Intimate Wars (14 page)

The pro-choice movement's prominence in mainstream media and public consciousness was paralleled by the growth of the anti-choice movement, members of which could increasingly be seen demonstrating outside abortion clinics across the country. But the glow of legalization disallowed the idea that there could be a viable political challenge to
Roe
at this early point. Many of my pro-choice colleagues thought the possibility of a return to back alleys was inconceivable. It was hard to take the antis seriously. When Ellie Smeal of the National Organization for Women (NOW) called together pro- and anti-choice contingents for a dialogue in 1979, an anti-choice group held up jars of pickled fetuses and prevented productive discourse. Their oversimplified battle cry, “Don't kill your baby!” seemed almost too easy to defeat, and emboldened by our relatively recent victory, we allowed ourselves to take a well-deserved, collective deep breath.

But we would have to learn that in this war, with this issue, the combatants never have much time to breathe. I was soon
forced to thrust my way daily through a throng of protesters who gathered at the entrance of Choices. I knew that our side was in danger of falling prey to the most fundamental strategic failure: underestimating the opposition. The antis were not going away.

Unfortunately, they began proving me right on a massive political scale. In 1979 the American Life League was formed by Roman Catholics Judy and Paul Brown. The ultimate abortion abolitionists, members of this group believed that the procedure was unacceptable even in the case of rape or when a woman's life was endangered. A year later former Catholic seminarian Joseph Scheidler founded the Pro-Life Action League and began to organize abortion clinic invasions. The National Right to Life Committee busily laid the philosophical foundation of the modern right-to-life movement by connecting abortion to euthanasia and assisted suicide, while fundamentalist anti-abortionists produced a Nuremberg-style “hit list” of pro-choice providers to be targeted for harassment or worse.

Anti-choice sentiment blossomed more broadly with the founding and growth of popular televangelist Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, a hugely influential evangelical lobbying organization with an adamant pro-life agenda. Republicans had always taken a firm position in favor of a constitutional amendment banning abortion, but democrats were also affected by this social and political shift to the right. Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical Christian to become president, famously forsook his party's pro-choice plank when he defended his support for the Hyde Amendment with the statement “Life is unfair”—a lack of commitment to abortion rights that democratic politicians would continue to exhibit, even though the party's official pro-choice stance didn't change.

The possibility that Congress could favor a ban on abortion became more difficult for the pro-choice movement to dismiss. Representative Romano Mazzoli proposed the Paramount Amendment, a “Human Life” bill that would circumvent the long process of passing a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion by having Congress vote that human life began at conception. With its passage, Congress could trump science and religious differences by co-opting the ultimate authority to define when life begins, then moving aggressively to protect that life by outlawing abortions.

The bill didn't pass, but the idea that such an amendment was even up for discussion infuriated me. A sperm and egg were to equal a person at the moment of conception? A fertilized egg—whether or not it was “alive”—would have the same rights as I would? How could a fetus ever take on the responsibilities of personhood? But I was not in the land of reality among the antis. Logical arguments were met with arrogant dismissal by these true believers. Life was life; fertilized eggs were people who had to be protected, and damn the women whose bodies housed them.

It was a power struggle, pure and simple, the same struggle that continues to this day: Who holds the power to decide whether a fetus should come to term? Who has the power to decide whether a woman should give birth, how many children she should have, what constitutes a “good” mother?

Ironically, the New Right and Moral Majority were as in touch with the fact that abortion empowers women as women's rights activists. The antis clearly understood that to keep women in the traditional roles of wife and mother—and thus prevent wholesale societal upheaval—they had to remove a woman's power to choose.

And so the American right-to-life movement, with the help of “pro-family” activists like Phyllis Schlafly, Christian fundamentalist
preachers, and right-wing politicians, unabashedly touted the Bible-rooted construct of the “good woman” as a selfless mother above all else. They encouraged women to take their place in the “natural order” of the world—a hierarchy with god at the top, then men, then women, whose duty it was to have children. Terminating pregnancy was an assault on the very will of god.
Fetuses were people and abortionists were killing them
. The language of the debate was growing ever more heated and violent, and it was only a matter of time before actions would begin living up to the rhetoric.

In 1979, in what was said to be the first terrorist attack against an abortion clinic in the US, a firebomb destroyed Bill Baird's abortion clinic in Hempstead, Long Island. Of all the providers I'd met through NAAF, I was closest to Bill, and the news that his clinic had been bombed was incredibly upsetting. A man seen picketing the week before had walked into the clinic, screamed that everyone would burn in hell, poured gasoline across the lobby, and lit it with a torch. Thanks to Bill's careful preparation for such an attack, the only person injured had been the bomber. He was caught by the clinic's staff and sentenced to two years in a mental institution.

The case was viewed as tragic, but ultimately seen as an aberration—after all, how could “right to life” believers be capable of killing people? The claim was made that anyone who would commit such an act must be mentally ill, but time would reveal anti-abortion violence to be a serious existential threat.

I felt the severity of this war beginning to hit very close to home. In response to the escalating anti-abortion tension, I held an open house at Choices, inviting local politicians and interested parties to help me spread awareness about the city's newly declared Abortion Rights Week. I became a regular representative of the pro-choice position on radio and
television programs covering abortion. As the issue became hotter, diplomatic discussions morphed into gladiatorial games, and before long I was routinely pitted against antis in heated debates.

 

MEANWHILE I BEGAN paying careful attention to the band of dedicated protesters who regularly picketed Choices. They were out there rain or shine. Every Saturday a priest and a group of his parishioners, mainly older women, bore signs, rosaries, and pictures of aborted fetuses to influence the young women who hurried past them into the clinic.

There was one woman in particular who hardly ever missed a Saturday. One morning I watched her as she stood just outside the clinic doors at her usual post.

She stopped a young black woman, touching her shoulder, her voice insisting, “There is another way. Choose life, let your baby live. Don't murder your own child!” The girl, shaken and frightened, pulled away and walked quickly into Choices to resolve her already difficult decision.

A man and a woman approached the doors. This time the faithful protester stood squarely in front of them, eyes blazing, fingers furiously working her rosary. “Your baby must live. How can you murder your own child?”

“Get out of my way, lady! I have a nine-year-old at home who drives me crazy. You want to take her?”

They brushed her aside. She moved on to tug at another woman's sleeve, physically trying to prevent her from entering the clinic. It was time to intervene. A Choices staff member dialed 911. A young Irish cop showed up and informed the woman that she was not to physically harass patients, that her expression of political and religious passions were limited by law.

The cop turned to the protester. “You should see them the way I have, the kids who no one wants . . . burned, scalded with boiling water, thrown out of windows.”

But that reality never touched this protester or the millions like her, the people who, in turning toward the rights of fetuses, turned against the mothers who carried them.

The indefatigability of the antis has always impressed me. I cannot dismiss the passion, persistence, and power of the members of their movement. Many of the anti-choice women I have encountered over the years have been intelligent, serious activists. Many have made sacrifices to continue their activism. In light of their belief that fetuses are babies and abortionists are killing them—abortion is murder—their actions and activities are understandable. What person of conscience would not fight against the wholesale slaughter of innocents? They want to convince the world of the righteousness of their position, and they see themselves as warriors in a transcendent battle.

That is exactly how I have always felt.

On some very basic level, I understand those antis who protest outside Choices. And I respect them for acting on their beliefs—even if I will do everything in my power, and put my life on the line, to ensure that they are defeated.

 

IN 1980 the anti-choice movement elected one of their own to the White House to inspire, encourage, and solidify their position. With Ronald Reagan's election there was a collective joy in the air, an expression of unity and expectation among conservatives not unlike the early days of Obama's presidency. Reagan was outspokenly allied with the Moral Majority.

A year later, another Human Life amendment was introduced: the Hatch amendment, an attempt to overturn
Roe
as
a federal protection and send the power to legislate abortion back to the states. With Reagan in office and a Republican majority in the Senate, the amendment posed a real threat to reproductive freedom.

I wrote a letter to Senator Hatch outlining why I was opposed. “Any federal ‘human life' legislation that throws control of these issues back to the states is tantamount to a states' rights ‘emancipation proclamation,' giving the states the power to decide who should be free and who should not,” I wrote. “Freedom and liberty should have no boundaries. No woman should have to travel from one state to another to seek adequate medical care.... There is only one State—the United States—and its history and constitution cannot be prostituted.”

Although the Hatch amendment did not pass, “choice,” a word made dirty in the mouths of Reagan and his Moral Majority talking heads, was being attacked from all sides. As usual, the poor and those with the least access to the medical system were the first casualties. The billion dollar over-the-counter birth control industry began running misleading ads for sponges and spermicides, implying that these products were just as effective as the Pill and other prescription birth control. The companies advertised lower costs and greater ease of use without the risk of any side effects.
¹²
It was an egregious case of false advertising. Every day at Choices women and young girls waiting to have their abortions would earnestly insist, “But I
did
use something!” Poor women who could not access doctors as easily to receive prescription birth control were quick to buy these inexpensive sponges and spermicides. Many women were also turning to over-the-counter contraceptives because of heightened public concern about the side effects of the pill and IUDs.

I lodged complaints with members of Congress and went to work publicly accusing the drug companies of forcing women to play Russian roulette with their birth control. The
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
,
Women Wise
, and the
Los Angeles Times
published my concerns, and I had high hopes when the Food and Drug Administration finally issued a report stating that the labeling of over-the-counter products was misleading and dangerous. A bill stipulating that every over-the-counter device would have to carry labels describing how effective they were was introduced in Congress.

It didn't pass, of course; it seemed Congress wasn't keen on regulating the drug companies. Still, the defeat was baffling. Better birth control meant fewer abortions—why couldn't Republicans see that? No matter how much people disagreed about abortion, everyone should have been able to agree on the urgent need for accurate labeling and promotion of all devices that could keep women from getting pregnant against their wishes.

It was clear that with Reagan's election we had entered a new social era. Women's issues were losing popularity, while family values, American supremacy, and a unified expression of the American dream had taken center stage in public consciousness. The pro-choice movement was losing ground, and Reagan was leading the attack.

I had to find a way to fight back with something more potent than my articles and letters. In the months since my first television appearances I'd honed my natural talent for going head to head with formidable opponents. I was fascinated by the preachers on the Sunday morning shows—Jimmy Swaggart, the Church of Truth, Jerry Falwell—and I practiced debating by talking back to the television. Marty
would go crazy and demand that I “turn that shit off,” but I loved listening to their theatrics, especially Swaggart's. His preaching was so musical, so sensual, especially when he started speaking in tongues. I was interested in what these shows could teach me about “the enemy,” but there were also points of congruence. I could relate to the preachers' overriding desire to be good, to be worthy, and I agreed with their attacks on consumerism and materialism. In fact, I even concurred with some of their diagnoses of societal problems; it was the etiology and the treatment that was at issue.