Sex & Power is the real history of Roe v. Wade. In establishing that history, we will appropriately respond to the current threats underway with the Supreme Court justice appointment, and the threats to women’s rights. We can use our positions with the greater intention if we get to ground with the facts. My book Barefoot Frontrunners: Sex, Women,and Power, provides the research of Roe vs Wade that tells us a great deal about the potential we now face, and its meaning. One primary source I relied upon is Estelle Freedman, Stanford professor and historian and author of Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics.Freedman states how far back we can look within our own country to the issue of women’s rights: that is, the omission of abortion in the Constitution was because it was so commonplace and implicit in practice that it didn’t bear recognition. The same women who helped women give birth helped women with unwanted pregnancies. There were no doctors involved in childbirth or attending to women until the 19th century. Everybody who saw Call the Midwife on PBS knows of this fact, right? Further, Linda Gordon, author, and historian of The Women’s Liberation Movement states that “All known human societies have tried to control reproduction, and abortion was a common means. It was legal in three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism-provided it was before the “quickening or fetus movement.”
History of Abortion
But where abortion became a matter of morality is described by Linda Gordon: “From 1840-1890 throughout all the states in the US, moral reformers arrived and all forms of reproduction control were banned until 1873.” Until 1964, the birth control pill became available through doctors for married women, even as unwanted pregnancies became more frequent, the issue remained a moral taboo. Secrecy and risk were then associated with the help women received with unwanted pregnancies. Gordon further claims that the growing acceptability of sex outside marriage made the ban on abortions unacceptable. In other words, the attempt to control reproduction has as its base inhibiting women from having choice about their sexual practices. Even so, it is important to note that before Roe v Wade, seventeen states had legalized abortion practices, Gordon notes.
Where did the help for women come from then prior to Roe v. Wade? We know of the stories of risk and death of women who found means generally following the trail established by other women and word of mouth in shame and secrecy to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Women who had the means found the way. Roe v. Wade brought with it the intervention of medical society who formulated the legality of abortion; their role has to be considered as a factor of Roe v.Wade from the advantage they sought to aid patients and not be in legal jeopardy, regulating the process.
Medical Assumptions of Roe v. Wade
To understand the origin of Roe v. Wade, it’s important to note the actual assumptions of the foundation of Roe v. Wade as provided by the US National Library of Medicine.
Issues Law Med. 2014 Fall; 29(2): 183-230. C. Forsythe.
“Too little attention has been paid over the past forty years to the complete lack of a factual record in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, and to the Court’s fundamental assumption that drove the outcome. The decision and opinions were driven by the medical claim that “abortion was safer than childbirth,” which was raised for the first time in the briefs in the Supreme Court without any lower court record. This medical premise directly and profoundly shaped virtually every major aspect of Roe and Doe, including the creation of the trimester system and the prohibition of health and safety regulations in the first trimester. Because of this medical assumption, the Justices extended the right to abortion throughout pregnancy. It was key to the Court’s historical rationale for a “right” to abortion. Because of this notion, the Justices gave abortion providers complete discretion to manage any issues of health and safety, and they prohibited public health officials from regulating abortion in the first trimester. This medical assumption was the most consequential factual assumption of the abortion decisions of 1973 and it has been assumed to be true in subsequent abortion decisions by the Court.”
Medical Doctors became available to women through Roe v. Wade and it is known that they fostered the bill that brought standardized safety to women, but as Ruth Bader Ginsberg states: “ It is the women in poverty who suffer the lack of abortion rights, women of means have always had choices based on their decision and not one made for them by the government.
States Rights
Abortion has also always been a states rights issue. Roe v. Wade was based on dismissing the laws that criminalized abortion because it violated the for the right to privacy:
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 vote, agreed with Roe that Texas’s law criminalizing abortion violated her right to privacy. But the Court held that states do have an interest in ensuring the safety and well-being of pregnant women, as well as the potential of human life.
However, Thirteen states immediately set up roadblocks to Roe v. Wade becoming accessible. Sustained and maintained today, those states make it impossible through distance and imposing counseling and restrictions that shame women got the benefit of Roe v. Wade. The conflict has only deepened since. The right-wing conservative attacks in those states and others is said to be based on fear: “White fright.” Less white women having babies, particularly upper-class white women, as a threat to the ruling majority the white men of the country.
Roe v. Wade & ERA
Many historians consider the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973 as the trigger that set off an alarm that created serious resistance to the Equal Rights Amendment. The result was that only thirty-five of the needed thirty-eight to ratify the passed ERA Amendment could be achieved, then or now. The potential of women in power: in equal standing with men in sexual and economic policies was and is resisted strenuously by the conservative right-wing factions, and is the script Trump and his partners are attempting to legislate.
But here’s the most profound research to consider: women have relied on their integrity around their sexuality. Many women have not and will not consider abortion for themselves, but do not consider their position as a needed imposition on choices made by other women. They are not for or against abortion, but for women’s right to choose. The use of abortion has before Roe v. Wade is equivalent to the percentage of use now. The suspected notion that availability of abortion would increase its use over this duration of time has proved to be false. Since 2011, abortion rates in all the US regions declined, in the Midwest by seventeen points, the West fifteen points and Northeast by nine percent.
It’s not the 1940’s…
As the New York Times July 2nd, 2018 reported in their article by Pam Belluck and Jan Hoffman, Medical Gains are Reshaping Abortion Fight, we are not going back to the 1950’s, 50’s or 60’s. Advances have been made such that inexpensive early detection, the morning after pills, over the counter medications, improved intrauterine devices and hormonal implants all have brought down the necessity for abortion. Medical abortions enable women to manage up to 10 weeks to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Women have powerfully taken control of their reproduction.
So when you look at the long run of how the attempt to control women’s sexuality has been taken from the hands of authorities, it has failed. But the cause we need to sign up for is the one that lingers before and after Roe v. Wade. The tolerance or lack of tolerance we take by the action/work we take on to see that all women have the right to choose, all women are given the dignity and respect of their choices, and that the working low-income women must be our problem. Let’s use our voices for that! Let’s have the women who benefited from the decades past make sure the current and next generation of women have more, not less that come after us. The work of human rights/women’s rights did not go far enough and deep enough, and this is the work to be done now.
All rights reserved to the content of this article are from Barefoot Frontrunners: Sex, Women, and Power are reserved: No parts to be reproduced without permission from the author: Peggy Reskin
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