New Biography Chronicles Fifty Years of One Woman’s Fight for Life in Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky – Writers of the West announces the release of Fifty Years in the Trenches: Margie Montgomery and the Fight for Life, a biography written by son Schu Montgomery that documents the extraordinary life and legacy of one of Kentucky’s most consequential pro-life advocates.
From a comfortable suburban life in Louisville to the front lines of one of America’s most divisive political battles, Margie Montgomery spent five decades as the founding Executive Director of Kentucky Right to Life, the face and voice of the pro-life movement across the Commonwealth. She served on the Board of Directors of the National Right to Life Committee for forty years, acting as its secretary and a member of the Executive Committee. She lived to witness the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade — the victory she had spent her life working toward.
Fifty Years in the Trenches is the story of how she got there.
About the Book
Written by Schu Montgomery, a broadcast journalist and Margie’s son, the biography spans her entire life — from her childhood in East Orange, New Jersey, shaped by a physician father who made house calls at three in the morning and a nurse mother who modeled quiet strength, through her education at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania, her marriage to her husband after a transatlantic courtship by letters, and her arrival in Louisville as a young wife and mother who had no idea that a 1973 Supreme Court decision was about to redirect the course of her life.
When Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were handed down, Margie Montgomery was a southern suburban wife involved in her church, her children’s activities, and her golf club. She became a founder of Kentucky Right to Life and never looked back.
The book traces her transformation from volunteer to statewide leader, her decades lobbying in Frankfort, her relationships with politicians across party lines including Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli and Governor Brereton Jones alongside Republican leaders she pressed and challenged in equal measure. It documents her personal encounter with Governor Ronald Reagan at a 1980 campaign event, her attendance at White House bill-signing ceremonies during the Bush administration, her receipt of the Guardian Angel Award from National Right to Life, and the grassroots lit drops, door knocks, and precinct walks that made the difference in races most people never heard of.
It is also a son’s portrait of his mother — her humor, her faith, her Rosemont College journalism career, her love of theater and music, the Ireland trip they took together to trace her Irish roots, and the thread that ran from her early ambitions as a writer through to everything she built.
What Sets This Book Apart
Fifty Years in the Trenches gives readers a ground-level view of the pro-life movement as lived experience rather than political abstraction. Margie Montgomery was not a professional politician. She was not wealthy or well-connected when she started. She was a woman of deep faith and stubborn conviction who built an organization from her kitchen table, raised funds through creative direct-mail campaigns in an era before the internet, and spent decades being taken seriously in rooms where women often were not.
The book covers fifty years of American political history through the eyes of someone who was present for much of it — not as an observer but as a participant. From the earliest days of the movement after 1973 through the Reagan Revolution, the Clinton years, the Bush White House ceremonies, and finally the Dobbs decision in 2022, Margie Montgomery was there.
Her son writes with the intimacy of someone who was alongside her for many of those moments and the journalistic discipline of a professional broadcaster who knows how to tell a story.
About the Author
Schu Montgomery is the son of Margie Montgomery. A journalist by training who spent a decade in television and radio reporting from Kentucky, he was personally involved in the Right to Life movement alongside his mother for decades — walking precincts, producing media, and bearing witness to fifty years of a cause that shaped both their lives.
Publication Details
Title: Fifty Years in the Trenches: Margie Montgomery and the Fight for Life Author: Schu Montgomery Publisher: Writers of the West Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and major booksellers worldwide: https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Years-Trenches-Margie-Montgomery-ebook/dp/B0H4ZDBS3Q
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Website: https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Years-Trenches-Margie-Montgomery-ebook/dp/B0H4ZDBS3Q
