While national prochoice organizations have focused on defending women's reproductive rights on legal grounds, they have largely sidestepped a major problem at the grassroots: terrorist attacks on abortion providers. But what use is the "right" to an abortion if there aren't enough clinics or doctors willing to endure threats and violence to perform them? ask abortion provider Baird-Windle and social worker Bader (who has written for PW). Their shocking, month-by-month chronicle covers acts of sabotage, bombing and murder over more than two decades. According to the authors, the "antis" (as the prochoice movement calls them) are usually white males of a paramilitary bent, informally ordained by fundamentalist Christian sects, led by skillful manipulators like Randall Terry and fueled by what Terry calls "righteous testosterone." To make matters worse, law enforcers are often unwilling to uphold the law when it comes to abortion, leaving clinic providers to defend themselves. Whether RU-486 can change the terms of battle is, unfortunately, too recent a question for consideration here. While the entries in this volume are startlingly repetitious, and the authors have made no attempt at elegant prose, they offer a piercing wake-up call and a useful reference work for any women's rights activist or civil libertarian. (May)
Forecast:The recent election of an antiabortion president and the appointment of a U.S. attorney general whose antiabortion views are well-known have renewed anxiety about women's access to legal abortion that may spark some sales. The probable trial of antiabortion activist James Kopp for the 1998 murder of abortion doctor Barnett Slepian may also cast a spotlight on the book, though it's more likely to be talked about than bought.
