Jennifer L. Holland, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Abstract

Jennifer Holland’s Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement is the political history of anti-abortion activism for which I have been waiting. In her impressive monograph, Holland argues that, in a reversal of the feminist mantra “the personal is political,” the late twentieth-century pro-life movement made the political personal by linking fetal politics to intimate familial, spiritual, and interpersonal relationships, reshaping conservative identities and making “life” their “primary political and moral concern” (p. 14). This personalization of abortion politics bolstered the pro-life movement and created a cohesive moral center for the New Right by “building a civil rights movement for fetuses” that allowed American conservatives to compete with liberal arguments for minority rights (p. 4). Because of this political alignment, Holland suggests that more intimate activism such as “anti-abortion sermons, viewings of pro-life films in schools, or a casual glance at a fetal pin were more transformative than...