What do we do now?
IT WAS 1968. I was 18 years old when a UCLA gynecologist told me that I was pregnant. When I started to cry and said I couldn’t go through with it, she was kind, yet clear and measured in her words. “I cannot help you. If you take any action to terminate this pregnancy you must come back to me as your life and your ability to have children may be endangered. If you come back, you need to understand that I will be required to report any action you have taken if it has occurred within the United States. Do you understand me?” She held my face in her hands and looked into my eyes and repeated, “Do you understand me? I am here to help you and the law and the hospital policy is clear about what I must do.”
I left devastated yet determined. I would not let my life be totally upended, I would not lose my independence, my college education, my parents’ respect. Thankfully, I had one girlfriend I could turn to. She knew a man who was supposedly a medic at a Los Angeles County Hospital who would meet me at a house in a poor part of the city. For $200 he would insert a chemical into my cervix, I would return to my dormitory, and I would expel the fetus over the next 36 hours. It was scary, it was painful, it was the longest 36 hours of my life.
I have never met a woman who wanted an abortion.
AS WOMEN WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO MAKE DECISIONS NECESSARY TO TAKE CARE OF OURSELVES AND THE PEOPLE WHO DEPEND ON US.
But I think I know why we find ourselves with a U.S. Supreme Court, numerous state legislatures and a Congress prepared to undermine women’s autonomy. We dedicated our resources to protecting abortion using the word --“choice”. By creating a laser focus on abortion and abortion restrictions, we failed to build and maintain a deep and wide constituency across ethnicity, religion and political parties. We used the right to an abortion as a litmus test. In so doing we alienated many of our sisters and allies who had ambivalence or opposed abortion on moral grounds. We failed to do the work of joining hands and understanding and building trust by facing into the complexity of our differences by holding on to our shared humanity and keeping the ideologues in check.
Pregnancy is as dangerous as abortion, sometimes more so. For many women pregnancy threatens their physical as well as their mental health and the viability of the lives of the families who depend upon them. Our black and brown sisters and their babies at all economic levels suffer and die in childbirth in significantly higher numbers than white women and children. Women of color who experience poverty suffer disproportionately and are often scorned for bearing children.
There is a lot to learn. WE MUST MEET EACH OTHER BEYOND BELIEFS OF RIGHT OR WRONG. We must insist that universal health care, childcare and economic justice be at the forefront of our concerns. We must build a wide and deep coalition of people who define life as the ability to survive and thrive both inside and outside of the womb. Our independence and autonomy as well as our communities depend upon it.
And, we must find a way to transform our intentions into actions. Only then can we mobilize the will of the majority to elect representatives who will change the laws.
AS LEADERS WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO CREATE THE FUTURE WE WANT FOR OURSELVES AND OUR CHILDREN.
I know the part I need to play; I encourage you to find yours.