The Cost of "Choice": Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion

Rating:
Summary: a feminist case against abortion
Review: A solid collection of twelve essays by professional women who are active in the public square. This book includes a version Feminists for Life's president Serrin Foster's brilliant speech "The Feminist Case Against Abortion."

This book is a fine addition to a growing pro-life feminist library, including Prolife Feminism Yesterday & Today (ISBN: 0945819625, soon to be updated); Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices (ISBN: 0919225225); Swimming Against the Tide: Feminist Dissent on the Issue of Abortion (ISBN: 1851822674); and Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion (ISBN: 1888212071) ...all of which are available through Amazon.com.

Abortion is a violent symptom of numerous systematic and structural economic & social injustices perpetrated against women. Real feminists should not be advocating abortion, but seeking to address abortion's root causes: the lack of practical and social resources for women. If you recognize the intrinsic interrelatedness and interdependence of all humans, you must believe we have a personal and social responsibility to empower women to make life-affirming, nonviolent choices for themselves and their children.


Rating:
Summary: A Provocative, Fascinating Book
Review: The 12 essays in this book come at the contested issue of abortion from a different point of view than one typically hears in political discourse about abortion. Listening only to partisans debating the issue in political campaigns, one would think that the issue boils down to this: does the fetus's claim to life outweigh the benefits to women and society of safe, legal abortion?. After reading these essays by 12 women intellectuals and professionals, one should question the assumptions underpinning that basic question.

Instead, these women ask a fundamental question, the answer to which is usually assumed, rather than proven: is legal abortion a boon to women? The answer from these 12 is no. Once that assumption is undermined, so too is much of the argument in favor of legalized, widespread abortion.

While pro-lifers will be drawn to this book more naturally than those who are pro-choice, there is something in here to disturb and enlighten people on both sides of the issue.

For pro-lifers, the essayists here make a central point that is often ignored in pro-life rhetoric that it is important to ask what the benefit to women of legalized abortion is. For those who believe that an unborn child has a claim on life, the benefits to the mother of abortion are sometimes written out of the equation. The essayists also recognize that many men and women who are pro-choice take that position because they genuinely believe legalized abortion is good for women. It is to these people of good will that the essays are really addressed. The book will also make pro-lifers realized that 'feminist' is not a dirty word and is not synonymous with being pro-abortion.

For pro-choicers who care about the well-being of women (as opposed to those who are pro-choice for other reasons such as societal benefit or an ideological committement to absolute individual autonomy), this book raises important questions that must be answered, rather than assumed. It should prompt those advocating an absolute right to legal abortion as a fundamental component of women's health to question whether abortion really is a positive for women's health or a negative. After all, if abortion does not actually benefit women, the debate takes on an entirely different tone.

This book also puts to lie the notion that pro-lifers on are a mission to force women into subservience, roll back women's rights and exclude women from the public sphere. This is a feminist a book to the core.

This book is an important contribution to the ongoing abortion debate, and opens a new front for discussion, research and analysis. Those who care about this issue, on both sides, would be well-advised to attend to its arguments.