American society produces numerous social movements to address perceived problems affecting segments of the population or the population as a whole. For a social movement to occur, the following must take place: 1) some members of society must share a grievance they want to correct; 2) they must have hope and think there is a possibility of success; 3) there is often a precipitating event that ignites these grievances and convinces the people that the time for action has arrived; 4) people are recruited through a network of attachments. For a social movement to succeed, the following must occur: 1) it must achieve an effective mobilization of people and resources; 2) it must withstand or overcome external opposition; 3) the fate of the movement depends on enlisting external allies from other major groups; 4) the movement will tend to be embodied in several separate organizations which may cooperate but which often compete vigorously. Stewart, Smith, and Denton (1989) further identify a social movement as having at least minimal organization, meaning we can identify leaders, membership, and one or more organizations. The abortion controversy involves a clash between two social and cultural movements roughly identified as Pro-Choice and Pro-Life on this issue, movements made up of somewhat different segments of society with different priorities and increasingly with more polarized points of view.
Trends in the popular reaction to abortion have been studied since abortion was legalized, with one important source of data being the General Social Surveys (GSS) which have been conducted annually since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Each GSS consists of face to face interviews with approximately 1,500 adults who have been selected to represent the civilian population of the continental United States, and generally the set of included attitudinal items regarding abortion has been the same (Davis & Smith, ...