Notice that (A) and (B) can and have taken place without the "massive sea change" in the US public opinion "toward the requisite police enforcement."
--I think I see your point here Yoshie. I'd note that all these efforts must be taken as strategies to restrict abortion *without* a law that requires police arrest of abortion providers or women who have abortions. As far as laws requiring the criminalisation of abortion, there has been a seachange, in that, should the state ever try to criminialise abortion again it would meet mass resistance. That wasn't the case prior to the 70's I think.
--------------------------------------------- A) The way anti-abortionists have gone about whittling down access to abortion is to make abortion providers the primary target (terrorizing them by murders, arsons, bombings, death threats, etc.), either leaving women to be only the secondary target (mainly to be shouted at in front of clinics) or presenting women as "victims" of greedy abortionists or pro-choice cultural elitists or both. Terrorize, harass, and browbeat doctors and doctors-to-be, and you'll be able to diminish access to abortion without using any police powers directly against women.
---agreed, yet i'd note that these strategies have been none too successful in terms of winning support from the public. in fact they have at times backfired. to the extent they've succeeded, part of that has been due to what people like Pollit have pointed out, the liberal/ lobbying orientation of the feminist movement in the US. In any event, these phenomena indicate to me that the very difficulty the anti- abortion movement faces is its incapacity to turn back history. They can take childish cheap shots at women for having an abortion, but they really can't go back to the days of old, not without resorting to a police state. i'm not sure if i'm being clear here, i'm *not* saying that this makes all rosy for pro-choice mov't or the expansion of abortion rights, but it does tell us the limits of the anti-abortion movement by virtue of its reactionary orientation, no different than the reactionary status of the pro-segregation movement. The abortion question is as settled as the segregation mov't, the mockery of women who have abortions that are proffered by those on the left or liberals and conservatives is beside the point as regards that reality. Thus their need to resort to a whole host of other methods to achieve their goals (to return to a state in which women fear having an abortion, without resorting to outright criminialisation of abortion...ditto the racial segreagation mov't and their attempt to go back to the old days minus the use of police powers to enforce that paradigm....)....