Review
A Deadly Confusion
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
by Katha Pollitt
Picador, 2015
(258 pages, $16.00, paperback)
reviewed by Howard Isaac Williams
Pro is part of a new front opened by abortion advocates who assert that, instead of being considered a necessary evil, abortion should be celebrated as a benefit for society. The book, however, offers nothing to prove this. Its author is a poet, essayist, Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright scholar and longtime columnist for The Nation. That an intelligent author can produce no better case than this that abortion is a social good is a reflection of the weakness of the assertion.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Howard Isaac Williams lives in San Francisco, where he attends St. Sergius Orthodox Church. He is semi-retired from the messenger and pest control industries.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on abortion from the online archives
26.1—Jan/Feb 2013
on Abortion as a Matter of National Welfare by W. Ross Blackburn
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
30.3—May/June 2017
on the Misuse of Property Rights to Justify Slavery & Abortion by Robert Hart
more from the online archives
32.2—March/April 2019
Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II by Paul Gosselin by Louis Markos
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
