Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
Life's Work
Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice | Willie Parker
4 posts | 4 read | 16 to read
In Life’s Work, an outspoken, Christian reproductive justice advocate and abortion provider (one of the few doctors to provide such services to women in Mississippi and Alabama) pulls from his personal and professional journeys as well as the scientific training he received as a doctor to reveal how he came to believe, unequivocally, that helping women in need, without judgment, is precisely the Christian thing to do. Dr. Willie Parker grew up in the Deep South, lived in a Christian household, and converted to an even more fundamentalist form of Christianity as a young man. But upon reading an interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he realized that in order to be a true Christian, he must show compassion for all women regardless of their needs. In 2009, he stopped practicing obstetrics to focus entirely on providing safe abortions for the women who need help the most—often women in poverty and women of color—and in the hot bed of the pro-choice debate: the South. He soon thereafter traded in his private practice and his penthouse apartment in Hawaii for the life of an itinerant abortion provider, focusing most recently on women in the Deep South. In Life’s Work, Dr. Willie Parker tells a deeply personal and thought-provoking narrative that illuminates the complex societal, political, religious, and personal realities of abortion in the United States from the unique perspective of someone who performs them and defends the right to do so every day. He also looks at how a new wave of anti-abortion activism, aimed at making incremental changes in laws and regulations state by state, are slowly chipping away at the rights of women to control their own lives. In revealing his daily battle against mandatory waiting periods and bogus rules governing the width of hallways, Dr. Parker uncovers the growing number of strings attached to the right to choose and makes a powerful Christian case for championing reproductive rights.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Karen.reads
post image
Pickpick

This was excellent. I have long been pro-choice, but my understanding of reproductive justice has evolved in recent years. The new abortion bans being passed now are nothing more than an attempt to control women and limit our choices. Dr. Parker, an abortion provider and a Christian, compassionately explains why religious objections to abortion are misguided and why everyone benefits when women have control over their reproductive health.

blurb
gasbagcharm
post image

This book is so good and so important.

review
alisahar
post image
Pickpick

I believe people can change their mind on the abortion issue-- I changed mine-- but I almost never read books that actually communicate across the divide. This one does. I LOVED this book. Willie Parker is a devout Christian & an abortion doctor. He's substantive, thoughtful, gentle, faith-filled & following a clear calling. Now I want to do a book exchange with an anti-abortion person--I read one of their books if they read this! #recommendsday

14 likes2 stack adds
quote
alisahar
post image

This memoir of a Christian abortion doctor has been on my #TBR for a while now. This excellent New Yorker review has me adding a couple more to the list: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/why-its-become-so-hard-to-get-an-ab...

huntersmom1977 I just finished reading A book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates. I think you would enjoy reading it. It's about abortion and religion. A very great read. This was the first book I have ever read by the author. Oh boy she opened Pandora's Box. She has written so many books! So excited to read them all 😊 7y
8 likes1 stack add1 comment