Posted on 02/05/2006 5:52:28 AM PST by Incorrigible
WASHINGTON -- "It's over," Kate Michelman sighed in a tone that did little to hide her feelings about the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Going on Defensive |
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| Kate Michelman, who led NARAL Pro-Choice America for 20 years, says advocates of women's reproductive rights have become complacent and sees the confirmation of Samuel Alito to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as a wake-up call. |
Alito and John Roberts' nominations to the court were supposed to lead to pitched battles with filibusters, "nuclear options" and millions spent waging election-style campaigns to win the public's support.
Michelman has been fighting such battles for three decades, first as head of Planned Parenthood of Harrisburg, Pa., and then as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America for nearly 20 years.
The latest fight ended with little more than a whimper this week, as Democrats and moderate Republicans failed to mount a serious challenge to Alito's confirmation.
"It's just profound disappointment that we've arrived at this moment that the right wing has been dreaming of and planning for and working toward for 25 years," said Michelman, 63.
She said she's angry at conservative Republicans for trying to take away women's reproductive rights, at complacent abortion rights supporters, and at pro-choice lawmakers who didn't fight the nominations hard enough.
"It seems like there is always a trading off of principle for politics," Michelman said.
Michelman said she hopes Alito's confirmation will serve as a wake-up call on abortion, women's rights and privacy rights.
"If anything, I think this will be a moment where people will finally realize that having been complacent over the last few years in the belief that it couldn't happen, it's time," she said in an interview.
Promoting her new book, "With Liberty and Justice for All: A Life Spent Protecting the Right to Choose," Michelman hopes to raise awareness and inspire young people as she lectures at college campuses around the country.
"I wanted to remind people through my own personal story of what it was like -- the indignity, the humiliation that women suffered," said Michelman, who was required to convince a hospital review panel that she was an unfit mother in order to gain permission for an abortion in 1969.
Turning the political tide won't be easy, she said, with conservatives taking control of the White House and Congress and shifting the judiciary. She predicted a gradual shift by the Supreme Court that will restrict rights of women, minorities and people with disabilities.
"I have to give credit to the right wing, (which) has been very deliberate, has been focused, has had a plan of action. It's held its course very steady, it's held its candidates to a high standard of adherence to their views," Michelman said.
Abortion rights supporters need to be as disciplined, she said.
The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America in 2003. Michelman retired as the group's president in 2004 to care for her ailing husband but promised to remain active in the abortion rights movement.
Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said at the time: "It reminds me of the old country and Western song, `How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"'
Among abortion rights activists, Michelman is still a hero. Men and women swarmed around her at NARAL's annual dinner in Washington, posing for pictures and offering hugs. The event was on the same day Alito was confirmed.
"You're wonderful," said Janet Denlinger of Fort Lee, N.J., wrapping her arms around Michelman. "I had been a closet activist for many years; then I met Kate."
Michelman's own experience with abortion, which she kept secret for years, still motivates her. She had three daughters and had never given much thought to the issue of abortion, let alone about having one, when her first husband left her and she learned she was pregnant. She tried to commit suicide.
Relatives and friends say she is intimately involved in the lives of her five grandchildren despite a still-hectic schedule. She used a taxi ride from her Washington home to the NARAL dinner for a quick telephone conversation about horseback riding with her 10-year-old granddaughter.
"Here's this pro-choice woman who has been labeled the baby killer and she is telling her daughter that I am doing the most important thing I can do," said daughter Lisa Gregory, recounting her mother's frequent praise for her child-rearing.
Friends and family members describe Michelman as an introvert who dresses in sweats and loves to garden at her other home in central Pennsylvania, whose location she asked not to be identified because of frequent death threats.
"She'll go to a party and go and hang in the corner and be very invisible," said Gregory, who teaches chemistry at Gettysburg College. "But yet when she is faced in front of crowds she has an incredible poise about her."
"I like to organize to make things happen," Michelman said. "I never thought about myself or planned to be out in the public limelight. That's been hard for me. I'm really kind of shy. I don't want it to be about me."
Feb. 3, 2006
(Brett Lieberman can be contacted at brett.lieberman@newhouse.com)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
What? Are you advocating PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY??? How DARE you suggest such a thing! It's a womans body, and they can be as irresponsible with it as they want to, and, in an ideal world, everyone else should pay for it.
She will have more to whine about in the years to come, as muslims demand special sharia law courts in America, because American courts do not respect the rights of muslims (males), so they need their own. Of course, lefties will support such a "multiculteral move", which will turn back the clock centuries as far as woman's rights go for any American woman stupid enough to marry one.
No, she won't do that, because killing babies is big $$$,and
she is doing her master work .
"Women's reproductive rights." What does that mean? We know what such flowery fascist language means. It means abortion.
She's selling a book to the morons.
It was called a rancor.
The ENTIRE feminist movement is based on lies - big, little, new old, necessary, unnecessary.
It's pathological that way.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Repent, Kate...you still have time.
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