Real Victims by Helen Hull Hitchcock

Real Victims

Real Choices
by Frederica Mathewes-Green
Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1994.
(256 pages: $8.99)

reviewed by Helen Hull Hitchcock

When a crazed failed hairdresser opened fire in two Boston-area abortion clinics a few days after Christmas, killing two receptionists (one an alumna of Catholic Boston College) and wounding several others, a veritable Kristallnacht of verbal violence seemed to shatter the prolife movement. Predictably, prochoice activists accused prolife rhetoric of inciting the murderous rampages of John Salvi and Paul Hill, another loner, recently sentenced to death for killing an abortionist. Even the amazing election sweep that returned every prolife congressman to office and gave Republicans control of both houses for the first time in forty years—a clear repudiation of the militantly prochoice Clinton administration—could not offset the effect of such lunacy. Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law instantly called for a moratorium on peaceful prolife demonstrations, for “mutual respect” and prayer (then canceled a prolife Mass)—and was supported by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights and Catholics for a Free Choice. The noise of confusion, dissension, and disarray within the prolife movement will probably ring in our ears for some time. But this makes it even more important that the established prolife groups and newer promising efforts be vigorously supported. One such effort is the National Women’s Coalition for Life (NWCL), an association of more than a dozen independent prolife women’s organizations with a common commitment to defend life.

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