Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today: Edited by Mary Krane Derr, Rachel MacNair, and Linda Naranjo-Huebl: $24.99 (Amazon.com)--Book Review.(Book review)

Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today is a very interesting and informative look at the broad scope of pro-life/feminist writings. Divided into two sections, Part One looks at the writings and speeches of early feminists (17901960) who opposed abortion. Part Two (1960present) looks at how pro-life feminism carries on the life-affirming heritage of the first wave of feminism, which puts it in stark contrast to the feminist movement saturated in abortion advocacy that the media adore.

The book, while lengthy, is an enjoyable, productive read. Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today includes representative samples of writings from such well-known 19th-century feminists, such as Susan B. Anthony, and modern writers, such as columnist Nat Hentoff. This not only documents pro-life feminism but gives it deserved intellectual heft.

You can skip around or read the book in ordereach "chapter" is a self-contained study of a particular person and heror, occasionally, hisassociation with the feminist movement and the pro-life views of its many leaders. The rich history of early suffragists is recounted in this volume using the original writings.

While pro-life feminism embraces a broader range of issues than NRLC is involved in, the arguments it uses to oppose abortion will be familiar. The writers and leaders of the movement, even in its early years, came from a wide variety of backgrounds that include Jewish, Quaker, Catholic, doctors, nurses, post-abortive, Socialist, and ordained women.

Early feminists, of course, sought to bring women into a position of greater equality with men. While these 19th-century feminists believed that women had a right to control their own bodies, they passionately argued that the unborn, developing child was a separate being from his or her mother and that once that life had begun it was a horrible wrong to kill the child.

Many of the early pro-life feminists went on to personally help women facing crisis pregnancies. Examples included domestic help who'd been let go because of pregnancy or a pregnant woman left destitute because her husband had been killed in an accident in the factory. With the advent of the 20th century, factory work became the largest form of employment especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Many immigrant ...