While there is a myriad of resources available for understanding the pro-life movement and history, some stand out. Every pro-lifer should consider reading some of these books. Sound, intellectual, apologetically-based, rooted in truth and science, the pro-lifer who understands the concepts contained in these works will be able to better defend the reality of life in the womb to the most cynical and difficult of audiences. Each would make a great pro-life gift this holiday season.
The following books are only some of the excellent resources available. Note: For convenience and publication information, each work is linked to its Amazon listing.
Aborting America – Bernard Nathanson
Nathanson was one of the most prolific abortionists of his time, working hard to make abortion a legal right in the nation. This is Nathanson’s first book, offering profound insights into the abortion industry’s greed and obsessions with taking preborn human life. (More on this work here).
Hand of God – Bernard Nathanson
Nathanson’s autobiography details the methodical ways in which he worked with the abortion industry to advance the agenda of death. He also offers a frightening prophetic look at the current fetal body parts sales scandal and gives insight that explains much of what we’re seeing today. Before his death, he had both a religious and pro-life conversion and dedicated the rest of his life to repealing abortion laws.
Subverted – Sue Ellen Browder
Browder, a trained investigative journalist, “unwittingly betrayed her true calling and became a propagandist for sexual liberation.” In doing so, she promoted the cultural values (or lack thereof) that permeate the abortion, free sex, and contraception industries as she wrote numerous articles for Cosmopolitan magazine. This work reveals her journey to the realization that she was not only influencing abortion culture but also being influenced by those more sagacious than she was. Browder details her freedom from this bondage and corrects the myths she had once promoted.
Pro Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments – Randy Alcorn
Alcorn is one of the foremost pro-life voices in the nation. The pastor and pro-lifer actually worked for minimum wage instead of the salary he was worth after a judgment against him for peacefully protesting outside an abortion clinic penalized a portion of any income he made above minimum wage. In this book, Alcorn offers a pro-life apologetic which answers virtually any question a pro-lifer may have.
Beyond the Abortion Wars – Charles Camosy
Camosy, an ethicist and theologian from Fordham University, breaks down the binary argument of pro-life vs. pro-choice, and “shows that placing oneself on either side of the typical polarizations — pro-life vs. pro-choice, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican — only serves to further confuse the debate and limits our ability to have fruitful dialogue.” Camosy argues that most Americans are actually more in agreement on abortion than our polarized culture would have us believe. After de-polarizing the debate, he lays out what he calls a Mother and Prenatal Child Protection Act as a proposal to solve the issue of abortion in our culture.
Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History – Joseph Dellapenna
Dellapenna tackles the myths that guided the pro-abortion cause, including those argued by Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun when he wrote the majority decision in Roe v. Wade. Instead of the myths of abortion perpetuated by two scholars, Dellapenna examines the actual history of abortion in both English and American culture, including:
Anglo-American law always treated abortion as a serious crime, generally including early in pregnancy. Prosecutions and even executions go back 800 years in England, establishing law that carried over to colonial America. The reasons offered for these prosecutions and penalties consistently focused on protecting the life of the unborn child. This unbroken tradition refutes the claims that unborn children have not been treated as persons in our law or as persons under the Constitution of the United States.
Innocent Blood– John Ensor
Ensor is the president of Passion Life and an evangelical pastor who has been deeply committed to pregnancy resource centers. Ensor writes and teaches on bioethics, as well, and Innocent Blood is an evangelical, pro-life apologetic on the biblical mandate of God to not shed the blood of the innocent. Ensor explores bloodguilt and the implications for humanity. This is a must-read for any Christian who is committed to the pro-life cause and wants to grasp an understating of the biblical concept of bloodguilt, from Genesis to Revelation. Some of the questions Ensor answers include:
- What does the Bible mean when it says that “life is in the blood”?
- What does the Bible say about blood-guilt?
- How is it that we are all stained by it and accountable for it even though few of us have taken a human life?
- What remedy does God provide for the guilt of shedding innocent blood?
- What are we to do when confronted with the shedding of innocent blood, and where does our courage to take action come from?
- What is the link between protecting the innocent and proclaiming good news to the guilty?
Lime 5 – Mark Crutcher
Crutcher, who leads Life Dynamics, was exposing the fetal parts industry 15 years before The Center for Medical Progress. While his exposé didn’t have the viral benefit of YouTube and social media, Crutcher’s revelations are of gargantuan proportions. This book exposes much of the abortion industry in raw and stunning ways. Some of the topics covered:
- It fully documents that women are being sexually assaulted, mutilated, and killed inside perfectly legal abortion clinics. It also shows how pro-choice groups have used raw political power to fight off regulation of the abortion clinic business.
- One chapter exposes a massive cover-up of abortion clinic disasters being carried out by an agency of the U.S. government. Other subjects include: the medical evidence of a connection between abortion and breast cancer; how the abortion clinic business is collapsing because of the toll that abortions take on abortionists and abortion clinic workers; the barriers faced by women injured by abortion who seek compensation in the courts and suggestions for solving these problems.
Grand Illusions – George Grant
Grant’s work offers a comprehensive look “on Planned Parenthood’s role in the controversial matters of abortion and sex education”. Packed with well-researched and documented history, legal and political background, and data, this book has current applications with the almost-weekly news of Planned Parenthood’s involvement with middle and high school sex education programs.
Third Time Around– George Grant
Another work by Grant, Third Time Around explores a surprising abortion history. Most of us see abortion as “Pre Roe v. Wade and Post-Roe v. Wade,” but Grant takes the reader back to a “guild of abortionists” in Caesarea doing, in essence, medical abortions, many hundreds of years ago. He enlightens readers on unknown facts, such as how the Medieval period was actually more enlightened than the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, as Medieval people ran what were, essentially, pregnancy resource centers. Grant shows us that the battles we’ve been fighting since Roe v. Wade go back centuries, showing that there is really nothing new under the sun, and lighting the fire under us to finish this battle. This book is worth the read for the inspiring history of the pro-life movement as well.
Abortion and the Pro-life Movement an Inside View – Dr. and Mrs. John C. Willke
This out of print book explores the history of the pro-life movement in the United States. This work “offers their front-line perspective through the presidency of National and International Right to Life. […it] begins with the early years before legalized abortion, and follows the explosive growth of what would become the pro-life movement.”
Defenders of the Unborn – Daniel K Williams
Williams’ 2016 work published by the prominent Oxford University Press “reveals the hidden history of the pro-life movement in America, showing that a cause that many see as reactionary and anti-feminist began as a liberal crusade for human right” where these pro-lifers “saw themselves as civil rights crusaders, defending the inalienable right to life of a defenseless minority: the unborn fetus.” The human rights aspect of this endeavor, says Williams, is why there was so much traction attached to the pro-life movement, even prior to the passage of Roe v. Wade.
