Political Recruitment and Pregnancy Resources: Anti‐Abortion Feminists Come to Campus, United States, 1990s

ABSTRACT

This article examines Feminists for Life's (FFL) rhetoric and activism on US college campuses in the 1990s as a case study into the complexities of organizing against abortion in a historical context whereby few supports existed for young pregnant women. Members of this anti‐abortion feminist group understood college students as both the future of the right‐to‐life cause and especially “vulnerable” to abortion. As well as distributing anti‐abortion propaganda to collegians, FFL generated a site of discourse surrounding pregnancy discrimination in academia and the lack of material resources available to pregnant and parenting students. Their college‐centered campaigns attest to the ways in which some right‐to‐lifers championed “women‐centered” approaches to ending abortion in a context marred by welfare cuts that affected young women and their families. The article serves to draw attention to the diversity of opinion within the anti‐abortion movement at the close of the twentieth century, whose members came from diverse political backgrounds and invested in widely different strategies.