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Roe V. Wade: Perspectives Podcast

Digg This!February 22nd, 2008 • Contributed by Dino Corvino
Posted in: Podcast

In this week’s podcast I had the chance to speak to two women engaged in opposite sides of a similar discussion: Judie Brown, of the American Life League, and Cathy Thompson from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. We asked both of them to tell us what they thought was occurring at the time of the Roe vs. Wade decision 35 years ago and we received two vastly different takes. We also asked them about the future of their movement or cause, and this is what they told us.On January 22, 2008 we celebrated the 35th Anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. This Supreme Court decision made abortion legal, and as a result safer for women in this country. Roe vs. Wade was significant because it made bans on abortion at the state level and some at the federal level unconstitutional, thereby allowing both women and doctors a safer option for reproductive health. Its lesser-known companion case, Doe vs. Bolton, was decided at the same time.
According to Roe, most laws against abortion in the United States violated the right to privacy outlined under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This decision remains one of the most controversial and politically significant cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. The Roe vs. Wade decision is still hotly debated, even after 35 years. It still is something that comes under attack, and clearly is taken seriously on both sides.
On March 6, 2006, hoping to directly challenge Roe vs. Wade, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed into law a pro-life statute which made performing abortions a felony. That law was subsequently repealed in a referendum held on November 7 of the same year [Myers, Megan. "S.D. rejects abortion ban", Argus Leader, (2006-11-08)]. On February 27, 2006, Mississippi’s House Public Health Committee voted to approve a ban on abortion, but that bill died after the House and Senate failed to agree on compromise legislation [MacIntyre, Krystal. "Mississippi abortion ban bill fails as legislators miss deadline for compromise", Jurist News Archive (2006-03-28)] .
Several states have enacted so-called “trigger laws” which “would take effect if Roe vs. Wade is overturned.”["Blanco signs law that would ban abortions", Reuters (2006-06-17)] Those states include Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota.[ "Blanco signs law that would ban abortions", Reuters (2006-06-17)] Some states still maintain abortion bans in their statutes which would go into effect if Roe were ever overturned. On the other hand, some states have passed laws to maintain the legality of abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, and those states include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada and Washington.["Blanco signs law that would ban abortions", Reuters (2006-06-17)]

2 Comments

1. Lon Newman said:

   Thanks, Dino – it’s fun and a bit unusual to listen thoughtfully to thoughtful people explain their point of view on this very emotionally charged issue . . . (Although I think that Ms. Brown is a long way from reasoned, it’s refreshing to hear her calmly describe her perspective.)

   The key underlying assumption of the All-America Life League and others that abortion kills a human being “and that’s a scientific fact” seems to me to be the fundamental religious assumption from which the extremism springs. It does seem indisputable that a fertilized egg is human life and living tissue . . . but at what stage of development that living organism becomes a human being has never been universally agreed upon. It certainly won’t be determined by scientific fact as long as the definition of a human being, for most adults in the world, includes the presence of a unique soul that is unweighed, unmeasured, and chemically invisible. In other words, science falls short of resolving whether/when a soul exists. To make that point clearer . . . we would ask ourselves whether a fertilized egg that later splits in two to form twins had two souls . . . do the children end up with one half soul each . . these are ‘angels on the heads of pins’ religious questions, but when a life becomes a human being is not determinable by scientists.

   So, I agree with Cathy’s main points that we’ve spent a lot of time and energy and resources trying desperately to protect access to safe and legal abortion, contraception and sex education . . . energy and resources that could have been better spent preventing unintended pregnancies.

   Thanks, again, to you and Cathy . . . I hope other listeners will enjoy the interviews as much as I did . . . and I hope they’ll comment as well.

   –Lon–

   February 23rd, 2008 at 8:23 pm #

2. SueK said:

   My thoughts after listening to the interview with American Life League’s Judy Brown and Cathy Thompson from the Religious Coalition For Reproductive Choice: I believe there were some points forgotten or missed and felt compelled to respond with my recollections about abortion.

   I was just three months old on the day of the Pearl Harbor Attack…December 7, 1941. I was 4 years old the year the US dropped Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I reference these dates so a reader will know the decade I was born into and some sense of where the US was during that decade.

   I first heard the word abortion on a newsreel in the movie theater at about age 5or 6. Movies were cheap entertainment and my parents took the whole family at least twice a week. We saw reports of the war and shots of Roosevelt and Churchill and later Truman during those news reels. The news reels also reported on organized crime and how various well known organized crime bosses were being charged with providing abortions. Now, what I (at 5 and 6 and 7 years of age) thought was that abortion was a terrible thing that organized crime people were doing to vulnerable women in America. The crime figures were usually charged with providing abortion and tax evasion. As a child, I didn’t understand what tax evasion had to do with it.

   After the war ended and there were less newsworthy events linked to organized crime, I didn’t see or hear the word abortion again until I was nearly an adult. In high school, sometimes when a girl got pregnant, her boyfriend wanted her to “get rid of it.” Usually no one knew what that meant or how that was possible so she continued to be pregnant. Many times girls went away. An enlightening book about the era is “The Girls Who Went Away, The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V Wade” by Ann Fessler.

   One point not clear in the interviews was when contraception became available. Contraception wasn’t new in the 1960’s.
   My mother used a diaphragm and breastfeeding to achieve the birth spacing in our family. My father was familiar with condoms…which he called “safes” – a word used during the war I’ve learned.

   Did they have access to birth control? Yes. My father knew the store to go to in our township to purchase “safes” which were behind the counter and not openly discussed. My mother was able to get contraceptive care through her physician, most likely because she was married. The thing that happened in the early 1960s was that birth control pills were developed and sold. They were easy to use and extremely effective. The speakers were right…now the American woman could effectively control her fertility. I took some of those early birth control pills for 5 months in 1962. I took Enovid E and it cost $1.69 in the drug store. After using those birth control pills, I went on to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies. When my family size was complete, I used birth control pills again. Countless women in my generation used birth control pills and most of them worked outside the home eventually.

   Another element:
   The American woman moved into the workforce outside of her home out of necessity during World War II. She went back to being a woman focused solely on the work of her family after the war. However, women had learned from that war experience that they could do the work in the factory and in the office and they were good at it. They also filled many important roles in the medical community and had done so for decades. Financial necessity and personal interest sent women back into the workforce armed with a tool that would help them postpone pregnancy, achieve birth spacing and limit the size of their families. Fewer children in a family and Mom’s income helped the family maintain their health and raise and care for their children.

   I was already working outside the home by the time Roe v Wade happened in 1973. I came to work at a family planning provider in 1975. Some states had abortion available at that time. Sometimes women needed to travel outside of Wisconsin to obtain an abortion. Within a few years, first-trimester abortion became available in Wisconsin. Women from most parts of the state still had to travel to Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay or Appleton. They needed a checkup 3 to 4 weeks after the procedure. By 1978 our family planning agency was providing on-site clinics and women came to the local family planning provider for their checkup rather than going out of town again. The confidentiality provided by the family planning clinic was essential to women and their families.

   The statewide family planning providers in Wisconsin have prevented thousands and thousands of abortions by providing accessible, affordable, effective contraceptive methods. Today, those family planning providers have another tool to help prevent the unintended pregnancy. That is Emergency Contraception (EC). If taken as soon as possible after any unprotected sexual contact, EC can prevent pregnancy quite effectively. …Sue Kettner Family Planning Health Services

   March 17th, 2008 at 3:57 pm #

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