Fear and loathing in Kansas City: Political harassment and the making of moderates in America's abortion wars (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The pro‐life movement regularly employs tactics of political harassment in its campaign against abortion. As the murder of the controversial abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, demonstrated last year, such tactics often betray a potential for violence. This paper explores how the militant tactics of the pro‐life movement in the 1990s have contributed to the formation of a ‘new’ political identity in Kansas politics: that of the moderate Republican. But for those that seek to counter‐mobilize against the Christian right, the political stakes remain high.     

Variations in the Spatial Pattern of Settlement Locations: An Analysis Based on Proportional Hazards Models

Models based on hazard functions are used to analyze spatial trends in the distance intervals separating point locations. The proportional hazards model, which has been widely applied to analyze intervals of time, is used to investigate variation in the spacing of settlements in Nebraska. This model allows spatial trends in the intervals between settlements to be investigated under very general conditions regarding the interdependence of settlement locations and permits the coordinate locations of the intervals to be treated as spatially varying covariates. An empirical analysis reveals an East-West trend in the spacing of settlements.