Dr. Jeff Koloze

Anti-life/pro-abortion wrongs book written in English needs to be translated into reality.

This graphic “novel” is supposed to be fiction, but it’s more an extended advertisement for an abortion clinic.  Besides that, the language needs to be translated into realspeak from its Orwellian doublespeak.

Since the “volume” is unpaginated, the following comments will be addressed in the order in which the hapless reader of this “literary work” will find them.

A mother’s pregnancy is called an “accident” (quotes in original).

An abortifacient drug is erroneously named an “emergency contraception pill.”

The author mistakenly thinks that pregnancy only involves the mother’s body, omitting the presence of the unborn child’s body: “(duh…it’s your body)” (italics presumed in the original).

A chemical abortion is called a “medical” abortion, as though using the term “medical” will improve the connotation of the always negative term “abortion.”

The author admits that abortion “can pose risks to the woman”, but the language needs to be retranslated, since only a mother can abort because a mother is pregnant, not merely a “woman.”

The author engages in tautology when she states that “a surgical abortion uses surgery to abort the pregnancy.”  Note also that it’s not the unborn child who is aborted or killed, but some non-human noun called the “pregnancy.”

The author recognizes what most mothers who abort experience: their lovers/husbands/casual sex partners/whatever usually abandon them after the abortion: “Although Lisa was not with her partner anymore.”

It’s very interesting that the illustration for the mother being aborted with abortifacients instead of a surgical abortion is in a room where the ultrasound is blank.  The reason given is that “some girls [mothers] find that they would rather not see a visual of what’s going on in there [the unborn child depicted as a human body moving in the restricted space of his or her mother’s uterus].”

Typical of every pro-abortion author, the abortion procedure itself is deflected: “she could near the humming of the instruments”—not the suction machine which rips the unborn baby’s body to pieces in a surgical abortion, but “instruments” which “hum” (as though this verb would make the act of killing comfortable or pleasant).

The author recognizes the reality of Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS) when she affirms that “the emotional recovery [from abortion] might take longer” than the physical recovery.

The ultrasound screen of the chemical abortion is blank a second time.

The unborn child who is killed in a chemical abortion is dehumanized in medical language: “misoprostol […] causes contractions that expel the fetus.”  Even though the Latin word “fetus” means “little one”, a very humanizing term, anti-life people use “fetus” to suggest that the unborn child at whatever stage of his or her development is not human.

The author notes that heavy bleeding from abortifacients indicated “that the abortion had really happened.”  Similarly, writing that “the abortion is taking place” and determining “if the procedure was successful” focus on the procedure itself, not the fact that abortion involves three people: mothers (who are harmed by abortion), unborn babies (who are killed in abortion), and fathers (who are alienated by abortion).

The author acknowledges her anti-life position by including the abortion business Planned Parenthood in her list of people to “thank.”

Finally, the author has the audacity and hypocrisy to write, “I’m not trying to offer my own political agenda one way or the other about the subject of abortion”, yet the National Right to Life Committee, Birthright, or other pregnancy support centers are not listed on the “Resources” page.

Reading this travesty of a “novel” only takes half an hour, but pro-life students could write term papers about the divisive and dehumanizing rhetoric on each page.  These 623 words may help those students write longer essays.

Cautionary tale for Americans in the age of Antifa domestic terrorism.

Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls may be dead white male literature, but don’t deprive yourself of a masterpiece just because some Antifa-loving English professor hates white men.

The entire book is a demonstration of how vicious a society can be when it loses its faith.  Whether it’s Spain during the Civil War or the United States beset by Antifa’s domestic terrorism, the political message of Hemingway’s volume is as relevant today as it was in 1940 when it was first published.  The killings and terrorism of the political factions of the Spanish Civil War remind me of the terrorism of Antifa and the criminal Democratic Party’s support not only of abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever but also of infanticide.  Both Antifa and the Democratic Party are as intolerant of political difference as those involved in the brutal Spanish civil war.

What is more saddening on reading this novel is that Spain, which was supposed to be an ostensibly Catholic country, abandoned its Catholicism so immediately during a brief yet bloodthirsty internecine war.  What took millennia to develop as a brilliant form of Western Christianity seemed to be destroyed so quickly.  The master works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross apparently had no enduring effect on a population so quick to kill each other merely because of partisan differences.  If Spain had maintained its faith of two millennia, the horrors of its civil war would not have been entrenched not only in its society, but also in world history as they have.

However, that is a premature conclusion.  The Spanish civil war was brutal, and Hemingway’s illustration of the brutality sears the synapses, especially chapter ten’s description of the killings of fascists in a certain village.  Maybe the civil war was an essential purge of such weak-willed Catholics who could not live up to their baptismal promises to love one another.  Interestingly, Hemingway’s characters are supposed to be irreligious, but it is obvious in his metaphors and allusions that religious faith is still evident in people’s lives, still seeps through, despite their best efforts to be, as many characters declare, a society “without God.”

After all, the faith is still practiced in Spain.  Even today, with abortion and the medical killing called assisted suicide and euthanasia rampant in what were formerly called “Catholic” countries (like Ireland and Spain), people who actually live their faith and support human life rise to the occasion to fight the fascism of the anti-life (pro-abortion, pro-infanticide, and pro-euthanasia) movement.

If this does not read as a plot summary or one of those saccharine  reviews overusing words like “wonderful” or “great”, then my goal is accomplished.  If you want a plot summary or a digest of poetic language in what is usually called Hemingway’s terse prose, then read the novel yourself and annotate your favorite terms, phrases, sentences, descriptive paragraphs, and trenchant one-liners as I have done.  (Virtually every page of the original 471-page volume has some annotation on it.)

This review is, however, meant to be my perspective on how this masterly novel is a warning of what could happen here in the United States if the domestic terrorist tactics of groups like Antifa or the criminal Democratic Party control not just Washington, but the broadcast media, social media, and other institutions.  That means that we who are faithful Jews and Christians, of all denominations, must fight against the same forces which destroyed so many lives in the Spanish civil war.  Then, they were fascists; now, they are called abortionists, Antifa, and the criminal Democratic Party—a triad whose members are interchangeable.

Standard plot, tries to make abortion funny, written by zealots.  Next teen abortion novel, please….

This teen abortion novel is meant to be a unique, comical take on how a teen mother faces an untimely pregnancy, but it’s a typical teen abortion novel.  The tired clichés and plot features that have been used since Richard Brautigan wrote his 1971 novel The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 continue in this work.  Not much has changed in fifty years.

Despite that, pro-life readers can use this novel as evidence that even activist anti-life authors know that abortion is negative, a moral wrong, and disastrous.  If this novel fails at making abortion comical, the teaching value of this typical teen abortion novel redeems it.

For example, Veronica is a typical teen mother in a typical teen abortion novel; she thinks of the abortion business Planned Parenthood first—not a pregnancy support center or her parents, or her church or synagogue, or any other source which can help her with an untimely pregnancy.  Her first thought is to get an abortion and kill the unborn child.

In fact, Veronica’s claim that “I was out of options” is feeble (48).  How can Veronica, a teen in the contemporary United States, think only of an abortion clinic when pregnancy support groups which help women outnumber abortion clinics which subject those women to harm?  Such a ridiculous claim demonstrates either the abortion zealotry of the authors or Veronica’s complete ignorance.  Since she is supposed to be a brilliant student, the former must be true.

Also, this novel continues the anti-life practice of using euphemisms to refer to the abortion or the unborn child him- or herself.  (For obvious reasons; if someone refers to an unborn child, then that person must acknowledge the humanity of the child, making killing him or her nearly impossible.)

For example, the abortion itself is euphemistically changed from “the weekend you got an abortion” to “the weekend you saw Roswell” (82-3).  Veronica calls the abortion her “thing” (188).  Like many other abortion novels, no description of the abortion is provided; the novel resumes after the killing is over (262).

Instead of an unborn baby boy or girl, the unborn child is called “the currently occupied state of my uterus” (37) or “whatever’s going on in there” (191).

Of course, the novels contain the customary anti-religious references.  Although attacks on Catholics have long been a feature of pro-abortion fiction since the early days of the genre, the main character seems more Protestant than Catholic Christian; thus, the anti-religious elements are attacks against Evangelical Christians more than other denominations.

As pro-lifers know, a mother who aborts will feel relief that the “problem” of an untimely pregnancy is resolved, even if by abortion, but eventually post-abortion syndrome (PAS) will occur.  Veronica is a typical teen aborted mother in this regard as well.  Her PAS manifests itself soon after the killing.  Veronica asserts, “all anyone would remember about me now was that I was the girl who got an abortion” (265).  Other typical post-abortion symptoms manifest themselves quickly: Veronica remains angry at Kevin, the father of the child (269); she “didn’t recognize” herself (295); and she lies to her parents about breaking up with Kevin (296).

Perhaps the standard abortion plot can be attributed to the authors’ strong anti-life positions on the first right-to-life issue.  Both Hendriks and Caplan praise the National Abortion Rights [sic] Action League (which changed its name to “NARAL Pro-Choice America” because “abortion” is still negative) and the abortion business Planned Parenthood (308).  Hendriks’ Catholic mother objected to a priest talking in support of protective legislation (308), and Caplan utters the ridiculous anti-life slogan that “no one should be forced to have a baby” as his naïve justification of abortion, which harms mothers, kills unborn babies, and alienates fathers (309).

It is curious, also, why it took two people to write a typical teen abortion novel.

Is this novel worth reading?  Yes, if only to see that the plot of typical teen abortion novels hasn’t changed in fifty years.  This could show either literary continuity with “the tradition” or a plot sequence which is incredibly stale.  I think it’s the latter.

Readable, often humorous, and thoroughly documented, a masterly work on contemporary media bias.

Both conservatives and liberals know that the media is biased, and Groseclose’s masterly analysis brings an Economics professor’s reasoning and documentation to the issue.

Moreover, pro-life activists can use his ideas not only to understand, but also to fight against journalists’ pervasive and (as we now see in every White House press briefing) aggressive liberal attacks.  Every pro-lifer should master Groseclose’s concepts of “PQ” (political quotient), which is the degree to which someone is liberal (viii) and “SQ” (slant quotient), the liberal bias of major news outlets (16).  Chapter 14, “The Language of Journalists and the Special Case of Partial-Birth Abortion”, ([161]-168), should be required reading for every student in a pro-life or journalism course for its analysis of liberal linguistic bias against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

Some ideas in the volume have withstood the test of time and are incontestable, such as the following:

The media is liberal [vii]: check.

Leftist professors often write, as every student knows, not scholarly material but psychobabble (4): check.

The logical fallacy of circular thinking, what Groseclose calls the “Fundamental Trap”, contributes to media bias (19): check.

Liberal journalists often fail to distinguish between normative questions (questions of what should be) vs. positive questions, “what logic or nature has determined is true or untrue” (27): check.

“Distortion theory” is evident in journalism since “journalists are more likely to report facts and statistics that liberals want you to learn and less likely to report facts and statistics that conservatives want you to learn” (68): check.

Diversity in major news outlets does not include political viewpoints (101): check.

Journalists were 90% more likely to donate to Democrats and liberal causes instead of Republicans (106): check.

Professors are (surprise!) 5:1 Democrat (112): check.

The Washington Post was guilty of extreme bias in its flaccid coverage of the 1990 Rally for Life (121-122): check.

Journalists pick experts who agree with them (152): check.

Media bias helps Democratic candidates 8-10% (245): check.

Other ideas in Groseclose’s work are almost prophetic.  The “vast army of nonvoters are more conservative than voters” (52; italics in original) may account for President Trump’s miraculous 2016 victory.  He suggests the possibility of a conservative shift in voters later in the volume ([241]).

Some ideas in Groseclose’s work need further research, and I hope he will produce work which addresses the following two questions.

First, only 14% of survey participants cited the internet as a source for news (195).  Certainly, that must have changed radically in the past nine years.  For example, I stopped reading hardcopy newspapers decades ago, and, like my students, rely more on Twitter than websites for immediate news.

Second, who needs the media?  “Media”, a Latin term, implies someone who is between information being transmitted from a sender (for example, an elected official) to a receiver (an ordinary citizen).  Who needs the liberal White House Press Corps, asking repetitive, if not stupid, gotcha questions when we can watch President Trump on Facebook directly or read his direct tweets to us?

Fortunately, not all is lost with the liberal media.  Groseclose offers some strategies to end journalists’ claims that they are unbiased, two of which are worth repeating here.  “First, we should stop believing the fiction ‘I report the news as it is.  My political opinions do not influence how I report it’ [….]  Second, we should reward news outlets that are transparent about the personal opinions of the journalists” (254; italics in original).

These tactics would surely put liberal media (like CNN, MSNBC, and, increasingly, Fox) and liberal social media monopolies (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) on notice.

During the China virus (coronavirus) pandemic, learn what Nazis and the Democratic Party have in common.

The parallels between Nazi oppression of Europe and Democratic Party oppression of the United States become obvious on reading Martin Gilbert’s mammoth history of World War II.

While I originally wanted to learn more about the Nazi oppression of European nations only, imperialist policies of fascist Italy and imperial Japan reinforced several ideas about how dictatorships not only suppress, but eventually kill freedom-loving people.  Of course, Nazi actions in Europe parallel the policies of the Democratic Party in the United States, so reading a dated history of World War II is still relevant.

Besides that, the 747 pages of text—and many full-page maps and photos—are sure to occupy time well spent indoors during the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the parallels between Nazis and Democratic politicians are obvious.  First is the dominant Nazi belief that there is some human life which is not worth living.  For Nazis, it was Jews, the Roma people (Gypsies), Slavs, and others (homosexuals and mentally ill persons).  Democrats, similarly, despise the unborn, the handicapped newborn, and the elderly.  That’s why their policies endorse abortion legal throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever, infanticide (the killing of handicapped newborns), and euthanasia (the killing of the elderly and denial of care to medically-vulnerable senior citizens).

Second are the means which Nazis used and Democratic politicians use to obtain and maintain political power.  For Nazis, terror and violence were the order of the day.  For Democrats, much the same, although the terror is usually masked in ad hominem and politically-correct attacks against their opponents, as when an opponent is branded as “homophobic” or “racist” when the person attacked is anything but.  Sometimes, Democratic politicians endorse the practices of violent domestic terrorist groups like Antifa to intimidate law-abiding citizens.

Third is the devastation which the Nazis and Democrats created.  Nazi destruction of Europe is obvious; we have still photo and film documentation of the damage caused to European cities throughout their long reign of terror.  The evidence of Democratic devastation is not as clear as a photo of a destroyed Warsaw, but nonetheless apparent.  Democratic abortion policies, for example, have not only killed unborn children, but also harmed or killed mothers and alienated fathers.  Democratic assaults on heterosexual normativity have affected the family and the importance of the husband and father in the family as much as any Nazi bomb would have destroyed an ancient European church.

Gilbert’s interpolation of historical facts with countless narratives of victims of the war makes the reading of his 747 pages suspenseful and powerfully emotional.  Although we know how the “story” ends (the Nazis lose, and Western civilization is saved from a vicious totalitarian threat), we do not know the specific facts of how Europe saved itself from Nazi oppression.  Gilbert supplies those facts and relates painful episodes of people killed by the Nazis.

Similarly, while we know the horrors of Democratic policies attacking human life, what is not so clear is whether we twenty-first century people have learned anything from Nazi oppression of Jewish and Christian (Western) civilization.  One could answer “obviously not” since the policies of the Democratic Party in the United States are as oppressive as Nazi ideology yet are still endorsed by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who align themselves with that party.  One can only hope that Americans will reject Democrats’ Nazi-like policies and practices in November’s elections.

A perfect counter to the anti-life fantasy fiction of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

“The cat’s out of the bag!  Forget Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  Gmitro’s novel PROVES that anti-choicers will ENSLAVE women as BREEDERS!”

There are three things wrong with the above paragraph, which would be what a typical anti-life feminist, foam flying out of her mouth in feverish and futile frustration, might say about George Gmitro’s novel, Viable@140.

First, get the easy part out of the way.  There is no little kitty cat in a bag.  Unlike the abortion business Planned Parenthood, pro-lifers have nothing to hide—except their strategic political plans to get rid of anti-lifers in office and replace them with pro-lifers.

Second, as much as I love Canada and the pro-life Canadians who suffer under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (whom I call “the Obama and Hillary of the North”), Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is simply a fantasy.  No amount of college professors who want to use her work as their fiction choice in upcoming English classes can transform it into anything other than the sheer fantasy of an aging feminist whose support for the destruction of the unborn is not matched by the tsunami of pro-life feminists who will take her place.

Third, Gmitro’s novel is a perfect counter to Atwood’s fantasy because, while it has some flaws, Viable@140 is fast-paced (unlike Atwood’s ultra-serious novel, Gmitro’s work can be read in one day), contains wicked humor (unlike Atwood’s intensely unfunny novel), and plausible (unlike Atwood’s ridiculous dystopia, since, as we all know, anti-lifers, being inherently intolerant and elitist, would enslave pro-lifers more than pro-lifers would ever subjugate anybody else).

But I slightly digress….

The claim could be made that Gmitro’s work justifies what every anti-lifer suspects: that pro-lifers want to kidnap pregnant women (aka mothers), render them unconscious, and force them to give birth.  This summary approximates what some people think Margaret Atwood’s fantasy novel The Handmaid’s Tale suggests will happen if pro-lifers control society.  This is the typical formulation of that tired and tiresome feminist principle that men are patriarchal and want to oppress women with the power of their literal or figurative phallus, blah blah blah.  (Feminists say little about matriarchal oppression of men by women, but this simple book review by an ‘umble pro-life English professor is not the place to discuss such oppression.)

Patriarchy aside, readers will understand that the focus of the novel is to emphasize father’s rights over the mother’s or the unborn child’s rights.  After all, when a father learns that his girlfriend (lover, fiancée, wife, mistress, whatever) wants to kill his unborn child, what would he do?  To what length would the young father go to save his child?  Would he just allow the mother to arrange an abortion at the nearest clinic or would he do something drastic to save her and their unborn child?

Gmitro’s fictional approach to solving this controversy is…well…unique.  Lance, the father, abducts Sandi, his fiancée, while she is on the hospital gurney, waiting to abort their child, and sequesters her well beyond the point of viability so that she cannot abort.  During this time he keeps her sedated; the mother is effectively silenced throughout the pregnancy.

Whether the author is serious about this as a solution or not is unnecessary to argue because I believe the literary perspective of the narrative is more important than the deeper legal and moral issues which the novel neglects.  The anti-life mother is “out” of the picture, literally and figuratively.  She is mercifully so, because most readers would compare her potty mouth on page 59 to the vulgarities spewed out either by an anti-life feminist or by the best that Hollywood can illustrate of an evil spirit being exorcised.  Thus, readers will have a chance to hear from the second most silenced person involved in an abortion, the father.  In Gmitro’s work it is the father who is able to explain his actions, who has his chance to speak about his love for his unborn child, and who shows that he wants his child even though the mother wants to destroy him or her.

Yep, anti-life feminists would be enraged by such a novel.  “How dare any man voice support for his child.  If that isn’t patriarchal oppression, then I don’t know what is.”  How I would like to tell such an anti-lifer, “Shut up, just shad up…”

Aspetta!  That’s just what Gmitro has achieved in this novel.  The customary anti-life reasoning that every anti-life mother offers in other fiction is absent.  In this fictional instance, the father—finally—has a turn to speak.

An additional feature of this novel is that, a few minor passages aside, it is not didactic or preachy as one might expect from characters who ostensibly come from a Baptist Christian background.  Pro-lifers would appreciate the humor throughout the novel.  For example, the names of the various characters conjure up both pro- and anti-lifers: the abortionist Griswold, who hails from Connecticut (page 45); Candee Williams from the anti-life network NSMBC (page 54); FBI agent Ben Casey (page 99); a greedy character named Cindy Pelozi (page 145); an anti-lifer named Davin Souter (page 152); Stare Decisis, the name of the “steep ridge” around the villa where Lance is keeping Sandi (page 205); Colorado Governor Blackmun (page 229); pro-life activist Pam McKorvey (page 232); Georgia Democrat Senator Ann Soto Mayer (page 299); and newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Reilly (page 301).  The characterization of that eminently weak and virulently anti-life president that the United States endured for eight tragic years (Obama) is true to life.

Some characterizations, however, make me want to scream out.  Why, for example, is Lance so gullible or such an innocent that he can’t see that his fiancée is a material girl?  I mean, is sex with her that enjoyable if he knows that she is ephemeral and contrary to his Horatio Alger values?  The reader has to conclude that his Baptist Christian training about sexuality must not have been as complete as that for orthodox Catholics.

The novel has some technical flaws.  For example, omitted commas before and after appositions are annoying punctuation errors which hamper a quick read of various lines using direct address.  Some grammar errors will stop the educated reader from appreciating the flow of the narrative.  Also, the last thirty or so pages are composed of too much dialogue instead of descriptive details and dialogue, which can confuse the reader.  It is hoped that future reprints of the work will correct these errors.

Gmitro’s work is a good read not only because the action is fast-paced, but also because the plot is plausible, dramatizing a complex philosophical problem.  The question posed on the novel’s promotional materials (“When it comes to the life of your child, just how far would you go?”) is worth raising.  While I hope that men do not use Lance’s ignoble means of abducting his fiancée for the noble means of saving her and her unborn child, I can see how some unfortunate radical person who claims to be pro-life (or desperate father, who wants to save his child from being aborted) would conclude that the main character’s activity is morally good.  Such a possibility is frightening because no one would want to see any father take matters into his own hands by kidnapping the mother of his child and forcing her to give birth.

Over all, Gmitro’s novel can lead to a fruitful discussion of moral principles which most colleges and universities ignore.  Move over Margaret Atwood; your anti-life fantasy novel has been replaced by a more plausible, life-affirming one.

Seventies politics aside, novel still relevant for fatherless young men

A friend recommended this novel for its abortion content, and it does mention that issue as well as infanticide.  However, what makes this work of dead white male literature more interesting for today is its depiction of men who suffer from father loss.  Thus, it comports with the best of academic discussion about the masculinist literary theory.

Plot details need not be elaborated here.  What I see in this work is more interesting: the deep hurt several male characters feel being fatherless, the connection between loss of Christian faith and support for abortion and infanticide, and the compelling nature of love which overcomes even the most disgusting and violent political and terrorist activity.

Dr. Eduardo Plarr, the ostensible protagonist of the novel, is the father of a child presumed to be the Honorary Consul’s, Charley Fortnum’s.  Unlike most dads who rejoice in their unborn children, Plarr not only may have done abortions (128), but also thinks of his unborn child as “a useless part of Clara like her appendix” (265).  Although it is a redeeming quality of this character that, eventually, “the child became real to him” (265), shortly after this affirmation of life, Plarr recounts how he would have committed infanticide of “a child born without hands and feet.  I would have killed it” (283).  Today’s disability rights and pro-life communities would be outraged at such violence against a handicapped newborn.

But then, what else can one expect from a physician who lost his Catholic faith?

Besides that, Plarr is just another man who is missing a vitally important element in his life, his father.  Reinforcing heterosexual normativity may not have been Greene’s intent on writing the novel in 1973, but the pain these men feel is obvious and worthy of college students’ exploration, especially if they have to write a literary research paper using one of the sanctioned theories demanded by leftist professors.

Consider: the discussion of masculinist literary theory concepts begins early in the novel, in an initial contrast between Latin-American and British men (16).  Plarr wonders whether his father is alive or dead; he learns late in the work that his father was killed trying to escape his imprisonment for political activity (219). Oddly, shortly after this revelation (three pages later), the author chose to include an account of a man who did not know who his father was (222).  Equally odd is Plarr’s declarative/interrogative that “We all of us seem to live with dead fathers, don’t we?” (272).  Does any college student detect ideas for a good research paper?

Best of all, though, the novel ends with an episode demonstrating the compelling nature of love.  The child whom Clara is carrying, conceived by Plarr, will not merely be raised by Charley Fortnum, but truly loved by him.  The unborn child is evidence that “Someone he [Charley] loved would survive” (335).

Thus, a novel concerned with terrorist activity, which mentions abortions and suicides and which illustrates the class warfare of Latin American society in a turbulent historical period, ends with that most life-affirming literary device: a newborn child bringing love to a shattered world.

Easy-to-read guide to assist pro-abortion persons to choose pro-life views.

Stephanie Gray’s work “in the trenches” among college students has resulted in this easy-to-read guide to assist persons who may think they must support abortion to reconsider their views and adopt pro-life positions.

Not a scholarly, point-counterpoint debate text, Gray’s work is much person-focused.  Pro-abortion people would most benefit from reading this work since she focuses not so much on what they believe but the person behind those beliefs.  The book is filled with anecdotes of how she engaged with pro-abortion persons successfully—often people who were most hostile and aggressive at first—but who later saw in Gray a pro-lifer who helped them to resolve their own personal problems which compelled them to think that they had to support abortion.

Pro-life readers will also benefit from Gray’s emphasis that we should listen and ask questions of pro-abortion persons instead of arguing the issue logically (13).  Gray recommends a three-step approach when discussing abortion with such persons: finding common ground, using stories and analogies to convey a pro-life truth, and asking questions of the pro-abortion individual (32).

Gary’s compassion towards abortion supporters is manifested in other areas, as when she affirms that “the pro-lifer’s task of being a voice for the pre-born also involves ministering compassion, love, and grace to the born” ([69]).

Finally, readers on both sides of the abortion issue will find some of Gray’s statements simply memorable.  Her account of two young people who were conceived through in-vitro fertilization is joyous in one instance, heartbreaking in the other.  When discussing why a pro-life friend would never drive a mother to an abortion clinic, a makeover of a common expression will stick in one’s mind: “Friends don’t drive friends to abortion clinics” (123; bold in original).

Lugubrious writing, yet how Catholics overcame British bigotry in the nineteenth century can apply to the pro-life movement today.

What do events two centuries ago have to do with life today?  If you can say “religious freedom”, “bigotry”, and “anti-Catholicism”, then those phrases should be enough to help contemporary readers understand how Protestant bigotry against “Papists” kept millions of people in second-class citizen status for centuries.  More importantly, though, Fraser’s book illustrates how the peaceful protests of activists like Daniel O’Connell and Catholic and Protestant aristocrats overcame such bigotry.

The heroes of the book are the Duke of Wellington and O’Connell; the anti-Catholic bigotry of “beloved” writers like William Wordsworth and Robert Southey is simply disgusting.  The irrational anti-Catholic positions of George III and George IV testify to the inherent contradiction of the British monarchy: if a British king thought he was forced to uphold only Protestant Christianity, then he could not help those who believe in the Church which Protestantism left.  Those kings, who blocked Catholic Emancipation for forty years, also deserve our disgust for their bigotry against millions of their Catholic subjects.

However, the contemporary pro-life movement’s emphasis on peaceful protest and legislative action parallels O’Connell’s methods to provide civil rights for the millions of Catholics in Britain at the time.  The parallels are inescapable, especially when contrasted against the hostile, Antifa tactics which obstructionist Democrats endorse to keep abortion legal throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever.  That they want to have infanticide and euthanasia legalized makes pro-life efforts more vital in the new year and beyond.

Finally, I disagree with the opinions of the critics on the back cover about the quality of the writing.  In many places, passages are not as mellifluous as they could be; a clearer chronological order would have helped.  The uneven flow probably accounted for a reading which took three days instead of one.

Fields’ work is a lucid discussion of the fears mothers experience when faced with unexpected pregnancies.  Divided into nine easy-to-read chapters (can be done in a few hours), Fields offers suggestions on how to respond to an unexpected pregnancy so that both the mother and the child will have the best outcomes of often difficult—and, in some cases, insurmountable—circumstances.  All husbands and fathers should read this book of women’s experiences.  More importantly, it should be read by those men who think of their girlfriends only as objects for their sexual gratification.