What can abortion and divorce laws in other countries teach
Americans about these thorny issues? In this incisive new book,
noted legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon looks at the experiences of
twenty Western nations, including the United States, and shows how
they differ, subtly but profoundly, from one another. Her findings
challenge many widely held American beliefs. She reveals, for
example, that a compromise on the abortion question is not only
possible but typical, even in societies that are deeply divided on
the matter. Regarding divorce, the extensive reliance on judicial
discretion in the United States is not the best way to achieve
fairness in arranging child support, spousal maintenance, or
division of property-to judge by the experience of other countries.
Glendon's analysis, by searching out alternatives to current U.S.
practice, identities new possibilities of reform in these areas.
After the late 1960s abortion and divorce became more readily
available throughout the West-and most readily in this country-but
the approach of American law has been anomalous. Compared with
other Western nations, the United States permits less regulation of
abortion in the interest of the fetus, provides less public support
for maternity and child-rearing, and does less to mitigate the
economic hardships of divorce through public assistance or
enforcement of private obligations of support. Glendon looks at
these and more profound differences in the light of a powerful new
method of legal interpretation. She sees each country's laws as
part of a symbol-creating system that yields a distinctive portrait
of individuals, human life, and relations between men and women,
parents and children, families and larger communities. American
law, more than that of other countries, employs a rhetoric of
rights, individual liberty, and tolerance for diversity that,
unchecked, contributes to the fragmentation of community and its
values. Contemporary U.S. family law embodies a narrative about
divorce, abortion, and dependency that is probably not the story
most Americans would want to tell about these sad and complex
matters but that is recognizably related to many of their most
cherished ideals.
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