Overview

In 1967, when abortion was either illegal or highly restricted in every U.S. state, a group of ministers and rabbis founded the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (CSS) to counsel women with unwanted pregnancies—including referral to licensed physicians willing to perform the procedure. By the time Roe v. Wade made abortion legal nationwide in 1973, CCS had grown into a surprisingly outspoken national medical consumer and women’s rights advocacy group. To Offer Compassion offers a detailed history of this unique and largely forgotten movement, drawing on extensive interviews with original participants and on primary documents from the CCS’s operations.

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9780299311346

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Reviews

Provides critical historical evidence and lessons for the reproductive justice movement of today. Relying on oral testimonies from aging clergy involved with CCS and limited archival sources (given the clandestine nature of the work), Dirks and Relf reco Timely and the message is on point. --Faith Matters Provide[s] critically important social history that too many in today's abortion wars have never known or chosen to forget. --Publishers Weekly To Offer Compassion provides a glimpse of a rare moment in American history when Christian ministers and Jewish rabbis were at the forefront of the campaign for abortion rights. . . . [Dirks and Relf] were able to capture a vanishing--and for some, nearly forgotten--moment in the history of liberal religious abortion rights activism. --Church History

Author Information

Doris Andrea Dirks teaches at Mount Royal University. Patricia A. Relf is a freelance writer.

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