Recall Abortion

Last updated on: February 6, 2013 at 4:58 pm by Jeff Miller

Recall Abortion 2013-02-06T16:58:47-06:00 Jeff Miller

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RECALL ABORTION: Ending the Abortion Industry’s Exploitation of Women by Janet Morana and published by Saint Benedict Press is a new book dealing with ending abortion. Janet Morana is one of the co-founders of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. This book is certainly influenced by Silent No More in that it makes much use of the personal stories of women who have had abortions or had been pressured to have one.

THIS BOOK is not about ideology, religion, or politics. It is not written to win an argument or to make people feel guilty.

It is, rather, a simple plea to listen to the voices of women and do what is right for them.

Abortion continues to divide the American people as deeply and vehemently as anything else in our history. And people on both sides of the abortion debate claim to care about women.

This book is not just for pro-life or pro-choice people. It’s for people who know in their hearts that they do care about women, and that in the end, that matters more than all the ideology and slogans, the rhetoric and politics of the abortion debate.

For the most part this book satisfies the stated intent. The theme that runs through the book is that besides abortion being a direct murder of a child is that it often hurts women along with those around them. If any other product had produced so many problems including deaths, that product would be recalled. Abortion as a product is being sold to women as a salve to their problem. The abortion industry and proponents of it frame everything as their care about women and yet the abortion industry has an assembly-line attitude towards women with surgery in unregulated and often medically unsafe clinics. Any attempt to help inform women or to regulate this clinics results in vociferous opposition.

The chapters set up the case as to why abortion needs to be recalled and the chapters are topic oriented answering specific arguments typically used for abortion. For those involved in the pro-life cause the arguments made are mostly what you have heard before. Although there were certainly areas where I learned something new. Some of what I learned was rather surprising such as the state of the legal system and the preferential treatment given to a rapist regarding the child over the mother.

What makes this book exceptional are the personal stories throughout. The arguments are first made regarding something and then the life experiences of women is shown in often heart-breaking stories. The stories are from women of varied backgrounds and experiences. These stories combined with the arguments made are a powerful combination. It is hard to gauge how somebody who is pro-abortion who read this book would react. No doubt there would be various reactions to what was said and the content of the personal stories. Still the book excels at not being confrontational at a personal level while engaging what abortion really is and the consequences of it.

One thing I would have liked to have seen more of in the book was to answer some of the expected objects to what is said. For example the psychological problems many women experience because of abortion would be put down just to a guilt that should be discarded. The varied backgrounds of the stories answers part of this, but it could have been more explicit. I would have also have liked to have seen one of the other aspects of IVF, that is the freezing of so-called leftover embryos mentioned The chapter regarding this mainly addressed the idea of “Children made to order” and “selective reduction”. For the most part the book relies on natural law arguments and actual consequences and very rarely goes outside this framework. At times though it does put forward language reflecting how the Church has meditated on this.

I think this is a useful book in the battle against abortion that goes beyond the politics of it.

Review

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