[0748] rlcarr@ATHENA.MIT.EDU MIT_harassment 03/15/93 13:35 (61 lines) Subject: more dworkonian censorship...not surprising.. Article 58403 of misc.legal: From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) Subject: Andrea Dworkin vs. "A Woman's Book of Choices" Message-ID: <1nrh7mINN42l@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> The following is from The Boston Phoenix, February 5, 1993, byline credited to Maureen Dezell. Transcribed and reprinted without permission; all typos are mine. -- William December Starr -=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=- cut here -=-=-=- WOMEN'S CHOICES Anti-pornography activist Andrea Dworkin is trying to keep a book on abortion out of women's bookstores. Dworkin, who could not be reached for comment, apparently objects to two paragraphs in _A Woman's Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486_, by Rebecca Chalker and Carol Downer (Four Walls, Eight Windows, 271 pages, $13.95), a consumer guide to legal abortion and other means of safely ending unwanted pregnancies in cases in which legal abortions aren't available. Dworkin maintains that a short section in _A Woman's Book of Choices_, which tells the story of a woman who, in the 50s, lied about being raped in order to get an abortion, could be used in court against rape victims. Last September, Dworkin told publishers at Four Walls, Eight Windows (which also brought out her most recent novel, _Mercy_) that the book could be used as evidence that women sometimes lied about being raped. According to co-editor Chalker, Dworkin threatened to "kill" the book if the section wasn't removed. Chalker says she and Downer "modified" the two paragraphs in question, at a cost of $3,000 to the publisher. But Dworkin wasn't satisfied. At her instigation, "several" women called and wrote the publisher, claiming the book was "dangerous for women," says Chalker. In addition, according to a spokesman for Four Walls, Eight Windows, "at least a few major" feminist bookstores Dworkin contacted have refused to carry the book. "We were just trying to review all the options women have used to get an abortion in the book," Chalker said in a phone interview from New York, where she works as an abortion counselor and writer. "I don't think doing [what the woman described in the passage did] is an easy choice. But you can't rewrite history. There's plenty of documentation this sort of thing happened. And as states continue to restrict abortion, rape will probably be one of the few [preconditions] for obtaining legal abortions in some places. "We recommend in the book that abortion should be legal in all states. When it isn't, I don't think Andrea Dworkin or anyone else should tell a desperate woman what she should or should not do." A January 17 New York Times Book Review praised the book, calling it "a sign of the times -- a warning sign." _A Woman's Book of Choice_ [sic] is available at New Words, in Cambridge.