I found out that I was pregnant nearly 40 years after Roe, but my pregnancy and that case are inextricably linked, even though on paper they have nothing in common.
The pro-choice movement's shift in attention, messaging, and resources away from a focus on family means that the anti-choice movement has been able to make the idea of family, specifically unborn children, central to its emotional power and success.
Any law that allows abortion only in certain cases also helps create two classes of women: those who “deserve” abortions, and those who do not. This is a complete fallacy; all women deserve access to safe abortion care, along with the entire range of reproductive health care.
One of the biggest challenges for small abortion funds is
that our resources are so limited that often we can not adequately train people to deal with some of the hard cases. If there was something that I [didn’t] know how to handle, I would often call one of my colleagues and debrief and take care of myself first, to make sure that I was available to my client and wasn't doing them more harm then good.
I really feel that we're continually fighting a rearguard here. Obama has maintained the status quo (probably) on the Supreme Court. I don't see a Freedom of Choice Act passing anytime soon. The anti-choicers are out to stop contraception generally, not just abortion, because pregnancy is supposed to be God's punishment for "easy women." Combined with Dr. Tiller's murder and the generally lukewarm response, along with the lack of training for new doctors in abortion care, I worry that we're going to be seeing a further decline in availability for quite some time.
During the summer of 2009, Sarah Erdeich talked to dozens of young pro-choice activists and doctors about what motivated their work for reproductive justice, what concerns them most about the current state of abortion rights, and what they think the future holds for legal abortion in the U.S. This is the first of three interviews to be published at Rewire.
