Shifting Boundaries and Splintering Movements: Abortion Rights in the Feminist and New Right Movements

Abstract

Social movement boundaries are fundamentally about deciding who "we" are by defining who we are not. However, newly salient issues in a movement community can shift these boundaries by changing the membership criteria for both insiders and outsiders. Through a comparative case study of two relatively conservative feminist organizations, Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) and Feminists for Life (FFL), I examine how shifting boundaries around abortion rights in the feminist movement led to movement splintering, as organizations struggled and sometimes failed to maintain their relationships in a movement that increasingly defined them as outsiders. This analysis reveals how abortion rights' growing importance to both the feminist movement and the New Right resulted in the realignment of FFL with the feminist countermovement. This process had important consequences for both the organization and the countermovement with which it was realigned. This article contributes to our understanding of how shifting boundaries affect individual organizations, the movements in which they participate, and the relationships between countermovements.

Social movement coalitions: Formation, longevity, and success

“…Shifting social environments may alter the salience of different issues, turning ideological differences into insurmountable obstacles to collaboration. For example, Kretschmer (2014) shows how Feminists for Life, which had previously collaborated with feminist organizations like the National Organization of Women on the ERA and anti-sexual and domestic violence campaigns, increasingly had difficulty finding coalition partners because of their position on abortion. While abortion was not an issue frequently discussed by feminist organizations in the early 1970s, with the passage of Roe v. Wade, abortion became a prominent issue for feminists and fundamentally altered the feminist boundary, excluding activists and organizations with a pro-life stance.…”

Unpacking intersectional solidarity: dimensions of power in coalitions

“…Controversial issues offer excellent material to analyse these questions. Debates around abortion and sexual rights as well as around the value of domestic and reproductive work as a path to women's emancipation have always splintered the feminist movement (Ciccia and Sainsbury, 2018;Kretschmer, 2014). Not only is solidarity more difficult to manifest itself, and all the more needed, but the contested nature of those issues implies the presence of less established frames and discursive disputes over the representation of the problem and desirable solutions.…”

Fragile Political Coalitions: Negotiating Race and Class in the Opt-Out Movement

“…Other scholars have turned their attention to the challenges of building-and maintaining-collective identity, especially in heterogeneous movements (Kretschmer, 2019;Walker & Stepick, 2014). This can be challenging, especially as movements are asked to negotiate differences over ideology (Benford, 1993), policy positions (Kretschmer, 2014), or particular strategies (Levitsky, 2007). These negotiations sometimes fail, leading to infighting, factions, schisms, and defections (Ghaziani & Kretschmer, 2018).…”

“…Here, movement boundaries are defined not only by shared values but by exclusion; in effect, social movements decide who "we" are by defining who we are not (Gamson, 1997). As Kretschmer (2014) argues, "movements are defined both by the internal relationships among organizations, as well as the movement's adversarial relationship with opponents and counter-movements" (p. 895). Similarly, Holland et al (2008) caution that movements are not made up of unified actors who occasionally disagree with one another.…”