Clears Health Services Bill,” Congressional Quarterly, 19 July 1975, 1556–1559.
97. Craig and O'Brien, 160–161
98. New York Trmes, 6 September 1974, 34.
99. Craig and O'Brien, 160–165.
100. Joseph Califano, Governing America (New York, 1981), 51–73
101. Congressional Quarterly, 22 January 1977, 132
102. Craig and O'Brien, 164.
103. Early in the campaign, in response to questions about abortion, Carter argued that government should take a “positive role” in preventing unwanted pregnancies by expanding sex education and family planning programs. Daynes and Tatolovich, “Presidential Politics and Abortion,” 547–548.
104. Califano, Governing America, 71.
105. U.S. Senate, Committee on Human Resources, Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevendonand Care Act of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, D.C., 1978), 21–23; 430.
106. Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevendonand Care Act of 1978., 104–108
107. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Population, Fertility and Contraception in the United States, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (December 1978), 96–97.
108. See also Califano's testimony in U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, and Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriations, Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, and Related Agencies (Washington, D.C., 1977), 817–937.
109. New York Times, 5 February 1978, sec. 4, p. 5
110. New York Times, 18 August 1977, 15, and 29 November 1977,18.
111. Craig and O'Brien, 127–135.
112. New York Times, 16 October 1980, 20
113. Daynes and Tatalovich, “Presidential Politics and Abortion,” 549.
114. Alissa J. Rubin, “Searching for the Middle,” Congressional Quarterly, 3 July 1993, 1737. Clinton's position on Medicaid funding was somewhat less than liberals hoped. To avoid forcing the states to pay for Medicaid abortions, the Clinton administration planned to classify abortion as an “optional” rather than “medically necessary” service.
115. Alissa Rubin, “Clinton's Funding Ban Repeal May Leave States in Charge,” Congressional Quarterly, 3 April 1993, 839–840.
116. “Clinton Reverses Directives; Battle Begins Anew,” Congressional Quarterly, 23 January 1993, 182
117. “For Family Planning Program, New Funding and New Day,” Congressional Quarterly, 6 February 1993, 270
118. Alissa Rubin, “Clinton's Funding Ban Repeal May Leave States in Charge,” 839
119. idem, “Freedom of Choice Bill Returns: Too Early to Predict Outcome,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly, 20 March 1993, 675
120. Alissa J. Rubin, “Deep Divisions over Specifics Could Be Bill's Undoing,” Congressional Quarterly, 27 March 1993, 755–756
121. “Issue: Abortion,” Congressional Quarterly, 11 December 1993, 3389–3390.
122. Julie Kosterlitz, “Is Hillary's Team Ready to Play?” National Journal, 6 February 1993, 368.
123. Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1994, 321–23. The two leading alternatives to the Clinton bill, introduced by Senator John Chafee (R.R.I.) and Representative Jim Cooper (D.Tenn.), also required health insurance plans to offer all “medically necessary and appropriate services,” a phrase usually interpreted by the courts to include abortion.
124. Alissa J. Rubin, “Lobbying Focuses on Abortion,” Congressional Quarterly, 14 May 1994, 12220.
125. See, for example, the excellent articles in journal of Health Politics, Policy andLaw 20 (Summer 1995).
126. Alissa J. Rubin, “Mixed Signals,” Congressional Quarterly, 9 July 1994,1871
127. Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1994, 336.
128. Rubin, “Mixed Signals,” 1871.
129. As Canadian feminist D. Gail Kellough has put it, “In the United States, women won the symbolic right to choice without the corresponding right of access to medical services. In Canada, women won the symbolic right of access but without the corresponding right to choose.” See D. Gail Kellough, “Pro-Choice Politics and Postmodern Theory,” in William Carroll, ed., Organising Dissent: Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice (Canada, 1992), 83.
130. Recent studies show that 93 percent of all counties outside the major cities are without an abortion provider, the lack of access in nonmetropolitan areas has been intensified by a 13 percent reduction since 1985 in the number of hospitals that offer abortion services (a particularly key aspect of availability, since the poor rely heavily on public hospitals for health care). In 1989, the average abortion clinic charged $245 for a first-trimester abortion. Stanley K. Henshaw and Jennifer Van Vort, “Abortion Services in the United States, 1987 and 1988,” Family Planning Perspectives 22 (May-June 1990): 102–8, 142
131. Stanley K. Henshaw, “The Availability of Abortion Services in the United States,” Family Planning Perspectives 23 (November-December 1991): 246–52, 263
132. J. D. Shelton, E. A. Brann, and K. F. Schulz, “Abortion Utilization: Does Travel Distance Matter?” Family Planning Perspectives 8 (November-December 1976).
133. For an explicit comparison of the United States and a Scandinavian country on reproductive health services, see Henry David, Janine Morgall, Mogens Osier, Niels Rasmussen. and Birgette Jensen, “United States and Denmark: Different Approaches to Health Care and Family Planning,” Studies in Family Planning 21 (January-February 1990): 1–19