How the Pro-choice Movement Saved America: Sex, Virtue, and the Way We Live Now - Hardcover

A provocative salvo in the abortion wars. Activist pro-lifers aren't just out to end abortion, charges Page, director of NARAL Pro-Choice New York's Institute for Reproductive Health Access; they aim even to ban contraception, roll back the sexual revolution and force women to stay in the kitchen. The author pointedly questions why anti-abortion advocates, who presumably would do anything to prevent unwanted pregnancies, oppose sex education in schools. Using rankings produced by the Children's Defense Fund, Page argues that pro-life congressmen consistently vote against children's interests on matters like gun control and education. The Bush administration is, unsurprisingly, a major villain here, due to such incidents as the FDA's refusal to grant over-the-counter status to emergency contraception-the result of pressure exerted by ill-qualified, ideologically zealous appointees, the author contends. Page, who believes Roe v. Wade may soon be overturned, concludes with chilling accounts of the desperate measures pregnant teenagers resort to when they can't get an abortion without parental consent. One 17-year-old persuaded her boyfriend to jump on her stomach until she miscarried; under the state's unborn victims of violence act, he was sentenced to life in prison. (The couple lived in Texas.) Occasionally, Page's charges are flat-out wrong. She repeatedly insists that pro-lifers believe that "the only acceptable reason for sex is procreation." Unlikely to persuade any dyed-in-the-wool pro-lifers, these arguments may well inspire fence-sitters or people with pro-choice leanings. (Such readers may wish the author had included an appendix listing ways to get involved in the pro-choice cause.) Stirring, if a little predictable. (Kirkus Reviews)

A pithy polemic bolstered by solid research, intellectual heft, and firsthand reporting, this is a book poised to change the debate over reproductive rights in this country wholesale. As activist and writer Cristina Page shows, the gains made by birth-control advocates (historically) and pro-choice organizations (currently) have formed the bedrock of freedoms few Americans would choose to live without. Now, not only is the future of legal abortion far from guaranteed, in many parts of the country ready access to many forms of contraception is in jeopardy as well. And that development, Page argues, should have everyone, regardless of moral or political persuasion, deeply concerned. For these basic freedoms are not just for the freewheeling gals of "Sex and the City," but are central to the lives of working mothers and fathers from Phoenix to Duluth, churchgoers and nonbelievers alike. Page crystallizes the thoughts and attitudes of a generation of women and men whose voices are seldom heard in the political arena. "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America" is the first book to address the positive transformation our society has undergone because of our ability to plan when and if to have children. It also exposes the anti-choice movement's far-reaching-and dangerous-agenda. Fresh, bold, and stocked with counterintuitive arguments, this is a book bound to form the basis for heated conversations nationwide.