Roe, 35 years later

Salon asked leading feminists to talk about the court case that changed their lives, and why it matters more than ever.

Read more: Abortion, Supreme Court, Pregnancy, Reproductive rights, Life

Jan. 22, 2008 | Tuesday, Jan. 22, marks the 35th birthday of Roe v. Wade, the case in which the Supreme Court decided that any state or federal laws restricting or outlawing abortion were in violation of a constitutional right to privacy. Roe made it legal for women all over the United States to exercise the control over their bodies and their reproductive lives that they should have had all along.

I wish it were possible to raise a glass, give a birthday toast, and claim that Roe didn't look a day over 29, but alas, this is a bittersweet bash. A mere three and half decades after her birth, Roe shows her age: She's been weakened, knocked around, had big bites taken out of her. Beginning with the 1976 Hyde amendment that cut off Medicaid funding for abortions, which made it difficult for poor women to obtain the medical services to which they had every legal right, and continuing through this past spring, when a conservative Supreme Court banned late-term abortions with no exception for the health of the mother, Roe's existence has been in constant jeopardy from the moment it came into law. And, of course, it's not just Roe that gets buffeted and bruised by these attacks; it's everything the ruling stands for -- the fundamental premise that women are human beings, as valuable under the law as men, conscious, capable and responsible for making decisions about their bodies, their reproduction and their lives.

So no, this particular party is not, cannot be, a raucous celebration. It's tempting to wish, in fact, that we didn't have to mark this birthday at all, that these basic rights were so ingrained, so not up for further debate, that their being granted so late would now seem simply a chronological aberration in the course of enlightenment thinking, rather than a leap that we must still recognize as a surprising accomplishment.

Today, in honor of Roe v. Wade, Salon publishes the thoughts of some of those who remember life before Roe and some who were born into a post-Roe world, who have grown up to see what they should rightly have trusted was bedrock equality erode under their feet. All these women see a tempestuous future for Roe; yet they, and we, take a moment to pay tribute to the decision that changed all of their lives. -- Rebecca Traister

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Gloria Feldt: "It's time to establish reproductive rights in a human and civil rights framework"

On Jan. 22, 1973, I was oblivious to the Roe v. Wade decision. A young wife and mother of three, I was taking a bilingual teaching course in McAllen, Texas, near the Mexican border -- a border frequently crossed then by desperate U.S. women seeking the illegal abortions that were readily available, though often dangerous, there. The big news that day was President Lyndon Johnson's death, which relegated Roe to a media footnote even in Texas, where the case originated, argued by 27-year-old Austin attorney Sarah Weddington (who had crossed that border herself while a struggling college student).

The following year, I decided to learn more about the fledgling local affiliate of Planned Parenthood. I quickly realized I'd had the good fortune to join the single most important social justice cause in human history -- because the right to make one's own childbearing choices, and to have our bodily integrity protected, profoundly affects every human being.

Roe's outcome made so much sense. But after three and a half decades defending it, I'm convinced that Roe alone is important but clearly not sufficient. According to Jeffrey Toobin, author of "The Nine," the right to privacy was the best precedent the Supreme Court had in those days before gender-equality law. Today, despite a ringing affirmation of Roe's privacy application to gay rights in Lawrence v. Texas, both the rhetoric and the laws on women's reproductive rights have been pushed so far backward by other high court decisions that Roe's fragile shell affords women but limited protection.

That's why the next phase of this long trajectory toward women's full civil rights requires us to build a movement from the ground up once again -- state by state, vote by vote, until we pass federal laws such as the Freedom of Choice Act, laws that will be upheld by a Supreme Court reshaped by presidents who respect women's moral capacity and human right to make our own childbearing decisions.

Vote early and often, my friends.

Gloria Feldt is the author of "The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back."

Lynn M. Paltrow: "If Roe is overturned, these laws mean women who have abortions would be charged with murder"

While Roe is vulnerable, few recognize there are already laws in place that, in effect, declare that women, upon becoming pregnant, lose their civil and human rights. More than 30 states and the federal government have "unborn victims of violence" acts, fetal homicide, and other laws that treat fetuses as separate persons in some circumstances. This year, Colorado and several other states may have ballot measures designed to grant the status of legal personhood to the unborn under their state constitutions. Fetal-rights laws generally claim to protect pregnant women from third-party attacks, yet are primarily used to justify actions that deprive women of the right to informed consent, bodily integrity and life itself. In the name of fetal rights and protection, pregnant women have been forced to have unnecessary C-sections (in one case both the woman and fetus died), been civilly committed to mental hospitals and drug treatment programs, been arrested as child abusers for using marijuana to cope with morning sickness, and been charged and, in some cases, convicted of murder for suffering an unintentional stillbirth. These fetal-rights laws do not make abortion itself illegal. But make no mistake: If Roe is overturned, these laws mean women who have abortions will be charged with murder, not illegal abortion. Moreover, if the unborn are legal persons, then states already have the means, through their civil commitment and child protection laws, to police and imprison women to ensure that they do not have abortions. It should be clear, then, that those who defend the right to choose an abortion and those who defend a woman's right to mother-friendly childbirth must unite to defend women's human rights -- not just Roe or reproductive rights.

Lynn M. Paltrow is the executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

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