Category: Pro-Choice Movement

Author Misty McBeth describes what happened when she talked about abortion to a co-worker. McBeth had been arguing the pro-life side:

“Perhaps topics like this should be left out of the workplace,” I thought as I argued my view of the debate. Too late, the guns had been loaded and ready to aim. Unfortunately they were aimed at me, or so I thought. This coworker roared at me like a fierce lion protecting her cubs, firing every shot she could at me. Oh, and did I mention this was at six in the morning and I had just signed into my phone to receive inbound calls? Lucky for me, the first few minutes of her rampage the phone was silent, no calls. I tried to politely interrupt her and let her know I was signed in to work but to no avail, the bullets kept flying. Her face was beet red and her arms were flaying and pointing in my direction. Then a call came in. I answered with my usual customer greeting, fully aware that the customer could probably hear the ruckus in front of me. When the customer questioned what the background noise was I simply asked if I could put them on brief hold. How was I going to defuse this bomb that had gone off? Nothing I said or did mattered, she was visibly upset and was taking it out on me. Finally after what seemed like hours my coworker grabbed her stuff and huffed off. I then was able to deal with the customer and finish the call. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that I may have been the first to fire a shot and perhaps the bullet went a little too deep.”

Misty McBeth Anti Abortions: Behind the Signs (Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2013)

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In this newspaper editorial, a reporter praises Mario Cuomo for fighting against any limits on abortion and opposing the death penalty:

“If the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Missouri’s restrictions on abortion signals an all-out attack on a woman’s right to have an abortion, at least Governor Mario Cuomo has his priorities straight.

The state will not go down the same slippery slope that the court has, Cuomo said this week, promising that he would reject any legislation that limited abortion the way the Missouri statute did. “Nothing in [the decision on the Missouri law] changes my opinion about the right to abortion or the right of poor people to receive funding.”…

This is Cuomo at his best. Under enormous political pressure, he has refused to cave in to the proponents of the death penalty. Now he has pledged himself to stand by the liberal abortion law enacted by the legislature in 1970…”

Newsday, July 8, 1989 Quoted in Oliver Trager Abortion: Choice & Conflict (New York: Facts on File, 1993) 20

Below; death penalty as inflicted on preborn baby

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In her book A Question of Choice, where she gives an account of arguing Roe Vs. Wade, Sarah Weddington describes the pro-life movement’s string of victories after Roe was decided, and how the pro-choice movement diminished in power:

“… Generally our energy and contributions sagged, and we seemed only to plod forward. We were forever trying to increase NARAL membership, raise the funds necessary to keep the organization afloat, respond to press requests, and maintain and build our public support… The opposition was fighting a battle of attrition, keeping the pressure on in so many different arenas hoping that eventually our resources would collapse, and in fact that was happening.…

We began to lose on matters of access. The opposition mustered the votes and passed measures that denied government funding for almost all Medicaid recipients, even though the government would then provide prenatal and delivery services at greater cost to those same women. Antiabortionists lobbied and passed measures to cut off insurance funding for abortion for federal employees, and made it almost impossible for people in the military and their dependents to obtain abortions. Even when we could collect the votes to defeat one of their anti-funding measures, the opponents of abortion would roar right back with another.”

Sarah Weddington A Question of Choice (New York: The Feminist Press, 2013 ed.) 199 – 200

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Sarah Weddington, one of the women who argued Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, believed that the Roe ruling would settle the abortion debate. She had not anticipated the rise of the pro-life movement.

“Initially I joined others in thinking that the basic question had been settled: abortion was and would continue to be legal. In a few years, I thought, the decision would be accepted, abortion would become a part of routine medical practice, and the opposition would go away. Until that time, we just needed to protect what we had won.”

Later in the book, she says:

“If someone had told me in 1969 that I would still be talking about abortion 40 years later, I would have thought that preposterous.”

Sarah Weddington A Question of Choice (New York: The Feminist Press, 2013 ed.) 195, 276

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Pro-abortion writer Judith Orr describes how feminists were angry that a pro-life group was using tax dollars to build a shelter for pregnant homeless women. They would rather homeless women be on the street than be helped by a pro-life organization.

“… There was so much anger in March 2017 at the news that the Tory government had given 250,000 pounds raised from taxes on tampons and sanitary pads to the antiabortion organization Life. Life said it would fund a homeless shelter for pregnant women. Pro-choice campaigners argued that it was bad enough for necessary sanitary items to be taxed as “luxury” products, but for money generated by this “tampon tax” to be given to an organization that declares it won’t give up until “abortion is a thing of the past” was a “bloody outrage.”

Judith Orr Abortion Wars: The Fight for Reproductive Rights (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2017) 91

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Two doulas wanted to become abortion doulas, giving support to women as they killed their babies. They encountered resistance from the pro-choice movement. According to an article by Alex Ronan:

“…birth doulas Lauren Mitchell and Mary Mahoney sought to bring those support practices into abortion clinics, they met immediate resistance. “To imply that women getting abortions would need something as touchy-feely as support was not accepted,” Mitchell explains. …many pro-choice doulas, doctors, and nonprofits were unwilling to acknowledge how difficult and painful many women find abortion. To some on the left, drawing any more attention to the messiness of the procedure and the decisions surrounding it would mean potentially undermining the work of the political movement.”

Alex Ronan “My Year As an Abortion Doula” The Cut SEPTEMBER 14, 2014

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