IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE by Jerry Falwell (Thomas Nelson: $12.95; 219 pp.)

I should confess at the outset that I am as good an example as one could find of the sort of person who looks down his nose at the Reverend Jerry Falwell. His way of packaging free enterprise, evangelical religion, the nuclear family, and a mega-billion-dollar defense industry sets my teeth on edge. His recent forays to bless the good works of President Botha in South Africa deserves a prize for the most tawdry use of religious celebrity in many a year. I am also pro-choice in the abortion debate, and a book by him on that subject was not one for which my allies and I were exactly waiting.

For all that, he has written an interesting book, not so much for its detailed arguments and opinions but for showing the power of a coherent approach to abortion. Falwell’s thesis is relatively simple. He believes that one of the most effective ways to reduce the number of abortions in America would be by the development of a national network of services, agencies, and homes to help pregnant women make meaningful choices against abortion and to live with them.

His starting premise is that, in fact, most women--particularly teen-agers--have no real choice about their unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. They are often likely to be too emotionally distraught to make a balanced decision for or against abortion. Moreover, because of legalized abortion, most of the hidden social pressures favor abortion rather than keeping a child or putting it up for adoption. It is, for the most part, convenient, simple and decisive. To be sure, many women can face pressures against abortion in some parts of the country, or be hard pressed financially to afford it in other places. Even so, abortion has become the method of choice in dealing with troubled pregnancies. Only the creation of viable alternatives is likely to change that situation, and that insight is what Falwell seizes upon.

He makes his case by the use of an effective technique. The book alternates chapters between his own arguments against abortion and what he has tried to do about it, and the first-person story of a young woman identified as Jennifer Simpson. Jennifer, as we come to know her, is the teen-age daughter of fairly strict and conscientious middle-class parents. In response to her pleading, however, they make the mistake of allowing her to go to an unchaperoned weekend party where, as chance would have it, she is raped. (This is a bit pat, but maybe it happened.)

Jennifer’s subsequent pregnancy ends, with her parent’s sympathetic help, in an abortion, but one marked by moral turmoil and later guilt. Then Jennifer gets pregnant again, now by a real boyfriend. This time the outcome will be different. When she once again turns to her parents for help, they lead her to one of the Rev. Falwell’s maternity homes in Virginia where she can bear the child and then either keep it or put it up for adoption. As it happens, she chooses the latter.

The story told by Jennifer begins sadly but ends on a resolutely upbeat note. All’s well that ends well if one comes over to Christianity, chooses against abortion, and has the help of the just terrific, and fun, people that run the maternity programs. One or two less happy outcomes are mentioned in the book, but they are hardly prominent. It is a broad-brush picture that will irritate most pro-choice activists.

Still, I am prone despite the treacle to accept the generally hopeful picture that Falwell, with Jennifer’s help, draws. Perhaps one reason why abortion is such a difficult moral issue is that under ideal circumstances, there can be relatively satisfying--though utterly contradictory--ways of understanding either support of, or opposition to, abortion. If those women who choose an abortion have a supportive environment, comforting family or friends, and feel that they exercised a genuine choice, they can feel comfortable about their decision. But so also can those who choose against abortion, assuming that they also have a similar kind of support.

Jerry Falwell’s “shepherding homes,” and “Godparent Centers”--the names given to various facilities that are part of his system--capitalize on that insight. When dealing with teen-agers, in particular, where they are likely to have little in the way of developed views one way or another on abortion, the critical difference is likely to lie with the kind of comfort, sympathy and help they get. Falwell’s book suggests, with perfect plausibility, that an intensive effort to provide alternatives to abortion can be highly effective with the immature and uncertain, leading them just as happily against as for abortion.

Many important related problems are, however, not addressed in the book at all. At no point does Falwell try to understand why freedom of choice might be the best legal solution in a pluralistic society, or at least a plausible one. Not all thoughtful people consider abortion the kind of “butchery” that leads inevitably to another Dachau. While he decries the “liberalism and hedonism” of our society, he fails to note the role of the free enterprise he supports in facilitating that result. Sex is almost as profitable an industry as defense.

But then this is not a book to turn to for a balanced discussion of the issues. It is, instead, an effective account of how alternatives to abortion can be developed, and how a coherent anti-abortion position might be defended. Falwell’s alternative does offer women a real choice; abortion is not left as their only choice. That he would also deny other women, if he could, the right to an abortion seems to me to undercut the freedom he does offer. His alternative, if made part of a full spectrum of viable choices, including abortion, would then be all the stronger. But to take away from women the freedom to an abortion and give them the freedom only to have a child is to deny them the full freedom that is their due.