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Library | Material Type | Call Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
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Searching... Central | Book | 363.46 W611W | 1 | Non-fiction Collection | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Central | Book | NF 363.46 W61 | 2 | Non-fiction Collection | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Central | Book | 363.46 WHITNEY | 1 | Non-fiction Collection | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
Author Catherine Whitney places the debate of abortion in terms of its history and confronts head on the issue in which people are so sure of an answer--and so strongly divided on what the answer is. Whitney follows America's abortion debate chronologically and by subject, with chapters on Roe vs. Wade, dissension within the Catholic Church, and other contemporary matters.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Its subtitle notwithstanding, this lively, concise survey of the abortion debate in America is written from a pro-choice standpoint. Interweaving legal cases, political sparring and women's personal stories, Whitney (coauthor of Rude Awakening ) begins with Bush's alleged ``back room pact'' with the extreme religious right during the presidential campaign, then jumps around geographically, from Idaho to Guam, reporting on current battles in courts, classrooms and clinics. There is coverage of parental notification laws, the debate over whether an embryo has personhood, the French RU486 abortion pill, the global trend toward liberalization of abortion laws and pro-choice New York governor Mario Cuomo's feud with ``Father Church, a classic patriarchy.'' Appendixes include a Supreme Court ``abortion scoreboard'' and a state-by-state table of abortion regulations, making this a valuable sourcebook. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Here, Whitney (Uncommon Lives: Gay Men and Straight Women, 1990) surveys the complex intermingling of law, science, and faith in the debate over abortion. Despite its subtitle, this absorbing report is neither balanced nor comprehensive. Whitney's selection of ``The individual conscience is the highest court'' as her introductory quote defines her personal point of view. Right-to-lifers will find her treatment of their position unsympathetic, and those interested in the larger history of abortion will be disappointed by the brevity of her historical survey. Nevertheless, the history she does provide is fascinating: the Bible has no direct references either to abortion or contraception, and it was not until the 19th century that Pope Pius IX made abortion of any kind an excommunicable offense; abortion was legal in the US until the mid-1800's, and the concept of fetal rights did not develop until the 20th century. Whitney tracks the current debate neatly through numerous complicated legislative and judicial battles, telling revealing stories of the human beings involved as she does so. She also takes side trips into problems posed by advances in medical technology: Are frozen embryos human beings with rights? What role should society play in protecting the fetus from harmful habits of the mother, e.g., smoking and drinking? Is the new French abortion pill, RU 486, with its potential for treating breast cancer, a blessing or a curse? For the record, Whitney includes a tabulation of Supreme Court decisions relating to abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973 and a state-by-state summary of abortion laws. In spite of its flaws, a generally restrained, well-written account of where the abortion debate stands now, with intimations of what may lie ahead.
Booklist Review
The subtitle of this superb popular history of the U.S. abortion conflict is problematic. Mixing the chronicling of public events with the stories of ordinary women active on both sides of the struggle, the book is admirably comprehensive. It is, however, hardly balanced--i.e., utterly disinterested--in its final effect. Whitney does not find virtue and reason residing in both pro-choice and antiabortion camps in equal proportions. She never impugns antiabortionists' motives or personalities; indeed, the antiabortionist activists upon whom she focuses are notably sympathetic. But the pro-choice foot soldiers are sympathetic, too, and the results of antiabortion activism--the picketed and fire-bombed clinics and their verbally and physically abused clients, the teenagers dead from back-alley abortions undertaken when parents wouldn't consent or couldn't be asked to consent to legal abortion, the parishioners excommunicated for not being politically correct, the medical research and humanitarian foreign aid defunded because it might "encourage" abortion, etc.--as well as the dishonesty of antiabortion propaganda most decidedly are not. The antiabortion movement ultimately appears as deeply misogynist (none of its leaders are women, and its basic assumption is that the life of a fetus is more important than the life of the woman bearing it), antidemocratic, and irresponsible. Highly, unreservedly recommended. ~--Ray Olson