A Time to Be Born, by Bonnie Shullenberger (Cowley Publications, 108 pp., paperback, $9.95)
I WAS asked to review this book for an Episcopal pro-life publication, and having done so I felt moved to bring it to the attention of NR’s wider audience as well. Whenever a book delves as deeply as this one does into painful areas of its author’s life, the reader is likely to wonder: Ought this book to have been published? The answer, in this case, is definitely, Yes. For the author is perfectly placed to answer the pro-choicer’s challenge: You have no right to criticize a woman’s decision to have an abortion; you have no idea what she’s going through. Bonnie Shullenberger can answer: Oh yes I do. I know what it’s like to be a frightened teenaged girl whose boyfriend wants her to have an abortion. I know what it’s like to be a 39-year-old woman whose life another pregnancy would totally disrupt. And I also know how devastating it is to give a child up for adoption. But A Time to Be Born is not purely narrative; there is much serious reflection on how babies, both before they are born and after, fit into the “web of life,” and on what the Church should be doing to “form Christians.” The author also tells how she came to believe that women could be validly ordained, and how she came to seek ordination herself. For some of our readers, that may make her book unacceptable. For those for whom it does not, A Time to Be Born is an extraordinarily powerful account, both spiritually and intellectually.
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