To the editor:
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Your reviewer Noah Berlatsky [“Wishful History,” February 18] offers a comparison of abolitionists and pro-lifers as if this were a fresh insight on his part and not a tired cliche (a Google search of “abolition” and “abortion” will get you just under 100,000 hits). As banal as the analogy is, it doesn’t hold water. Pro-lifers are good at staying united and on message; the abolitionists were notoriously sectarian and divided their energies among a whole slew of causes (temperance, marriage reform, female suffrage, etc). Pro-life has working-class grass roots; abolitionism was a middle-class to elite phenomenon. Pro-lifers are fundamentalists; abolitionists were the New Age seekers of their day, attracted to spiritualism, fad diets, free love, etc. Pro-lifers are social conservatives; radical abolitionists were anarchists whose principled hatred of hierarchies and institutions greatly impeded their ability to organize and act politically. Make no mistake, abolitionists belong to the American left.
