[Oregan Governor] Kulongoski's wife speaks out on abortion

Two noted Oregon women who prefer privacy to the public stage gave intensely personal speeches Saturday night on the importance of keeping abortion legal at a time of shifting political values.

Mary Oberst, wife of Gov. Ted Kulongoski, and Portland writer Ursula K. Le Guin recalled before an audience of about 400 people the days when abortions were outlawed, and women lost jobs, got kicked out of school and were put at risk after getting pregnant.

Oberst, addressing an abortion rights banquet in Portland, said younger women today don't fully appreciate what it was like before the U.S. Supreme Court made abortion legal 31 years ago in the famous Roe v. Wade decision.

They don't know "the fear, the danger, the loss of control over the most private decisions," said Oberst, an attorney who works for the Oregon State Bar. "We don't ever want to go back to those days."

The speech was part of the "Celebration for Choice" sponsored by Oregon Naral, and it was a rare keynote address for Oregon's first lady. Although she has given a handful of speeches to large audiences, she generally has kept a low profile since her husband took over as governor one year ago.

"It's a tough business," he said. "She's a very private person. But there are some things she believes in very, very strongly, and this is one of them."

Both Oberst and Le Guin told stories about how abortion laws affected their lives, either directly or indirectly. Both said legalized abortions allow women the freedom to dream and determine their own destinies.

Oberst said she attended a Catholic high school that had no courses on birth control. Two of the brightest students became pregnant and had to drop out. Oberst said she took over a job one of the girls held as a cashier at a local carwash.

"That brief carwash experience made me more grateful than ever that I was headed for college," she said. "More importantly, it made me more aware than ever that in a country without choice, a young woman's dreams can die very quickly."

Le Guin, best-selling author of "The Left Hand of Darkness" and many other novels, said she had an abortion as a young woman, and has been a strong supporter of abortion rights ever since.

Like Oberst, she said it's difficult to convey the deep changes that occurred for women over the three decades since Roe v. Wade, the federal case that legalized abortion. She compared being pregnant and 20 years old in the 1950s to living under fundamentalist Islamic law.

If she hadn't disobeyed the law and had the abortion, Le Guin said, she never would have went to college or met her husband as the two were sailing on a ship for England as Fulbright scholars.

"I would have been an unwed mother with a 3-year-old in California," she said, most likely living off her parents and "unmarriageable. Another useless woman."

That means her three wanted children would never have been born, Le Guin said, choking up. "I can't bear the thought."

Both Le Guin and Oberst, as well as other speakers at the banquet, emphasized the precariousness of the nation's abortion laws. For the first time in years, Congress approved a law banning certain types of abortion procedures, they said, and the push to continue weakening abortion rights continues at both the state and national levels.

The biggest concern, they said, is that President Bush will appoint an anti-abortion rights judge to the Supreme Court, which could provide a majority to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Oberst described her husband as an "unwavering guardian" of abortion rights but cautioned rights supporters to remain vigilant with each election.

The Left has apparently decided to counter the Silent No More campaign by bringing out all the "Glad I Aborted" ladies, like the one in the Boston Globe magazine who killed her child in a partial-birth abortion. I gather we are supposed to feel sympathy for these people, but I can't imagine how anybody could care whether Ursula Le Guin "would have went to college."

It's all too easy for some people to justify murder. They are called socio-psychopaths I believe. Maybe someone could "correct" or "amplify" the record regarding their problem.

We really have to get some sort of "mind wipe" technology in order so that we can get rid of these personalities without destroying their bodies.

I am unbelievably saddened to read the statement of Ursula Le Guin, one of the finest fantasy and science fiction writers alive, to the ridiculous effect that being pregnant in the Fifties was like living under Islamic law.

Abortion is not about "choice." With the exception of rape, pregnancy is a condition a woman incurs as the result of a prior choice. To inflict her regrets for her behavior on a helpless bystander -- the developing baby -- is so selfish and cruel that it calls into question whether she is fit company for decent people.

I'd have expected someone smart enough to write The Left Hand Of Darkness and The Dispossessed, two undeniable classics of modern fiction, to be able to grasp that.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

"The speech was part of the "Celebration for Choice" sponsored by Oregon Naral, and it was a rare keynote address for Oregon's first lady. Although she has given a handful of speeches to large audiences, she generally has kept a low profile since her husband took over as governor one year ago."

It is amazing that this women, who has chosen to keep a low profile, speaks up on the issue of abortion. With all the issues before the people of Oregon - a women's right to kill her unborn child - is the issue that she impels her to address an audience. What is it that drives a person to make their mark on society as a supporter of infanticide? What kind of person wakes up every day and perseveres to assure the most unborn children as possible are put to death?

The problem with these stories is that I understand why women have abortions and why many want it to be legal. However, when I hear someone say that having a baby might have ruined their career the only impression they are leaving is one of self centered shallowness. The argument for abortion is a practical one and when they try to make it sound like it is idealistic they look like fools.

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