A feminist activist argues that it is time to return to the fundamental ideas that won legal abortion in the first place: Women publicly telling the full truth of their own experience, demanding repeal of all abortion restrictions, and showing how abortion and birth control are the key demands in the struggle for women’s freedom.
In Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now, Brown extrapolates from the theoretical framework of [her book] Birth Strike to make a powerful and extensively researched case for a militant approach to winning reproductive rights ... the movement for reproductive rights must fight for all women to access whatever form of birth control they wish, including abortion: an essential point for the liberation of all women ... the strategy makes perfect sense.
Brown takes the reader through a succinct, fascinating history ... Without Apology’s grim account of the century of illegal abortions...will surprise even readers well aware that women died trying to end their pregnancies ... Without Apology derives strength and clarity from its omission of gruesome details about the relentlessness of the anti-abortion movement, which often dominate public conversations about abortion even within the left. It’s invigorating to read a book about abortion politics that makes feminists the protagonists. In this sense, Brown’s book performs the proactive, rather than reactive, stance it advocates. Yet Brown also weakens her own case by glossing over the factors behind many feminists’ choice to take a defensive strategy instead. There is no getting around the tension between the short-term goals of defeating an anti-abortion ballot initiative or keeping a clinic open, and the long-term goal of shifting our culture ... Without Apology delivers a critical message.
... [a] cogent manifesto ... Not all readers will embrace Brown’s Marxist interpretations, but her call to 'move feminism toward bolder, more universal demands' is likely to strike a chord with young progressives. This laser-focused polemic makes its case effectively.
