[Policy Review, Summer 1991] The voluble cashier wears a locket containing her toddler's picture; coming through her checkout line is brightly entertaining, like rejoining a show already in progress. You know that she works another job, that her landlord is a jerk, that she has a weakness for ice cream, that her little girl loves Big Bird. You suspect that her immigrant status may not be entirely in order. One day she is pale and subdued; another baby is on the way, and she loves babies, but how can she ever manage? With a stricken look she whispers, “But how could I have an abortion?”

[University Faculty for Life,  June 1994] The abortion battle has been dragging on for over twenty years. It began sometime before Roe v. Wade, when individual states first loosened their laws. I have friends who have been active in the cause from before the beginning; some of you may fit that category. But I have only been working at this for about five years, and so my perspective is perhaps fresher. It seems to me that what we have been doing, frankly, isn't working.

[Sojourners, January 1995] For years I scoffed at the idea of violence outside abortion clinics. Sure, plenty of violence was going on inside the clinics--over 4,000 babies killed every day. But opponents of abortion are pro-life, I kept saying. We're in this because we oppose bloodshed. Occasionally I'd wince to hear that someone who was Not Clear on the Concept had harmed an empty building, an action that was wrong, risky, and stupid. But the notion that anyone would aim a gun at an abortionist's head and pull the trigger was ludicrous. Then somebody did it.

[The Remnant, January 20, 1992] The abortion debate seems like an unresolvable conflict of rights: the right of women to control their own bodies, the right of children to be born. Can one both support women's rights and oppose abortion? Truly supporting women's rights must involve telling the truth about abortion and working for it to cease.

[Sisterlife, Spring 1991] On June 4, 1990, Jack Kevorkian attached Alzheimer's patient Janet Adkins to a homemade contraption in his 1968 VW bus, then watched her push the activating button that made her die. Public reaction was swift and generally negative. Judge Alice Gilbert, in barring Kevorkian from ever again using the device, charged that he “flagrantly violated” all standards of medical practice.

[Sisterlife, Spring 1992] On April 5, 1992 , the National Organization of Women sponsored an event in defense of abortion; delegations from women's groups marched through the streets of Washington , DC , united by the slogan “We Won't Go Back.” But the march organizers intended the day to be a time of, at least, looking back: “We want to tie our current challenge to the historic fight for women's rights waged by our foremothers,” they wrote in a letter to women's groups.

[The World and I, May 1992] Major movements begin with dreams and end with mechanics. The term “feminism” is almost inextricably bound up in the public mind with access to abortion, provided (as a recent Fund for the Feminist Majority mailing puts it) “without restrictions”. A kind of red fury surrounds this demand, one that is presented as beyond negotiation and even beyond discussion.