Roe v. What? The Pro-Choice Movement Is Losing Steam
The luncheon began on a festive note, with emcee Susan Saint James Ebersol (the Kate and Allie star who married NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol) inviting us to "celebrate the first year of a pro-choice White House!"
We applauded, of course, smiling happily over our poached chicken. Chocolate mousse and a tower of petit fours was set out on each table, and wine flowed freely (at lunch! on a weekday!).
"Remember this luncheon last year, when we were so nervous?" Saint James grinned. How far we've come, we were all thinking: from Dubya to a Nobel Laureate!
We were gathered at the swanky Cipriani's on 42nd Street in Manhattan for the annual National Power of Choice Luncheon, celebrating 40 years of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Certainly the occasion should have been festive ... but it wasn't.
As speakers took their turns at the podium, we were cautioned over and over that anti-choice members of Congress are using health care reform as an opportunity to restrict women's access to reproductive health services.
The Special Guest Speaker was Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett, who mentioned that, unbelievably, some health insurers consider pregnancy a "preexisting condition." She had come from the White House not just to assure us that Obama "remains firmly pro-choice," but to note pointedly that "change does not come from the top down, but from the bottom up."
"Anti-choice lawmakers want an abortion ban in the new system," NARAL President Nancy Keenan warned us, and "we still don't have a pro-choice working majority." Keenan virtually apologized for casting a pall on our day; "It's enough to ruin your lunch," she said. And it was.
But NARAL is right to rattle our nerves. Nineteen states have anti-choice legislatures while only 12 states and the District of Columbia have pro-choice legislatures. In the U.S. House, there are 205 anti-choice congressmen compared to 185 pro-choice congressmen. In the Senate, there's an anti-choice majority too. This is all too easily forgotten when we're still slaphappy about getting Obama in the White House.
Less than three weeks ago, the Pew Research Center announced that support for legal abortion has slipped in 2009. Since Obama became president, the number of people who support legal abortion has fallen from 54% to 47%. "Supporters of legalized abortion may have grown complacent," wrote Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times, covering a trend that has received much too little coverage.
At the same time there is this growing complacency, there is a growing generation of youngsters taking reproductive rights for granted. It's not their fault; they're just far removed from history. "It's like 'Roe versus what'?" explained Keenan. We need to engage this new generation, she said, "to ensure they feel as passionately about protecting choice as they do about climate change."
Dana Sandberg, in her late 20's, is co-leading NARAL's Future Direction Committee. "Our experiences are different from our mothers and grandmothers, so the conversation about choice starts in a different place than it did 20 or 40 years ago," she admitted to me. "But the ability to make our own personal decisions is a universal value that transcends generations -- and it is our job to make sure our peers know that there are forces working to take these decisions out of our hands."
After the luncheon, I asked Keenan whether she was worried. "The complacency concerns me," she said. "It's like, 'Oh we're safe. We can take a breather.' The fact is the other side never takes a breather."
While NARAL is in good hands, our reproductive rights aren't so lucky. There is no guarantee abortion will remain legal as health care in this country is reformed. And remember that pro-choice doesn't mean pro-abortion, it just means pro-choice.
Follow Odile Weissenborn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/OdileAntoinette
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Just as you explain in your article, the tide seems to be turning in favor of life.
In our free society, isn't this the way it works. If, over time, the people, who are the ultmate judges of policy, change direction, we just have to accept it, don't we? Of course the pro abortion people have every right to express themselves and to lobby for their point of view.
One of the important statistics of public opinion about abortion, which you seldom see discussed, is the question "Would you, yourself, have an abortion done?". There has always been a large majority that say they would not have a abortion themselves.
Also, as the science gets better and better, it seems obvious to many that the fetus is a livng person very early in the process. Certainly long before the date comes when an abortion usually isn't done. Many 3rd trimester abortions are still done, by the way. Something that almost no one on either side of the argument wants, at least they say that.
The left expects the right to gracefully accept the change in public opinion on gay rights and gay marriage. Why shouldn't the right expect the left to have the same graceful acceptance of the people's feelings on abortion? If indeed the pro life cause is coming into the ascendancy.
"Why shouldn't the right expect the left to have the same graceful acceptance of the people's feelings on abortion?"
Because when two gay people marry, it effect THEIR lives and their bodies.
The anti-choice people want to tell me what I can do with MY body.
Huge, huge, huge, huge difference.
Forced birth is more like it. Decisions need to be between a woman and her doctor.
Choice and access to safe clean legal abortions has always been a financial matter. Wealthy women have alway had nice clean safe abortions, they could travel and have a legal abortion outside America, or bribe a good doctor to perform an illegal abortion. No matter what happens legally women of wealth will have abortions. Poor and young women were the women who died,, either attempting to abort themselves or in foul back alley butchers.
Those folks so vehemantly against abortions, before you say one word to me about your religious beliefs, tell me how many older mixed racial kids with special needs, or born addicted to alcohol or crack or with HIV you have adopted in your home. If the answer is zero.....j
I wish the country could just settle the abortion debate once and for all.
I propose a one-time-vote, only adult women can vote, and which ever side wins settles the matter PERMANENTLY.
I bet pro-choice Roe vs Wade will win. Even women who wouldn't choose abortion for themselves, are more reluctant to make their view forced upon another woman, they will give that woman the right to choose.
Men I think should stay out of the discussion.
Only adult women will vote? Sounds like the men talking before women got the vote, doesn't it?
Don't you think men have an interest in their children?
Don't you realize the men care for, and deeply love their wives and children?
To illustrate this, Robert Shapiro wrote a book a few years back. The plot was that a man kednapped his wife and had an abortion performed on her against her will.
The idea being, that a woman has the right now. She can abort a baby she has conceived with a man without his permission, why shouldn't a man have the same right?
It's an extreme example, but it does expose a moral dilemma, doesn't it?
All the men with wombs can vote too
now ya happy?
A man aborting a woman against her will is COMMON, but he kills her while he's at it.
Murder Is One of Top Causes of Death for Pregnant Women
Police Often Look at Boyfriend or Spouse as First Suspect
"According to a number of studies, homicide is one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women in the United States. Studies in Maryland, New York and Chicago determined that about 20 percent of women who die during pregnancy are murder victims."
http://abc
Women don't sleep with anti-choice men...let natural selection solve this issue
Politicians may say that they're against abortion, but whether they have any desire or will to outlaw it is another matter. The silent or quiet majority of Americans has no desire whatsoever to outlaw it, no matter how distasteful a thought it is to them personally.
I agree, too, with other commenters here who have said that while the prochoice movement is quiet right now, it would erupt into a very loud, roaring, raucous crowd if laws were to remove that choice.
For those saying here that "the baby" has no choice... prove that there's a sentient being with the rights granted to United States citizens, and perhaps you'll get your way. Until then, the theory that there's a "person" inside the uterus concerned is based only in religion.
Religion is no basis for law or government. Period.
Even if it could be proved "that there's a sentient being with the rights granted to United States citizens", they'd also need to make the case that those rights supercede those of the pregnant woman. And if that were to happen (which it won't), the woman would be reduced to being a 'vessel' of the state (pun intended).
More people than not are pro-choice but anti-abortion. Let us support education & persuasion over legislation & intimidation, to keep abortion legal, safe & rare.
This should NOT be a matter for a legislative body made up overwhelmingly of males to decide. (How would men like it if it were mostly women making laws about when they could access that little blue pill?)
For that matter, it's not something that should be legislated, period. It's a personal decision.
Acrually religion is the basis for quite a bit of law.
Thou shalt not murder, steal, etc..
As far as whether the fetus is a "person", as science continues to push the technology that illustrates the status of the fetus in great detail at early ages continues to progress, the argument that you can just ignore the rights of the fetus will be les convincing, in my opinion.
No, religion isn't the basis of laws in your example.
Do you think that no culture before, after, alongside of Jews standing staring at Moses with stone tablets in his hand thought it maybe wasn't okay to steal or kill people?
Give me a break. You can't claim ownership of those.
PS: you wrote:
"the argument that you can just ignore the rights of the fetus will be les convincing, in my opinion."
The key phrase in that sentence is "in my opinion."
That's it -- your opinion. You are entitled to your opinion. But you don't get to make it supersede mine. So, you don't like abortions? Don't have one.
Mark my words. Once abortion is outlawed in this nation, conservatives will then launch an attack on a woman's right to use contraception.
It wasn't that long ago that birth control was illegal.
If the right to abortion was overturned at the federal levlel, it would fall to the states to have their own laws. Many states would be pro-choice, many would be pro-life.
Very unlikely federal funds will be provided for abortions. The nature of Congress reflects the broad attitude in the U.S. about this. Most people oppose abortion, but understand there is a gray area. They won't ram their views down the throats of others, nor will they sit quietly by while their tax dollars are used to fund abortion.
Women are there own worst enemy. Really. They have all the power in the world to change all of this crap from choice laws, to views on child rearing to equal pay....
2 years - don't have kids. Let society get a taste of what 2 years and no new babies is like and I bet you see some change.
But first you have to come out of fantasy land about relationships.
YOU'RE in a "fantasy land". After 6000 years of the subjugation of wimmin we're finally seeing it's impact on the entire planet.
Of course, you think only of the USA as you don't seem able to comprehend what it's like for wimmin in other countries.
Other than that, I don't know what you're talking about.
I think the only reason the pro-Choice movement seems to be losing steam is that it accomplished most of what it set out to do. The same thing happened to the Civil Rights movement. Let a state pass anti-abortion legislation, however, and watch that sleeping tiger spring to life. There is nothing unnatural about people shifting their attention and enthusiasm to other things once a central problem is resolved. In other words, ladies...y
Check, what is good for women is good for society. We dont want women to be bare foot, in the kitchen and waiting hand and foot for ten kids... well those of us who are enlightened that is.
When women choose to not keep a pregnancy there is a very good reason for it.
If a woman chooses to have ten kids and be bare foot in the kitchen, lovingly caring for and raising her beloved children, shouldn't she have that right?
Yes. I see your point. When you're enlighted you don't recognize the reality of millions of women that find joy and fulfillment, fathers too, I might add, raising their children.
How silly of me to think that. I must become more enlighted, and drop my foolish ideas about the joy and wonder of being a parent.
So no choice for the baby? The mother has a choice between keeping it or putting it up for adoption. The baby has NO CHOICE. Who are the Anti-Choicers? Plz....
What baby. Prior to 24 weeks it is a fetus.
You were a fetus too.
Kind of like in 1800: "it's not murder to kill a black slave, since they aren't really people". I mean the law is the law. It can't be wrong.
The baby wouldn't get a choice anyways. Babies don't know what a choice is. So I fail to see your point.
Yes, the mother has all the rights. Not the baby growing inside her.
Let's hope so, because she's the one carrying it and has the responsibility for raising it.
why should the "rights" of a fetus be more important than a pregnant woman's rights? And why should anyone but that woman get to say so? Until you've walked in her moccasins, butt out.
I would guess how you ask the question in a survey would have dramaticly different outcome.
ask
Should a woman and her doctor decide her reproductive choice, or insurance paper pushers and politicians?
Here is the question to ask, not in a survey but before having sex...
Do I want to get pregnant?
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point, but you seem to be suggesting that you, personally have had sex only when you wanted to have children.
So how many kids do you have? I see three possibilities: you have few, because it's difficult for you to conceive; you have few, because you rarely engage in sex; or you have great big bunches.
Funny. If I took the above question literally, men would never be justified in having sex, because they CAN'T get pregnant.
I agree. I've been called by surveyors before where I just refused to answer because the questions are very black and white.
Folks, here's an excerpt from a study by the BBC published last week that demonstrably shows what happens when access to birth control and education increases:
"Western Europe is held up as an example of what access to contraceptive services can achieve, and the Netherlands - with just 10 abortions per 1,000 women compared to the world's 29 per 1,000 - is held up as the gold standard..
Even the UK, which has a relatively high rate, fares well in comparison to the US, where the number of abortions is among the highest in the developed world. The institute says this rate is in part explained by inconsistencies in insurance coverage of contraceptive supplies."
Read it for yourself and then ask yourself if the abortion access rhetoric is outdated: http://new
That's great, now let's do a comparison on religion in this country and what effect that has on contraception. I think catholics are against birth control no? When I was 17 I virtually received birth control for free by getting it from a clinic and I didn't have to have my parents permission. I think the access is here, but the education isn't. Many who come to this country and reproduce don't believe in it because of their religion. That's the sector of the U.S. population that needs to be educated, but it's tough.
The name game goes back a long way in the fight against abortion. You call us anti-choice, we call you pro-abortion. But the fact remains that those who advocate for the "right to choose" are just asking for the right to kill unborn children. Those of us who stand up for life first and foremost want to end abortion, which has claimed 50 million lives in this country since Roe vs. Wade, but we also want to end euthanasia and capital punishment. We Catholics call this the "consistent ethic of life." The pro-abortion movement is advocating for the culture of death. These are the facts, no matter which words you use to try to disguise them.
The idea that "unborn children" are being killed, is not fact. It is religious and philosophical opinion. Exactly when does human life begin? Please provide proof.
This obviously can't be proven either way.
You could argue that human life begins before inception, since the egg and sperm are made of living cells.
Those who are advocating against the right to choose are asking for the power to compel women to give birth when they don't want to. Forced birth, in other words.
That is just as morally wrong as forcing a woman to get an abortion. I am against both. That's why I'm pro-choice.
The right is the woman's. The "right" your side has imagined itself to have is to tell women what medical procedures what they canand can't have. You think you have some 'right" to force women to give birth, reguardless of why they don't want the fetus to begin with. The right is the right to decide what a woman wants to do for herself.
He also neglected to mention that the Catholic Church also disapproves of birth control. They want to force women to have many unwanted children.
I am no catholic and therefore do not agree with you. This is my choice not to follow your religion and all that goes with it. I wonder how many catholic families are willing to adopt children all across the U.S. and elsewhere that would be put in foster homes. The rate of those on welfare would sky rocket. Is the catholic church prepared for that? Those are also facts that cannot be denied
You'd have a lot more credibility if those on the Right were FOR birth control. But you simply cannot argue that in our non-religious society that abstinence-only classes (promoting ignorance) and health insurance plans that cover Viagra but not birth control lead to LESS abortion. I'd argue those conservative policies lead to an INCREASE in abortions. So what do you really want, Father? Because from my perspective, those on the Right are walking, talking contradictions.
"Pro-life" = "Pro-forced births."
Forcing women to give birth is just as despicable as forcing women to get abortions. I am against both. That is why I am pro-choice.
54% down to 47%? That's not possible. There's something amiss here. Perhaps the question wasn't phrased the same way. Perhaps the sample was skewed. I guarantee that 7% of the population haven't become anti-abortion rights since Obama became President.
Rarely does a single poll have any meaning.
Especially when you don't agree with it :P
Just Kidding!
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