Let me start out by saying that if you're concerned about whether this novella is going to be too Pro-Choice or too Anti-Abortion, you've already missed the point and should probably read something else. Now that we have that out of the way...

Right to Life starts out with a woman being abducted on her way to an abortion clinic, and nothing really good happens to her after that. Ketchum handles the story with the brutal realism he's known for, and the only real flaw with it overall is probably the length, although I would be hard-pressed to argue that Right to Life would actually benefit from a novel-length treatment. It's hard not to compare this novella to The Girl Next Door, which is unfair considering the complexity of characters and events in the latter, and the unconscious comparison of the two works is probably the only reason that Right to Life failed to have a significant impact on me. Ketchum achieves what he set out to do, and does it well, but ultimately doesn't take the subject matter anywhere new if you are already familiar with his other work, especially his reoccurring theme of captive women (The Girl Next Door, The Woman). It's good Ketchum, don't get me wrong, but it's not the one you're going to recommend to others first when they tell you they've never read his work.

The two short stories included appear somewhat inferior - once again, perhaps due only to his masterful handling of novel-length pieces - with Brave Girl feeling more like a cheap Andrew Vachss knockoff, and Returns loses it's impact by mirroring a sentimentality already displayed ten pages ago in the ending of Right to Life. All things considered, they probably should have been aborted, and Right to Life released as an only child. ( )

Good but not as good as The Girl Next Door ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?ID=250 ( )