Customer Reviews

Before the Shooting Begins

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FACT: Not many people really care about the abortion issue anymore. FACT: Not many people ever really did. FACT: Speicial insterest and lobbying groups, not regular people, are the ones who 'take sides' and push the abortion debate. FACT: The regular person, when polled, is smack-dab in the middle of the two "sides".

So Congress just passed a bill banning partial birth abortions, hailing it as a big victory...despite the fact that less than 1 percent of abortions are late term. Why, if congress has so much else to do that affects so many more people, did they spend so much time, money, and emotion on this piddley bill? REad this book to find out.

Here is the irony. Abortion is one of the most polarized issues we've ever faced as a nation. BUT, the average person is overwhelmingly ambivalent about it. No one is completely pro-life; no one is completely pro-choice - except the lobby groups who have everything to gain from demonizing the opposition, scaring the citizenry by exaggerating problems (this is how the later-tem abortion bill got so much attention; and remember the Bork Supreme Court nominations?).

Anyway, this book is very neutral to each side and is premised on the idea that how the abortion debates have been conducted is more a symptom of a declining deliberative democracy than it is about lack of moral resources. The conclusions above are well borne out in this book and the author is rightly befuddled over how any of this actually happened.

Good book for all political science or ethics students. The abortion debate is used as a micro-cosm, pointing at larger problems prevelant in how we conduct political "debate" (read; No Spin Zone) and how the average citizen thinks (or doesn't) on the issues affecting us.

Hunter's book lives up to the publisher's blurb. If you have any interest whatsoever in the world outside your front door, read it. This is information you need.