the courage of Churchill’s convictions: the man who couldn’t win but who DIDN’T LOSE

It all happened behind closed doors; it depended on the discussions between a handful of senior English politicians; no one else outside their circle had the slightest idea of the importance of these discussions. But if the arguments held between…

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the changing status quo – political shifts in the abortion debate

Abortion protests in Washington DC

There was a fascinating short article in the latest BBC History Magazine (as well as a really helpful pull out section on the anniversary of slavery’s abolition) about some recent research into the history of the abortion debate. It is worth quoting in full:

“Going to War Over Abortion”

The current debate over abortion in the USA is polarized, with pro-choice opinion coalescing around the political Left and pro-lifers being associated with the Right. yet, as Richard Hughes of Illinois State University reveals in Burning Birth Certificates and Atomic Tupperware Parties: Creating the Antiabortion Movement in the Shadow of the Vietnam War (The Historian, vol 68, no 3), when the anti-abortion movement took off int he 1970s it had much more in common with the radical anti-war movement.

As the Vietnam War drew to a close in the early 1970s, former activists became instrumental in the pro-life movement, (more…)

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