BOOK REVIEW: Dennis Di Mauro.  A Love for Life: Christianity's Consistent Protection of the Unborn.  Eugene, Oregon:  Wipf & Stock, 2008. Peperback.  163 pages.  $20. 

January 22 has come and gone for another year. For many this date has no special significance, but for more the than 300,000 people in Washington D.C. who turned out to participate in the annual March For Life and for many others across the nation this date marks the remembrance of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. For the last 36 years Christians have been gathering together to let the lawmakers in D.C. know that there are people out there who care about life from its beginning stages and that they are not satisfied with current legislation that contradicts the natural law of life.

It is not just for the last 36 years, however, that Christians have been speaking out against abortion. In his book A Love for Life Dennis DiMauro outlines the case that Christianity has made against abortion since the earliest times. His short and eminently readable book walks the reader through the consistent pro-life position of Christianity starting with historical Jewish beliefs all the way up through current denominational statements on abortion. Historically, all early church leaders spoke out against the dangers of abortion. It has only been within the last 30-40 years that some church bodies have broken with tradition and begun to advocate for pro-choice legislation. Even where church denominational statements may show support for pro-choice legislation DiMauro painstakingly proves that within each major church body there are current leaders that are fighting to protect the rights of women and unborn children by working to overturn current rulings that allow abortion.

Christians can often become entangled in the media that surrounds us and says that the way of “me” is better than the way of “we”. Maybe we begin to think that we are wrong and that it is the right of a woman to choose whether or not she completes her pregnancy. Denominations may falter under pressure to break from a tradition that upholds the sanctity of life and forget that social justice demands justice for all people-especially those that cannot speak for themselves (p. 60). A Love for Life is a good reminder to Christians everywhere that historically our church has stood for life in all its stages and that the majority of Christendom today still feels that life is to be valued in all its stages beginning to end.

Jessica Sauer is a stay at home mother in the Bronx, New York.