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A number of books have been written describing the tactics and motivations of pro-life activists. The work of Faye Ginsberg, Kristin Luker, Carol Maxwell, and others have provided important insights into the beliefs and actions of those who actively seek to limit or eliminate legal abortion in the United States. Ziad Munson's The Making of Pro-Life Activists is a welcome addition to this literature.
Munson's contribution to the analysis of pro-life activists contains a couple of unique features. First, Munson interviews activists in four different settings: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Boston, and Charleston, South Carolina. These research sites differ in religious composition, geographical location, and the extent to which abortion is an important issue in local politics. Thus, unlike the other fine works in this genre, Munson's analysis is not based on data gathered in a single (perhaps unusual) community. Second, rather than compare pro-life activists to pro-choice activists (as was done in Kristin Luker's Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood [1984]), Munson compares his activists to demographically similar non-activists in the cities in which he conducted his research.
The book has something of a loose-leaf quality; that is, individual chapters stand as independent entities, rather than providing a linear narrative to a single conclusion. In these chapters, the reader is exposed to a number of counterintuitive findings and insights.
First, Munson's interviews with pro-life activists and non-activists shows that the process of mobilization to activist is...