The abortion rights movement and social identity theory

Running head: ABORTION RIGHTS 1

ABORTION RIGHTS 4

Social Movement: Abortion Rights Name Academic Institution

Social Movement: Abortion Rights The movement in support of women’s reproductive freedom dates back many years, long before Roe v. Wade made access to abortion during the first trimester the law of the land. And the fight still continues. Many states have made access to abortion more difficult. As noted by Gibson (2016), that fact is one reason why the US Supreme Court finding in favor of abortion providers in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was so significant. The Court found that the restrictions placed upon providers by the state of Texas to be prohibitive enough to effectively prohibit access to abortion for the majority of women. The state demanded a 24-hour waiting period after women were given an ultrasound, making the procedure costly in both time and money (Gibson, 2106). Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards stated that the justification behind the restriction lay in the fact that, “There’s this thought that women are just too scattered, we’re too impulsive, we are too hormonal, we can’t make good decisions for ourselves,” and “Therefore we need the state to tell us, we need the state to give us medical information, even if it’s incorrect,” (Gibson, 2016, par. 11; 13) As noted by Ravitz (2016), the idea that abortion should be an illegal procedure is an extremely novel idea, not simply politically but also religiously. It was not until 1869, “at about the same time that abortion became politicized in this country, did the [Catholic] church condemn abortion; in 1895, it condemned therapeutic abortion” designed to save a woman’s life (par. 13). Thus the idea that prohibiting abortion is a relatively old one is simply not valid, and restrictions against abortion with non-religious justifications were put into place in the 19th century primarily because of concerns about health and safety (Ravitz 2016). Moral opposition to abortion and contraception was critically linked to opposition to women’s suffrage, similar to today, when abortion supporters and foes are largely divided based upon support for liberal or traditional attitudes to gender roles. Abortion has become a cultural more than a medical issue, despite the fact that outlawing or prohibiting access to abortion will have a very material impact upon women’s lives, particularly women in “red” areas of the nation who are unable to travel to states outside the US that have less entrenched opposition to abortion and where abortion has always been legal. Supporting or opposing abortion is often used as a way of self-labeling an individual as either liberal or conservative, secular or religious. Similarly support or opposition for abortion rights is likewise linked to an individual’s support of other liberal social issues, such as the demand that all employer health plans support contraception and anti-discrimination laws to protect gays and lesbians. The abortion debate may be seen through the lens of what social psychologists call social identity theory, first proposed by Tajfel (1979) who stated that the groups “people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world” (McLeod, 2008, par.3). If support for those groups is threatened, regardless of the merits of the issue, people are less inclined to support the ability of others to access a particular right. If someone self-identifies as a conservative and believes that their religion would prohibit them or their family members from getting an abortion, they are likely to oppose laws allowing access to abortion, even though the United States has no official religion.