Virtue and the American family: abortion and divorce in Western law by Mary Ann Glendon

Abortion and Divorce in Western Law is seductive and dangerous. It is seductive because it is half right; it is dangerous because it is half wrong on many levels: the data assembled about abortion law, the comparative law methodology employed, and the conclusions drawn for American public policy about privacy and the family. Glendon's argument is disarmingly simple. American abortion law protects the fetus less than abortion law in any other Western country. American divorce law is as free with the dissolution of marriage as divorce law anywhere, but at the same time, the United States provides less support for maternity and child raising and devotes less attention to the economic consequences of divorce than any other Western country. The explanation for this apparent schizophrenia is that America is individualistic to a fault in letting people choose what to do with their own lives and in leaving them alone with what they have chosen.