Jon Shields is a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College whose research focuses on moral and cultural politics in America. He contributed articles to The Weekly Standard between 2009 and 2013, writing extensively on abortion-related issues, including the Kermit Gosnell case, and on ideological diversity in academia. He is the co-author of "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University."
The American left loves Western European democracies for their cultural sensibilities and for their policies on everything from crime to health care. One policy area where you won’t hear American liberals cite the European example, though, is abortion.
Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia for killing a female patient and using scissors to cut the spines of fetuses that were aborted alive. According to the grand jury report, he killed “hundreds” of living fetuses. It was his “standard business practice.” Mysteriously, Gosnell…
Social Science Research editor Jim Wright is fighting to save his professional reputation. Wright is under fire from fellow sociologists and left-wing bloggers for publishing an article in June by sociologist Mark Regnerus, which concluded that children of parents who had engaged in same-sex…
Abortion rights activists have long preferred to hold themselves at some remove from the practice they promote; rather than naming it, they speak of “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” But those who perform abortions have no such luxury. Instead, advances in ultrasound imaging and abortion…
The recent murder of late-term abortion specialist Dr. George Tiller cast a spotlight once again on the violent fringe of the pro-life movement. What motivates them? How do they differ from the law-abiding citizens who work and demonstrate against abortion?