Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America

I know Eyal Press. I know his father. I was there. All of the analyses from people who think this thing about abortion, that thing about feminism, something else about the religious right - none of that comes down to earth half so well as Eyal's book does for those of us who lived it. And who live it still. Absolute Convictions tells the human story of the Press family's experience with the sheer hell that became Buffalo. No one realized in the early days that Buffalo was 'Ground Zero' in this battle. Who think Buffalo is central to anything? But it was the third hardest-hit city in America because it was Randall Terry's home turf by proxy - he had many a good friend in that town, and he and they made as much political hay as they could out of it. The venom and divisions they fostered ultimately erupted in a violence of such magnitude the city and the friends of Bart Slepian are still reeling 8 years later. Only Eyal could find and ask those on the periphery of this virulence whether they have culpability in the butchering of a man who wasn't evil - just different from them in terms of where he placed his value for life. No one has asked the anti-abortion zealots that before, and the very question may have altered some of the future choices and actions these people make. Abortion opponents are ultimately low-sacrifice people: they think they are brave for giving up a few hours on Saturday morning or shivering in the cold, but they have remained merely smug finger-pointers. They are without reflection on their own morality, their own culpability, their own need to examine values and conscience. Eyal made at least one face up to the consequences of her actions. Perhaps more will follow. Eyal makes it clear: Doctors who respect women's health and their right to choose the course of their lives are pro-life, too. They value adult, sentient human beings over what for them are still only potential humans. And on the turn of this difference, real people are dying. Absolute Convictions lets us see inside the fanatacism, and it becomes frighteningly clear: no matter what happens to Roe, either the nation or the states with strong pro-choice positions will erupt once again. Absolute convictions don't just go away.

Only in America does the controversy over abortions rage so openly and bitterly, never seeming to be settled or pushed off the front page for long. Long ignored by everyone except medical practitioners (doctors and midwives) and those who needed their services, it was thrust into the national public eye by the Roe v Wade decision January 22, 1983 when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not prohibit abortions in the first trimester and also allowed for certain abortions in the second and third trimester. But before that time, the issue had come to a head in several states including New York. "Absolute Convictions, My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America" by Eyal Press tells the story of Eyal's father Dr. Shalom Press at the center of this controversy in Buffalo during the turbulent 70's, 80's and 90's. The book describes Dr. Press as anything but a fighter for a cause. He is more like the worker who shows up every day, day after day, because it is the thing to do. And his patients need him. He did not go into medicine to perform abortions but to deliver babies. Abortions simply came with the territory because some women would have other wise chosen unsafe, illegal abortions or suicide to terminate their pregnancies. The book explores the wide gulf that exists between pro-choice and pro-life groups and the small but significant beliefs they share: women should be treated with respect and the fewer abortions, the better. The book also explores the tactics of right-to-life groups and how those tactics sometimes escalate the actions of a fringe element to commit murder to "prevent murder". For being so intimately tied to one side, as his father could easily have been one of the few doctors who have been killed for performing aborions, Eyal Press does a marvelous job in presenting both sides. I found the book an outstanding example of telling the history of abortion in America in the late 20th century. And it makes a good case for why the issue won't soon fade into the past.

Eyal Press is a gifted writer, free lance. This is his first book. In less than 300 pages he tells of his home town Buffalo, New York where with his father he once routed for the Buffalo Bills. He tells of the city which like so many in the 'rust belt" came on hard times. As a child he came from Israel with his parents. His mother surived the death camps of Hitler. HIs father,educated in medicine served the military. Doctor Press moved to Buffalo and set up practice in OB/BYN along with a new colleague, Dr Barnette Slepian would later die in his home, shot by a Right to Life zealot Jams Kopp. For those who insist that the abortion of a fetus is no less murder than this murder of a physician, husband and father--this book may be rejected. But I found it very fair, with compassion for all of us who care about our country and this awful division on such a personal matter.

A male reviewer writes: "But as for the rest of the circumstances (which are largely the result of 'convenience,') I'd like to see it stopped." ... "So I'm a 'Christo-Fascist' for thinking that people shouldn't have abortions because their baby is the wrong sex, and because I think that partial birth abortion is wrong." No, and you are not a Christo-fascist for thinking so little of women and understanding so little about the realities of women's lives that you would actually say any abortions are "largely the result of 'convenience.'" (For example, how long has it been since you were a young, single mother of two young children, on your own with a low-paying job, facing the "inconvenience" of losing that job because you were pregnant?) Nor are you a Christo-fascist for regarding an insentient developing embryo as a "baby." An acorn is not an oak tree. When a developing embryo, then fetus, becomes a person that is anyone's business other than that of the woman deeply within whose body it resides is a philosophical issue upon which rational people reasonably differ, not a fact upon which law should rest. You have a right to think whatever you think. You ARE a Christo-fascist (assuming you derive your thoughts on this issue -- or have swallowed what has been spoon-fed you -- from your interpretation of Christian mythology) because you want your thoughts -- your religious beliefs (note: beliefs, NOT facts) -- transformed into coercive law on all (regardless of what THEY believe) that would have horrendous consequences for women, teenage girls, and their families. That previously quoted male reviewer, perhaps as naively as the late Senator Pat Moynihan whom he quotes, resorts to the hackneyed fallacy of so-called "partial birth abortion." The deceptive and inflammatory term, "partial birth abortion," invented by "pro-life" propagandists, has no medical meaning and is not a medical term. This deliberately misleading and inflammatory term refers very loosely not to third trimester, or late term, abortion at all, but to a specific technique of abortion that is usually employed, when at all, infrequently in the second trimester and only very rarely in the early third trimester in order to reduce the risk of surgical injury to the woman, although its meaning has become progressively more blurred in the deceptive attempts by "pro-life" lawmakers in various state legislatures and in Congress to write prohibitions of it in wording that could be used to criminalize all abortions. The term itself is inaccurate and misleading because it carries the false implication that fetuses aborted by this procedure are normal, healthy fetuses that are far enough along in development that they could simply be born instead, which is never the case. If such a law ever stands, it will prevent no abortions at all unless it is so ambiguously written and so liberally interpreted that it might lend itself to effectively banning all abortions. If clearly written and s

One of the questions the author poses is: "Why is abortion in America so polarizing that those that want to stop it murder doctors?". The answer may lie in the falsehoods espoused by Christo-facists that include terms such as "sex selection abortions" and "partial birth abortions". Having lived in Buffalo for many years with a vivid memory of the events in the book, I clearly remember how valued the "Right to Lifers" respect women. Simply put, they don't. Eyal Press has done his home town proud with a great telling of the events surrounding the murder of Dr. Slepian and how it effected his family. Thank you Eyal Press for telling this important story.