Table of Contents
Praise forHow The Pro-Choice Movement Saved America
At a time in our national life when so many vital issues seem to be deliberately obscured by lies and half-truths, this book delivers the kind of clarity, backed by research and insight, that comes as a welcome relief.
VIVIAN GORNICK, author of Fierce Attachments
Cristina Page, at long last, unmasks the dirty little secret of Americas right wing fanatics. They dont like sex. They dont support birth control. Their nutty obsessions pose a very real threat to a centurys worth of social and economic progress. All who cherish freedom must read this original, compelling, and carefully documented work.
ELLEN CHESLER, author of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.
Finally, a history that accords the womens liberation struggle its rightful place at the center of the times in which we live. Every political reporter and pundit should read this powerful and insightful book. Itll wake them up.
LAURA FLANDERS, author of Bushwomen
The Christian Right is often pilloried, but seldom understood. Cristina Page shows us that pro-lifers arent just waging war against abortion; theyre targeting contraception and even sex itselfabusing science, and causing considerable societal damage in the process.
CHRIS MOONEY, author of The Republican War on Science
From the very first sentence of her book, its clear that Cristina Page is looking for common groundprofound understandingbetween those frightened to interrupt biology in motion and those determined to control their own destiny.
ARIEL LEVY, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs
Cristina Page has written a powerful, persuasive and well-documented account showing how the policies of the Pro-life movement result in millions of unintended pregnancies and abortionsnot to mention hundreds of thousands of deaths.
CRAIG UNGER, author of House of Bush, House of Saud:
The Secret Relationship Between the Worlds
Two Most Powerful Dynasties
In a well-researched and pointed critique of prolife excesses... her defense of the sexual revolution in upbeateven patrioticterms makes this a spirited, thought-provoking addition to the culture wars.
Publishers Weekly
A provocative salvo in the abortion wars.
Kirkus Reviews
The issues Page puts forth directly concern the women on the University campus, whether they believe that life is sacred in any form or that we have the right to decide. In fact, they concern men as well. They concern politics, freedom and an entire countrys future.
Minnesota Daily
A powerful condemnation of the pro-life movements influence and methods.
Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
A well-researched and thoughtful look at the politics behind reproductive issues and the implications for all Americans, whatever their position on abortion.
Booklist
Page does what most liberal Democrats in elected office are afraid to do; she goes through the eye of the storm and comes out the other side victorious.
Buzzflash Reviews
To my mother,
my husband
and my son
Preface to the Paperback Edition
IN THE YEAR since the first publication of this book our nation has moved dramatically closer to realizing many of my grimmest predictions. Emboldened by the resignation of pro-choice Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor and the appointment of her replacement, staunch pro-life Justice Samuel Alito, pro-life operatives have in a matter of months laid the groundwork for the toppling of abortion rights. The cornerstone of this plan was put in place in March 2006, when Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota signed into law a bill outlawing all abortions (it has no exceptions for rape, incest, or protection of a womans health and only an inadequate exception to save a womans life). Eleven other state legislatures followed, introducing similar bills. This strategy ensures the judicial pipeline will be jammed with direct challenges to Roe v. Wade. If the Supreme Court balance were to suddenly tip (were one justice away), Roe would be gone.
The inspiration for the South Dakota law was the findings of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion. The composition of the task force, appointed by the governor and other elected officials, offered in advance a sure sign of what it would produce. The majority of the task force members were pro-life and included the Executive Director of South Dakota Right to Life, a board member of the National Right to Life Committee, as well as the husband of national pro-life leader Leslee Unruh (more about her in Chapter Three). Those familiar with the tactics of the prolife establishment will not be surprised to learn that the task forces pro-life majority rejected proposals requiring that its final report include only rigorous scientific research accepted by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and other professional organizations. (Scientific truths are, as youll see in greater depth in the following pages, problematic for professional pro-lifers. In South Dakota they found procedural ways to circumvent fact.)
Most interesting, however, are the other proposals the pro-life majority discarded, namely those recommending South Dakotans have greater access to pregnancy prevention through contraception. Its worth repeating: The architects of the South Dakota total ban on abortion rejected all proposals to equip their citizens with a greater chance to avoid unintended pregnancy.
The abandoning of any scientific rigor and all common sense solutions prompted several task force members (including some pro-life members unaffiliated with the professional pro-life establishment) to walk out of its final hearing in disgust. One who left, Dr. Maria Bell, an ob-gyn and surgeon, was the co-chair of the task force and later explained: The task force members who walked out of the meeting had spent much of the meeting introducing findings and recommendations which would have, if adopted by the Legislature, resulted in a reduction of unplanned pregnancies in South Dakota, thereby reducing the number of abortions in the state. All of these recommendations were struck down by the anti-reproductive rights majority on the task force. They werent willing to do anything to reduce the need for abortion by preventing unplanned pregnancies. Nearly all of our recommendations were focused on helping women and families so that the babies born in South Dakota are healthy and born into families ready to take care of them.
What I hope you will discover in reading this book is that the pro-life movement is really no longer the anti-abortion movement, if it ever was. Its agenda has lately become much broader, and to the average American it will appear much more sinister. In recent years it has turned itself into the anti-birth control movement, the antisex movement and, indeed, the anti-modern family movementwhether it avows this or not. These transformations have been largely hidden from view, since the national focus is almost always on abortionand the pro-life movement, so adept at controlling the rhetoric and symbols of this debate, certainly prefers that. Yet the pro-life movement is almost diametrically opposed to some of the foundations of contemporary life.
