The Catholic Church And The Politics Of Abortion : A View From The States

This book, a study in religion and politics, analyzes the efforts of a major American religious institution—the Catholic Church—to shape public policy on one of the most controversial political issues of our time—abortion.

We had a great deal of help in producing this book. Lyman Kellstedt of the American Political Science Association''s Special Section on Religion and Politics allowed us to try out our ideas on a panel at the association''s 1990 meeting in San Francisco. Paul Weber and John Francis Burke offered helpful suggestions at that session . Amy Eisenberg and Deborah Rich at Westview Press were helpful and supportive throughout. A. David Lynch of the City College of New York and Murray Karstadt of Rutgers University turned eleven chapters 011 five different word processing programs into a single manuscript. Needless to say, we could not have done it without them. Vicky Donner, supported by the City College Scholars Program, also assisted in readying the manuscript for publication . Dolores M. Byrnes prepared the index. Mary Segers acknowledges Dean Donald G. Stein and the Graduate School at Rutgers in Newark for the partial support provided by a 1 990-91 graduate research award . Lastly, we both offer our gratitude to the contributors to this volume. All of the chapters of this book, with a single exception, were written explicitly for inclusion in this book; none have been published previously. We could not have asked for more enthusiastic responses to our requests to contribute nor greater responsiveness to the time constraints we set. The goodwill of the contributors allowed this book to be the collaborative effort we originally hoped it would be. That said, the views expressed by each individual author are those of that author alone.