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BOOK REVIEWS
Deadly Choices
by Paul Marx, O.S.B.
Victims of Choice
by Kevin Sherlock
Brennyman Books
196pp.
Abortion has been legal nationwide for a generation supposedly to protect women and girls from being damaged and abused by so-called back-alley abortionists. But the public record shows the licensed abortion providers of today are lethal to mothers (and of course babies) in their own right.
That is the thesis of Victims of Choice, a truly frightful book written by veteran investigator Kevin Sherlock.
Sherlock's book is unusual for a right-to-life book. He names the women who died at the hands of abortion providers. And he names the abortion providers who killed them.
Sherlock's tone is also unusual for a pro-life book. He tells the stories of hundreds of women victims of abortion and puts a human face on each of them. "I cover the stories of the girls and young women who died from abortion like homicide cases," he writes, "because that's what they are, homicide victims."
Sherlock used public records, like lawsuits, autopsies, health code citations and death certificates, in preparing the book. He also used news articles, magazine articles, and internal government memos in painting the realistic portrait of a greedy, bloodthirsty, and less than competent group of abortionists who ply their trade with the protection and promotion of government officials.
In his crime writer's style, Sherlock proves many more women and girls have died from abortion than what federal authorities are willing to admit to. And since he names names of the victims of abortion, and footnotes his sources or at least gives the race, age, career, and date of death in some cases, the experienced pro-life activist can give officials and the media a taste of just how unsafe abortion is in his state and across the country.
For example, Sherlock noted Illinois authorities only reported one girl's death from abortion in the 1980s, and the Pro-Life Action League found six abortion victims in Chicago alone during that decade. He named each victim and the abortion providers who stood charged of killing them.
Sherlock also virtually doubled the reported body count of women who died from legal abortion during the 1980s in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey to name several of the most populous states whose officials he says have been under reporting deaths from abortion.
We know at least some of Sherlock's research is good from personal experience. That is because he told the stories of Erica Kae Richardson, Gladys Estanislao, and Debra Gray. These three young women were victims of abortion in Maryland in 1989, and we at Human Life International uncovered and presented their deaths to the nation, after state officials tried to cover up the real cause of their deaths.
Sherlock's research is so thorough, and his writing style is so explicit and personal, that no one who reads this book can walk away untroubled. Sherlock said every woman who has read his book (including a number of women who reviewed it) has cried or suffered repeated nightmares.
If you are serious about finding out the truth about abortion's carnage, you need Victims Of Choice. Sherlock covered many cases of women who died from abortion that we at Human Life International knew about, and quite a few we did not know of at all. I could not put this book down.
"Is abortion on demand safe because it is legal?" Sherlock asks. "Don't tell that lie to these women and girls' loved ones."
Victims of Choice costs $19.95, all shipping and taxes included. You can order the book directly from Sherlock at: P.O. Box 2629, Akron, OH 44309.
Father Paul Marx is the Founder and Chairman of Human Life International.
The Last Crusade
by Warren H. Carroll
Christendom Press
232 pp.
1-800-877-5456.
Dr. Warren Carroll, with his Last Crusade, has performed a great service to undergraduate students of European or World War II history by providing a very readable and at times enthralling account of the first year of Spain's 1936-1939 civil war. The vast majority of accounts of this conflict have presented it on the stated or underlying assumption that this was a war between the good guys (the forces of democracy and progress) and the bad guys (the fascist allies or cat's paws of Hitler and Mussolini). Sadly, for liberty and enlightenment, the bad guys won because of the indecisiveness of the democratic states of Europe in meeting their obligations to Republican Spain. Most of these accounts dwell, lovingly and in gory detail, upon the misbehavior, cruelty, and irrationality of Franco's Nationalists, while merely summarizing or presenting in dry, and often understated, statistics the misdeeds of the Republican (Loyalist) side.
After a student has read several of such heavily biased Left versus Right accounts by other historians, journalists, or participants, he will find it refreshing to come across a book which comes close to convincingly presenting a mirror image of the standard account. Here all the good guys fight heroically, unselfishly, and gloriously for Franco and the Faith. The other side, largely under control of Stalin and the COMINTERN, is represented by hate-filled, diabolically-inspired, mobs, civil guards, and anarchist leaders who senselessly hunt down, imprison, and execute faithful Catholic lay persons, priests, brothers, and nuns. And all of this is convincingly documented.
On October 1, world-famous Jesuit historian Zacarias Garcia was killed by militia in Madrid (p.164) ... On the next day ... 50 more prisoners ... including 14 priests and a Marist brother were mowed down ... and three nuns after refusing to deny their faith .... On October 4 Martina Vazquez, a sister of charity well known for her holiness and care for the poor, after being taken from the hospital where she worked was ... killed by the roadside (p.165).
... In Catalonia ... the revolutionaries ... explicitly proclaimed their goal to be the extirpation of Christianity .... "We have lit the torch, applying the purifying fire ... and have crossed the countryside purifying it of the plague of religion."
* * *
On August 18 the last two Claretian seminarians, seriously ill in a hospital, were taken out and shot ... making a grand total of 51 Claretian martyrs there ... On August 20, at Lerida in Catalonia 74 priests and religious...were taken out at ... midnight ... in trucks to the cemetery ... On August 25, sixty men were taken ... and machine-gunned, ... the majority ... priests (p.118-120).
All over Spain the martyrdoms ... in August ... reached their peak. On August 16 ... six priests and 14 Brothers of Christian Schools were killed ... They marched to their death chanting requiem .... Six days later the Bishop of Ciudad Real ... [and] 106 priests of their small diocese were martyred, which was almost all of them ... On August 31 at Malaga ... 60 priests and religious ... On August 28, as on the 9th, two bishops were martyred in a single day.
* * *
On August 22 Pope Pius XI granted special permission for the celebration of Mass in secret .... He told Cardinal Pacelli [the future Pope Pius XII] to tell them that he shared in spirit their agony and their sacrifice. God was with them, and the Vicar of Christ would never forget them. (p.123)
According to the author, 6,832 priests and religious (including 15 bishops) were martyred, "Exceeding by a substantial margin the clerical victims of the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution in Russia." The Spanish bishops estimated that 20,000 churches and chapels were destroyed, 800 of them in Barcelona alone. Almost all of this occurred in 1936 when the perpetrators of these atrocities were still convinced that their "Loyalist" side would triumph.
In addition to being a martyrology of 1936, the Last Crusade presents, in chronological order, a detailed military history of that year. It is also an unblushing panegyric to the glories of Francisco Franco, the Spanish Carlists, and individual Nationalist military leaders.
If asked to find fault, one might wonder why Dr. Carroll included some relatively unimportant historical scenes while neglecting to choose some historically more significant ones. One of these might have been the scene in Hitler's chancery where, on July 25, 1936, two German emissaries of Franco, accompanied by a Spanish officer, were appealing for "German military assistance." To properly understand all the implications of the situation, and to arrive at a decision, Hitler summoned his top advisor in such matters, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. The admiral, it happens, was a life-long lover of Spanish culture, having served in that country in an intelligence capacity during World War I. Canaris also happened to be an old acquaintance of General Franco, with whom he shared a hatred of Communism, socialism, and anarchy, as well as a love of law, order, and hierarchy. They also shared a consciousness of Sephardic ancestry.
Canaris had previously been briefed on the anarchic and desperate situation in Spain by an officer who came to Germany for that purpose: General Jose Sanjuro-the original leader of the cause Franco was to lead upon the former's death in a plane crash.
Dr. Carroll gives short shrift to the role of German airlift and air power which made Franco's cause a realistic possibility. And he makes no mention at all of Canaris, who personally headed the military intelligence effort of the Nationalist side. In the early stages of the war, which Dr. Carroll covers in some detail, the geographically separated forces of Generals Mola and Franco communicated to each other through Canaris' organization. Canaris also flew twice to Italy to personally meet with General Roatta to persuade Italy to greater and more coordinated cooperation in Spain. In October 1936 Canaris, incognito, met with Franco in Spain to initiate the 6,500-man Condor Legion with ten squadrons of fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance planes, as well as anti-aircraft, anti-tank, and armored units. Without this German effort, entirely initiated and directed by Canaris, it is doubtful that Franco's forces could have survived half a year.
No German carried more weight in contemporary Spain than Rear Admiral Canaris. Thanks to his senior status in the Wehrmacht hierarchy and his growing network of agents in Spain, he was intimately acquainted with every new development in the fighting. His informants held posts at the various belligerents' headquarters and his agents infiltrated the remotest subsidiary theaters of war ...
(Heinz Hoehne, Canaris. Doubleday, 1979. p. 239).
For the record: Canaris was contemptuous of the Nazis, but obeyed and served Hitler, whom he considered to be the legitimate head of state and government ("lawful authority"). However, once he came to the conclusion that Hitler's regime had lost its legitimacy he worked against it at the cost of his life. He was hanged on Hitler's personal order just six days before his concentration camp was liberated by the U.S. Seventh Army.
Dr. Carroll also gives scant notice to the role of Salazar's Portugal whose porous border enabled the Nationalist rising to begin, nor the 20,000 Portuguese volunteers who fought bravely and effectively in the Catholic cause, with Salazar's approval. Perhaps a more serious omission was the role which Salazar played as honest broker and a close friend and ally of both Britain and Franco's government. This enabled indirect communication between Franco and the British from 1936 on. One payoff was the rescue of thousands of Jews (all those, who, like Franco, had provable Sephardic Jewish ancestry) by granting them Spanish nationality and passports and shipping them out of Europe, through Lisbon, to the New World. This open rescue effort continued through 1945.
Dr. Carroll claims the war "took more than 250,000 lives." Most others claim the figure was three to four times as high. And the bibliography of the Last Crusade which lists some fifty sources, many quite reputable, would have been improved if it had cited the publishers.
John Dombrowski is a writer and historian.