Amy Welborn Reviews The Party of Death

Amy Welborn has up her review of Ramesh Ponnuru's new book, The Party of Death:

Ponnuru says that part of the reason he wrote the book is because there had not been a book on life issues published for the general reading public in twenty years, and with the advent of new issues, one was needed. It's a useful book, especially for people who may not be familiar with the issues, or who could use some education. Those who follow life issues closely won't find a great deal that's brand new here, but that's not the point. The value of the book is the way in which Ponnuru connects dots, rips the lid off lies and ambiguities, and asks simple, quite logical questions, as in, "Do pro-choice advocates really disagree with Peter Singer about infanticide?"

I think the most important aspect of this book for all of its readers is the way in which Ponnuru rather relentlessly hangs on to logic and refuses to accept the assumptions of conventional wisdom. The arguments of prolifers are frequently denigrated for having a religious dimension, but really, which argument is based on spiritual voodoo and which on reason? The view that there's some point, based on something that we can't quite commonly define, at which this growing human being somehow enters the human community and before which can be killed? Or the view that says, "Conception. Individual human life begins then. Protect that life from that point on."

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