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Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America
Marvin Olasky

Reviewed by Eileen Rebstock in In Defence of Life

Abortion is a modern issue. In defending the right to life, we are entering uncharted waters. There is no past to look to for guidance in today’s struggle. Right?

Wrong. Abortion was very common during the nineteenth century, and indeed was tolerated by the law, the press, and the general population. And it was a brave but small coalition of journalists who exposed the practice of abortion, doctors who educated the public about the facts of life, and ordinary citizens who established support for women in crisis pregnancies that shut down and criminalized the lucrative abortion industry. Sadly, this victory was overturned, and Olasky also chronicles the events that led to today’s toleration of abortion.

Much in Olasky’s history will be familiar to today’s pro-lifers. A certain Dr. W.C. Lispenard wrote in 1854 that abortion “is exclusively the affair of the mother. She alone has a right to decide whether she will continue the being of the child she began. Moral, social, religious obligations should control her, but she alone has the supreme right to decide.” (p. 110) Other promoters of abortion insisted that every child should be a wanted child. One hundred and fifty years have passed, and still the pro-abortion rhetoric is the same. Then as now, euphemisms were in full force. Abortion was innocently referred to as restoring a woman’s menstrual periods. Notorious abortionists such as Madame Restell grew prosperous and well-respected off the profits of their business.

In sketching out this history, Olasky presents many lessons that we can find in the successful nineteenth century pro-life movement. “The adage “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” states the problem backwards as far as today’s movement is concerned. The goal of today’s pro-lifers should be to repeat a nineteenth-century past in which abortion was successfully fought by moderate means under conditions that were spiritually far from ideal.” (p. 306) Education about the beginnings of life, a tireless witness to the brutality of abortion, and support for pregnant women are the building blocks of recreating that success.

This book can be borrowed from the Edmonton Prolife Office or from the University of Alberta Libraries or through The Alberta Library Online.

Or you can buy it from Amazon by following this link.

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