Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement [Paperback]

Teresa R. Wagner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2003

Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement is an unprecedented collection of thoughtful and sometimes painfully honest essays, evaluating the pro-life cause thirty years after Roe v. Wade. Contributing writers are the movement's most respected leaders, including Dr. James Dobson, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Nat Hentoff, Dr. Mildred Jefferson, Congressman Chris Smith, Phyllis Schlafly, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Paul Weyrich, and Jean Garton, among others. They are statesmen, scholars, doctors, lawyers, judges, activists and mothers. They are Evangelical Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Jewish, and Catholic. They are men and women, young and old, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican – and third party. Many are veterans, some are new; but all have labored in the effort, and care about its future.

The book is intended for the next generation of pro-life leaders, who will learn from its pages of the movement's history and current predicament. The collection's many and varied views, about the future as well as the past, invite readers to go back to the drawing board and contemplate: What now?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Teresa R. Wagner is a former lobbyist with the National Right to Life Committee, and a former Legislative Analyst for the Family Research Council.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press; 1 edition (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587310600
• ISBN-13: 978-1587310607
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,350,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Impress a story and you impress a lesson..., June 18, 2003

By 

Edmund Brophy (Hallandale, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement (Paperback)

I liked this book because many of the pro-life movers and shakers who wrote this book were willing to admit that we need fresh thinking and new strategies in order to get to the next level.

As Barbara R.Nicolosi, the Hollywood screenwriter describes it in her chapter called: "The Problem With Selling Half The Story" she says, "We need to tell stories, including stories about the cost of abortion to American women and their families."
If your just an average person interested in the pro-life movement you may want to wait until "the new generation of pro-lifers" comes out with an inspirational movie or book geared more towards personal stories and mainstream America, which is "the other half of the story" that conservative scholars don't write about much.
This book is not exactly what you would call, "Chicken Soup for the Pro-Life Soul". In view of the tremendous success that programs like Alcoholics Anonymous have had with this method of training and dissemination through personal testimony, K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) should be an obvious addition to the future of the pro-life movement. Emotion is stroger than logic. Facts tell-stories sell.
When we begin implementing more of what the greatest salespeople have always done-tell stories of everyday people, then we'll see and feel a level of success never before imagined. As the late great Og Mandino once said,
"Even the word of God has to be sold".
In all fairness though, if you are currently part of the pro-life movement as I am, then you may find much of this book rich in the history of legal arguements, political & religious foes and heroes, and good Washington lobby talk which quite possibly may still be of some good interest to you.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening!, May 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement (Paperback)

This is an excellent collection of essays that everyone should read, but it is most important for those in the pro-life movement. Most illuminating are the contributions of columnist Joe Sobran, Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party, and Terry Jeffrey of Human Events, all of whom document the capitulation of the Republican Party to pro-abortion precepts, thus ensuring the failure of the pro-life movement.

Judith Reisman also contributes an important essay on the fraud of "sexologist" Alfred Kinsey, a pervert and pedophile, whose "research" has been used to promote abortion, homosexuality, pedophilia, and a culture of moral decadence.

With both major parties - Republicans and Democrats - now supporting abortion and homosexuality in principle, not to mention related issues like massive legal and illegal immigration to replenish the resulting decline in population, no American with common sense or Judeo-Christian belief can support our fraudulent "two-party" system any longer. Perhaps Phillips' Constitution Party is the solution.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About time, March 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement (Paperback)

Discrete essays thematically linked, a great read for anyone interested in the abortion issue on any level. Its greatest strength is its sheer eccentricity: basically this is a book that covers every angle you haven't heard a million times before.

Wagner's central thesis -- the only thing that holds this potpourri together -- is that, whatever the prolife movement is doing, it ain't working.

A mixed bag of essays to be sure, touching topics from culture to politics to jurisprudence and everything in between. Some big names among the authors and some lesser known ones (Barbara Nicolosi?). But where else would you find Village Voice jazz critic and libertarian Nat Hentoff in the same forum as Focus On The Family fundamentalists? An eccentric collection, but that's the part of its charm -- discussions all around ProLife and the abortion issue from every angle except ones you've read before.

Highly recommended!