Kate Michelman President, NARAL Pro-Choice America Remarks at the National Press Club

I appreciate the Press Club’s invitation to speak at the commencement of what will be an extraordinarily important year for American politics, for women, and for me personally.  

It is the eve of the 31^st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v Wade, which – along with the legalization of birth control – recognized the fundamental relationship between the Constitutional guarantee of liberty and a woman’s right to control and decide the most intimate aspects of her life.  That recognition transformed women’s experience:  saved their lives, protected their health, fostered equality and paved the way for greater partnership with men in all aspects of this nation’s life.

This anniversary comes at the beginning of the most important presidential election year of my lifetime – and at a personal milestone for me.  I’m approaching the end of my service with NARAL Pro-Choice America.  And recently, I’ve been reflecting on the inspiration for my career as a pro-choice activist.

For me, the seeds of activism were planted in my own searing, humiliating experience with a pro-Roe abortion.  Those seeds sprouted and bloomed through my work in early childhood development back home in Pennsylvania.

That was rewarding work.  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as plopping down on the floor at work so a gaggle of kids can pile into your lap for story time.  As I worked with these children—and their parents, young families, often headed by single mothers, struggling against the longest odds—I became more and more aware of the lasting consequences for all involved of the conditions into which children are born.  I met women who felt they couldn’t control those conditions.

And I decided that one of the most important ways I could contribute to healthier children and stronger families was to empower women to bring children into the world under circumstances of their own choosing.  

After nearly 20 years at NARAL Pro-Choice America, I would have hoped we would be a bit further along in recognizing at least one broadly-shared interest – working toward a world of only wanted pregnancies.  It is not that I was naïve in the assumption that once a hard-fought right and freedom was achieved, there is no need for vigilance.  Even rights at the heart of our democracy – such as freedom of speech and religion -- must still be guarded carefully.  But I hoped that as we worked to protect a woman’s right to choose we could have moved forward with a conversation about the kind of society we want – better education, the provision of contraception, indeed, the creation of a society in which the burden of raising a child is lighter.

But, in 2004, the fact remains that a woman’s right to choose an abortion—the single option that ultimately determines whether she controls her destiny during her childbearing years—is gravely imperiled.  And its only security lies in an alert, vigilant, active citizenry devoted to its protection.

The clearest lesson of my 20 years in Washington is this:  When the American people understand what is at risk, they act on their pro-choice beliefs and vote to protect their rights.  But when we are complacent, those who want to take away those rights take advantage of that complacency.

I must be honest.  I’m concerned that some people listening today will dismiss my message as a warning I’ve sounded many times before.  So I’m left with a dilemma: How do I avoid sounding like the little boy who cried wolf when the wolf truly is at the door?

I suppose I could recite the numbers—that the appointment of just one anti-choice Supreme Court justice, perhaps two, would be enough to overturn Roe v. Wade or gut it beyond recognition—that the last time we went this long without a vacancy on the Court, James Monroe lived in the White House—that even with Roe on the books, the states have enacted nearly 400 restrictions on a woman’s right to choose since 1995 alone.

This is reality.  But it’s also abstract.  Roe v Wade is many things.  It’s a legal decision.  It is a rallying cry for both sides of the abortion debate.  But at its heart, it is an entirely human story, one that is repeated by women all over the United States, every day.  Allow me to introduce you to a few.

Coreen Costello, a California woman, registered Republican, and devout Christian, was opposed to abortion.  Then, in the seventh month of her pregnancy, her doctors discovered that her fetus suffered from a lethal neurological disorder that left it unable to breathe, its vital organs atrophying and its body locked into a contorted position from which it could not safely deliver.

The fetus had no hope of survival—and the pregnancy threatened Coreen’s life and fertility.  Reluctantly, Coreen decided to terminate the pregnancy.  Because of the fetus’ position, the safest option was a procedure called an “intact dilation and extraction.”

By any decent moral calculus, Coreen deserves our compassion.  According to the anti-choice leadership of Congress, she merits contempt.  And according to President Bush, the doctor who provided medical care to Coreen during her time of crisis belongs locked up in federal prison for a term up to two years.

That’s because the procedure he performed is one of those criminalized by the ban on so-called “partial-birth abortion.”  That is a political, not a medical, term.  No one knows quite what it means, except that the language of the law covers a variety of procedures used as early as the second trimester of pregnancy.  President Bush signed that ban last year, making him the first President in American history to criminalize abortion and threaten the practice of medicine by sending doctors to jail for caring for their patients.

Coreen’s voice was one of those that persuaded President Clinton to veto the same bill.  It fell on deaf ears last year.  Anti-choice politicians refuse to confront the reality that women for whom this procedure is necessary are wrestling with wanted pregnancies that have gone horribly wrong.  Instead, those politicians promote a shameful caricature of doctors and women who are morally reckless.

This is not hypothetical.  This is federal law—not if the Supreme Court falls, not if President Bush is re-elected, but the law of the land today—and it’s only a beginning.

Of course, some anti-choice politicians would object that the law provides an exception if a woman’s life is threatened.  But what does that mean?  If a woman has a 50-50 chance of dying from pregnancy, for example, is that enough?

It wasn’t for Michelle Lee.

Michelle, a young woman in Louisiana with a life-threatening heart condition, became pregnant when her contraception failed.  A doctor warned that her heart might not be able to bear the strain of pregnancy.

Because Michelle happened to be a poor woman on Medicaid, her life was placed at the whim of politicians.  A hospital panel decided that a 50-50 risk to her life was insufficient to overcome the federal ban on Medicaid funding for abortions.  Michelle had to travel hundreds of miles by ambulance—at a cost of thousands of dollars—to obtain an abortion in Texas.

This is not hypothetical.  This is the law—not if the Supreme Court falls, not if President Bush is re-elected, but the law of the land today—and it’s only a beginning.

General Claudia Kennedy, retired from the U.S. Army, tells of a young woman soldier in her command who became pregnant while serving in Germany.  She decided she needed to end the pregnancy, but federal law prohibits abortions at military facilities.  That left one choice: a German clinic in another city.

The experience, General Kennedy later learned, “was both mortifying and painful. … No pain killer of any kind was administered; the modesty of this soldier and the other women at the clinic had been violated … and the instructions were given in almost unintelligible English.”

This is not hypothetical.  Federal law prohibits military dependents and servicewomen —heroes risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world—from using even their own money to obtain abortions at military facilities.

This is the law—not if the Supreme Court falls, not if President Bush is re-elected, but the law of the land today—and it’s only a beginning.

If politicians can’t muster compassion for women in crisis, or poor women, or soldiers, surely they can make room in their hearts for children.

Not in Mississippi, where a 10-year-old girl was impregnated by a rapist.  She lived in a rural county that—like nearly 90 percent of counties in the United States—had no abortion provider.  Her family drove three hours to Jackson, where a state law forced them to wait 24 hours and then submit the little girl to a misleading state lecture whose explicit purpose is to discourage abortion.

The family couldn’t afford a hotel.  Clinic staffers discovered the girl, her parents and two younger siblings sleeping in their car in the parking lot while the temperature outside soared to 100 degrees.

Mandatory delay laws impose awful burdens—especially for women who work, who can’t afford to take time off to travel long distances, or who must arrange extended child care for the journey.  And the very premise of these laws—that women must be rescued by politicians from our apparent tendency to make impulsive and uninformed choices about pregnancy and child bearing—is insulting to all women.

Yet this is not hypothetical.  Twenty-six states impose mandatory delays, many of them accompanied by state-required lectures.  This is the law—not if the Supreme Court falls, not if President Bush is re-elected, but the law of the land today—and it’s only a beginning.

President Bush, meanwhile, has tried to take away access to contraception.  He has stripped foreign family-planning organizations of desperately needed U.S. funds—an act of blatant inhumanity that risks lives in a world in which pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young women between the ages of 15 and 19.  Here in this country he has shifted priorities away from needed family planning programs to support unproven abstinence only sex education. 

He is stacking the federal courts with extreme anti-choice ideologues—judges who say the right to privacy in which Americans have always believed is a fantasy—who will exercise extraordinary power over women’s lives for literally decades to come.

President Bush has openly stated that his ultimate goal is to ban abortion.  He attempts to however reassure the American people, to keep the issue under the national radar, by saying America is not yet ready to follow him or to ban abortion.

But imagine that reasoning applied to any other fundamental right.  Imagine a President saying, “I don’t believe in freedom of religion, but America isn’t ready to repeal the First Amendment yet.”  We would hardly find that comforting.  On the contrary, we would rise up.  That’s exactly what we must do today.  Because America may not be ready for a ban on abortions, but President Bush plainly is.

All this is ominous enough.  But what has happened is only a precursor to what lies ahead.  Anti-choice politicians have spent the last several years taking choices away one procedure, one woman at a time—going most aggressively after the rights of women they believe are least able to fight back—poor women, often disproportionately women of color, young women, and others living in the quiet corners of our society.  Now, if Roe v. Wade falls, anti-choice politicians will be free to impose a ban on all abortions for all women that will only increase the terrible burdens on those least able to bear them. 

All this depends on the votes Americans cast this November.  Without a pro-choice President and enough votes in the Senate to block the most extreme judicial nominees, it is difficult to see how a woman’s right to choose as we know it can survive.

Without Roe, nearly 20 states today would pass laws either banning or severely restricting abortion.  We know.  We’ve counted the votes.  And the very same White House and Congress that just enacted a ban on some procedures would be free to pursue their openly stated goal: banning all abortions.

To those who believe that such an unthinkable event could never occur, I say: If a ban on abortion is introduced in Congress, as it surely would be, would the leadership—Speaker Hastert, Majority Leader DeLay, Majority Leader Frist, all avowed foes of a woman’s right to choose—work against it?  Would President Bush veto it?

Of course not.  They want to ban abortion, and with Roe out of the way, they could.

With the threat so indisputably real, every American bears a responsibility to consider what that means—to contemplate the catastrophic implications of forcing women to bear children against their will.  Of making pregnancy and childbearing a public mandate rather than a cherished choice.

We know too well what those implications are.  In our own country, not very long ago, when abortion was a crime, women died.  Children were left motherless.  Even today, millions of women around the world live in societies in which abortion is illegal – nearly 80,000 of them will die this year.  That reality could be ours if George Bush is reelected and Roe is overturned. 

Last year, in Nicaragua, a nine-year-old girl was raped and impregnated.  The country’s Roman Catholic Cardinal pressured the government to withhold approval for an abortion.  Instead of acting quickly, the government ordered a study of the case be taken. The government was studying -- studying -- whether she could have an abortion.  Nine years old.  Already she will live every day of her life with the memory of having been raped.    Imagine the added trauma to her nine-year-old psyche of bearing the product of that crime -- to say nothing of the trauma to her nine-year-old body of carrying a pregnancy to term. 

To say that America is headed in this direction is neither to exaggerate nor inflame the issue.  It is to document the facts, cold and hard, and to reveal the experiences of women in America and around the world today.

But it is not too late to change history’s course.  We can elect a pro-choice President in 2004, and a woman’s right to choose can be an important factor in winning votes and driving the gender gap for the Democratic pro-choice nominee.  We know we can do this because we did it in 1992—when, at this stage of the campaign, pundits said there was no way an incumbent President riding a wave of wartime popularity could be defeated.  And a careful analysis of election returns showed that this issue, a woman’s right to choose, was decisive for an important group of swing voters.

Then, we were one vote away on the Supreme Court from losing our right to choose.  We mobilized—one person, one community, one state at a time.  We put a pro-choice President into White House, and he put two pro-choice justices on the Court.  We can do it again –

We must pose the central questions:

Under what circumstances do we bring children into the world—and who makes the decision?

Should children be born by choice or under the heavy hand of government compulsion?

Should women be equal, contributing partners in society, or should they be held captive to their reproductive function for the entirety of their childbearing years?

In short, who decides?  Women or government?

Our opponents, of course, have an answer.  They say politicians know best—that women are incapable of making moral judgments without the government’s direction.  The anti-choice movement’s contemptible caricature of the casual abortion—the woman who waltzes into an abortion clinic as carelessly as she stops by a beauty salon—is a shameful political myth.

Perhaps that woman is out there somewhere.  But frankly in nearly 30 years working in this movement and with women struggling to raise healthy families against long odds, I have yet to meet her.  Without fail, every woman I have met has made choices about pregnancy and childbearing with a respect for the moral responsibilities involved.

Are those choices complex?  Of course.  Of course women consider the stage of their pregnancy in making choices about abortion.  Obviously they understand a developing life is within them.  Naturally those decisions become more complex as a fetus approaches viability.  The complexity of the choice is exactly why it should be left to individuals who understand their own circumstances and values rather than politicians who seek to impose a blind, uniform and morally chauvinistic choice on everyone.

I don’t know what to call anti-choice politicians’ callous dismissal of women’s ability to make moral choices or how to characterize politicians who would hold their constituents in such low regard.  But I know one word that certainly doesn’t apply – compassionate.

This November’s election is about more than a woman’s right to choose, as fundamental as that right is.  It’s about the kind of society we want to be and what role women will play in it.

After nearly 20 years at NARAL, I have decided to devote myself to my two highest priorities:  my family and electing a pro-choice President without the day-to-day burdens of running a large organization.  This election is the most important of my lifetime.

This is the last time I’ll speak to this forum as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.  But it doesn’t end my commitment to this cause, and it will not be the last time that a pro-choice leader sounds the alarm in this forum – because those who oppose the right to choose are relentless, and our vigilance can never cease.

In a few months, I’ll end my tenure in this role on the most fitting note I can imagine—after the April 25 March to Save Women’s Lives, when we will bring a historic number of Americans to Washington, D.C. to speak for a woman’s right to choose.

It has been a privilege to serve with this organization for these 20 years —a privilege because of the people I’ve worked with, and because I’ve been able to devote my career to an issue about which I care so deeply— an issue which makes a real difference in people’s lives. 

I’ll leave it to others to decide what difference I made.  Here’s what I do know: If I helped save the life of one woman, enrich the life of one child, strengthen just one family, that’s enough for me.  And I hope it’s enough to inspire other activists, especially young women, that they can make a difference too.

Our vision IS ambitious, and the odds we face ARE long. But America is an ambitious nation, and the odds against our centuries-long experiment in freedom couldn't have been steeper.  That experiment is thriving today because we've never taken a single freedom for granted. Our vision for American society--a society in which every pregnancy is wanted, every child welcomed, every woman respected--is as close as our determination to build it--our willingness to maintain our vigilance--our commitment to knock on doors and cast votes and canvass neighborhoods.   Americans prevail when we persevere, and that is precisely what this moment demands.  We CAN preserve our freedom. We CAN save women's lives. We CAN make families healthier and we can make society stronger. It's up to us.  Thank you. 

Contact:
Ted Miller, 202.973.3032