Compact Book Club: "Letter to a Child Never Born"

This Compact Book Club will be a non-ideological conversation on the novel that Italian journalist, “true feminist,” and author Oriana Fallaci wrote in 1975: Letter to a Child Never Born.

In this book, the honest truth seeker Fallaci–a woman who started out as an antifascist youth in Florence, matured into a war reporter ciritcal of the Vietnam war, and died as one of the strongest pro-American voices after 9/11–describes the story, the tragedy of her own loss.

She does it through a letter written to her own baby. In it, she addresses all the hard questions, fears, and doubts that pregnant women face and experience. She describes fears, doubts, and questions that require living through to be understood. As for her answers, they are all but simple.

Consistent with this year’s theme, becoming adults, this book club explores the struggles of a woman who might refuse to grow and become a mother. On the men’s side, this book may help them realize that they are not mere “spectators” of women’s choices. Mature men acknowledge their responsibilities: both as lovers and fathers.

Hopefully, this book club will open ears and minds on both sides of the abortion debate. We all need to remember that abortion--and human life--are not the products of solitary decision.