Morality play

There are certainly generational land mines in a women's movement that hasn't been cohesive for generations. Younger women are anxious to participate; they clogged the streets of Washington during April's March for Women's Lives. But some may wonder what their role is. Technology and mating practices are not the only things that have morphed over the decades; so has the attitude of the generations of women who have grown up without fear of coat hangers or back alleys. Smeal said that in her experiences on campuses -- the Feminist Majority is the major liaison between the movement and college kids -- she has observed more anger. "Young women are going to be tougher than any of us ever were. They have no hesitancy, no apology, no shame. They don't feel [abortion] is moral or immoral. They feel it's necessary, and they feel proud of it."

But Richards said they may also feel more hesitant. "Older women have always been more likely to talk about abortion because for them it was something heroic," she said. "Younger women, we don't have to talk about it. That doesn't mean we're ashamed, but it's the same way I don't talk about having warts removed." Richards, 34, recalled a conversation with some of her younger colleagues who argued that the term "reproductive rights" should be replaced by "reproductive health and justice." "The younger women were saying 'reproductive rights' is a dated term," said Richards. "And they were right. I was too entrenched in my own view."

Women who consider abortion normal -- such a given that it doesn't even count as a "right" but simply as "health and justice" -- may also have more psychological space -- not taken up by fears of injustice -- to consider their own emotional, spiritual or moral ambivalence about abortion.

But this lack of fear, the lack of historical perspective on the threats they may face in their lifetime, the assumption that the right to control their bodies will never be snatched from them, are precisely why people like Susan Hill are so worried.

Hill is the president of the National Women's Health Organization, which runs women's health clinics in six midsize cities, including the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. "I have been so frustrated by hearing all this," said Hill, a trained social worker who has provided abortion services since the week after Roe was passed in 1973. "I am so frustrated by the apologetic approach toward abortion rights. It's so frustrating to hear people discussing the fetus but not discussing the woman.

"When I first started in the '70s, the image we saw was of a dead woman on the floor after an illegal abortion, with blood all around her. We were fighting for whether or not there were going to be dead women on dirty bathroom floors. We're two generations past that now, and that picture -- well, you almost have to explain it to people who are in their 20s now, because, thank God, they've never had to see it."

She continued: "When I heard Hillary and John Kerry saying we need more money for education I thought, This is crap! These are not uneducated women!" Hill also dismissed as naive and classist the assumption that women born into a world where abortion is legal will never see their rights reversed. "This isn't going to end until the middle-class and upper-middle-class think it's going to affect them. Someone will always say, 'Rich women will always be able to get abortions.' But in cities where we're located, private doctors aren't doing private abortions. And this is when abortion is legal. I truly believe that if something changes with Roe, the wealthy and middle-class will not be able to get them either. It's going to affect everybody."

She pointed out that despite improved sex-education programs and abstinence movements, the abortion rate has remained steady at between 1.3 million and 1.5 million abortions each year. "When I hear it should be safe but rare, it makes me crazy," Hill said. "What's rare? What does that mean if it's been steady for 30 years that 1.3 million women needed abortions? I think it's a cop-out."

Hill also attacked the antiabortion movement's focus on late-term abortions, pointing out that when she began providing services, there were very few second-term abortions. That changed in 1977, when the Hyde Amendment restricted Medicaid-funded abortions to poor women, who were then forced to save money and schedule later terminations. "The same people create a need for later abortions, and then they attack it! I think our community has lost sight of who we are fighting for. We have got to redefine it and give it a face again."

In this regard, Hill agrees with even the speakers who are driving her nuts -- the movement needs energy, she said: "You have to make it personal to people."

Hill said that when she was in her 20s, an older doctor told her, "Before you start this, you have to sit down and search your soul. In the issue of abortion you have to identify with either the fetus or the woman, because at some point there's a choice and you cannot identify with both. You decide which one you're going to be the advocate for." Hill said firmly, "Thirty-two years later, my choice is always to help the woman."

There is, of course, no right answer, no correct choice. The notion that 32 years later society is still working from the same two-pronged woman or fetus blueprint might be problematic. That blueprint could be exactly what's creating this internal pressure to evaluate, grow and reach out before things get ugly again.

"We are two justices away from seeing Roe vs. Wade overturned," Sanger said. "So I think we need to have the discussion that I'm calling for, that Frances is calling for. Have it be now, have it be loud, get a new framework and perspective out to the American people so that they understand that when we demand that senators oppose a nominee who wants to overturn Roe that we have a reason behind it."

But if the discussion is loud, and if it does change a framework, Smeal will be right to take the press to task for painting this moment as riven by internecine discord. In fact, what all the ideological jousting might suggest is not a movement coming apart at the seams but a community benefiting from the engaged, fresh, multigenerational vigor of internal debate that could propel it into a new era. For the first time in decades, there seems to be a lot of life in the pro-choice movement.

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