May 6, 2022
When Roe v Wade was decided in 1973 I was a law student with a 3-year-old son. I heard about the decision on the radio. I arrived in class a little early, and found a few men already there, talking sports. No women – there were only ten of us in the class of 1975. I told them about the monumental, lives-changing decision. They resumed talking sports.
We were both very young
In 1989 Governor Bob Martinez of Florida called a special session of the legislature to pass a bill based on the Missouri law which the US Supreme Court had just upheld in the Webster case, permitting abortion regulation in the second trimester of pregnancy, beyond what Roe would allow. I was part of Voices for Choice, a group hastily formed by Representative Elaine Gordon to defeat the Governor’s bill. I spoke to any group that was interested, explaining Roe, Webster, and the impact on women and families of abortion restrictions.
Elaine Gordon image at floridamemory.com
I was driving to Tallahassee for a meeting of the group when I pieced together recent changes in my body, suddenly realized I was pregnant, and remembered the morning weeks before when I had found my diaphragm in the shower – I had failed to put it in. Walking to the parking lot after the meeting, still in shock, I told Elaine, a warm, motherly woman and a fierce feminist, who gave me a sympathetic hug. After nineteen years of raising my son alone, I wasn’t willing to start over again, and I had an abortion.
I have not been politically active for a while – some door to door work, a couple of demonstrations. https://elizabethmccullochauthor.com/pro-abortion/ On May 4, 2022 I was driving on the interstate again as I listened to interviews about the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Almost fifty years after Roe it seems that we are about to go back to where we started. My granddaughter called me from college in Georgia, horrified by the Georgia law that is waiting in the wings for Roe to disappear: no abortion after six weeks pregnancy, no exception for rape or incest. I briefly explained the situation and asked her again to please, please, PLEASE register to vote. She promised it’s the first thing she’ll do when she gets home.
The forces that have apparently succeeded in ending Roe have their sights set more broadly on other issues; we are going to be fighting all over again. The fight for women’s rights and other justice issues has continued without me; preoccupied with children, loss, aging, and writing, I haven’t done much in recent years. Yesterday I was completely disheartened, but despair is self-indulgent, and depressing as hell. I’ll probably leave demonstrations to others with more energy than I; but networks are organizing to help women get access to abortion, and others are working furiously for the mid-term elections. I will work with the latter and contribute money to the former. It’s time once again to light a candle and curse the darkness.
image by tuca bianca at pexels.com
Nov 18, 2017
I’m waiting to check out at Publix. The headline on People magazine – Taking Down a Hollywood Predator – is surrounded by head shots of young actresses. Just below People is the Time Magazine Commemorative Edition. Hugh Hefner, in his burgundy bathrobe, leans forward with a tight smile.
image:bio.com
From Hollywood it’s spreading like slime– politicians, government officials, business leaders, academics. Women are shining a light on sexual harassment, and the nasty young and old men are deer in the headlights. Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly – we barely hear about them any more – the stories are coming so fast and furious, tumbling over each other.
image:instructionsoninstructing.wordpress.com
I don’t know anything about the reality of Hollywood – I see them as a group of shined-up women and men, sometimes gifted actors, sometimes merely glossy. The casting couch – it was a casual joke. I think I both assumed it was true and didn’t believe it about any particular woman. I believed Hollywood was a land of casual sex and multiple marriages, where an actor’s sexual image was a costume designed by agents and studios, unrelated to his or her real life. Virgin, slut, stud (always heterosexual) – what did the market need this year?
images:theindependent.com, pinterest. playgirldlist.com
I do know about the reality I’ve lived, as a privileged white woman, prep school girl, hippie, lawyer, growing up in the middle of the sexual “revolution”and the second wave of feminism. I once taught feminist jurisprudence, and in 1989 wrote a long lecture on law and sex, focusing on rape and sexual harassment, then a new legal concept, though certainly not a new problem. After seventy years, I’m still puzzling over gender relations. I have wrestled with this essay, trying to pin down what I think. The whole subject makes me wonder.
I’ve only encountered sexual harassment second-hand, unless I count the urologist who asked me out after hearing about my sex life.
image:healthcare.utah.edu
At the legal aid retreat, the men had a poker game and asked the (female) secretaries to parade in front of them in a wet T-shirt contest. We women lawyers were furious when we heard about it. The men just laughed.
image:hispotion.com
Many years later, a young graduate student confided in me. She had stayed after the office Christmas party to help clean up, but fled when our boss, I’ll call him Peter, came into the kitchen naked. Apparently Peter believed the mere sight of his penis was sufficient seduction. It was too bizarre, and I might not have believed her had another woman, a professor, not told me a similar story. I reported it to the head of the organization. He was appalled, and called Peter on the carpet.
I’m proud that a few months later, when Peter told me someone had reported him – I don’t know if he was confiding in me as a friendly feminist or suspected I was the snitch – I told him. We were not so friendly after that. Perhaps the episode was noted in his personnel file, but it certainly didn’t stop his upward momentum; he rose to the top of the organization. I wonder if he’s shaking in his boots. I wonder why I don’t out him.
I don’t wonder why I myself was never harassed. Harassment involves unwelcome sexual advances. When I was young, they were rarely unwelcome; indeed, I was often the one advancing. I dressed to entice, and rarely refused an offer. Men’s desire made me feel powerful; I almost had notches on my headboard. (Whether I was fooling myself about what I was seeking is a different inquiry, and complicated.)
Don’t fish off the company pier is a fine rule, but sometimes the only people you meet are swimming in the company pond. A former colleague points out that I ignored the rule. He is now my husband, and an excellent fish indeed, But I never felt sexually pressured by co-workers.
image:canadianflyinfishing.com
I think this is due to my personality. For years I thought of myself as kind and tactful, guided by my mother’s saying: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Looking back, knowing myself much better, I realize that was a delusion. You could call me blunt, or you could call me a bitch. More than one man told me I was intimidating. I imagine they called me a ball-buster behind my back. I would have hated that then, but it amuses me now.
Do women who are harassed bring it on themselves, perhaps with their attire? I’ve heard this from men and women. The mixed messages begin when we are so young. Look pretty. Look sexy, but not too sexy. Newscasters are told to wear skirts so the audience can see their legs under the table. Katie Couric changed her appearance, trading pants for skirts and pumps for stilettos, when Diane Sawyer was slotted opposite her on a rival network.
At the law school, fall was recruiting season, and suddenly the halls were filled with carefully groomed young people in suits. But the women had seen the lawyers on TV – skirts to mid-thigh, cleavage peeking out from the neckline, stiletto heels – and dressed accordingly. We older women fretted, but the TV lawyers were more influential than we.
image:express.co.uk
Men still run things in business, entertainment, government, academia. The message? You must dress to attract us. We want to see your breasts and thighs, but if you show them, you can’t complain when we are overcome by our powerful male libido.
If I display it, does that give you license to touch it? To comment on it? Certainly not the former; I don’t know about the latter. But I think we all know that regardless of what we wear – knit sheath or boxy business suit, tight jeans or khaki coveralls, steel-toed workboots or stilettos -some men will see our mere female presence as an invitation.
It all makes me wonder. What does it signify that it is so common? If it’s how it’s always been, do we now hold men accountable for their behavior? Yes, we do; sexual harassment has been recognized as discrimination by the law for over thirty years, first by the EEOC, and then by the Supreme Court. Why do women wait so long to come forward? Oh please. Whose job was in jeopardy? Who feels shame about these episodes? Who gets blamed if she lets herself be pressured into a sexual relationship?
Scholar Catherine McKinnon, with many brave victims and their feminist lawyers, changed the legal environment in the eighties. The harassment and abuse continued. “When you’re a star you can grab em by the pussy,” said candidate Trump. Now a bunch of women, who were raised in and worked in a world where that was true, are saying en masse, No, you can’t. This part’s not for sale. My sexuality isn’t part of my job description.
image:aclu.org
The powers that be in media, entertainment, politics, legislatures, are scrambling to distance themselves from this tawdry culture. Shocked, they are shocked. They compete to see who can deplore most forcefully, and the particular men who have been called out are being punished severely.
What I really wonder is, will it last? Is this a brief storm, or an earthquake which will change the topography? Social change, a movement – it surges forward, falls back, subsides, gathers strength, surges again. Do we gain ground?
The New York Times, once famously patriarchal, now has a gender editor, Jessica Bennett. She explores how we got here and queries whether this is a permanent change. Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, told her “There comes a tipping point when the ‘frame’ changes. One day, segregated water fountains seemed ‘normal’…It’s just how things were. Then they’re illegal, and a few years later you say, ‘Wow, how did we ever see that as O.K.?’” click
image:arts.gov
I’ve lived seventy years in a world ruled by men, with rules of behavior enforced by men and women. My fifteen-year-old granddaughter has learned all these rules. She tells me what you must do to get and keep a boyfriend, and tells me who is a slut. Like all young people, she thinks her generation invented sex, and says, “Things are different now, Grandma.”
I worry that the frame will not change, that each new generation of women will be harmed by it, and not find the courage to resist until they reach middle age. Diana Nyad wrote an op-ed column recounting the trauma of her high school swimming coach’s continuous molestation: “And therein lies the call for our speaking up. We need to construct an accurate archive of these abuses. And we need to prepare coming generations to speak up in the moment, rather than be coerced into years of mute helplessness.” click
image:theextraordinary.org
Have we come a long way, Baby? And will we keep moving forward?
Nov 15, 2016
I vote a week early. I get tears in my eyes as I black the little oval next to Hillary’s name. On election night I am excited, set up my computer to watch the numbers roll in. But they’re rolling the wrong way. Hope eroding with the numbers, I go to bed at 10:30. Maybe I’ll wake up to good news in the morning.
I wake at 12:30. It looks worse. At 1:15 I go to Facebook; I have to say something, anything. Judging by the response, many of my Facebook “friends” are awake. I stay up until 4.
Before she went to bed I had told Amanda, “Don’t worry about it honey. She’s going to win.” When she wakes up in the morning I have to tell her. In the car I try to acknowledge our outrage while warding off despair. “Why do you have to talk about it. You know I’m mad; leave me alone.”
For a couple of days it doesn’t seem real. I shake my head as if to clear the bad dream. Then for a little while I think – maybe the president won’t be as awful as the candidate. After all, he has no firm opinions. But I know he is a racist, a misogynist, hateful, impulsive, still a two-year-old at 70. I fear his ignorance, his incompetence, his willingness to exploit what is worst in us to win.
I try to avoid information, but the New York Times and Facebook keep drawing me in. I see in the Times the committee that will manage the transition – I recognize Steve Bannon from Breitbart News, and Pam Bondi, the Florida Attorney General who received $25,000 from the Trump Foundation and then did not investigate fraud allegations against Trump University – and realize things may be as bad as I fear.
Bondi and friend image:NYTimes.com
A few weeks before the election I had started writing about Michelle Obama’s New Hampshire speech – the one about Trump boasting of assaults on women – trying to understand my response to it. On Friday – has it only been three days? – I watch it again on YouTube, download the transcript. And now the crying begins, on and off for two days, until it feels like this new reality has loomed forever.
The looming horror: image of Hurricane Matthew in news-press.com
I’ve long thought that it’s past time for the American Century, the American Empire, to be over. Maybe this is just a marker on that road. But the crumbling won’t be painless, and most of the rubble will fall on the poorest, the least powerful.
image:bbc.com/gettyimages
I watch David Chappell, Steven Colbert, Seth Meyers, Whoopie Goldberg. I cry. I have to do something. What can I do?
Wednesday is the HOME Van food pantry at Arupa’s house. I hand out medicines, tents, sundries. To my surprise – usually the political views I hear there are right wing – most of the talk in the long line is dismayed, or outraged. I go to the annual celebration at Grace Marketplace, our two year old homeless services campus, knowing I’ll see familiar faces. I go to collect hugs. I get plenty. I ask a friend about the mayor’s book circle – first they read Ta Nahisi Coates, now they’re going to read Ibram Kendi. I’m going to read it. Good old progressive, prosperous, white me, I want to learn more, I want to connect.
From my car I wave and smile in the rural southern way at pedestrians, especially non-whites. I wish I had a Clinton bumper sticker. We go for an evening walk and pass the home of the two gallumphing Great Danes. In their yard is a Trump sign. I call to the neighbor. “I love your dogs. But they’re not big enough!” – and she laughs. We walk on and I mutter to Joe, “But I hate your sign.”
image:danesonline.com
Everything makes me think of the election. Sunday afternoon we go to the new Depot Park to hear some reggae – it’s been open a couple of months but this is our first time. It was built on a brownfield full of contaminated soil and water, which was treated and removed. How much its recent opening influenced the latest eviction of nearby homeless camps, I can’t say. In Gainesville we have big camp evictions every few years, with no provision for the campers to go anywhere else, no regard for the functioning community they have created. The people scatter and find new sites.
Despite my misgivings, the park is as wonderful as I’ve heard – still new and raw, but when the trees grow up it will be glorious. Plenty of seating – rocks, benches, concrete risers – and curved walking paths. In the center is the playground, full of delights. Fossils planted in the sandbox. Little digging machines that kids can sit on, the sand shovel controlled by the pedals and handlebars. A wet area where water spurts from the ground, slides down a wall, sprays out from moveable metal tubing. This is Florida, mid-November; we can still play in the water.
image:independentfloridaalligator.com
Joe and I sit by the sandbox and watch the children, parents, grandparents. It’s like an advertisement for multicultural diversity. Asian faces, faces framed by hijabs, children black and brown and white, talking English and Spanish, and is that Chinese? A 7-year-old blonde girl makes sand angels. A 2-year-old brown boy with glistening black curls stamps his feet in the water. I nod and smile at everyone I pass. This is not Trumpworld, this is America.
image:sandia national laboratory
Light a candle and curse the darkness – it’s been my motto for many years. What can I do? There is a Progressive Women’s Meeting Sunday afternoon, but meetings?… Oh God, I can’t anymore. A Million Woman March January 21. Possibly. The last big demonstration I went to in DC was for abortion rights. I remember the exhilaration -seeing clusters of women in Atlanta at the gate for the DC flight, masses of women on the DC subway. But I was 45 then – I could stand for hours and hours. And I hate crowds.
image: huffingtonpost
The news keeps getting worse; Bannon will be chief advisor. What can I do? What can I do?
It’s been a week. At 3AM Tuesday morning I see two posts on Facebook:
Amanda Debour Bartlett asks people to protest to Congress about the appointment of Steve Bannon as Trump’s senior advisor, followed by much discussion regarding Congress’ lack of power in this matter. I think, and say, that if we protest as often as we can on the truly horrible decisions (and with Bannon in charge there will be many of them) Congress may believe it has to resist the executive when possible. I share the user-friendly Common Cause website to “find your representative.” click I resolve to keep addresses and stamped envelopes by my writing chair, and dash off notes whenever I feel the outrage.
from Common Cause website: my representatives – alas (mostly)
Another post:
“…Join me in showing love and respect to others. Find your way to swing the pendulum in the direction of love. Because today, sadly, hate is gaining ground.” (Mara Carrizo Scalise on Instagram, posted on FB by Karen Epple, shared by Arupa, and comically mocked by her husband) I vow to work hard on kindness, friendliness, civility. To wear the safety pin. click
Is it all silly? I don’t know. Will it help? Probably not. Maybe only to assuage my feelings, to save my own soul. I am still crying.
Aug 14, 2016
In this year of totally distressing, not to say horrifying, political campaigns click, Joe and I turned to West Wing. He brought home DVDS from the law school library, and we binge-watched, together and separately. (I fall asleep when I watch anything after 8pm.)
image:twinversity.com
After five seasons, the show lost steam and we lost interest. But now I had the TV habit, and, fearing I wouldn’t get enough exposure to politics, I turned to House of Cards. I had watched one episode a few years ago, but I found the characters so loathsome I didn’t want them occupying my living room or my mind.
THE WEST WING
image:theatlantic.com
In West Wing, the liberal’s wet dream, various domestic or international crises force the characters to reconcile their ideals with the need for political compromise. The President is just one of many major characters in the show, which focuses on senior White House staff. Each episode has multiple story lines, which may reflect each other, and there is often a humorous side story.
The scripts are stuffed with policy discussion presented in rapid-fire arguments, but at the core of the show are the almost-family relationships among a group of people working long hours towards usually common and often elusive high-stakes goals. They argue and get really angry, cover their caring with teasing and jokes, and support each other through tough times.
I enjoy these struggles. Not everyone does. In Wikipedia I found critic Heather Havrilesky: "What rock did these morally pure creatures crawl out from under and, more important, how do you go from innocent millipede to White House staffer without becoming soiled or disillusioned by the dirty realities of politics along the way?"
an innocent creature image(leopard gecko): dreamstime.com
a soiled politician image:izquotes.com
HOUSE OF CARDS
Frank and Claire Underwood image: netflixlife.com
In House of Cards, the paranoid cynic’s delight, everybody does heinous deeds and then they blackmail each other. The show is about two ruthless people with one ambition: to reach the top. They remind me of a law student I once interviewed for a public service internship whose ambition was to “be a leader.” I kept trying to find out what issues he cared about, what he wanted to achieve; he just kept saying he wanted to be a leader. Finally I asked, “But where do you want to lead people?” He had no answer.
Whither the wethers? image:gapemogotsi.com
The show is also about visual style. No matter where it takes us – homes, offices, cars, stores, motels – the entire world is decorated in shades of brown and gray and ivory. Everyone is thin. Everyone’s clothes match the decor. Two exceptions to the neutral pallette: outside we may see a touch of green, and the blood is always red.
image: businessinsider.com
Robin Wright, as Claire Underwood, wears very high needle-thin heels and tailored suits (sometimes tailored dresses) regardless of what she’s doing, unless she’s running or rowing. Then it’s a skin tight black workout suit.
image:pinterest.com
Obviously these costumes reflect and enhance her characterization, and my friends might say I’m in no position to criticize someone’s attire click, but as with the set design, they distract me. When a viewer is more intrigued by the show’s design than by the characters, there’s something wrong.
And that brings me to Kevin Spacey, an actor I usually admire. In House of Cards he seems to have two notes, sneering contempt and instrumental charm. The former is the major note – he can’t say he wants a cup of tea without scorn dripping from the line. In the later episodes, he rounds out the character a bit, but that over-the-top contempt still dominates. Robin Wright’s character seems more layered than Spacey’s. Doubt and second thoughts sometimes shimmer in her face. She is also considerably less talkative than her husband, and therefore less transparent.
It should be obvious that I preferred West Wing to House of Cards. West Wing is made for me, a left-of-liberal with a fairly positive view of people (in sum: few of us are evil, most do the best we can, but we are led astray by self-interest, ignorance, blind spots, and incompetence).
image:cathtatecards.com
But I don’t think my preference is only because of my politics and world view. I think it comes down to the difference between character-driven and plot-driven fiction.
The West Wing crew, both major and minor characters, are complex. They grow in each episode. Though I binge-watched the show three months ago, I remember the names of many of the West Wing staff. I finished watching House of Cards just a few weeks ago, but while I can picture the faces, I can only name the two major villains.
House of Cards is all about plot, the more outlandish, the better. Old plots (both stories and dastardly schemes) return from time to time, giving the series continuity and depth. I continued watching to the bitter end because I was curious about what melodrama the writers would devise next. But I sometimes had trouble remembering who did what to whom, and why it mattered.
I think that’s because, while heavy on plot, House of Cards is light on character. Everyone is cynical and ruthless, or a hapless victim, and not much beyond that. Villains are supposed to be more interesting than saints; good guys can be insipid. But villains with no redeeming features are as flat as heroes with no flaws. You can show their vulnerabilities, and throw in some back story to explain how they got that way, but it's not enough.
images: wikia.com, somesaints.tumblr.com
I am neither cynical nor paranoid (though I sometimes wonder whether Donald Trump was hired by the DNC to destroy the Republicans). I understand that loathsome heroes are currently a popular trend in television series. At the risk of being called a goody two-shoes, I think that consuming large doses of evil as entertainment promotes cynicism and despair.
image:wikipedia.org
I don’t have to be inspired, but I do prefer characters with more than one note, and characters I can like, or at least care about. If I’m going to let them into my living room, they should be people I’m willing to hang out with for a while.
Feb 9, 2016
Is this the longest running campaign in history, or does it only feel like it? The 2016 presidential campaign has been afflicting us since Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. It feels as long as the War on Terror. I am not a political junkie, but you can’t avoid this campaign unless you turn off the TV and radio, and only read the funnies. The Gainesville Sun’s multi-page coverage, with the heading “Campaign 2016″ and a little flaggy logo, threatens to surpass hearing-aid ads for most pages devoted to a single subject.
I blame the media. Many journalists seem to have a herd mentality, and turn their attention to the same limited number of stories. Far too many of them devote their considerable intelligence to writing or talking about the daily shenanigans of would-be Leaders of the Free World. Tirelessly they analyze the cause, effect, and meaning of each dip and rise in the polls. Breathlessly they await the outcome of each primary, then eagerly move on to the next.
On to the next primary! image by Paul Taggart :potdpdn.online.com
They seem to be amazed that the decision hasn’t yet been made, despite all their attempts to predict the two parties’ candidates, proclaiming a new rising star with each poll. “Bloomberg’s efforts underscore the unsettled nature of the presidential race a little more than a week before the first round of primary voting,” says the Associated Press at the end of January. Isn’t it supposed to be unsettled? Aren’t the primaries supposed to begin to decide it and the conventions finally settle it?
How to reach an intelligent decision. image:washingtonpost.com
If I were Supreme Goddess, I would ban all fund-raising, polls, and public discussion of the presidential campaign until six months before the election. (Goddesses are not constrained by the Constitution.)
image:historyprojectformsmuslim.weebly.com
There have been times when presidential elections excited me: Fanny Lou Hamer and the Missipppi Freedom Party at the 1964 Democratic convention – I was seventeen and still a believer, not yet jaded. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention, and his subsequent election.
image:biography.com
image: rjustin.wordpress.com
But now I am just disgusted and disheartened. If anything good is happening, if any of the candidates actually have solutions, and actually will be in a position to accomplish something when elected, I can’t see it. My feelings are some blend of a pox on everybody’s house, and it’s time for the American Century to be over. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting old, or because I’ve had three viruses since Thanksgiving. But I believe my grumpiness and despair are widely shared. If I’m fed up, so are a whole lot of other people. I’ll probably vote for Sanders in March, and Clinton in November, but my heart won’t be in it.
image: dailymail.co.uk
Oct 9, 2015
I have always been pro-choice and pro-abortion. Having a baby transforms a woman’s life, and abortion is often the best solution to an unwanted pregnancy. I have participated in a few demonstrations about abortion rights.
I am ambivalent about the value of demonstrations. But the latest outrageous attacks on Planned Parenthood have really pissed me off, and when I see a notice on Facebook that the anti-abortionists are picketing our local affiliate (which doesn’t provide abortions), I decide to join the counter-protest.
Planned Parenthood in Gainesville
The event is at 9am on a Saturday in August. I arrive at 8:50 and nobody’s there. ‘Shit,’ I think. ‘What if the Anti’s show up and I’m the only Pro? I gotta have a sign.’ I had thought Someone Else, as in ‘let someone else do it,’ would bring signs.
I park at Office Depot, across the street from Planned Parenthood, to buy supplies. Three SUV’s pull in, two with out-of-state license plates. I read the bumper stickers: They’re all about Jesus. Probably not my allies.
In the store I buy a giant foam board and a pack of six colored Sharpies on sale for three bucks. I’ll move my car to a shady spot and make my sign. Oh. The foam board doesn’t fit in my car. I lay it on the sidewalk in the blazing sun and open the Sharpies. They’re super-fine, and barely make a mark. I go back into Office Depot to exchange them for jumbos. Can’t leave the foam board outside where the Anti’s might steal it. (I don’t think they’re all as righteous as their signs and prayers imply). I take it inside with me and ask the clerk to keep an eye on it.
I need to write something brief, visible, and to the point. Support Planned Parenthood? I Support Choice? Both too fuzzy. Support Abortion Rights. That’s what I write, in black block letters . Fill them in with black zigzags, crossed over with red zigzags. I’m pleased – it’s very visible, if a little crooked.
I cross Tenth Avenue, holding the sign so drivers can see. I cringe a little at expressing myself publicly. What if somebody doesn’t like me? I lift the sign higher and feel good, if self-conscious. As I cross Thirteenth Street I see about twenty-five people. I recognize some from Occupy Gainesville, and see that old chestnut, the coat hanger sign. I’m greatly relieved – I won’t be just one crazy old lady in muumuu, big hat, and sunglasses. A little farther down the sidewalk are four or five Anti’s with signs. Oh boy, we outnumber them.
image:rackjite.com
It doesn’t last. Within half an hour, a few more Pro’s have arrived, and maybe sixty Anti’s. Most of the Anti’s line up across the street, in the shade, while two small groups split off and stand on either side of us in the merciless sun.
The day is a cloudless ninety degrees. I’m perfectly attired in my big straw hat and breezy muumuu with no underwear, and I have a water bottle full of minted iced tea. But sweat runs down my face and all down my torso.
ready for action
I see a lot of familiar faces. Sharon, who used to be head of Planned Parenthood. She was a leader in Voices for Choice in 1988, when Gov. Martinez responded to the Supreme Court’s Webster decision by proposing many restrictions on abortion, and women around the state organized to fight him off. Shirley, who’s now working to save Payne’s Prairie from an even loonier governor. Linda, who put out the call on Facebook for the demonstration. She was a volunteer at the domestic violence shelter when I was president of the board, and stood in angry solidarity with staff against the board when we hired a new director in a process they felt excluded them. Joe, who founded the Civic Media Center, hub of radical and progressive action in Gainesville. And wonderful Zot, tireless advocate for the homeless, currently working with the residents of Dignity Village. It feels good to see them all, to feel connected to my 35-year history in Gainesville, to know we’ve all kept on keeping on.
And it feels good to see a lot of young women with hand-made signs like mine – one says “My Choice and No Regrets.” She hadn’t heard about the demonstrations, but tells me that when she drove past she had to make a sign and join in.
image: Shirley Lasseter
Oh my, the signs. Many are too tiny or cluttered to read. On their side we have “Aborted 2nd Trimester embryo” with a large bright red photo of an embryo. On our side we have a very neatly lettered sign that says, “Every ____________ deserves health care.” In the space is an odd pink object, like a child’s stuffed animal. I can’t tell if it’s a pig or some kind of Pokemon character. Across the street is a well-lettered sign, easy to read: “Men Regret Lost Fatherhood.” I can’t help it, all I can think is ‘Tough shit.’
It’s a uterus. Image: Helen Strain
It all takes me back, though I’ve only been an occasional demonstrator. On both sides you have your Aggressive Protesters, who yell at each other. “Baby-killer.” “Religious fascist.” They like to get up close in each others’ faces and make all sorts of accusations.
image: bostonglobe.com
I’ve never liked the hateful ones. I can’t stand self-righteous closed minds. I’m too deeply imbued with “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” from my mother. And I’m a great believer in ‘You catch more flies with honey…’
image: pitara.com
Finally, I don’t think any of us can say or do anything that will change each others’ minds. By definition, protesters are among the more opinionated people about any particular cause. In fact, I have to wonder why we do it. For me, this time I was just fed up, so I wanted to speak up. And perhaps waving signs at passing drivers will call attention to the issue, and remind them that, over fifty years after Roe v Wade, it still matters.
One woman comes along our line holding a truly beautiful 3-month-old baby – one of those plump, bald, round-headed ones. She looks at each of our signs and asks if she may give us a hug. At first I think she’s pro-choice, but soon realize she’s an Anti. I give her a hug anyway, and whisper, “I don’t want to interfere, but PLEASE put something on that baby’s head. The sun is brutal.” She thanks me and goes on down the line, hugging whoever is willing. Then she puts the baby in its stroller, covers it with a cloth, and leaves it in the sun. She sets up a folding chair for herself and begins saying Hail Mary’s and other prayers to the Virgin.
Get that baby out of the sun! image:havebabywilltravel.com
Meanwhile I, and several others, are becoming increasingly distressed about the baby in the stroller. “Please put the stroller in the shade,” say Polite Protesters. “That’s child abuse.” “You don’t give a shit about babies.” “I raised three children and I’d never do that.” “Fuck Jesus Christ,” says Aggressive Protester.
Finally someone calls the police to report the baking baby situation. When the police car arrives, the mother promptly pulls out her breast and begins nursing, leading Aggressive Protestor to say, “Oh right, stick in the nipple when the cops come.”
image: coolmompicks.com
The police officer walks along the lines on both sides of the street and
ensures that nobody’s blocking the sidewalk or trespassing on property, and then approaches the mother. He speaks to her for awhile, and then leaves, suggesting that she put the stroller in the shade. As he passes me I hear him say into his radio, “The baby is breathing, its heart rate is normal and it shows no signs of distress.” The mother switches from praying to singing, in a very pretty voice, though I can’t make out the song.
Sharon says they want a couple of “point people” to talk to TV 20 when they arrive. They have Erica, from Wild Iris Books. Will I do it too? Of course I will – the old warhorse smells the cannon smoke and is chomping at the bit. Or something like that. As we wait, I think of what I want to say.
image: benjaminhale.tumblr
We had planned to leave at eleven, but we wait in the sun till 11:40. Then the organizers (a loose term) say they don’t think TV 20 is coming, and Joe of the Civic Media Center says it’s just as well because it would publicize their big crowd, and we gratefully gather our stuff and leave. I’m pleased to see the Anti’s trooping into the Office Depot parking lot with their signs too.
Here’s what I planned to say: “The anti-choice people have been relentless and very well-organized, and statute by statute, case by case, have eroded our right to abortion, and also succeeded in making people think abortion is shameful. I’m 68, and I had an abortion in my early thirties, and again in my early forties. Both were complicated decisions, which no one else could have or should have made for me, and I’ve never regretted either one.”
The constitutional right to privacy is the legal underpinning of abortion rights. But thanks to years of effort and propaganda by anti-abortion forces, privacy has become shame.
Katha Pollitt calls for everyone who has had an abortion, or participated in an abortion as a father or friend, to tell their story. “…[T]oo many pro-choice people are way too quiet…Nearly one in three women will have had at least one abortion by the time she reaches menopause. Why don’t we hear more from them?…It’s not that they think they did something wrong: A recent study …finds that more than 95 percent of women felt the abortion was the right decision, both immediately after the procedure and three years later. They’ve been shamed into silence by stigma.” (NY Times, August 5,2015)
It’s been fun to write a light-hearted story, complete with illustrations, about all us earnest people on both sides of the street. But I don’t take this issue lightly. I was 41, and deeply involved with Voices for Choice in the fight against the Webster decision. I was driving to Tallahassee for a meeting, when I suddenly realized, in the way you do, that all the tiny signs – sleepiness, a missed period, a rash – meant I was pregnant. In the next couple of weeks I weighed many factors, including a boyfriend who didn’t want a child. It brought home to me the absurdity, the outrageousness, of a bunch of legislators or anyone else presuming to interfere in my choice of whether to have a baby. This is truly a decision that belongs to the pregnant woman, and whomever she chooses to involve.
I don’t think we need to tell our full stories. Why a woman has an abortion is entirely her business. She doesn’t have to justify it to anyone. But maybe if everyone who has had an abortion acknowledged it openly the stigma would fade. Your mother, your sister, your Catholic girlfriend, your fundamentalist boss – any one of them is likely to have had an abortion. I’m not brave enough to go on Facebook with it; I’m afraid I’d drown in ugliness. But at least I will say so here.
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To read a very moving, anti-abortion and pro-choice essay by a wonderful writer, click here. click
