The way we talk about abortion has changed a lot in recent years since the fall of Roe v. Wade and the political battles that have ensued here and around the country.
I used to be that abortion was referred to by Democrats as something that should be safe, legal and rare.
"We can support a woman's right to choose. That makes abortion safe legal and rare and reduces the number of abortions," said Hillary Clinton talking about it decades ago.
But today, the conversation has changed. On the left now, abortion is about fundamental rights, bodily autonomy. Today you can buy a tote bag that says. "abortion, anytime, anywhere, anyone."
So how did we get here?
Gloria Feldt joined The Show to talk about how while the rhetoric around abortion has always changed throughout our country's history, it's always been about politics.
Feldt is a longtime abortion rights advocate. She ran Planned Parenthood in Arizona for 18 years before becoming president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1996. She's currently the co-founder and president of Take the Lead Women.
Feldt said until the late 1800s, women's health care was largely under the control of midwives including abortions — though that isn't what they were called then.
Full conversation
GLORIA FELDT: In the newspapers of the day, you could purchase by mail order methods to take care of quote unquote women's problems, euphemism for an unplanned pregnancy, medicines to bring on your period.
GILGER: But then the medical realm became professionalized and the midwives were pushed out. And in 1873, the postmaster general at the time, Anthony Comstock, pushed through legislation that banned mailing anything designed to prevent contraception or procure an abortion.
At the same time, the women's suffrage movement started to take shape. And some of those suffragettes spoke out about the need for women's right to contraception and abortion as well. That included Margaret Sanger.
FELDT: Margaret was a consummate marketer. And so she began to use the term birth control. She didn't invent it, but she quickly realized it was much more acceptable than talking about sexual freedom.
GILGER: So it was a way of sort of sanitizing this issue for the …
FELDT: Exactly. So by framing it then as a medical need, she was able to enlist the president of the American Medical Association to endorse birth control.
GILGER: So let's talk about the other terms that have been used over time for abortion, right? Like there's family planning, there's reproductive health. Some of these terms have been used on the right side of the political spectrum as well as the left, right? I wonder, is it always about that same kind of strategy from Margaret Sanger on? Like it's about sanitizing this issue making it something that can be palatable for the majority of the country.
FELDT: There's always that tension. There's always that tension because there's always that minority, and it is a minority, but it's a very loud minority that basically doesn't want women to, to have access to the means to control their own fertility and thus their own destiny. And so there's always that tension between trying to come up with terms that will bring the most people into the story and yet not compromising the ultimate value of it.
And I mean, I will tell you when I was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, I literally got yelled at not just by people inside Planned Parenthood, but by my colleagues running other reproductive rights organizations. When I would say, I would say, reproductive rights are human rights, they would like, they would yell at me. ‘You can't say that that's too, that's too radical.”
I just, it's one of those things that as I became a student, I guess, of the history and really looked into what was going on and, and serving women for years and years and years and just seeing women's real life stories. And I wrote a couple of books about it and, and I began, you know, saying very publicly that reproductive rights have to be civil and human rights.
GILGER: So this is super interesting because you are one of the people who has caused the more recent shift in, in, in the way we talk about abortion and, and women's health care, right. Like, so I want to kind of fast forward to post Roe v. Wade America. When we have Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton in office, like Democrats who are talking about abortion in a way that should be rare and legal. I remember that term being sort of the way you would talk about these things.
And if you look at what's happened today and the and the big shift that's happened on the left now in a post-Dobbs America, we hear much more, you know, extreme, I guess is the word, language about abortion, like anytime anywhere. And, and this framing that you're getting at right of abortion as a right as a human right, as a civil right.
FELDT: Exactly. Exactly. The, the problem with Roe v. Wade is that privacy was never a strong enough legal theory. They simply didn't have gender equality cases on which to base Roe v. Wade in 1973. So they used the right to privacy, which again was more palatable to people than saying that it's up to women to decide whether and when they have children because think of the power and control in that.
And the thing about Dobbs is that it finally confronted people, it forced people to face the music, it forced people to really clarify their values. And if you value women and if you think women should have an equal place in society and in the world, from a legal, moral and ethical perspective and economic perspective, then you have to level the playing field. And the playing field can't be leveled unless both genders have equal rights to determine their fate.
GILGER: Take me back, Gloria, to what you mentioned before about being stopped by fellow abortion rights, you know, advocates from calling abortion a human right. You know, 20-30 years ago, what was the political landscape like at the time? Like what was the fear?
FELDT: It was, it was a movement that was mired in defensiveness because after Roe v. Wade was decided, people thought, “oh, good, we have won everything. We have the right to, to birth control, we have the right to abortion. We are getting funding for family planning services through the federal government and state governments.” There are new and better birth control methods that were coming onto the scene. So there's so much progress that has been made. But the fact is that Dobbs forced people to confront what their true value system was about women.
GILGER: I want to ask about, about the role of Black women in this kind of throughout history, but especially more recently, like they have, it sounds like for longer talked about abortion as a civil right, reproductive rights as a human right, that kind of thing
FELDT: For very good reason because Black women and women of color in general have often been used as, you know, research subjects. And if you think about women who were enslaved, they didn't have the right to have children with the person they might have loved, their bodies were owned and controlled by their owners who often impregnated them against their will.
So Black women have really led the way to the understanding that and, and in fact, coined the term reproductive justice. Reproductive justice being much broader than the right to abortion. It references, you know, you should not only have the right to decide when not to have children, you should also have the right to decide when you have children and with whom.
GILGER: Let me ask you lastly, Gloria, a political question about today. I wonder how you think about this because you were talking about this in this way for longer than people wanted you to. So as the left has switched and talked more openly about abortion as a right, about abortion being available to anyone whenever they need it. I wonder like is it too far to win elections?
FELDT: I don't know that I'm hearing that, to be honest with you. The thing is, I if you look at the data, the overwhelming majority, like 60% I think now, of abortions, they’re mostly medical abortions, not surgical abortions. And they are typically done under 12 weeks of pregnancy. So I, I actually, I, I would have to challenge whether, whether I, maybe I my ears are not inured to hearing that. I don't know. Because it's so logical to me that it's really not the government's business in any way, shape or form to be telling people what to do.
And it should be a decision that's made by a woman and her family and her doctor and that nobody wants to have an abortion later in pregnancy. But there are times when it is necessary and there shouldn't be restrictions on it because it should not be, you know, you don't want your state legislator who has no idea about your medical history to be able to tell you whether you are entitled to have that procedure or not.
