Customer Reviews

Wrath Of Angels: The American Abortion War

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

WOA is journalism as a seamless garment of teamwork. Risen and Thomas (who admirably write in one voice) lay out a chronology of anti-abortion activism that starts in non-violent picketing by a small group of post-Viet Nam war, socially-concerned Catholic pacifists, moving to criminal behavior as impressionable fundamentalists take up and dominate the cause, culminating in violence by the extreme fringe against abortion clinics and assaults and murder perpetrated on abortion providers.

As I write this at the end of 2006, the 1998 paperback edition of this book is being remaindered, and the book may go out of print. This is too bad, as the determination amongst conservative Catholics and right-wing fundamentalists to make the US an anti-abortion society by law continues unabated since WOA's publication. With the centrist rebuke of the Bush government in 2006, one wonders if the increasingly marginalized religious right will once again become desperate enough to condone (or look the other way) a resurgence of violent activism of the sort documented so well by Risen and Thomas in WOA. Readers should be aware that activist anti-abortion forces are willing to achieve their goals by pluralities, not majorities, and by packing local political precincts with single-issue fellow ideologues, not to mention the courts and attorneys general. (I'm writing from Kansas where this is NO small matter)

If there is one book to read on growth of the extreme anti-abortion movement, it should be this one. It humanizes the anti-abortion personalities (John O'Keefe, Joseph Scheidler, John Ryan, Randall Terry, Shelley Shannon, Joan Andrews) in ways that will even surprise staunch abortion rights advocates. WOA has an extensive bibliography to guide interested readers to further information, as well as a section of news photographs (it could have used MORE of these!).

The journalistic style is dynamic, forward moving and vivid, a model of reportage, if not analysis. The reader is free to draw his/her own conclusions. The book is compromised, however, by stopping just short of portraying the religious motivations of the anti-abortion protagonists to the fullest. Even so, it does better by comparison than other works on the subject that simply dismissed the religious ideology that fueled and grew with the rise in anti-abortion activism in the 1980s and early '90s.

Though I am pro-choice, the book does a great service in humanizing the anti-abortion forces and in presenting them as three-dimensional characters, not media stereotypes. As Joel Dyer's Harvest of Rage did (less well) for the militia movement, this book reminds readers that there are real people on both sides of the issue, and that progress is unlikely unless their complexity is taken into account. The journalism is thorough, the writing is clear and graceful, and the story is compelling. An excellent and insightful treatment.

Wrath of Angels is hard-hitting, objective, scary. From governmental agencies more concerned about their egos than solving clinic bombings, to the terrorist praising God in prayer and song while driving from a clinic she just torched, it is not only scary; it is sickening. Whether Catholic or fundamentalist, from the left or the right, blockades or bombings or shootings, these are people who believe they have some message from God to deny women the ability to make personal, medical decisions about their reproductive lives. Each part of the story is told in a way that gives readers the opportunity to make up their own minds and judge for themselves the appropriateness of these actions. Certainly, I knew long before reading this book what I believe. This will likely be true for most readers of this book. But seeing the wrath of these people who see themselves as God's agents documented with such detail and comprehension will, nonetheless, add new and deeper understanding of these people who call themselves "pro-life."

In Wrath of Angels, authors James Risen and Judy L. Thomas chronicle the fallout from the 1974 Supreme court decision handed down in Roe v. Wade that generated a nationwide anti-abortion movement, which, they correctly profess, is "America's most volatile, most divisive and most irreconcilable debate since slavery." Wrath of Angels published in 1998, details why the battle to end abortion failed to achieve its goal but still managed to become one of the most important and least understood social protest movements in American history. The authors begin their point of inquiry by discussing the rise of the anti-abortion movement in the United States that began prior to Roe. The Roe decision, they argue, effectively caught off guard local anti-abortion in states where it was legal. For example, in Massachusetts abortion opponents, prepared to lobby for change at the state house, suddenly had to switch their focus to Washington. Overnight, Roe elevated the abortion debate in the United States as a national abortion rights policy was born. Despite the movement's newfound national prominence, it became increasingly fragmented, as the chances of overturning Roe through polite, mainstream political lobbying seemed to fade. Risen and Thomas, both reporters for the Los Angeles Times and the Kansas City Star respectively, provide a detailed journalistic account of the rise of the anti-abortion movement, its critical role in the creation of the religious right, and the movements subsequent dizzying descent into violence. The authors draw on more than 200 interviews with activists, families and experts on both sides of the growing battle. Through investigative journalism techniques, Wrath of Angels, in plain and punchy language, details the 25-year evolution of this social revolution. Risen and Thomas shed some comparative light on the strengths and the weaknesses of the abortion movement. For example, the road to ending abortion would eventually have two sides; one based on a non-violent approach, the other, violent. Roy O'Keefe, Harvard graduate, and Vietnam veteran drifter, would eventually become the father of the rescue. Michael Bray, on the other hand, became the father of violence. The book details the lives of these two intensely religious bible-reading baby boomers that prayed to god and were drawn to the same cause and their respective entrée into the abortion wars. Eventually, the violent side would overshadow O'Keefe's pacifist approach. A group of extremists, working to save women from abortion clinics and doctors legitimized their cause with the title "Operation Rescue." But "Operation Rescue" leaders, like Terry Randall, would go too far in their mission to save lives. By 1993, the movement's level of violence markedly increased when one member, Michael Griffith, stood outside a Florida clinic and shot and killed David Gunn, a doctor that performed abortions regularly. The shots by Gunn's slayer were heard around the world and would forever change the shape and direction of the anti-abortion movement, prompting the first open debate among activists over whether the use of violence could be justified. Perhaps the works most significant contribution to the field of religion and politics is that it details the rise of the moral majority. The abortion issue provided the cohesion necessary for a new religion based social protest movement came alive in American society. Although the anti-abortion movement began in the anti-war protests of Catholic peace activists, it would eventually lead to the first conservative civil disobedience movement lead by Protestant fundamentalists in modern American history. This movement mobilized Protestant fundamentalists for political action for the first time in more than fifty years. But the work has its shortcomings. Most significantly, there is too much detail. The reader gets lost in the lives of the activists, rather than getting lost in an analysis of the cause. Although the authors demonstrate convincingly that the abortion debate led to the political and even cultural mobilization of Evangelical American, this connection, instead of every single detail of the lives of the activists, needs to be more drawn out. The reader needs a more sufficient analysis, or even better, for the reader to make a sufficient analysis between the anti-abortion movement and the rise of the religious right. In short, some more theoretical posturing about the abortion debate and its role in producing political ideologies would strengthen this work significantly. For example, Wrath of Angels needs to make a theoretical connection between the question and answer it poses: that the way in way each generation of Americans has come to terms with the abortion issue offers "a prism showing the shifting mores and political attitudes of the nation." Nonetheless, Risen and Thomas effectively demonstrate that the legacy of the generation long battle over abortion is that it forever changed the way Americans view social protests movements. Thus, as Operation Rescue went from violence to relative obscurity with a concurrent decline in anti-abortion activism, the Religious right remained one of the most potent forces on the American political landscape.

Dr. Veronica D. DiConti American University

Like many children of the 1970's and 1980's I grew up seeing clinic protests on the nightly news---and was initially bewildered by the actions.

The desire to stop legal abortion by killing medical personnel and destroying clinic property seemed to contradict itself even to a seventh grader who was only begining to become involved with feminist politics. For instance, Jehovah's Witnesses do not personally believe in undergoing blood/organ transfusions, but they are respectful enough to avoid terrorizing the local medical facilities which do offer these services.

In this gripping work, Risen traces the evolution of the American anti-choice movement. Disatisfaction with the pace of action from early days naturally gave rise to a violent 'fringe' who were actually known to the 'respectable' movement leaders---if not publically supported by these same figures. The early theory held the resulting good/bad cop routine would enable the mainstream anti-abortion movement leaders to ban the procedure faster than if they were the only ones working in the movmenet.

Because there are many books analyzing these actions from a second-person perspective and draw exclusively on the testimony of pro-choice activists and/or public officials, it is important that he included interviews with the perpetrators themselves. Personally pro-choice, he is nevertheless critical of intra-movement organizing tactics which inadvertently allowed anti-abortion protestors to gain critical ground in Wichita and elsewhere. Good organizing also involves the ability of a person and their allies to know when and how to self-scrutinize actions for future improvement plans.

Still disagreeing with individuals who would restrict reproductive rights for others and especially the violent protestors, I now understand the extent of their political network and enduring impact on American politics. The 'moderates' are quiet only because they realize a growing segment of the American public has also made connections between their rhetoric and 'extremist' actions.

The deepest feeling I come away with is a "You were there" sort of idea. Details are vivid - my favorite is the depiction of the first Right to Life march in D.C., when police went to arrest some of the protestors, who happened to be Pentecostals who suddenly felt the Spirit, began speaking in tongues and rolling on the ground. The police retreated, briefly.

Of course, given such vivid "you were there" detail, one has to question how much of this account is mere perspective, how much is fact. As such, it is a useful, though not central, work in studying the pro-life movement, and certainly not a theological or sociological treatise. The book accomplishes what it intends to do, which is to describe the development of the pro-life movement in very human terms. For that it earns 4 stars.

These reporters who have covered the abortion wars offer a richly detailed account of the evolution of both the militant direct action organization "Operation Rescue" and the growth of antiabortion violence including bombings, arsons and murder. Antiabortion activists don't like this book it because it accurately portrays the growing crimininality of elements of the movement, and the complicity of others. Wrath of Angels is an important contribution to the literature in this field and no serious study of the politics of abortion can be considered serious without addressing the information it contains.

Even the best of books can't cover eerything, and Wrath of Angels is no exception.

One hole is the profound influence of the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement on the growth of the violent wing of the movement -- which Risen and Thomas give only a passing mention. Another is the absence of any mention at all of the overlap between far right militias and the violent wing of the antiabortion movement. These matters had received considerable discussion in informed circles, as well as the mainstream press well before the publication of Wrath of Angels. Fortunately, these matters are well covered by Frederick Clarkson in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

Even with these flaws, Wrath of Angels is both an important work and an engaging read.

This book is a good, general view of the anti-abortion movement in the US in the last couple of decades, and its spiral into violence. However, I don't think we've heard the last of the violent fringe for a second.

I'm in this book and know many of the pro-life activists described. If the accuracy of the episode involving me is any judge, the book is more fiction than fact.

Painting this episode as a cloak and dagger conspiracy illustrates the bias of these authors, which is amply demonstrated throughout the book, as well as in the title itself.

My advice to potential buyers? Don't waste your time or money.

Under the assumed intention to write an authoritative piece on Operation Rescue and America's battle with abortion, Risen and Thomas have proven they have just as much skill in writing as the next abortion industry advocate. Thomas makes much of her role in reporting on at least one Operation Rescue campaign to stop abortions from being committed in Wichita Kansas. She was there. But then, so was I. Thomas is best known for having written a premiere puff-piece on Wichita's most infamous abortionist,George Tiller, a man who specializes in late abortions. In her hometown paper at that time, Judy fondly referred to the man as "an advocate for women." He's sensitive to the female gender, unless they are unborn and helpless to protect themselves. Tiller, she noted, had made wise investments. Among them is his in-house crematorium, a must-have item if you are going to kill babies and avoid public outcry. Get rid of the evidence. Risen and Thomas take olympic leaps to define some in the pro-life movement as violent. That they do so based on absolutely no fact will matter little to most readers I suppose. But I was there. I am familiar with caring men and women who this duo describe as "militant," "extreme," "angry," even "violent." As abortion supporters, Risen and Thomas not only view the world with blinders on, they need to increase their vocabulary beyond the left's four favorite adjectives suggested for use when talking about any idealogical opponent. Don't read "Wrath of Angels" if your goal is to understand history with a degree of accuracy. You won't find it here. But if you are interested in how it is that the media and the politically correct use language to marginalize or demonize a group of wonderful people, this is a must read book.