Absolute Convictions - a book review

Only in America does the controversy over abortions rage so openly and bitterly, never seeming to be settled or pushed off the front page for long. Long ignored by everyone except medical practitioners (doctors and midwives) and those who needed their services, it was thrust into the national public eye by the Roe v Wade decision January 22, 1983 when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not prohibit abortions in the first trimester and also allowed for certain abortions in the second and third trimester. But before that time, the issue had come to a head in several states including New York.

Absolute Convictions, My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America by Eyal Press tells the story of Eyal's father Dr. Shalom Press at the center of this controversy in Buffalo during the turbulent 70's, 80's and 90's. The book describes Dr. Press as anything but a fighter for a cause. He is more like the worker who shows up every day, day after day, because it is the thing to do. And his patients need him. He did not go into medicine to perform abortions but to deliver babies. Abortions simply came with the territory because some women would have other wise chosen unsafe, illegal abortions or suicide to terminate their pregnancies.

The book explores the wide gulf that exists between pro-choice and pro-life groups and the small but significant beliefs they share: women should be treated with respect and the fewer abortions, the better. The book also explores the tactics of right-to-life groups and how those tactics sometimes escalate the actions of a fringe element to commit murder to "prevent murder". For being so intimately tied to one side, as his father could easily have been one of the few doctors who have been killed for performing aborions, Eyal Press does a marvelous job in presenting both sides.

I found the book an outstanding example of telling the history of abortion in America in the late 20th century. And it makes a good case for why the issue won't soon fade into the past.