Player of choice: how ex-NARAL head Kate Michelman learned to play by Washington's rules--and was taken down by them.

• Author: Saletan, William
• Position: On Political Books

With Liberty and Justice For All: A Life Spent Protecting the Right to Choose By Kate Michelman Hudson Street Press, $24.95.

Twenty years ago, Kate Michelman came to Washington to take the helm of the National Abortion Rights Action League. She inherited a movement that had won the right to abortion in the courts but couldn't defend it at the polls. Her adversaries controlled the presidency, the Senate, and, within two years, an apparent majority on the Supreme Court.

By 1993, Michelman and her allies had turned the tide of war. Pro-life politicians were losing elections, defecting, or assuring voters that abortion was constitutionally untouchable. The court had flinched from overturning Roe v. Wade. Pro-choicers held the White House and Congress. If Michelman had retired then, her memoir might have been a tale of triumph. Instead, it's a plea. Pro-lifers have captured every branch of government and enacted the first federal abortion ban. The Democratic Party is rethinking its position. "The arc of history is bending into a circle," she laments.

How did this happen?

The first thing you have to understand is where Michelman came from. She was a stay-at-home Catholic wife. She bore three children in three years by relying on the rhythm method for birth control. Then her world fell apart: Her husband left her; she found out she was pregnant with a fourth child; she aborted the pregnancy; she went on welfare. Gradually, she got back on her feet. Trained in child development, she became an administrator of social service nonprofits, going from child care to family planning to abortion. The sequence is important. Michelman ended up in the abortion rights debate because she saw what unwanted births did to mothers and kids.

Years ago, Michelman explained this to me for a book I was writing about her and the movement. She wanted someone to write her version of the story. I demurred and wrote my own, but I see in her book the same person I saw then: a gentle idealist toughened by Washington, making brutally rational decisions but determined to see the best in people. She was treated badly by doctors--particularly the hospital panel that interrogated her before granting her pre-Roe abortion--but she defended them against restrictive legislation and harassment. She was treated badly by men, especially her first husband, but she defended all the harassers and adulterers--Bill Clinton, Bob Packwood, Chuck Robb--who stood with her for abortion rights.

The...