On the Front Lines for Women

By Ceci Connolly
Monday, February 27, 2006

With Liberty and Justice for All:

A Life Spent Protecting the Right to Choose

Kate Miche lman

Hudson Street Press, 278 pages

Kate Michelman and her dust jacket writers promise a great deal in her autobiographical account, "With Liberty and Justice for All."

The book, we are told, "is a wake-up call to American women to defend their freedom" in what the former president of the National Abortion Rights Action League warns is our "hour of greatest danger." It is the tale of "one woman's choice" to seek an abortion when the medical procedure was still illegal. And it is a book about -- cue the patriotic music -- "liberty and justice for all."

That's a lot for a first-time author to bite off; maybe too much.

Michelman's life story from abandoned, pregnant housewife to feminist leader is inspiring. Her account of this nation's 30-year struggle with the gut-wrenching issue of abortion is thorough, providing a front-row view of the movement's successes and setbacks. Yet one of the most difficult choices for a writer is deciding what to leave out, and rather than choose, Michelman delivers a little bit of everything.

The opening pages are chilling. A twenty-something, unemployed mother of three is being interrogated by a panel of men in suits. She must convince the four strangers she is an unfit mother -- so unbalanced that they should grant her request to terminate her fourth pregnancy.

Even knowing the outcome of the meeting and much of what is to follow over the next 35 years, the scene shocks. It is almost unimaginable to envision this savvy Washington powerhouse as the desperate young woman who swallows a bottle of sleeping pills and begs the husband who has deserted her to sign a permission slip for an abortion.

Out of her own painful experience -- which briefly put Michelman and her three young girls on welfare -- she found her calling. In short order, Michelman moved from running a Pennsylvania day-care center to taking over what is now called NARAL: Pro-Choice America, which emerged under her leadership as a force in American politics.

Few people have lived as rich a life as Michelman. Now 63, she has marched for civil rights, addressed the Democratic National Convention and testified against the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. In early 2000, she infuriated ally Bill Bradley and tossed tradition aside with the decision to bestow NARAL's endorsement on Al Gore before the New Hampshire Democratic primary. She counts among her friends former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, several senators and former president Bill Clinton.

The book, however, aims to make a larger point: "I do not tell my story because it is unique. On the contrary, I share it because it is so common."

As in the days before Roe v. Wade , reproductive rights in the United States are once again in jeopardy, Michelman writes. Not surprisingly, she faults President Bush, the Republican-controlled Congress, a reconfigured Supreme Court and the influential evangelical right. Less expected is the candid -- and accurate -- assessment that her own side deserves blame as well.

Since Clinton's election in 1992, many abortion rights supporters have "relaxed their guard and retreated into apathy," Michelman writes. Later, she acknowledges tensions in the movement, from mismanagement of the debate over the late-term abortion procedure known by critics as "partial birth" to the contradictions in feminist support for former senators Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) after sexual improprieties came to light.

But the missteps and internal rifts are dispensed with too tidily; there is no road map for the next generation of activists. More important, it is Michelman's personal odyssey -- the far more compelling drama -- that unfortunately gets short shrift.

"I qualified for a monthly stipend, food stamps and Medicaid," she writes in a textbook tone. "The idea that benefits are lavish is laughable. . . . I remain grateful that our government provides at least a minimal safety net."

Although it took Michelman nearly three decades to tell her devout Roman Catholic parents of her abortion, the powerful scene is condensed to 6 1/2 pages.

For most of the 278 pages, Michelman's daughters are largely absent or reduced to snippets. Lisa is the flute player, Anya the sports star and Tasha the horsewoman. What, one wonders, did these young women think of their crusading mother? Did they discuss sex, marriage and abortion? Did they urge her to find a new career after the 1993 murder of David Gunn, the Florida doctor who performed abortions?

By squeezing her internal struggles into neat, concise metaphors, Michelman deprives readers of the full emotional impact of her life story. When Lisa gives birth to her first child, both newborn and mother contract severe infections. Yet the only observation offered is that the experience was, "needless to say, a frightening start" for the pair.

In a similar manner, Michelman introduces the harrowing account of daughter Tasha's 2001 riding accident, a fall that left the young woman paralyzed. Here, too, Michelman is guarded, summarizing the medical decisions and grueling rehabilitation that followed, but withholding the mother's insights that only she can provide.

At each step in her journey, Michelman makes the link to public policy. A Parkinson's diagnosis for her second husband, Fred, enables Michelman -- and readers -- to reassess the debate over research involving embryonic stem cells. Yet again, she reveals little of the agony that surely ensues for a spouse watching her husband deteriorate before her very eyes.

But all that may be asking too much in a first book about a full life.

Connolly is a Washington Post national staff writer.