Posted on 01/07/2016 3:00:29 PM PST by presidio9
More than 110 prominent members of the legal profession shared stories about their abortions with the U.S. Supreme Court this week to try and persuade it to rule against a Texas law that they say limits access to the procedures.
Their stories are part of a campaign encouraging women to talk openly about their experiences. In addition to the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court (PDF), women have also been sharing their stories online.
"People are just hungry for breaking the silence that has sadly, unfortunately surrounded abortion for years and years and years by speaking out about their own abortion stories," said Kelly Baden, director of state advocacy for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the abortion clinics challenging the Texas law before the Supreme Court.
Baden said the center felt it was important that women's personal stories be part of the strategy in the Supreme Court case.
The case, Whole Woman's Health v. Cole, centers on whether a Texas law limits access if it requires doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and providers to comply with the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. A decision in the case could affect state abortion laws across the country.
The women behind the brief hail from a variety of legal backgrounds, and say they all have had abortions. They include partners at major law firms, attorneys for public organizations and law professors at well-known universities, among others.
"Amici obtained their abortions at different ages and life stages, under a variety of circumstances, and for a range of reasons both medical and personal, but they are united in their strongly held belief that they would not have been able to achieve the personal or professional successes they have achieved were it not for their ability to obtain safe and legal abortions," according to the brief.
Susan Katz Hoffman, a shareholder at Littler Mendelson, was among those who joined the brief, though she noted that she did so as an individual not as a representative of her law firm.
She said she had not previously shared her story. But she felt it was important to speak out because of the current threat to women's reproductive rights.
The Supreme Court has also agreed to hear a case about whether religious not-for-profits should have a role in helping employees get contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And Planned Parenthood has faced backlash from conservatives in recent months after an anti-abortion group released videos showing Planned Parenthood staff talking about providing fetal remains for research. Even Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman has come under attack for saying in recent days that women in their 20s and 30s have become complacent when it comes to abortion rights. Liberal group Credo has called for her resignation.
"There just seems to be more and more attacks on the ability of women to control their own lives," Katz Hoffman said.
Elizabeth Sepper, an associate professor of law at Washington University, said personal stories from female attorneys might be an effective strategy both from legal and emotional standpoints.
For one, she said, their stories bear witness to the court's opinion in a previous abortion case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, that women's equal participation in society depends on their access to abortion.
Speaking to Justice Kennedy
Also, she said, the fact that the women are involved in the legal profession might help the justices better relate to them.
"Like all the amici on both sides, these women are speaking to Justice Kennedy, the swing vote," Sepper said. "These women, for better or worse, are the types of people that Justice Kennedy relates to."
Not everyone, however, agrees that the women's stories will help the abortion clinics win the case.
Kerri Kupec, legal communications director for the the conservative Christian not-for-profit Alliance Defending Freedom, believes the stories have little to do with the case before the court.
"To me, this is a safety and health standards issue, and while personal stories are very important, that's not really what this case about," Kupec said.
Those behind the Texas lawsuit say the state law would limit access to abortion by forcing many clinics to close. Kupec, however, said if so many clinics are "subpar in their health and safety protocol," that should be the larger concern.
Either way, personal stories about abortion are likely to keep coming, especially as arguments in the Whole Woman case near. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 2.
Efforts such as the 1 in 3 Campaign, the Draw The Line campaign, the My Abortion My Life campaign and the recent Twitter hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion have been encouraging women to share their experiences.
Robin Fretwell Wilson, a law professor and director of the family law and policy program at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, said the campaigns are trying to put a human face on the issue.
"This takes a page from the gay rights movement," Fretwell Wilson said, “which has been wildly successful.â€
Hold on, if that top chart is accurate, then blacks were jumping from the Republican party to the Democrat party in droves WHILE the Democrat party was fighting tooth and nail to keep segregation in the south?!?! I thought the jump came after the civil rights era died down.
I see it, I just don’t understand it. Some kind of Stockholm Syndrome?
Yup.
It’s not ironic. It’s by plan. Just like immigration, there is plenty for the rat and gop politicians to love when it comes to infanticide.
By comparison, only about 75% of Catholics voted for JFK.
Regardless of who the Republican candidate is, less than 60% of women will vote for Hillary Clinton.
It appears we are to only marvel at the law degree - or the successful career.
We aren’t to bring up the bad decision that caused them to turn on their own babies like rattlesnakes.
Sixty million dismembered, murdered babies had no comment...
Irrelevant. Even babies conceived in rape, whose mothers did not have control over their bodies, should not be aborted. The argument needs to be framed in terms of human life.
The northern segment of the Democratic Party came out in favor of civil rights in 1948, at the convention which nominated Harry Truman (leading Strom Thurmond to bold the Democratic Party). The southern Democrats fought the civil rights movement well into the 1960s.
Correct. "Exceptions" are intellectually dishonest.
Either we are talking a human life, or we aren't.
If we are not, of course the mothers decision on what to do with her own body trumps all other considerations.
If we are, all exceptions are tantamount to murder for political convenience.
This debate has always been based on a philosophical understanding of the moment of personhood. The good news is that medical and technological advances are making it more and more difficult, morally, to push that moment later into the presidency.
I happen to subscribe to the notion that life begins at conception, but I recognize that I am in the minority there.
In the next generation, artificial wombs will become a reality, at which point the viability argument becomes irrelevant. At that point I expect that most of society will favor life, but that there will be a strong element of the pro abortion crowd who will argue that the power of life and death still resides solely with the mother.
If the freedom regarding the decision belongs solely to the woman, why doesn’t the sole responsibility for the decision belong to the woman?
And, in the interest of equal time, let’s hear from an abortion survivor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPF1FhCMPuQ
Equal time and judicial impartiality should demand 110 stories from the other side, the pro-life side. The left’is not concerned about justice, but i am.
abortion sold under various feminist arguments, independence, dads disposable, career good, mother bad, wait awhile, have fun before burden of kids, men suck, don’t have defect babies, it is just’birth control, too many kids not spaced far enough apart, etc.
It’s not hypothetical, she voted for Clinton twice. She already did vote for a rapist, at least twice.
And what does irresponsibly having abortions because using contraceptives is too inconvenient have to do with "controlling one's own life"? Women who exert control over their lives don't get pregnant with babies they intend to kill.
Elizabeth Sepper, an associate professor of law at Washington University, said personal stories from female attorneys might be an effective strategy both from legal and emotional standpoints.
Yep, women flaunting their callous disregard for human life makes *me* emotional. And the more they display their vapid selfishness, the more emotional I get.
For one, she said, their stories bear witness to the court's opinion in a previous abortion case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, that women's equal participation in society depends on their access to abortion.
Really? Women who are too irresponsible to take measures against getting pregnant because they know they can kill the kid hardly make a good argument for the idea that women deserve equality. Killing babies does not make one equal. And plenty of women have become successful who have never had an "unwanted" pregnancy. I wish those abortion pushers would quit trying to make women look so stupid and irresponsible.
There is one other aspect of abortion that its promoters never mention. Abortion is all about killing those who do not contribute materially to society. Those who accept abortion are being conditioned to accept that they, too, can and should be discarded the moment they become "useless eaters."
Your pro-contraception argument is flawed. You assume contraception is foolproof and that women seeking abortion are just too lazy to contracept. False. Even Planned Parenthood admits that the majority of women who have abortions were indeed contracepting at the time they got pregnant. So spare us your lecture on birth control.
Planned Parenthood's own "research" institute estimates that well over half of those who abort were not using any birth control at the time they got pregnant. Since it advances the agenda to claim that birth control has a high failure rate, that estimate is suspect, meaning the real number of women who get pregnant while using birth control is far lower.
The "pill" is >99% effective. Even condoms, properly used, are over 90% effective. While I have known quite a few women who have had abortions, not a single one of them made any attempt to prevent the pregnancy. In every case, abortion was the primary choice for birth control. This is also true of abortions that I read about in articles.
I'm sorry, but being anti-contraceptive while claiming to be pro-life makes no sense to me. Do you expect couples to remain celibate within marriage? Or do you think that women should keep on having kid after kid until they hit menopause?
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