Even as public opinion has quickly changed when it comes to previously controversial issues like gay marriage, opposition to legalized abortion has only grown—and has come to dominate conservative politics in the United States.
For today’s show, WORT news director Chali Pittman takes a close look at the history of conservative crusading against abortion access with historian Jennifer Holland, author of the book Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement, which tracks the rhetorical strategies and organizing efforts of anti-abortion activists over the last fifty years.
Jennifer Holland is associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Oklahoma, where she specializes in histories of gender, sexuality, and race in the twentieth-century North American West. She is the author of Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California Press, 2020).