The Street Politics of Abortion chronicles a particular front in the fight to reverse the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973): anti-abortion activism that took shape at the doorsteps and on the sidewalks of abortion clinics. Rising to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, this grassroots direct action campaign was one component of a larger movement-countermovement battle. As street-level counseling, protests, blockades, and violence increased, clinics and abortion-rights activists turned to the courts for injunctions, and some state legislatures passed laws creating buffer zones around clinics. Anti-abortion activists responded with legal challenges asserting free speech rights. Joshua C. Wilson's book examines how these movement-countermovement skirmishes were fought out on First Amendment terrain; how activists on both sides moved from the sidewalks to the courts and legislatures; and how movement development and institutionalization occurred along the way.
Three clinic-front disputes provide the empirical foundation for Wilson's analysis. Wilson documents the emergence, development, and judicial disposition of these First Amendment disputes by relying on a rich set of material: legal briefs, oral arguments, court rulings, legislative testimony, and, importantly, interviews with 50 elite and nonelite players (i.e., lawyers, legislators, clinic managers, and street-level activists). Chapters 2, 3, and 4 take up, respectively, conflicts in California, New York, and Colorado that resulted in court rulings in Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo Inc. v. Williams (1995), Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York (1997), and Hill v. Colorado (2000).
Two additional chapters examine “law's relationship to power” (p. 111) through the narratives and consciousness of street-level activists (Chapter 5) and elite actors (Chapter 6). Wilson seeks to show “if and how law mattered for those involved in these disputes; how their stories may or may not reproduce, challenge, or amend legal power and state authority; what conditions contributed to evident variations between differently situated groups of actors; and how their conceptions of law affect the ongoing politics of abortion” (p. 111).
The Street Politics of Abortion is bookended by chapters that provide theoretical context for examining these conflicts. Chapter 1 situates and frames the research within the relevant scholarly literature. Chapter 7 draws a variety of lessons about law, social movement activism and organization, legal mobilization, movement/countermovement dynamics, and legal consciousness.
With respect to legal consciousness, Wilson concludes that street-level activists on both sides “ultimately affirmed state law's authority in their stories,” whereas the “overwhelming majority of elites constructed images of law that were unprincipled and infused with politics and showmanship” (p. 178). More broadly, Wilson argues that the abortion-rights movement faced considerable difficulty despite legal and legislative success in clinic-front battles. Abortion-rights activists took a largely defensive stance, and the movement “has yet to find a way to take the offensive, control the political discussion, or sustain popular involvement” (p. 4). On the flip side, anti-abortion activism emerging on the clinic steps was largely successful despite substantial legislative and legal setbacks. “The anti-abortion movement's lead in transitioning to new ‘arenas of conflict’ is a prime example of strategic creativity, resource development, and the way in which movement-countermovement struggles continue” (p. 4). Moreover, Wilson suggests that “[i]n spite of the demise of the street politics of abortion, the conflicts in court appear to have brought net political and organizational gains for the anti-abortion movement. Their legal responses helped professionalize not only their movement but also the larger New Christian Right of which they are a major part” (p. 159).
Focusing on First Amendment disputes generated by street-level activism rather than on cases that directly address reproductive rights, Wilson seeks to shed light on what he calls “secondary movement litigation”—cases that do not substantively press a movement's goals but that indirectly advance those goals. Characterizing secondary movement litigation as a “largely heretofore-overlooked form of movement litigation that is produced in the movement-countermovement context” (p. 12), Wilson notes that there might be special risks to movement mobilization associated with undertaking such a legal strategy. Such risks include, for example, inviting additional scrutiny, generating involvement of groups removed from abortion politics, and alienating street-level activists. Highlighting both the risks and benefits of secondary movement litigation—finding, for instance, some evidence of alienation for anti-abortion activists—Wilson nevertheless argues that this strategy did not produce “the pernicious effects” sometimes predicted by those who caution against legal mobilization (p. 168).
The chronicles presented in The Street Politics of Abortion are well-documented, illuminating, and engaging. The presentation of interviews with street-level activists and elites on both sides of the abortion debate provides a detailed and balanced account of a contentious battle. At times the author overstates the gaps in existing legal scholarship and, correspondingly, oversells the book's contributions to filling these gaps. For example, Wilson suggests that law and social movement scholarship does not specifically concentrate “on the role of law and litigation in movement-countermovement struggles” (p. 10), although works by Reference KeckThomas Keck (2009), Reference KlarmanMichael Klarman (2004), and Reference RosenbergGerald Rosenberg (2008) suggest otherwise. Still, the book will be of interest to scholars and students of law and society.
The Street Politics of Abortion appears at a fitting moment. On January 15, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McCullen v. Coakley (2013, 2014), a case questioning the constitutionality of a 2007 Massachusetts law that establishes a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics. The challenge, brought by a 77-year-old pro-life activist, claims that First Amendment protections render the law invalid. If, as many are predicting, the Court overturns the buffer zone, it will be interesting to see if what Wilson describes as the demise of street-level activism is followed by renewed escalation in clinic protests. More broadly, Wilson's insights should lead us to ask whether and how the growing professionalization of the anti-abortion movement and New Christian Right politics figures into the appearance, disposition, and effects of McCullen v. Coakley (2013, 2014) at this particular stage of the movement-countermovement dynamic in abortion politics.
