Choice in Washington: the Politics of Liberalized Abortion

This thesis is a study of Washington's statewide referendum on liberalization of abortion held in November of 1970. Indeed, the voters of Washington were the first people to whom so many fundamental political and philosophical questions were put in the form of one decisional act. Thucydides has Pericles tell us that future ages would marvel at the heights which Athenian civilization had attained and at the political institutions and public spiritedness by which the state was sustained. So may future ages regard these free citizens of Washington who made such a choice in such a manner. Or history may reserve for this political community and its leaders what Edmund Burke called “her awful censure.” The purpose of this study is neither to marvel nor to censure, but to illuminate that choice in the spirit of the University of Washington: “Lux Sit--Let there be light”.