I see all these roses and I miss my mom. She used to grow rose bushes in our yard in Hartford, Connecticut.Her favorites were yellow but she grew red ones too. My mom tried to surround herself and us with beauty. She dressed in lovely, colorful skirts and blouses,wore her makeup lightly, had her hair curled every week, and she decorated our walls with pictures she liked and could afford. She was a single mom raising three kids by herself after our dad died. And she didn’t earn all that much.But in the spring, summer and fall, she took us to Elizabeth Park to see the spectacular rose gardens and smell the flowers.
My mom was born in 1912, 8years before women’s suffrage in the U.S. Her hero was Margaret Sanger, that pioneer feminist who coined the term “birth control” and battled heroically for women’s lives and choices. Sanger opened birth control clinics in the 1920s and1930s and made contraception available though it was illegal. Sanger was jailed more than once for her activism on behalf of women’s lives.
When I was 16, and 17, and18, mom would periodically ask me, “Are you still a virgin?” I have thought for years that she was just being nosy, or concerned about my morality or something. But this past week, reading about the history of contraception andabortion in this country, I think she might have been doing something different.
This was 1957, 1958 and1959. Prescribing and dispensing contraception was illegal in Connecticut. In the years when birth control was illegal, my mom helped two of my aunts get illegal abortion. I think when my mom asked me this question she was assessing whether she needed to break the law and find a way to protect me from unwanted pregnancy and venereal disease.
I moved to New York when I was 18 and made some new friends. One of them needed an abortion. I didn’t know how to help her, but another of my new friends gave me the name of someone who did illegal abortions, and I passed the contact information on. What I didn’t know then I learned later. Thousands of people died in those years from botched up back-alley abortions, or self-induced abortions with coat hangers, or incomplete abortions from drinking toxic substances, or infections or bleeding from incomplete abortions that went untreated for fear of legal repercussions.
I got pregnant when I was19. The man I loved was a fallen away Catholic, with a love-hate relationship with the church. He didn’t believe in so-called artificial methods of birth control, and relied instead on the rhythm system. Like abstinence, it didn’t work.
For a while I was scared I was pregnant, but soon I was scared I wasn’t. I wanted a baby, probably for all the wrong reasons.
Barry and I married quickly, and in December of 1961 we had our daughter. I was delighted to be a mom but probably way too young. Thankfully, sometimes, the human spirit is resilient, and having survived all the mistakes in rearing her that I undoubtedly made, Kim is a lovely, creative and productive adult.
Despite the faithful work of many committed activists for reproductive choice and women’s health, when Kim was born, 1961, birth control was still illegal in many states. Legal abortion was rare and made only in the case of threats to women’s health and lives, but decisions about whether and when to bear children and what was a threat to a woman’s health and life were made by male politicians, judges and doctors. 1966 was a pivotal year when it became legal to dispense contraception in Connecticut. In 1973, the case of Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court, and women’s right to privacy and reproductive choice became the law of the land.
I miss my daughter, too. I wish we could be together today, but living far apart, it is rare to see each other on Mother’s Day. We call each other, and she usually sends me flowers,and often I send her some too. She is a great mom. She is honest with her daughter as I tried to be with her. But she offers Hannah more guidance and limits than my mom gave me or than I passed on to her. And I think that has helped Hannah to thrive and grow well.
Kim was 12 at the time of Roe v. Wade. I never made the automatic assumption she would marry and have children. She married when she was 29 and had her daughter when she was 33. Kim is of that generation of women who could take their reproductive choices almost for granted, who could get a legal prescription for contraception and choose a legal abortion if they felt they should.
In her book, Protectingthe Freedom to Choose, activist Kate Michelman emphasizes how difficult such a decision can be.
Kate Michelman trusts women to make choices about whether and when to have a child. She counters the charge that women get abortions for frivolous reasons with her certainty that women have the right, responsibility and ability to be moral decision-makers about their lives and choices. As a young woman, Kate Michelman and her three daughters had been abandoned by her husband. She discovered she was pregnant and knew in her soul that she could not care for a fourth child. But to get an abortion then meant to go before a judge and be declared mentally incapable of raising another child. It meant risking the loss of the three children she already had and loved deeply. Michelman had to do all of that. In the end, it also meant getting her ex-husband’s permission for the abortion, since state law required that permission. The entire experience was humiliating and it infantilized her as a moral decision-maker.
As bad as her experience was, she knew of many others who suffered far more and even died in the times when abortion and even contraception was illegal.
As Director of Pennsylvania Planned Parenthood and then Executive Director of NARAL pro-choice for about 20years, Michelman worked tirelessly to protect women’s right to choose. She made it her life’s work and mission to protect women’s right to make reproductive choices for their health and future and for the future of their families. Like my mother, Kate Michelman’s hero was Margaret Sanger, who was a prophet for the rights of women.
Never take a constitutional right for granted. The administrations of Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush proved how vulnerable we can be. Consistently, conservatives have eaten away at some rights we thought we’d won forever, poking holes in civil rights protections and in the promises of Roe v. Wade. The courts allowed states to legislate limits on Roe v. Wade. One such limit was the requirement that teens get permission from parents or a judge for an abortion.
Michelman tells the powerful story of one young teen who died from a botched illegal abortion almost two decades after Roe v. Wade. Afraid to tell her parents she was pregnant and fearful of going before a judge, the teenager lost so much blood that her veins collapsed.
Even if a teen is an incest victim, still some states require them to talk to their parents or a judge and some pregnant teens just can’t make themselves do that. They are too afraid.
In the 1980s anti-choice activists scared many doctors away from offering abortions. Planned Parenthood Clinics offered many health services to women and girls, including family planning, unbiased counseling, abortions,help with adoptions, support for continuing pregnancies, contraception, testing for venereal diseases, and ordinary obstetrical and gynecological care.
The clinics, doctors, nurses and counselors were harassed, threatened and bombed. There were instances of direct violence and even murder.
For several years I was the Pennsylvania co-president of Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. That organization has since changed its name to Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, honoring the many choices women need to be free to make: whether to have a child, raise a child, give a child over for adoption, terminate a pregnancy, or simply and most importantly, prevent a pregnancy with complete access to birth control information and methods. They work in coalitions alongside NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Organization for Women, and other agencies. These and other organizations joined together for years in an initiative called “Who Decides?”.
The Religious Right frames the choice of abortion as murder, yet do not support the lives of children once they are born.
The pro-choice coalition counters that women’s freedom to choose is a matter of rights, freedom, and moral agency. This pro-choice initiative, “Who Decides” helped pro-choice candidates win elections all over our nation.
Religious right organizations have been relentless in trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and attack women’s rights. Because of their efforts Medicaid funds cannot be used for an abortion. Clinics that get federal aid haven’t been able to offer full information nor tell clients what information they were withholding. Poor women have less access to safe and legal abortion and to information that will help them make choices. Fewer doctors are willing to offer abortion services. Even in Illinois most Planned Parenthood centers do abortion referrals but not abortions themselves. Pharmacists have sometimes refused to fill contraceptive prescriptions on the grounds of conscience, yet women are thwarted in following their own consciences. Statistics show that 90 percent of teens are sexually active at some time.
Yet many Illinois schools teach abstinence only. We know how well that works.
When Kate Michelman planned the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, I went to Washington to participate. Kate brought her 9-year-old granddaughter onto the stage with her. My granddaughter, Hannah, was just 10 then. Kate knew that she had done this work of protecting women’s choices for so long because of children like her granddaughter, whose lives and choices she vowed to protect.I am committed to this effort for my granddaughter, too.
One member of the Supreme Court, David Souter, has just resigned. Souter supported women’s reproductive choice in narrow 5 to 4 decisions. Today I urge our president to choose a justice who unabashedly supports Roe v. Wade. Our right of privacy and choice must not be further compromised away. I ask you to encourage him too, and to support organizations that advocate for women’s rights, women’s lives and women’s and family health.
On this Mother’s Day, let us re-join this struggle for the reproductive rights of the girls and women we love, our daughters, nieces,grandchildren, students, for our spouses and partners, for all the girls and women who, because they are human, deserve to make their own thoughtful reproductive choices and create their own deeply meaningful lives. Amen.
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