This edition of National Right to Life News includes reviews of three new books. Time did not allow for me to personally read two others--pro-abortion books authored by Kate Michelman and Cristina Page. Instead I will borrow from a positively brilliant composite review written by Molly Ziegler that appeared in the New York Sun.

Ziegler reviewed Michelman's With Liberty and Justice for All: A Life Spent Protecting the Right to Choose and Page's How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex. Michelman is the former president of NARAL. Page is vice president of NARAL of New York's Institute for Reproductive Health Access.

Ziegler begins with the keen observation that the number of House Democrats has dropped by almost a third since 1980, concomitant with the near evisceration of pro-life Democrats. Politically speaking, that qualifies as a bloodbath, which, come to think of it, is an apt metaphor.

Ziegler pointedly asks the two-part question pro-abortionists avoid like the plague. If there really is the "pro-choice majority" they keep harping about, why do they avoid the legislative arena, fighting "most of their political battles in the courts" instead? Moreover, "how have pro-lifers racked up so many political wins?"

She writes, "The pro-choice movement ought to be reflecting on this state of affairs." Instead, Ziegler observes, "two new books from activists with the National Abortion Rights Action League highlight how tone-deaf the movement has become."

Ziegler neatly captures in just 23 words why pro-abortionists are floundering. She writes, "They dismiss the views of religious Americans, fail to understand the complexity of the abortion issue, and resort to histrionic declarations of doom."

In other words the Michelmans and the Pages see the abortion debate in Manichean terms--the forces of light and freedom versus forces of darkness and repression. I gather Michelman is simply tedious. For her part, in her wild and wooly speculations, Page represents a certain strain of tiresome, long-past-its-prime pro-abortion demagoguery.

To Page, the real reason you and I object to ripping the heads off of unborn babies is not because we find this a stomach-turning abridgement of basic human rights and a betrayal of our nation's best impulses, but rather because we are afraid of sex. This simple-minded putdown represents the ultimate one-explanation-fits-all strategy, which, for Page, also has the wonderful effect of eliminating the need to take ANYTHING we say seriously.

I can't say that I recommend reading either book. But we can be grateful for Molly Ziegler's keen insights.