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The young take baton on abortion
oregon live ^ | 4/25/04 | Ellen Goodman

Posted on 04/25/2004 11:37:30 AM PDT by qam1

A t times, I've had a fantasy about my generation as the last brigade parading for reproductive rights under a banner of "Post-Menopausal Women for Choice."

After all, those of us who remember when birth control was illegal and when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions don't have to imagine a world without choices. We were there. And while we moved on to discussions about hormones and hot flashes, we remained the committed core of pro-choice voters.

From time to time, we would sigh to each other about how Gen X and Gen Y took it all for granted. Then we would blush a bit because we actually wanted our daughters to take the freedom to make their own moral and medical decisions as a given, not a struggle. But at the same time, we worried: What if they couldn't imagine losing freedoms until those freedoms were gone?

Now it looks as if the Bush administration's policies have done what we couldn't do. They're mobilizing a new generation.

About 1,600 buses are rolling into Washington for today's "March for Women's Lives." The first such gathering in a dozen years is expected to bring more than a half-million women onto the Mall. More to the point, a third of the marchers are expected to be under 30.

In a wonderful moment of role-reversal, Crystal Lander, the leader of the campus outreach and owner of a T-shirt that reads "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like," will be bringing her mother to the elder's first march.

But today is not just a march. It's pass-the-baton day. It's the day the next generation will be called on to make a commitment and a connection between, as their mothers called it, the personal and the political. And of course, it's about whether young women will or won't be able to make decisions about sex and health and pregnancy.

Kate Michelman, the retiring head of Naral Pro-Choice America, one of seven groups sponsoring this march, puts it this way: "We know that the pro-choice movement needs to speak to and activate a generation that doesn't remember life before Roe, and we need to do it before George Bush gives them a chance to experience it for the first time. I want to be the storyteller, not the one helping them through the horror of back-alley abortions."

But this is not their mothers' movement. The language of "rights" sounds stale to many, like a golden oldie, a blast from the past. Phrases like "take control of our bodies" do not roll off younger tongues.

As pollster Anna Greenberg reads the generational change, "When I think about people under 30, I think they're very individualistic. They feel very empowered."

Baby boomers talked about sex as liberation, but for the past 20 years, these women and men have had messages about sex and danger. The buzzword for them is "responsibility."

"Responsibility" cuts both ways in conversations and attitudes, especially about abortion. For some "responsibility" means women have the obligation to avoid unwanted pregnancy. For others, it suggests women need the access and information to make the right decisions.

The anti-abortion movement has had success not only in focusing on the fetus but also in associating unplanned pregnancy with irresponsibility. For two decades, access to women's health has been chipped away, especially for poor women. But as long as the right to choose exists, this generation has had the luxury of ambivalence about individual choices.

Now we have peeping John Ashcroft, who wants to rifle through clinic papers. We have a national policy to teach abstinence as the only sex education. And across the globe, the administration's "gag rule" against clinics that would even mention abortion has closed down women's health and birth control centers in the name of democracy.

Meanwhile, there are pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraceptives and legislators who think that's fine. And of course there is the specter of four more years and one or two Supreme Court justices.

So there is a march, not just a meet-up, to jog the imagination of those who cannot imagine going backward. To jump-start the next wave of activists and show that, as organizer Alice Cohan says, "You are not alone, no matter what the Congress may enact or the press may say."

This one will be judged not just by the numbers on the Mall and on the news but by the next day, the next decade, the next election cycle, the next leaders.

As "Post-Menopausal Women for Choice," we expected to hand down a set of intact rights. Now we are handing down our history and our experience. And our baton.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News
KEYWORDS: abortion; babyboomers; genx; geny; killmygrandchildren; proaborts
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To: rwfromkansas
I watched as much as I could stomach of this. My sons came in and asked what I was watching. We all sat there staring at these psycho woman (yes, we mentioned that they must all be on crack.)

My sons said if they heard "reproductive rights" one more time they would scream. I finally had to turn it off when I started wanting to yell at my TV (sigh.)

21 posted on 04/25/2004 2:01:16 PM PDT by TxBec (Tag! You're it!)
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oops .. women.
22 posted on 04/25/2004 2:02:09 PM PDT by TxBec (Tag! You're it!)
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To: Mr. Silverback
please add me to your ping list.
23 posted on 04/25/2004 2:03:46 PM PDT by TxBec (Tag! You're it!)
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To: qam1
... and when 10,000 American women a year died from illegal abortions

This statistic seems ridiculous on its face. Does anyone know its origin?

24 posted on 04/25/2004 2:06:51 PM PDT by Polonius (It's called logic, it'll help you.)
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To: TxBec
please add me to your ping list.

You Betcha!

25 posted on 04/25/2004 2:07:22 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback (Dwight Eisenhower: "I will go to Korea." John F. Kerry: "I will go to Paris.")
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To: goodnesswins
Ellen Goodman was born in 1941.

Was birth control ever illegal? Haven't condoms been around in one form or another for centuries? Haven't diaphragms been widely available since the 1920's?

Birth control pills have been around since before Roe v Wade. Why are so many women so STUPID?
26 posted on 04/25/2004 2:14:13 PM PDT by EllaMinnow ("Pessimism never won any battle." - Dwight D. Eisenhower)
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To: qam1
I don't like being labeled a Gen-Xer, but... add me to your list anyway??

thanks!

27 posted on 04/25/2004 2:17:01 PM PDT by TxBec (Tag! You're it!)
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To: qam1
"Responsibility" cuts both ways in conversations and attitudes, especially about abortion. For some "responsibility" means women have the obligation to avoid unwanted pregnancy. For others, it suggests women need the access and information to make the right decisions.

What on earth does this mean? Some people think responsibility means taking an action and other people think responsibility means someone else telling you stuff so that when you screw up then you can figure out what to do?

28 posted on 04/25/2004 2:24:48 PM PDT by Dianna
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To: Aliska
'EVIL INTERRUPTED' ... one of mine.
29 posted on 04/25/2004 3:03:50 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: qam1
Ellen Goodman is a commie columnist for the Boston Globe.
30 posted on 04/25/2004 3:08:27 PM PDT by BlkConserv
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To: MHGinTN
put me on your ping list when you finish it?
31 posted on 04/25/2004 3:08:28 PM PDT by TxBec (Tag! You're it!)
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To: MHGinTN
Can't find it on google. How can one get a copy to read?
32 posted on 04/25/2004 3:34:36 PM PDT by Aliska
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To: Aliska
I haven't finished writing it yet! ... RJayneJ posted the short story version a while back, but I asked her to pull it when my agent said we wouldn't be giving that one away.
33 posted on 04/25/2004 3:42:46 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: TxBec
Will do ...
34 posted on 04/25/2004 3:46:32 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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To: MHGinTN
Oh! Please let me know when you are done.
35 posted on 04/25/2004 3:46:39 PM PDT by Aliska
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To: rwfromkansas
"If she would check the polls instead of live in her 60's fake world, she would realize young people are the most pro-life of all people!

James Taranto of WSJ online calls this the Roe Effect. His theory is that since leftists are more likely to get abortions than conservatives the younger generation that is being born now is more likely to be raised in a conservative household with conservative values. He has more about it in various "Best of the Web Today" columns on opinionjournal.com

36 posted on 04/25/2004 3:50:51 PM PDT by Klickitat
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To: Polonius
> This statistic seems ridiculous on its face. Does anyone know its origin?

Yes. The former abortionist, Bernard Nathanson, said they made it up, to boost the fledgling NARAL group (I think). This showed up in another thread today, though I'd heard it before. That thread also came up with the highest number of women's deaths from abortion at about 1,900 -- but that was before antibiotics. (Sorry to do this from memory. Best find that other thread and get the exact figures...)

37 posted on 04/25/2004 4:43:13 PM PDT by T'wit (There's no evidence "Bush lied." But I can PROVE Bill Clinton told the truth -- once.)
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To: Polonius
Here we go. This is from that other thread. I'll give you the link... Abortionist lies

"...The truth is that by 1966, the year before the first state liberalized abortion, fatalities dropped to 120 per year due to the overall improvement in medical care and the introduction of antibiotics. You have to go back to the pre-antibiotic days, the 1940's, and even then the highest annual death toll was 1,679. Former abortionist and NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson admits the 10,000 number was intentionally inflated just to get abortion legalized!"

So, 1679, not 1,900. (Knew I had that wrong but I couldn't remember the right figure.)

38 posted on 04/25/2004 4:52:33 PM PDT by T'wit (There's no evidence "Bush lied." But I can PROVE Bill Clinton told the truth -- once.)
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To: Mr. Silverback
>> ...I could name a mental illness after Ellen Goodman.

Great idea! She is a poster person for cognitive implosion.

What puzzles me about Ellen Goodman is how she can exhibit all the signs of pre-menstrual syndrome every day of her post-menopausal life. I suppose that's the price one pays for being a left-winger. There's nothing to smile about and after a while, your stomach ferments.

39 posted on 04/25/2004 5:10:54 PM PDT by T'wit (There's no evidence "Bush lied." But I can PROVE Bill Clinton told the truth -- once.)
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To: T'wit
I traveled all day, so I missed the broadcasts.

But, I wish there were some way to broadcast these statistics.
40 posted on 04/25/2004 5:59:26 PM PDT by hocndoc (Choice is the # 1 killer in the US)
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