Dollars for Life

“[Ziegler’s] argument [is] that, over the course of decades, the anti-abortion movement laid the groundwork for an insurgent candidate like Trump… . You get the sense that Ziegler could recite this history backward and forward.”—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

“In this thought-provoking book, Mary Ziegler traces how anti-abortion advocacy groups have transformed the landscape of US democracy… . Ziegler’s insights will benefit scholars, activists and party leaders seeking to understand the declining influence of the Republican establishment within US politics.”—Sara Angevine, International Affairs

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2022

“Another tour de force scholarly performance from one of our very best—and nonpartisan!—historians of post-1970 America. Ziegler always takes conservatives seriously, and superior insight is the result.”—David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Liberty and Sexuality and Bearing the Cross

“As Mary Ziegler shows us in this incisive and important book, anti-abortion activists have shaped the GOP in ways that even they could not have anticipated. Everyone interested in the past and future of American politics should read this book.”—Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Dollars for Life illuminates a crucial and surprising component of anti-abortion advocacy since Roe: thwarted repeatedly in Congress and the courts, abortion opponents have sought to spend their way to legal and legislative victory. The very activists who have worked to strip constitutional protection for abortion rights have fought to extend constitutional protection for money in politics. Mary Ziegler’s eye-opening analysis reveals the anti-abortion movement’s pivotal role in undermining campaign finance laws and with them, unexpectedly, the Republican party establishment.”—Laura Weinrib, Harvard Law School

“Dollars for Life exposes the largely hidden connection between abortion politics and campaign finance. Meticulously researched and enormously relevant, it will change how both pro-life advocacy and money in politics are understood.”—Andrew R. Lewis, author of The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics

Mary Ziegler is a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. She is one of the leading historians of the abortion debate and the author of three prior books on U.S. law and politics, including the award-winning After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate.

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