Roe, 35 years later

I wish young women knew this whole conflict isn't even about abortion. We've repeated the same debate, redrawing the battle along the same lines, for so long that its real sense has gotten lost. If the debate here were actually about abortion, there would be at least one "antiabortion" group in the United States that supports contraception, the only proven way to prevent abortion. Instead, we have the "right to life" movement investing its talents, immense resources and time in efforts to scale back Americans' access to pregnancy prevention. If this debate were actually about abortion, self-described "antiabortion" activists would be interested in investigating the policies that have succeeded in making abortion less necessary. Why doesn't National Right to Life lead pilgrimages for its policy staff to the places on earth that have achieved the lowest abortion rates in the world? The reason so-called antiabortion groups won't employ any proven strategies is because preventing abortion is simply not their goal.

I wish young women knew how deeply their way of life offends the right-to-life establishment and how set this establishment is on changing our lifestyle, either by criminalizing the things that make it possible (the most common forms of family planning) or filling our heads with fears and lies (abstinence-only curriculum). Today, 95 percent of us have sex before marriage, 85 percent of couples have sex once a week (decidedly not for baby making), 90 percent use some form of artificial birth control. The "right to life" movement is dedicated to stopping this.

What surprises me about the current state of reproductive rights is how much it has all become white noise for the average American. The abortion debate has become the political equivalent of living next to the train tracks -- after a while, you no longer feel the shake as the train powers by. As long as the pictures aren't falling off the walls, Americans don't pay much attention to which direction the train is heading -- or what rights it is carrying away with it. It's all political white noise until the pharmacist won't fill your prescription, or until you need the now-banned partial birth abortion because your very-much-wanted pregnancy is gravely deformed and now threatens your ability to get pregnant ever again, or your 16-year-old daughter just missed her period. It's then that the white noise can become the soundtrack for your personal nightmare.

On Jan. 22, 1973, as Roe was announced, I was working in an abortion clinic in New York City. One of my tasks was to decide which women got free or reduced-fee abortions. The clinic standard was 10 percent free. A first-trimester abortion cost $150, and an abortion between 16 and 24 weeks, including a hospital stay, was $350.

Five years later I was writing about Rosie Jimenez, a Mexican-American college student and single mother who died from a back-alley abortion in Texas. Medicaid funds for abortion had just been cut off. Her best friend, Paulina, who was with her in the hospital, told this story: The doctor treating her was at her bedside trying to determine the cause of the massive infection that had turned her skin a dark greenish brown and caused blood to seep from her eyes. "Did you or didn't you?" he asked. "You are very sick. You may not pull through. It would be easier to treat you if you told us the truth. Just squeeze once if you did and twice if you didn't." Rosie didn't pull through. While she is the only known fatality from the cutoff of federal Medicaid funding for abortions, hundreds of thousands of women have used the rent money or had a baby they couldn't care for because they couldn't pay the price.

Three years ago I spoke at the annual fundraiser of the Jane Fund, one of a few dozen kitchen-table groups that scrounge around trying to find money to pay for abortions for women who can't afford them. One of the members told the story of a woman who needed an abortion and was 26 weeks pregnant. They needed to find $10,000 for the abortion and plane fare to Kansas for the woman and her mother. Sending a 16-year-old to Kansas by herself to have a 24-week abortion would be inhumane. Last week, I asked a clinic director what abortions cost these days. About $400 on average if you are 10 weeks or less pregnant. The cost then goes up by the week, about $100 a week till you hit 16 to 18 weeks. Then the sky's the limit and supply and demand take over. When I e-mailed her she was at a providers' meeting. She had just gotten a quote from one of them. For an abortion at 24 weeks -- $10,000.

I am worried about many things related to abortion -- will it be legal? How can we reduce the need? Will it always be stigmatizing? But more than anything I am worried about how much it costs and how little we are doing about that. I want to see those of us who are pro-choice match the personal commitment anti-choice people make to help women continue their pregnancies with equal help for women who can't afford abortion. In the short term, I will be happy when every reproductive rights and women's rights organization pays for a few abortions a month or a year. When every foundation funding advocacy or research spends 5 percent of its grant-making budget on those groups who sit around their kitchen table and really help the most marginal and desperate women pay the far too costly price(s) they pay for abortions.

The 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade has a shadow hanging over it, which is the impending possibility that the increasingly conservative Supreme Court may overturn the landmark decision. If that happens, we'll see a separation of states into "free" states with legal abortion and "panty sniffing" states without it. Unfortunately, my home state of Texas -- where Roe was conceived by some uppity Texas broads at an Austin garage sale -- will be firmly in the panty-sniffing category. But the overturning of Roe would be, pragmatically speaking, just an extension of the already successful movement to strip most women of access to a legal, safe abortion. The organized intimidation and legal harassment of abortion providers has left us with a country where 87 percent of counties have no abortion provider, and many women who need the service desperately can't afford to get it. It's not much of a right if you can't use it.

Still, I find reason to celebrate the anniversary of Roe, even in light of this deprivation. Because Roe was a cultural landmark that was about a lot more than abortion rights; it was about women's right to autonomy and dignity. Anti-choicers might want to roll the clock back to 1972, but that will take a lot more than simply outlawing abortion.

Next page: We can admit it if our abortion was easy, or if it still makes us cry