AMONG THOSE OF us who wish to protect access to abortion, it's easy to feel that "right to life" language is a cover for an attack on feminism. It's a feeling supported by a common story about history: The anti-abortion movement began after Roe v. Wade, because conservative evangelicals were threatened by women's newfound power over their bodies. What else could explain the movement's swift rise in the decade following the Supreme Court's decision, if not a widespread reaction against equal rights? But to tell the story this way, the historian Daniel K. Williams argues, is to ignore the long history of the movement to limit abortion, and to discount the motives expressed for nearly half a century by those in that movement. In "Defenders of the Unborn," a deeply researched, evenhanded, accessible and surprising history of anti-abortion activism before Roe v. Wade, Williams gives us activists' beliefs in their own words. He shares language from personal letters, diocesan newsletters, meeting transcripts, and Catholic and Protestant periodicals. And he tracks opinion polls across the 20th century to lend quantitative support to this book's stunning central claim: For much of its history, the fight to restrict abortion was a progressive cause. From the perspective of our historical moment, it's hard to imagine a country where the most prominent voices against abortion were Catholic physicians, and evangelical Protestants were either in favor of lifting restrictions on abortion, or didn't really care. A country where Democrats and the Black Panthers opposed abortion, and Ronald Reagan, like most conservatives, supported it. Where more men than women supported legalizing abortion, and Hugh Hefner was one of those men, leading one activist to call legalized abortion the "final victory of the Playboy philosophy." Where opposition to abortion found common cause with opposition to the exploitation of women, to the abandonment of the poor, to big business and to the Vietnam War. While the language of genocide seems disingenuous to progressives now, Williams's characters remind us that in the years leading up to Roe v. Wade, the Nuremberg trials were fresh in the minds of Americans, as was the forced sterilization of poor women and women of color. Many liberals were understandably suspicious of any policy or law that seemed to promote population control funded by a government they suspected of systemic racism. As the Louisiana Right to Life Association put it in 1972: "Abortion is advocated as a way of reducing the number of illegitimate children and reducing the welfare rolls. Who do you think abortionists have in mind?" During the 1960s, the group that polled highest in the objection to abortion was African-Americans. THIS PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT was winning before Roe v. Wade, Williams persuasively argues, because it shared language and values with the decade's social justice causes. Even if you don't buy that language now, it's hard to read this history without believing that its adherents genuinely meant it. Legal in some form in 16 states, abortion had become much more visible in the late 1960s. An ecumenical, liberal coalition of anti-abortion allies began to share fetal photographs, abortion videos and the tales of horrified nurses with legislators, and even some who had supported liberalization changed their minds. In 1971, in every single one of 25 legislative battles, attempts to broaden abortion's legality were thwarted by activists fighting for "life." In the years leading up to Roe v. Wade, there were some anti-feminist impulses in the rhetoric of those activists, but this is not Williams's focus. And when his history reaches its familiar conclusion - when both parties were split on abortion, religious conservatives like Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell pressured Republican leaders to abhor abortion, and liberal Democrats who already abhorred abortion had to switch parties - Williams deals only swiftly with the gender issues so important to many activists on both sides of the issue now. As a result, some readers will find his history selective. He leaves it largely up to us to decide what to make of the relation between the evangelical turn toward family values, and the language of justice and genocide that continues to motivate some to walk into clinics with guns and bombs. While I was reading, another one did, and the Senate voted in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood. But Williams's book gave me a bit of hope. If the conversation was that different before, perhaps the terms of this deadlocked debate could change again. Given our shared history of fighting for justice for the less powerful, we might even find some common ground. KRISTIN DOMBEK'S essays can be found in The Paris Review, Harper's, and n+1, where she writes a column called The Help Desk. Her book "The Selfishness of Others" will be published in August.

Historian Williams (Univ. of West Georgia), author of God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (CH, May'11, 48-5382), offers a history of the movement for and against abortion, even though the issue in the past was often cloaked in euphemisms--civil rights, natural rights, or health issues for women; however, it has been more recently categorized as pro-life or pro-choice. As one might assume, religion played a major role in the issue; the Catholic Church appears to have acted most aggressively to attempt to deny abortions for women over time, but it was joined by Protestants of various denominations and, of course, various stripes of politicians. Men dominated the debate, but devout women--Eunice Shriver, for example--played major roles in moving abortion to become a major, religious, political, and ethical concern. This narrative presents a telephone book of names for and against abortion but omits a prominent Texan, Ann Richards, the late and former governor, who was outspoken as a pro-lifer and whose daughter, Cecile Richards, is currently president of Planned Parenthood. A helpful companion is Rickie Solinger's Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (CH, Feb'14, 51-3527). Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Paul D. Travis, Texas Woman's University

History professor Williams (God's Own Party) provides readers with a deeper understanding of the continuing debate about abortion in America in this thoughtful examination of the early pro-life movement, focusing on the period between 1937 and 1972. The sensitive nature of his subject matter is manifest from the outset, in a preface explaining that he feels that pro-life (as opposed to antiabortion) is the appropriate term for him to use as a historian because it is how activists in the movement described themselves. There's a lot here that will surprise even those who stay current with the battle over reproductive rights. Williams documents how the pro-life movement began with a strong base of "Catholic Democrats who were committed to New Deal liberalism," and who viewed protecting the unborn as consistent with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. And it's likely to be news to many that both Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy originally had very different positions on abortion than they are currently known to have had. Williams presents an accessible look at how the pro-life movement shifted strategies and affiliations with changing times and political currents, even if not all readers will agree with his conclusion that its main cause was "at its heart, a human rights campaign for the unborn." (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.