USA TODAY International Edition
To the women who support abortion rights, it’s time to rise
Republicans who want to end abortion and are seeking office must answer questions
Politico published a week ago a leaked draft decision written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for the apparent majority ready to abolish a woman’s right to an abortion. Within minutes, my editor and I began texting.
This news was what many of us have feared for years. If the Supreme Court reverses or guts Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, America’s most vulnerable women will lose their right to safe and legal abortions. In many states, this will happen immediately. Did I want to weigh in?
Not yet, I decided. I have been writing about right- wing efforts to eliminate abortion rights for more than two decades. Plenty were already responding, most notably Dahlia Lithwick, my wise and eloquent friend whose column for Slate posted shortly before midnight:
“If this draft opinion becomes precedent of the court, the results will be catastrophic for women, particularly for women in the states that will immediately make abortion unlawful, and in those places, particularly for young women, poor women, and Black and brown women who will not have the time, resources, or ability to travel out of state. The court’s staggering lack of regard for its own legitimacy is exceeded only by its vicious disregard for the real consequences for real pregnant people who are 14 times more likely to die in childbirth than from terminating a pregnancy. The Mississippi law – the law this opinion is upholding – has no exception for rape or incest. We will immediately see a raft of bans that give rights to fathers, including sexual assailants, and punish with evermore cruelty and violence women who miscarry or do harm to their fetuses. The days of pretending that women’s health and safety were of paramount concern are over.”
I needed a good, long walk in the night. I am lucky to have an editor who understood why.
Imagine an entire part of your body being declared government property, with neither your input nor your permission. Now, imagine it is one of the most intimate parts of your physical being. It has been my experience that most men who want to control what a woman can do with her uterus shut down when asked to discuss the many roles of this sex organ. The very word – uterus – repulses them. They prefer to call them wombs, as if it’s just housing.
Perhaps this reflects a desire to believe in their own immaculate conception. Treating a woman’s uterus as government property makes it easier to deny the fact of their mothers’ sexuality.
In 2004, an angry male reader called me after I had written a column about how many Catholic women had reached out over the years to talk about their abortions. He accused me of “trying to sexualize” Catholic women like his beloved mother. After a bit of questioning, I discovered he was one of 10 children. He did not appreciate my suggesting his mother might have viewed sex as more than just her duty.
Lectures and reality
Like so many men who weighed in that week, this was the passage of my column that had offended him:
The most painful conversations I’ve had about abortion are with Catholic women. They describe their horror as church leaders lectured that, should their own lives ever be threatened by an unplanned pregnancy, well, they’ve lived their lives. It’s the baby’s turn. And they cry over the guilt.
Heather Harrington, an abortion counselor at PreTerm, said many Catholic patients have told her, “I know I can’t have this baby, but I’m going to hell now. I will not go to heaven.”
“I feel so horribly sad for them,” Harrington said. “They feel they can’t receive any comfort or solace at their churches.”
Back to that angry reader: Do you see any mention there of the sexuality of his mother? Of course not. This is the rightwing pivot. They never want to be held accountable for the impact of their beliefs. They want to shame us for ours.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to answer reporters’ questions about the dangerous consequences.
Reporter No. 1: “You spent decades trying to remake the court, overturn Roe. You’re possibly single- handedly responsible for the 6- 3 majority. So do you take personal credit for abortion rights likely to go away from millions of people in this country?”
McConnell: “I think the story today is an effort by someone on the inside to discredit the institution of the senate.”
Reporter No. 2. “Democrats say the prospect of Roe being overturned and some of the more restrictive trigger laws coming into effect without exemptions for rape and incest will shock the public and motivate voters in November. What is your response to that? How does this change the midterms?”
McConnell: “Well, that’s not the story for today. The story for today is what I just said.”
Reporter No. 3: “If Roe is struck down, do you see a need for federal abortion restriction legislation in Congress?”
McConnell: ( Chuckles) “Look, all of this puts the cart before the horse. … You need, it seems to me, excuse the lecture, to concentrate on what the news is today. Not a leaked draft but the fact that the draft was leaked.”
Of course Republicans are worried about how gutting Roe will blow up their chances in November. So they try to divert our attention, as if we are puppies briefly distracted by squirrels.
This ends now.
Every Republican who wants to end abortion and is running for office this year must answer: Do you support exceptions for rape and incest? What about women who might die if they are forced to carry to term?
A recent poll shows Americans, by almost 2 to 1, want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade. Of my baby boom friends, that includes every one of us.
6 months till midterm elections
Like most women of my generation, my life is a story of conquests. I’ve spent a lot of years exceeding the low expectations of others, most of them men. Practice, is how I see it now. We’ve been training for this moment all our lives.
Inevitably, I will hear from some women who want me to know they oppose a woman’s right to abortion. Every so often, one of these women expresses the regret that my mother didn’t abort me. Turns out, even they have their exceptions to forced pregnancy.
This is an appeal to most women in my generation, who support abortion rights. We must stand loud and tall for the right we got to take for granted. I’m not interested in criticizing women who have waited until now to join the cause. I’m here to recruit, not to shame.
We’ve got six months until Election Day. It’s never too late to give a damn.