THE CHOICES WE MADE: Twenty-Five Women and...

THE CHOICES WE MADE: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion edited by Angela Bonavoglia (Random House: $10; 203 pp.). In this collection of first-hand accounts, a diverse group of women that includes Whoopi Goldberg, Grace Paley and Linda Ellerbee recount the shame, fear and pain they experienced. Jim Friedl saw his mother die from a botched illegal operation; Margot Kidder recalls how she narrowly avoided a similar death. The authors stress that their decisions were the result of long and agonizing soul-searching; abortion was never a procedure sought casually. Polly Bergen eloquently insists that the decision must be left up to the individual woman: “Once you allow politicians to tell you that you can’t have one, those same politicians can turn around and say you must have one, or it can only be a boy, it can only have blue eyes, it can only be a girl, you can only have two, you can’t have any.”