Lovejoy

About this book

Doctors performing surgery wearing bullet-proof vests. Nurses taking in homeless and hungry families who have no place to go. An accountant wielding a baseball bat as an angry mob threatens the clinic. A war zone? Maybe. The setting is the Lovejoy Surgicenter in Portland, Oregon, one of the nation's largest and most controversial abortion clinics. Journalist Peter Korn has spent the last year on the inside at Lovejoy, and the result is the first book to take an intimate look at the people involved in the abortion controversy. Lovejoy presents the gripping story of lives in conflict and lives redefined. Political dilemmas become agonizingly personal: An abortion doctor finds his name, address, and picture printed on a national "Deadly Dozen" hit list distributed by a violent antiabortion organization; a young woman, single and jobless, rushes from the operating room in tears, unable to go through with the abortion that logic tells her she desperately needs. Giving voice to all points of view - from Allene Klass, the founder and administrator of Lovejoy, to Shelley Shannon, a small-town housewife now in prison for shooting a Kansas abortion doctor and bombing a series of clinics, including Lovejoy - this compelling and important book puts a dramatically human face on the moral debate that continues to rip apart the American social fabric.