| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States. By Gene Burns. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xii, 340 pp. Cloth, $70.00, ISBN 0-521-55209-5. Paper, $24.99, ISBN 0-521-60984-4.)

This is an intelligent and accessible contribution to our knowledge of the struggles over contraception and abortion. On the latter topic particularly, Gene Burns sheds new light through his work on the debates in state legislatures during the 1960s and early 1970s. Two concepts form the core of the book: "framing" and "the moral veto." While the former is familiar, the latter is Burns's contribution. Focusing on the career of Margaret Sanger and contrasting her with Mary Ware Dennett, he demonstrates that contraception was first framed as part of a socialist call for the general reconstruction of society, then as a more modest proposal to expand physicians' rights to provide family planning. As contraception moved from a radical frame to a more socially acceptable one, it became susceptible to other associations, including, unfortunately, one with eugenics. It achieved success—in the courts, not the legislatures—when the more radical moral frame was forgotten.

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