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Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America
On October 23, 1998, the Buffalo abortion provider Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper's bullet fired through the kitchen window of his home. Days later, police informed another local doctor, Shalom Press, that they had received a threat warning that he was "next on the list." Within hours the Press household was under twenty-four-hour federal marshal protection. America's violent struggle over abortion - which had already claimed the lives of five doctors and clinic workers - had come to Buffalo.
In Absolute Convictions , Eyal Press returns to his hometown seeking to understand how an issue many people thought was settled decades ago could inspire such rage. Press combines a retelling of his family's experience with firsthand accounts of protesters arrested outside his father's office, patients who braved the gauntlet of demonstrators, and politicians who attempted to appease both sides. Through the Press family and the city of Buffalo, a blue-collar town undergoing wrenching economic changes, we see, as never before, the people behind the absolute convictions that have divided our nation for the past three decades.
With remarkable sensitivity, Press has written both a gripping narrative account of a family and a city caught in the crossfire of moral fervor and individual rights, and an incisive history that offers new insight into the economic and social roots of America's most volatile conflict.
In Absolute Convictions , Eyal Press returns to his hometown seeking to understand how an issue many people thought was settled decades ago could inspire such rage. Press combines a retelling of his family's experience with firsthand accounts of protesters arrested outside his father's office, patients who braved the gauntlet of demonstrators, and politicians who attempted to appease both sides. Through the Press family and the city of Buffalo, a blue-collar town undergoing wrenching economic changes, we see, as never before, the people behind the absolute convictions that have divided our nation for the past three decades.
With remarkable sensitivity, Press has written both a gripping narrative account of a family and a city caught in the crossfire of moral fervor and individual rights, and an incisive history that offers new insight into the economic and social roots of America's most volatile conflict.
292 pages, Hardcover
First published February 21, 2006
11 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
Eyal Press
9 books46 followersEyal Press is an American author and journalist based in New York City. He is the author of three books and is a contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, among other publications. Much of Press' writing and journalism focuses on topics of morality and social and economic inequality.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 26, 2013
Eyal Press has written a rambling history of his father's reproductive health care work in Buffalo. A stoic, quiet veteran, Dr. Shalom Press came to the US for medical training and ended up staying to open his own OB/GYN clinic. After his colleague Dr.Slepian's murder in 1998 (just the latest in a long string of clinic bombings, provider shootings, and general terrorizing), Dr.Press became the only abortion provider to live in Buffalo.
It contains some great tidbits, because he has intimate access to his father, but it doesn't contain anything particularly new. There isn't even much about Dr.Press himself that one couldn't get from any other reporter. I wish it had been more focused on the struggle between the pro and anti-choice sides, because far too much was caught up in Eyal Press's own reminiscences about Bills games or tangents into the founding of Buffalo or Amherst College. He lived through the Spring of Life and he doesn't even talk about that much!
That said, even as unfocused as this book is, it does provide a window into the extreme efforts anti-choice activists went to from the 70s on. Press chronicles as they go from picketing clinics, to chaining themselves to the doors or equipment, to harassing doctors, escorts and patients at their homes and schools. Activists sent letters to abortion providers' neighbors, complete with pictures of the providers, their exact address and phone number. They set up billboards with the same information. They picketed and shouted outside abortion providers' homes. Providers were shot. Clinics received threats, anthrax, bombs, and some actually blew up (one activist called his bombings on Christmas Day a birthday present to Jesus. Way to go, dude!). Finally, after years of escalating violence and police and judges who dragged their feet, the situation got so bad that the Clinton administration passed the FACE act and Janet Reno heightened security for providers like Dr.Press. And hilariously, once actual fines and jail time started being associated with harassment and getting inside the buffer zone, the number of protestors dropped like a stone.
Press also points out the impact of high unemployment and low union membership--he posits that unions used to provide an emotional high and community-building, but as unions lost power and people got poorer, people in Buffalo turned to churches instead. I'd buy that interpretation, although I wish he laid it out a little better. I really wish this whole book was tighter, because it's a fascinating subject that deserves more attention.
It contains some great tidbits, because he has intimate access to his father, but it doesn't contain anything particularly new. There isn't even much about Dr.Press himself that one couldn't get from any other reporter. I wish it had been more focused on the struggle between the pro and anti-choice sides, because far too much was caught up in Eyal Press's own reminiscences about Bills games or tangents into the founding of Buffalo or Amherst College. He lived through the Spring of Life and he doesn't even talk about that much!
That said, even as unfocused as this book is, it does provide a window into the extreme efforts anti-choice activists went to from the 70s on. Press chronicles as they go from picketing clinics, to chaining themselves to the doors or equipment, to harassing doctors, escorts and patients at their homes and schools. Activists sent letters to abortion providers' neighbors, complete with pictures of the providers, their exact address and phone number. They set up billboards with the same information. They picketed and shouted outside abortion providers' homes. Providers were shot. Clinics received threats, anthrax, bombs, and some actually blew up (one activist called his bombings on Christmas Day a birthday present to Jesus. Way to go, dude!). Finally, after years of escalating violence and police and judges who dragged their feet, the situation got so bad that the Clinton administration passed the FACE act and Janet Reno heightened security for providers like Dr.Press. And hilariously, once actual fines and jail time started being associated with harassment and getting inside the buffer zone, the number of protestors dropped like a stone.
Press also points out the impact of high unemployment and low union membership--he posits that unions used to provide an emotional high and community-building, but as unions lost power and people got poorer, people in Buffalo turned to churches instead. I'd buy that interpretation, although I wish he laid it out a little better. I really wish this whole book was tighter, because it's a fascinating subject that deserves more attention.
September 20, 2008
I picked up this book interested in the topic and not entirely making the connection to my own life until I started reading. I grew up near Buffalo (in Rochester, NY), and half of my family is originally from the Buffalo area (and yeah, we're Catholic). On top of that, the events described in the book happened when I was around 10 - 18. Can you believe I don't remember any of it happening? Either I tuned it out or it blended into the overall context in which I grew up - a heavily fundamentalist Christian (protestant and catholic) rural suburb of Rochester, where rhetoric about baby killers was not uncommon. I do remember driving to high school in 1998-99 and seeing protesters, from out of town, lined up along our 55-mph rural road to the school holding up giant signs depicting bloody aborted fetuses. I remember shaking my head and thinking, what is wrong with you that you'd be doing this outside of a school, waving those images at kids? We're not part of this.
It's interesting to get the full background of what was going on in the region and nationally at the time, and to try to match it up with what little I remember from my childhood. I had no idea that we were abortion ground zero in western New York, and I think half of my interested in Eyal Press's story ended up being local interest (which isn't a bad thing).
I read this book in one sitting - it's a fast, interesting read, and yet it is not superficial. Among the anecdotes, background information, interviews, and personal memories is an analysis of the situation that I think is spot-on and not often brought up in mainstream coverage: that much of the anti-abortion movement is also set on preventing us from getting ahold of information about sex and contraception. Press also addresses the whiteness and privilege of much of the mainstream pro-choice movement, and the disparities between what abortion and choice mean to middle-class whites versus the poor and women of color.
It's interesting to get the full background of what was going on in the region and nationally at the time, and to try to match it up with what little I remember from my childhood. I had no idea that we were abortion ground zero in western New York, and I think half of my interested in Eyal Press's story ended up being local interest (which isn't a bad thing).
I read this book in one sitting - it's a fast, interesting read, and yet it is not superficial. Among the anecdotes, background information, interviews, and personal memories is an analysis of the situation that I think is spot-on and not often brought up in mainstream coverage: that much of the anti-abortion movement is also set on preventing us from getting ahold of information about sex and contraception. Press also addresses the whiteness and privilege of much of the mainstream pro-choice movement, and the disparities between what abortion and choice mean to middle-class whites versus the poor and women of color.
October 11, 2020
An account of the extremist pro-life movement centered around the killing of an abortion provider in Buffalo, New York, told by the son of another physician who narrowly avoided the same fate. It starts a little slow but picks up and absorbs.
April 8, 2021
Really excellent book - incredibly detailed and rich in source material and really readable. So much information and it really went into detail about the cultural, political, religious, and social issues of the day. Excellent book.
October 11, 2021
This book tries to be too many things and ended up being just okay. More than anything it's a history of anti-abortion protest and violence, centered on Buffalo. There's a fair amount of history of Buffalo the city, which hints at general cultural trends in the Rust Belt from the 1970s-90s but doesn't really get deeply into analysis. Since the author is the son of an OB-GYN who performed abortions and was subject to harassment and threats, there's also a good deal of family history, but you don't really ever get close to Dr. Press himself - it feels like his son is keeping a respectful distance. There's nothing new about abortion itself, and there isn't much about the patients. The writing is journalistic and seems to be based on widely-available news plus a set of fairly brief interviews. Most of the book reads like a somewhat eclectic set of news articles.
December 30, 2023
part history, part memoir — it’s confused at some points but the genre ambiguity doesn’t detract from this informative and emotional portrait of a moment. one of the few books where i kind of wish i read it knowing less.
August 24, 2023
wonderfully informative, if at times somewhat tediously factual. a great book for anyone interested in the plight of abortion rights in the US.
October 5, 2023
Prescient and terrifying. One of the most important books on United States politics that can you read.
June 20, 2007
Read this if you're interested in abortion rights, the tactics of pro-lifers, feminism, or Western New York. My friend likened this book to "What's the Matter with Kansas," except in Buffalo. The author's father is an OB-GYN in Buffalo, and one of the few who performed abortions. His colleauge, Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered by a radical pro-lifer, at his home in Amherst in 1998. This book certainly covers that event in detail, but also spans the abortion debate, both pre- and post-Roe v. Wade; describes his family's life in Israel before coming to the US; and also deftly covers the history of Buffalo, especially in the post-World War II years. Very engaging and well balanced.
May 25, 2012
I liked it. It had a journalistic approach to the abortion debate. It was interesting to read about the history of the right to choose in Buffalo. I previously had no idea Buffalo was such the center of contention in the overall debate. Being a history nerd, I always enjoy books with historical context to them. Overall, parts of the book infuriated me, but that had nothing to do with the writing style, just the crap that has happened in the last 40 years in the anti-abortion/pro-choice debate.
October 3, 2015
I found the subject very interesting. I was attracted to reading about the history of Buffalo ( since I know a few people that live in that area) as well as how Buffalo related to the struggle for/against legal abortion. The book is well written and from an interesting perspective. No matter what side of the issue you are on, this book may help you wonder about the families, doctors and women that deal with this subject on a daily basis.
February 16, 2008
This is an intelligently written memoir and a good read. Eyal Press grew up in Buffalo NY - his father was an Israeli abortion provider and his mother was a Holocaust survivor. His story is a gripping account of living on the fault lines of culture clashes over abortion and religion and growing up as an immigrant family in America.
June 1, 2007
An awesome read for those interested in women's issues, abortion, controversy or Western New York.
never-finished
July 27, 2009i started this but never finished. If I can't do it this time I will just give up!
abandoned
July 16, 2014I don't need to read a balanced look at anti-abortion extremists
January 10, 2013
While the information I read I found to be quite interesting, at times I felt as if I were reading a textbook rather than a novel about the author and his family.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews