We are once again faced with the reality of what a war on women looks like, and it’s ugly. The same old story. Women are the ones who get pregnant, and men are the ones who feel entitled to make laws that govern the privacy of our bodies and reproductive rights. With the debate now raging across our country, a new wave of state abortion laws takes us back to the dark ages with a vengeance.
Something is very wrong with this picture in 2019 almost 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. In 1973 that law took abortion out of the alleys and bathrooms of my mother’s and grandmothers’ generations, and opened the doors to safety in medical settings and reproductive freedom for women. Safety and choice. Two key words in the continuing abortion battle that should no longer be a battle at all. Remember them because their threat of disappearance is greater than it has been in decades.
Before Roe v. Wade, women who were desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy with little choice would resort to the worst imaginable scenarios. Coat hangers. Knitting needles. Scissors. Swallowing almost any toxic substance thought to create a self-induced abortion. Women who were married used these things in an effort to abort. Women who were single used these things in an effort to abort. Women who were raped used these things in an effort to abort. Women who were victims of incest used these things in an effort to abort. Tragically, too often those actions killed them or damaged them for life. Personal anguish met restrictive personal laws, and cries for help were repeatedly silenced.
The death tolls from illegal abortions were staggering. In 1965, illegal abortion accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth. And these are only the numbers officially reported. The estimated number of illegal abortions in the 1950’s and 1960’s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million a year.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned, it will not stop abortions from taking place. Women’s lives, mentally, physically and financially are the ones at risk if forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. We know from all of the years before legalization what will happen. Women who can afford to go somewhere safe and have the procedure done, will do so. Women who can’t afford to go outside of their home area will be forced to take matters into their own hands.
The attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade has been emboldened by the master of moral authority, President Donald Trump. He is a man who will use and manipulate any issue to meet his own needs when convenient. At the time he was playing around with women in New York City while married, he was a strong supporter of “choice” when it came to abortion. In a 1999 interview with Tim Russert Trump said:
“I’m very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for, I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject, but still I just believe in choice.”
Fast forward to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign where he found abortion a winning issue among Evangelical Christians. It created a newly reformed man who saw the light of victory if he became an ardent supporter of the anti-abortion movement. Trump firmly committed to the appointment of Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Trump nominated conservative Bret Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Remember him? Mr. Pure and Clean who played around in college, but never let that interfere with his determination during confirmation hearings to throw a credible and respected woman, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, under the bus when she accused him of sexual assault. His subsequent appointment opened the right wing doors emboldening staunch anti-abortion Republicans to line up state legislation for potential Supreme Court review. The goal: overturn Roe v. Wade.
Where is it written that laws should only govern the reproductive rights of women? Nowhere. Should a man’s penis and reproductive ability be allowed to exist without laws dealing with the impact it can have? Perhaps not.
There are approximately 500,000 vasectomies performed on men each year. It’s a procedure that makes it near impossible for a man to impregnate a woman, and is performed privately in a doctor’s office or even in Planned Parenthood’s medical offices. It’s reproductive health after all, and sometimes can be helpful to women who don’t want children or any more children. But men have a choice when they decide to have a vasectomy, and no one is threatening to take that choice away.
There are no anti-vasectomy protestors lined up when a man walks into a medical office to have a vasectomy performed. No one screams “you’re killing a child” at a man walking into a facility to have the procedure, or shoves a picture of a fetus in his face, or forces him to wait and think about it before the procedure is performed. All of these things can and do happen to women going to clinics that perform abortions. A man’s reproductive rights have always been about the man’s decision, not a court of law telling him what to do.
I’ve been reporting on this story for a long, long time. As a young reporter in New York City, I covered the 1970 passage of the New York State law legalizing abortion three years before Roe v. Wade was enacted. Not long after, Sarah Weddington, the young attorney representing Jane Roe before the Supreme Court, and I shared a head table at a woman’s event. She spoke of her historic experience. I received an award for a television news series called “Rape”. We were living at a time of critical change for women, and looked to a future that would continue making life better and more equal for women.
We cannot go backward.
If abortion is against your religious or moral beliefs, no one is telling you to have the procedure. But millions of other women in this country need to continue having the legal right to make their own decisions when it comes to pregnancy. No group of religious or political extremists has a right to force their thinking on me or any other woman. I’ll respect you if you respect me.