Abortion Politics in North America

Abstract

Abortion Politics in North America. By Melissa Haussman. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 2005. 209 pp. $49.95.Abortion politics is a bellwether of women's rights in any country. Melissa Haussman analyzes abortion politics in Canada, Mexico, and the United States using social movement and political mobilization theories to access these three North American states. She finds that rhetoric and reality for girls and women is very different in all three states. In Canada, the national health service covers abortion procedures. However, it is more complicated than that because of funding and access issues. In addition, Canada requires that only medical physicians have the ability to provide abortions, therefore excluding nurse practitioners and other qualified health care workers from providing these services. Mexico has officially criminalized and forbidden all abortions (except for rape survivors, who must petition their local state's attorney general for permission to abort). However, a thriving illegal abortion business exists in Mexico with semiacknowledgment from the state. The official ban on legal abortion is maintained despite the fact that illegal abortions are the third-largest cause of pregnant women's deaths in Mexico. In the United States, abortion is legal but highly restricted. Poor women have limited access to funds for legal abortions in a few states, while many states provide no public funding for abortions. Haussman summarizes these realities on the ground as “a gap formed between legal declarations of rights and the extent of health services provisions” (p. 1).