The sites below are a good beginning for finding material on the abortion issue that has been published over the Internet. They contain valuable material and links to other useful sites. In addition, you will find the general search tools for internet documents valuable for tracking down Internet information on specific issues, if you use well-formed searches.

Also, most important, remember that much of the research on this issue must be found in printed documents. Some of these you find through the general search tools for printed documents (and some can be viewed "on line"). For others you may need to conduct searches at the library.  The first item following focuses on these sources for printed works to stress their importance.  The remainder concern material published on the Internet.

Printed Publications Databases, such as ProQuest, WilsonWeb, and JStor.    These will lead you to crucial work by scholars and commentary related to the social sciences.  (ProQuest probably finds a better range of work but does not provide "SFX" links to online sources if it does not carry the full text; WilsonWeb does provide "SFX" links; JStor has the best scholarly content and all items are available on line, but it does not contain recent works from the past several years.)  Generally you should start with a simple search, but for some databases simply using "abortion" will prove too broad.  If so, you will have to experiment with ways to narrow the search successfully.  For example, one reasonable search pattern for ProQuest might be:                     abortion AND (socio* OR politic* OR gender OR feminis*) Alternatively, with WilsonWeb you may want to start with a simple search using "abortion" but limit the search to social science materials.  You may find that a simple search often requires you to sort through a fair number of irrelevant titles as you pick out the potentially useful ones, however it has less chance of missing important things.  If the search seems to find too much, narrow it further as needed.  Too narrow a search, however, can miss important materials.    To give you a quick start here are some links that will take you to these databases and automatically run simple searches defined above: Click here to see how a simple search pattern works with WilsonWeb, or here for a more complex one with Proquest or here for JStor searching for "abortion" in titles only.      See the general search tools for printed documents for further suggestions

General Information Sites:

AltaVista - LookSmart - Reproductive Rights Links (with descriptions) to sites on reproductive rights.

Yahoo! Full Coverage - Abortion News Links to news on abortion issue and general sites.

Pro-Abortion Sites:

NARAL Pro-Choice America (National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) Varied background information.

National Abortion Federation - Abortion Fact Sheets "Facts" from a pro-abortion perspective.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute More "facts" from a (reputable) pro-abortion research institute.

Anti-Abortion Sites:

National Right to Life. Much information and "facts" from the anti-abortion perspective.

Pro-Life America. An advocacy site that goes a long way to get across the point of view.

Libertarians for Life. Not the mainstream opposition to abortion, but interesting in a curious way. Includes articles with basic arguments against abortion and responses to abortion's defenders.

The Radical Religious right: Pro-Lifers/Anti-Abortionists Not an anti-abortion site, but the links here attach to some good examples of conservative religious advocacy of the anti-abortion position.