Reviewed by Laura Echevarria

In her highly readable book, Kate O'Beirne, the Washington editor of National Review magazine, organizes a blistering critique around areas of our culture she believes modern feminists have inflicted grievous damage. We, of course, have only one concern--abortion--and for O'Beirne this is the area in which the greatest damage has been wrought.

(It should be noted that there are a growing number of pro-life feminists but their sisters on the other side are not only louder but also get almost all the media attention.)

In Women Who Make the World Worse and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military and Sports, O'Beirne points out in a chapter called "Abortion--- The Holy Grail" that "modern feminism's biggest enemies are the smallest humans."

Abortion is the foundation upon which all of the other feminist issues rest, according to O'Beirne. The impact of the so-called "right" to abortion can be found throughout her book in seemingly unrelated areas. But abortion has left it insidious a mark on nearly all of the modern feminists' agenda.

To modern feminists, the concept that women can be equal to men hinges on the idea that women need to have the "freedom" to be childless in order to achieve the same levels of success as men do. They believe the very fact that only women can bear children makes them inferior. Ergo, they believe, women must be able to abort at any time and for any reason.

Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, said, "Not only did [Roe v. Wade] legalize abortion but it became a symbol of our independence, because reproductive freedom is fundamental to a woman's aspirations--- to education, financial stability, and self-determination. . . .The simple ability to separate sex from childbearing gives women the power to control all other aspects of their lives."

O'Beirne points out that their 19th century foremothers "would see modern feminists as betraying women in the service of irresponsible men." She then quotes Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University.

Dr. Glendon, writes O'Beirne, "explains that early feminists fighting for women's rights saw that 'the ready availability of abortion would facilitate the sexual exploitation of women.' They 'regarded free love, abortion, and easy divorce as disastrous for women and children.' What made the feminism of the 1970s so different, according to Glendon, was a 'puzzling combination of two things that do not ordinarily go together: anger against men and promiscuity; man-hating and man-chasing."

The radicalism behind the pro-abortion agenda can be found not only in the celebration of abortion as the alleged crux of women's independence but also in the lies told about Roe v. Wade and it companion case, Doe v. Bolton.

Roe set the broad parameters but Doe filled in the crucial details. Doe defined "health" to mean, "all factors--- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age--- relevant to the well-being of the patient." This wide-open definition means essentially abortion on demand.

But, as O'Beirne notes, the feminists, in conjunction with their many friends in the media, have spent over 33 years telling the public that abortion is available under much stricter circumstances, this public relations ploy is critical because pro-abortionist feminists read the same polling data we do. When people are asked which abortions they would accept, a majority says none, to save the life of mother, or in cases of rape and incest.

"[R]ather than forthrightly defend their abortion-on-demand agenda," O'Beirne writes, "These feminists make hysterical claims about the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade. Kate Michelman, the former President of NARAL, likens the threat posed by the pro-life Bush administration 'to the situation a few years ago in Romania, when government leaders required women workers to publicly post their menstrual cycles.' Gloria Feldt maintains that without Roe v. Wade the country would . . . rocket back to the 1950s. 'Why are ["religious fundamentalists"] so eager to take us back to the stifling culture of the 1950s?' Feldt then recalls the days of racial segregation and poll taxes when women were denied credit cards and confined to 'help wanted female' jobs."

O'Beirne's research is thorough and well documented. My only disappointment was that in an entire chapter devoted to abortion, Roe v. Wade and the decision's impact in other areas of feminist argument, there is no direct mention of National Right to Life. Despite the mention of several NRLC-crafted pieces of legislation, the nation's largest pro-life group is mentioned only in endnotes.

Much of what O'Beirne covers about abortion in her book can be found in NRL News, Today's News & Views, or on NRLC's website. While there are no groundbreaking revelations, O'Beirne's book is an accessible, readable entry point for anyone trying to understand modern feminism's love affair with abortion.

Laura Echevarria is a former spokesperson and media relations director (1997-2004) for National Right to Life. Laura is a freelance writer living in Virginia with her husband and three children.