Posted on 04/30/2003 5:43:41 PM PDT by Chi-townChief
She is waging the good fight. Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, has won many battles. But in our political system, there are no final victories.
It has been 30 years since the Supreme Court ruled that women, as part of their constitutional right to privacy, may choose to terminate a pregnancy.
Few cases in American history have been more politically divisive and controversial than Roe vs. Wade. The "right-to-life" movement, dominated by the Christian right, has long sought to reverse the court's decision and make abortion a crime.
It is in no small part because of Michelman and her organization that a woman's reproductive freedom is still the law of the land. They have helped elect pro-choice legislators, judges, and executives across this country. NARAL has also provided educational programs and written public policy initiatives.
Michelman is speaking today at Chicago's ninth annual NARAL Pro-Choice America luncheon, and her organization is hosting house parties nationally featuring a half- dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls.
"Kate is that most important of figures in any movement--and especially in the movement for reproductive freedom--a long distance runner," said feminist Gloria Steinem, founder of Voters for Choice. "We need sprinters, too, but after the backlash forms, it's the lifetime fighters who provide continuity, memory, and a clear identity."
Loop lawyer Judy Gold, who is co-chairing today's luncheon, added: "Kate's leadership is especially critical at this moment in our nation's history. Never before have a woman's reproductive rights been in more peril."
Christine E. Mather, NARAL's former deputy political director, who is now communications director for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dan Hynes, said, "Kate not only built NARAL into a powerful political force. She had a profound impact on me and all who worked with her. She never backed down no matter how daunting the task or tough the opposition. She taught us that if it was right, you had to fight."
In at least five cases since the 1973 decision, the Supreme Court has upheld the principles of Roe. A majority of the American people has consistently supported abortion rights.
Even so, the pro-choice cause has had setbacks. Over the last eight years, the GOP-controlled Congress has voted 150 times on legislation seeking to restrict a woman's right to choose. The pro-choice cause has lost more than three-fourths of these votes. During this same time, more than 335 anti-choice bills have been passed at the state level.
"A woman's right to choose is deeply and gravely imperiled," Michelman recently noted. "Only the Constitution stands between women and those who want to take away the right to choose."
Michelman and her organization have been effective, with their bipartisan allies in the Senate, in blocking President Bush's anti-choice nominees for the federal bench.
"Roe v. Wade is hanging on by a one-vote majority--with an anti-choice president and Congress eager to install the one justice who could take our freedom away," Michelman recently noted. "If Roe is overturned, fully half the states would swiftly ban or severely restrict abortion."
Among the reasons Michelman is such a dedicated and persuasive advocate for her cause is that she speaks from personal experience. She had an abortion in 1970 when abortion was illegal.
At that time, Michelman was forced to obtain the consent of her husband who had just abandoned her family and an all-male hospital panel. "I was devastated. My family's survival was at stake. For me it was a difficult choice. But it was mine alone to make," she says.
In the wake of this trauma, Michelman became a women's rights activist and executive director of Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania. She also taught at Penn State's School of Medicine.
"Pro-choice is not pro-abortion," she says. "I pray that no woman has to face this decision. But if she does, I will be on her side. Each woman in America has the right to choose."
Hmmm ... so does she have the right to choose which schools to support with her taxes or the right to choose to smoke in a restaurant or the right choose to be a prostitute or choose to use illegal drugs or choose to carry a concealed weapon?
Yet, they don't think that Scott Peterson, if guilty, should face a murder charge for killing that baby.
The "pray" part is purely rhetorical. In fact, the whole sentiment is purely rhetorical.
How is it that so-called journalists and editors keep letting these "kill-baby-no-bag-limit" environmentalists get away with using free-floating intransitive verbs? Choose what? Coke vs. Pepsi. "Choice" is nothing w/out context. What are we talking about here, killing tadpoles?
Can the author REALLY be that ignorant?
Reversing Roe would simply return the matter to the states.
In truth the SC dug a hole by discovering a "right of privacy" which required federal recognition. Then, they dug the hole deeper, all the way to Hell in fact, by combining "privacy" with the idea that you cannot be a "person" in the sight of the law until you have been born.
It's within that zone of privacy that the murders take place - presumably without care or shame.
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