Library: Abortion Rights: Home

Home

Welcome! This guide will serve as a starting point for Shippensburg University students wishing to conduct research on various aspects of the national debate over abortion rights.You will find background sources that introduce you to your topic and keep you up-to-date with links to news articles, research websites, books, journal articles, and research reports concerning abortion rights.

You will also find selected key publications, books & E-books, research organizations and advocacy groups, data sources and links to general and specialized databases for further research.

Search Terms

Main Term(s): abortion
Related Terms: unwanted pregnancy, reproductive rights, pro-choice movement, right to life, pro-life movement
Broader Terms: women's rights, birth control
Narrower Terms: late-term abortion, sex-selective abortion, selective reduction (multiple pregnancies)

Background

Background Sources

Additional Sources

Books & Reference Books

Reference Books & Ebooks

Abortion in the United States: a Reference Handbook, 2nd Edition by Dorothy E. McBride; Jennifer L. Keys
Publication Date: ABC-CLIO, 2018
This work gives readers essential background information and addresses persistent questions regarding the abortion debate. The new Perspectives chapter features the compelling voices of those engaged in the front lines of this battle alongside those of scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Notable activists and leading advocacy groups are profiled, followed by the latest data on abortion rates and public opinion. Carefully curated documents and recommended news outlets, websites, documentaries, and an extensive annotated list of the most important books.
Abortion: a Documentary and Reference Guide by Melody Rose
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2008
This thought-provoking reference work explores the evolution of America's heated abortion debate in a selection of over 40 primary documents from the 19th century to the present day. The guide includes not only key laws and court cases that have determined abortion policy, but also political speeches, medical essays, theological writings, newspaper advertisements, magazine articles, and popular books that offer insight into America's changing attitudes towards women, race, the medical field, and the role of government in its citizens' personal lives. Each document is preceded by an introduction and is followed by analysis to help readers understand its significance and historical context.
Women and Health by Marlene B. Goldman (Editor); Kathryn M. Rexrode (Editor); Rebecca Troisi (Editor)
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2012
Women and Health is a comprehensive reference that addresses health issues affecting women of all ages - from adolescence through maturity. See Chapter 16 for issues surrounding abortion.

Books & Ebooks

Understanding Abortion by Stephen D. Schwarz; Kiki Latimer (As told to)
Call Number: EBL E-book
Publication Date: 2011
Books on abortion (other than collections of readings) typically express and defend a particular position. This book gives both sides, as evenly and objectively as possible; it gets to the heart of each position, the core idea which animates it. It then leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind. It is an introduction to the issue, not only to the basic positions on the issue. Despite being brief, it contains careful analyses and discussions of many topics often not found at all in other works. The treatment is thorough and detailed, but succinct. Understanding Abortion: From Mixed Feelings to Rational Thought is aimed at all people who want a better understanding of what the two sides on this issue are really saying, and what reasons they give for their position. Many people assume that this issue is an interminable one, with "no clear answers"; a purely emotional debate that cannot be addressed by the use of reasoned arguments. The book shows that this is not the case.
Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Rickie Solinger
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2013
Reproductive politics is a term coined by feminists in the 1970s to describe contemporary, Roe v. Wade-era power struggles over contraception and abortion, adoption and surrogacy, and other satellite issues. Forty years later, questions of reproductive rights are just as complex - and controversial - as they were then. Focusing mainly on the United States, Reproductive Politics explores the legal, political, religious, social, ethical, and medical dimensions of this hotly contested arena.
Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America by Jeanne Flavin
Call Number: HQ1236.5.U6 F532 2009
Publication Date: 2010
The intense policing of women's reproductive capacity places women's health and human rights in great peril. Poor women are pressured to undergo sterilization. Women addicted to illicit drugs risk arrest for carrying their pregnancies to term. Courts, child welfare, and law enforcement agencies fail to recognize the efforts of battered and incarcerated women to care for their children. Pregnant inmates are subject to inhumane practices such as shackling during labor and poor prenatal care. And decades after Roe, the criminalization of certain procedures and regulation of abortion providers still obstruct women's access to safe and private abortions.
Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern by Joan C. Chrisler
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2012
• Gathers and analyzes statistical data and research from many diverse countries
• Covers a wide variety of topics related to reproductive justice, including rape, female genital cutting, and STDs alongside discussions of subjects such as contraception, abortion, and maternal/infant mortality, allowing readers to develop a well-rounded and integrated understanding of the issues
• Presents information in an accessible, interesting style, making this book suitable for both classroom and reference use, and ideal for the educated lay reader with an interest in women's issues
Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics by Andrew I. Cohen (Editor); Christopher Heath Wellman (Editor)
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2013
This collection pairs cogently argued essays by leading philosophers with opposing views on fault-line public concerns. Chapters two and three cover abortion.
Abortion and the Moral Significance of Merely Possible Persons: Finding Middle Ground in Hard Cases by Melinda A. Roberts
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2010
This book has two main goals. The first is to give an account, called Variablism, of the moral significance of merely possible persons -- persons who, relative to a particular circumstance, or possible future or world, could but in fact never do exist. The second is to use Variablism to illuminate abortion. ... Variablism supports the argument that the early abortion is ordinarily permissible when it is what the woman wants. ... In contrast, the late abortion is ordinarily subject to a different analysis. For the loss incurred in that case has full moral significance, according to Variablism, since it is incurred at a world where the person who incurs it does or will exist.

Research Organizations

Women's Health Policy (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Click the Search Women's Health policy link, then filter the results by subject "tag" - "Reproductive Health" or "Abortion". Other filtering options are also available.
Abortion (Pew Research Center - Religion and Public Life)

U.S. Government Agencies

Reproductive Health (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

International Government Agencies

Sexual and Reproductive Heath (World Health Organization)

Advocacy Organizations

Expanding Abortion Rights

Restricting Abortion Rights

Data Sources

Abortion Surveillance Report 2019 (Center for Disease Control and Prevention)
This is the most recent issue of the standard data source for abortion statistics in the U.S. This annual report, appearing as an issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control, is the key data source for data about abortions in the United States.
Abortion (Gallup Poll)
Historical polling data on American opinions on the abortion.

Data Sources and Analysis from Partisan Groups

Databases

General

Ship Discovery Search This link opens in a new window
This library database serves as a search engine to search most library databases at the same time, including magazine and journal databases, e-book collections, and the library catalog. News databases are not included in a comprehensive way. Supplement this with direct searching of ProQuest Newstand and Lexis Nexis Academic. Search results default to items that the library owns, either in online or print format. Remove the "Available in Library Collection" limiter to retrieve items available through interlibrary loan.
Access on-campus or off-campus with your ShipID
Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Complete is our most important general database. covering all subject areas. It is useful for research in all classes, as it includes 26+ million newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, with 50% of these immediately available in full-text.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
Contents indexed in Ship Library Discovery Search.
ProQuest Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window
One of the most comprehensive news databases in the world, ProQuest Global Newstream includes access to over 3000 news sources, including 2,200 newspapers, as well as blogs, podcasts, websites and news wire feeds worldwide.
Development note - alt link use stats: (91 total hits, 33 since 7/2012 -- 10 /2012)

Library Guide to Current News Sources
This mobile-friendly guide provide excellent access to the best high-quality new sources.

Westlaw This link opens in a new window
This library database is one of the world's largest full-text databases, including very extensive news, legal, and business information. Along with ProQuest Newstand, it is our primary source of news information.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.

Specialized

SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Covers scholarly publications in sociology, social work, criminal justice, and related fields. Contains >2.5 million articles and other materials (70% in full text) with deep coverage from 1960 and some back to 1882.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
Philosopher's Index This link opens in a new window
Covers all aspects of philosophy, including ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics and logic. Contains indexing and abstracts from books and journals of philosophy and related fields.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.
Admin note: 49 total hits on PI (EBSCO) link, 24 hits on Proquest link (FY14-15)

Key Publications

Coverage for Abortion Services in Medicaid, Marketplace Plans and Private Plans (Issue Brief: Kaiser Family Foundation)

Key Partisan Publications

Find Your Own Sources

Library Background Databases

CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Library database that covers the most important and controversial issues of the day. Contains the full text of CQ Researcher, a weekly publication. Each issue provides a comprehensive overview and background essay, data tables and graphs, chronology, pro-con starter, and list of major research and advocacy groups. Includes extensive lists of sources and hot-linked footnotes throughout.
Access from on campus or off campus with Ship ID.

Quality Web Sources

In-Depth Journalism

ProPublica
ProPublica is a freely available website produced by a major online non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest. ProPublica features two kinds of reporting: Investigations, which include a series of in-depth articles about a topic (often between 15 and 30 articles - major topics range from dozens to 100+ articles). MuckReads are shorter reports featuring investigative journalism from other news agencies. Major areas of interest include, among others: healthcare and the health industry, fracking, censorship, money and politics, and financial and economic issues.
Reveal: The Center for Investigative Reporting
Reveal is a freely available website and the online media platform for the Center for Investigative Journalism, a major online non-profit news organization, founded in 1977, and dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest. They publish series of investigative reports on a topic (typically between 10 and 20). Major areas of coverage include: criminal justice, the environment, guns, health care, labor and employment, national security, religion, surveillance and privacy, and veterans.
Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a freely available website produced by a major online non-profit news organization dedicated to in-depth investigative reporting about current issues in the public interest, with a special focus on accountability and fairness, especially in terms of the role and influence of money. Topics featured include politics and elections, national security business, the environment, juvenile justice and health.
National Public Radio (NPR)
NPR is one of the most important freely-available sources of investigative journalism. It includes excellent topical pages but these are not easily browseable on the website. Use the High Quality Web Source Finder search box to locate the topical pages for your issue.
Journalist's Resource
This very high quality web site, located at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and sponsored by leading academic journalism programs, guides journalists and other researchers to find scholarly sources related to many of the most important topics in the news. Whenever the source is not available in full-text, use the discovery layer or library A-Z journal list to get library access to the article or to order it on interlibrary loan.

Newspaper Topic Guides

A number of important national newspapers have topic or issue sections of their website that bring together all the paper's articles on particular topics. The leading example of this is "Times Topics" from the New York Times. Each topic guide/section has a search tool that lets you refine your search.

Unfortunately, these sections are often not easy to browse or locate on the newspaper websites. Use the "High Quality Web Source Finder" search box above to search for your topic. Then choose the Newspaper Topic Guides tab to look for these in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. If you should hit a pay wall when browsing these newspapers, simply search for articles from any of these three papers using the ProQuest Newstand library database.

Science News

Congressional Research Service Reports (CRS Reports)

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research division of Congress. It issues detailed research reports on a very wide range of issues. CRS doesn't maintain its own website, but its reports are available through several organizations and libraries.

EveryCRSReport.com
Website that attempts to make all CRS reports easily available to the public. The result of a bi-partisan movement to get Congress to pass a bill requiring open access.
Congressional Research Service Reports (University of North Texas)
The University of North Texas maintains a freely available digital library collection of Congressional Research Service reports, with the goal "to provide integrated, searchable access to many of the full-text CRS reports that have been available at a variety of different web sites since 1990" -- website. Best search tool for finding CRS reports. Update holdings of specific reports through the Federation of American Scientists or through a web search on the name of a report.
Congressional Research Service Reports Archive (Federation of American Scientists)
As a public service, the Federation of American Scientists maintains this free archive of CRS reports.

Web Directories

Public Policy Issues and Groups (Vanderbilt Univ.)
This freely available website produced by the Vanderbilt University Libraries provides an alphabetical topical directory to important websites on some 50 current issues. These guide pages typically include sections for these kinds of web resources: Basic Sites, Government, International, News, Statistics, Interest Groups and Research Centers and Other Educational Sites.

Abortion Rights

Home

Search Terms

Background

Background Sources

Additional Sources

Books & Reference Books

Reference Books & Ebooks

Books & Ebooks

Research Organizations

Research Organizations

U.S. Government Agencies

International Government Agencies

Advocacy Organizations

Expanding Abortion Rights

Restricting Abortion Rights

Data Sources

Data Sources

Data Sources and Analysis from Partisan Groups

Databases

General

Specialized

Key Publications

Key Publications

Key Partisan Publications

Find Your Own Sources

Library Background Databases

Quality Web Sources

High Quality Web Source Finder

In-Depth Journalism

Newspaper Topic Guides

Science News

Congressional Research Service Reports (CRS Reports)

Web Directories

Contact the Ezra Lehman Memorial Library