Our Choices

Sixteen women tell their highly individual stories about having abortions in America. The range of experience is wide--from an illegal abortion in a hotel room to a more recent one in a contemporary clinic--though Hoshiko fails to explain how these stories were selected or how representative they are of women's experience with abortion. Still, this is an opportune attempt to add more--and relevant--voices to a debate that promises to continue for some time. One woman tells of the illegal abortion performed by her doctor husband with meat skewers; in another a young woman compares the clinic she visited to a factory production line. There are some common elements across the individual accounts. Each narrator affirms the importance of legal abortion, for example, even those women who had been fervently anti-abortion before their own unwanted pregnancies. A short foreword by Norma McCorvey, alias Jane Roe, provides a historical context, and an appendix of pro-choice organizations leaves no question which side of the issue Hoshiko (a research associate for the Association for Women's AIDS Research and Education) lands on. Her introduction is a reasoned look at the available alternatives to abortion and their respective failings. (Mar.)