Melody Rose

Pro-Life, Pro-Woman? Frame Extension in the American Antiabortion Movement

This article argues that some leaders within the US antiabortion movement are pursuing a frame extension in order to attract new adherents to their cause. While the dominant rhetoric of the movement today focuses on the fetus and the immorality of abortion, pro-woman rhetoric has reemerged that leverages both the language of womens rights as well as science in order to propose that abortion is bad for women. The frame extension is evident outside even the social movement organizations, and if the pro-woman rhetoric resonates with traditional opponents of the antiabortion movement, it could allow the movement to construct a majority for further restrictions on abortion access and rights.

The Upper Chamber Takes the High Road: Social Regulatory Policy and the U.S. Senate, 1953-2000

This article has two objectives: To further develop a policy type analysis of the consequences of divided government, and to bring the U.S. Senate more fully into the study of divided government. Based upon an analysis of 645 Key Votes taken in the U.S. Senate from 1953 to 2000, the article concludes that at least for the Senate, divided government has only a tenuous statistical relationship to policy type. This finding contradicts an earlier finding that divided government had a robust connection to Social Regulatory Key Votes in the U.S. House of Representatives, and challenges the dominant Senate theory that the chambers have converged. The research suggests that the Senates norm of collegiality, when combined with the institutional mechanism of the filibuster, prevents Social Regulatory debates from becoming a political tool of divided government in the upper chamber.