Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-life Movement Before Roe V. Wade

Abortion is the most divisive issue in America's culture wars, seemingly creating a clear division between
conservative members of the Religious Right and people who align themselves with socially and politically
liberal causes. In Defenders of the Unborn, historian Daniel K. Williams complicates the history of abortion
debates in the United States by offering a detailed, engagingly written narrative of the pro-life movement's mid-twentieth-century origins. He explains that the movement began long before Roe v. Wade, and traces its fifty-year
history to explain how and why abortion politics have continued to polarize the nation up to the present
day.

Daniel K. Williams is Associate Professor of History at the University of West Georgia. He is author of God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right.