[The World and I, May 1992]
Major movements begin with dreams and end with mechanics.
The term “feminism” is almost inextricably bound up in the public mind with access to abortion, provided (as a recent Fund for the Feminist Majority mailing puts it) “without restrictions”. A kind of red fury surrounds this demand, one that is presented as beyond negotiation and even beyond discussion.
[Tampa Tribune, December 3, 1989]
When I was in college the bumper sticker on my car read “Don’t labor under a misconception —legalize abortion”. I was one of a handful of feminists on my campus, back in the days when we were jeered at as “bra-burning women’s libbers”. As we struggled against a hazy sea of sexism, abortion rights was a visible banner, a concrete, measurable goal. Though our other foes were elusive, within the fragile boundary of our skin, at least, we would be sovereign. What could be more personal? How could any woman oppose it? I oppose it now. It has been a slow process, my path from a pro-choice to a pro-life position, and I know that unintended pregnancy raises devastating problems. But I can no longer avoid the realization that legalizing abortion was the wrong solution; we have let in a Trojan Horse whose hidden betrayal we’ve just begun to see.
[Sisterlife, Spring 1992]
On April 5, 1992 , the National Organization of Women sponsored an event in defense of abortion; delegations from women's groups marched through the streets of Washington , DC , united by the slogan “We Won't Go Back.” But the march organizers intended the day to be a time of, at least, looking back: “We want to tie our current challenge to the historic fight for women's rights waged by our foremothers,” they wrote in a letter to women's groups.
[Christianity Today, December 6, 1999]
The twenty-seventh anniversary of Roe v. Wade is coming up, and I have some bad news. The abortion debate is over.
For a couple of decades there it was the hot topic, the cover story of magazines, subject of television debates, and flashpoint of political campaigns. Many a punditorial brow was furrowed over ”this difficult, controversial choice."
Then the public got bored.
[Park Ridge Center Bulletin, May-June, 1999]
Issues of medical controversy hit close to home; in fact, they drop a cherry bomb right through the mail slot. Our bodies are our homes: they are where we live. For this reason, discussions relating to medicine can take on a desperate tone. When one person feels another is asserting the right to meddle with his home,
[Sisterlife, Spring 1991]
On June 4, 1990, Jack Kevorkian attached Alzheimer's patient Janet Adkins to a homemade contraption in his 1968 VW bus, then watched her push the activating button that made her die.
Public reaction was swift and generally negative. Judge Alice Gilbert, in barring Kevorkian from ever again using the device, charged that he “flagrantly violated” all standards of medical practice.
[World, November 26, 1994]
“Hey, you got stuff all over your car!” the boy called out.
He staffs the gatehouse at the retirement home where my son waits tables. The stuff I had all over my car was large white daisies with sun-yellow centers, carefully painted on by hand. Yes, it draws attention.
It's my daughter's car, I explain, but she hasn't learned to drive a stick-shift yet. While she tools around in my massive station wagon, I'm in her lumpy old sedan. When this car rolled off the assembly line ten years ago, Megan was in the first grade. It kept rolling for 114,000 miles until it crossed her path, and as soon as she caught it she scattered daisies all over its powdery dull-brown hide.
[Philanthropy, Culture, and Society, October, 1993] The toughest thing about Marilyn Szewczyk isn't her name. You can forget everything you learned in grammar school and rattle off “Seff-check.” Keeping up with Marilyn's determination, energy, and vision is not so easy.
Marilyn arrives late for our lunch appointment, her ample silhouette filling the door. Outside it is a blistering white summer noon ;
[The Remnant, January 20, 1992]
The abortion debate seems like an unresolvable conflict of rights: the right of women to control their own bodies, the right of children to be born. Can one both support women's rights and oppose abortion?
Truly supporting women's rights must involve telling the truth about abortion and working for it to cease.
