In the United States, much of the discussion of abortion frames an embryo as a person and a woman as a place for a person to grow, pushing women out of the debate. In Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Katha Pollitt shifts the focus of the discussion away from embryos and back to women.
Pollitt makes clear she is not engaging in a debate about whether abortion should be legal. Instead, she operates from the premise that abortion is--and has been for thousands of years--a common part of a woman's reproductive health. She argues that the abortion debate is a vehicle to control women, largely because many people in this society do not value women. In a country that so fiercely rallies to cries of freedom, choice and government non-interference, many people work to undermine this when it applies to women.
Exploring the beliefs people who identify as "pro-life" have about abortion, which she sees as illogical and frequently contradictory, Pollitt argues that such groups use tactics of fear and misinformation, often stooping to lie outright to women about the procedure, such as claiming that women who have abortions will die of breast cancer. For readers who have been uncertain of their position, this book may help them see through the diatribes surrounding the subject that have obscured the real issues and realize that they support access to abortion. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company