To the editor:
I share the anger, despair and sorrow with all of us whose lives will be changed by the current Supreme Court consideration of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. I am stunned by the hypocrisy of the Justices and lawmakers who give credence to the false narratives that have brought us to this moment in the United States.
I am old enough to remember what pre-Roe v. Wade life was like in this country. I have friends my age who became sterile because of botched abortions. I also have friends who had safe abortions done by licensed gynecologists in major U.S. city hospitals, their medical records substantiating that the D & C was necessary because of an incomplete miscarriage. For almost 50 years, women — my friends, my daughters, our granddaughters — have enjoyed education, built their careers and lived their lives without fear of an unplanned pregnancy bringing their lives to a screeching halt.
In 1973, just after the Roe v. Wade decision, I became a Planned Parenthood educator. The conflict to end this new constitutional guarantee for women began at once. It has never been a fair fight. Anointing themselves as the moral majority, the Right to Life tried to physically prevent women from access to the services they had just been promised. They blocked the entrances to abortion clinics with screaming lines of protesters. According to Rand, between 1973–2003 there were “300 acts of extreme violence, including arson, bombings, murders and butyric acid attacks.” In one breathtaking act of hypocrisy that I know of, one of my colleagues in a major city shared with me that the local president of Right to Life brought his daughter to the rear door of her clinic for an abortion, then resumed his place picketing against that medical facility.
Since Roe, there has been a deliberate movement to change the language commonly used to describe the process of human pregnancy. Neither medicine nor the dictionary, or even the Bible, define the result of fertilization as a “child” or “baby.” Here are the stages of pregnancy. The fertilized egg begins its journey to the uterus [womb] as a zygote. Once it implants in the uterine lining it becomes an embryo. Around 9 weeks after the last period, the embryo becomes a fetus until it is delivered. Some cultures believe that life begins with quickening — the experience of feeling movement from the fetus — which occurs around 13–16 weeks. As medicine has become more sophisticated, the time it takes for a fetus to become viable, or live outside the uterus, is now between 22–24 weeks. Life, as defined in the dictionary, is the period between birth and death — in other words, from the time the fetus is born, at which moment it becomes a child.
The Right to Life movement and other religious and political anti-choice individuals have changed the vocabulary around pregnancy to anthropomorphize the fetus and thereby strengthen the validity of their argument.
For the purposes of the current Supreme Court argument, Justice Alito uses this artificially constructed definition to support his personal belief that abortion is, in effect, murder. He and his originalist colleagues point to the distinction that there is no mention in the Constitution of abortion. There is also no mention of women from the founding fathers — remember, “All men are created equal.” There is no mention of people of color, or of slavery. We all know that these equal men were all white landowners. And they were the only Americans who could vote. While some states gave women the right to vote in the 19th century, it took the 19th Amendment, passed on August 18, 1920, for white women to gain universal suffrage. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Black women gained the same right. Can we then assume that, as a natural progress toward basing all laws on the original Constitution, women will not only lose the right to control their own bodies but lose the right to vote, as well?
The matter of abortion has nothing to do with religious belief nor the well-being of a woman and potential child. It is about economics and power. Those who hold legislative power control the flow of money in our economy. Roe enabled women to own their reproductive decisions, and build careers on an equal footing with their male counterparts. It was the end of “keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant,” the end of white males’ inviolate right to be in charge of everything.
How many of the sanctimonious Lifers actually care about children who are unwanted for a myriad of reasons and have thus adopted one or more? Why aren’t the hypocritical Lifers devoting their efforts to funding research into perfect contraception so that women can easily and affordably determine when the time is right for them to become pregnant? When will family life education provide factual, experiential curricula, grounded in proven methodology so that our children have the tools and information they need to make choices that enable them to succeed? How dare these two-faced, outrageous men decide that women who are raped or are victims of incest must carry the pregnancy that results from these crimes.
How many women will have to die because they cannot access safe, affordable reproductive care?
I respect the right of any woman who believes abortion is wrong for her, even though I am passionately pro-choice. What keeps people who share anti-choice beliefs from affording me and those who share my beliefs the same respect?
During their Judicial Committee hearings for their appointments to the Supreme Court, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh affirmed that they hold with stare decisis — precedent — and therefore, would uphold Roe. The coming Court decision will confirm them as men of their word or liars. If the latter, they must be held accountable.
Louise Yohalem
Mill River
