University of California Press
A professor at the University of Kentucky claims that the American pro-life movement is closely linked to white nationalism and political extremism in a book set to be published next month.
Campus Reform reported that Carol Mason’s From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary, set to be published in August by the University of California Press, argues that opposition to abortion has played a significant role in shaping what she describes as anti-democratic movements in the US and abroad.
According to the publisher’s description, the book contends that “white nationalism and authoritarian populism have taken hold in America under the guise of opposing abortion,” and that “antiabortion stories, images, and policies have primed Americans to embrace attitudes and politics once deemed extreme.”
Mason is a professor in the university’s Gender and Women’s Studies department. Her academic interests include “critical studies of whiteness,” “race and reproduction,” and “Right-Wing Movements,” Campus Reform reported.
In the book, she analyzes decades of pro-life materials, linking them to a range of ideological developments including Cold War conspiracies, religious fundamentalism, Tea Party populism, and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
It also claims that American pro-life activism has supported the “global rise of the Right” through tactics, personnel, and funding.
The publisher stated that Mason reflects on “thirty years of analyzing the intersections of race, reproduction, and right-wing movements” and argues that opposition to abortion “has come to imperil democracy worldwide.”
