Volume 25, Number 12 · July 20, 1978
The Predicament
By Mary Gordon
The Ambivalence of Abortion
by Linda Bird Francke
Random House, 261 pp., $10.00
Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, 1800-1900
by James C. Mohr
Oxford University Press, 331 pp., $12.50
Abortion is, of all moral issues, peculiarly conducive to displays of bad taste. Anti-abortionists write autobiographies of week-old fetuses for Readers' Digest and show slides of queerly inhuman creatures in sacs like spaceships. But their pro-abortion counterparts are little better: they wear T-shirts with coat-hangers printed on top of the word NO! and carry photos of botched abortionees, naked in motel rooms. The very language of both sides suggests the unease of the campaigners. Almost no one mentions the word abortion; one is prolife or pro-choice. And this jargon is effective, as all jargon is meant to be, in obscuring the issue, in bringing to one side or another the shy, befuddled partisan, unhappy with words that make the issue clear. Life and choice are, after all, not concepts anyone is likely to be anti.
Review, 3564 words
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