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 n a March 3 interview on PBS, South Dakota legislator Bill Napoli said that when he was growing up "in the wild West, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married . . . I happen to believe that can happen again." This vision of the future was illustrated by Napoli with enthusiasm, not dread. Three days later, his state's abortion ban was signed into law. Much of the media concentrates on pro-life attempts to turn back the clock to 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade made abortion a civil right. But according to Cristina Page, the true goal of pro-lifers is to regress society much further than the 1970s, to a time when women were housebound, gays were invisible and sex for fun was a sin. In her aggressive, exhaustively researched new book, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, Page, part of the leadership at NARAL New York, rattles off talking points that are rarely, and unfortunately, uttered by Democratic candidates. She contends that pro-choice policies, which emphasize
The title of this book suggests a look back, but it's really more about the present and the future than the past. The book is basically a laundry list of the rights we take for granted today: our sex lives, our equal marriages, the fact that we can manage the size of our family to what we want and what we can support. These are all fairly new concepts to Americans, and they came about because of the pro-choice movement. The American public has not been presented with an accurate portrait of that movement. The other side was constantly claiming values, as if what pro-choicers were fighting for was vice. Your main argument is that the pro-life movement is no longer just an anti-abortion movement. Nor has it really ever been. The first line of attack is legal and safe abortion. The second line of attack is contraception. We have to understand that the pro-life goal isn't about reducing abortion or furnishing people with prevention. It's about forcing people to live in ways that the pro-life movement wants them to live.
By the pro-life movement, I mean the professional organizations: Concerned Women for America, founded by Beverly LaHaye, the wife of Tim LaHaye; Focus on the Family; the Family Research Council. Is it possible to separate the pro-life argument from the religious argument? The pro-life argument is the knife tip of a religious movement. They're very clear that their creator has a version of the family that doesn't include anybody who isn't interested in procreating. What's the pro-choice movement's role in all this? The pro-choice movement is like a relief agency. In a war-torn country, these workers are the first to get attacked. The ones furnishing water, medical supplies, furnishing people with the things that enable them to live their lives safely — they're the first to go down. How do you feel about the media's coverage of the pro-choice position? The American Prospect recently analyzed coverage of the New York Times op-ed page and concluded that it's been increasingly airing inaccurate or terrifically critical views of the pro-choice movement. Even NPR has been slow. I don't see a lot of perspectives from people who are in the trenches on either side of this issue. What I do see are these diary-like entries as to what's been happening: "Alito nominated. Alito confirmed. Memo found." I don't see people asking questions that matter. What sort of questions? Like, if the pro-life movement succeeds, what would this country look like? What do you think it would look like? Their vision of the family is one that's really never existed before, except for maybe in The Handmaid's Tale. This view has women at home with a lot of children — an obedient, uneducated and unemployable wife. But having children you can't afford, that you can't provide health care for, leads to more abuse, which leads to more unstable societies. That sounds apocalyptic. For those of us susceptible to logic, these campaigns don't make sense, but you have to understand that these pro-lifers have a deep discomfort with sex for pleasure. Sex is reserved exclusively for procreation. That's why they attack the condom. There's no reason to attack the condom unless you oppose sex for pleasure. In South Dakota, what was less reported on [than the abortion ban] was the state making it a crime to distribute condoms to sexually active teenagers. Now school districts can't distribute condoms to teens under sixteen.
There are a lot of pro-life people who simply want abortion to be unnecessary. Those people have very little understanding that the pro-life movement they're sending donations to is leading to more abortions and later abortions. I wrote this book for pro-life Americans, too. As the goals of the pro-life movement have changed, how have they changed their tactics? This movement attempted to couch its arguments in religious terms for decades, and it didn't work. So they realized that if the pro-choice movement could put an abortion expert in front of senate hearings, then pro-lifers could throw out somebody who looked like that as well. So basically, the American public is asked to differentiate between, say, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that's peer-reviewed, and one that is thrown up on the American Heritage Foundation web site, which is not. Pro-choice has the weight of science and medicine, and pro-life has something like a Hollywood set. What happens when you've tried to debate leaders of the pro-life movement on scientific grounds? There was very little information on the pro-life movement's side that resembled anything factual. For example, they say that women are suffering extreme psychological damage by having access to legal abortion. Well, according to all of the experts, it's not having this access that's far more damaging to women. They tell children to think of the pores in condoms as being as big as a football field. They claim there's a link between breast cancer and abortion, yet the National Cancer Institute says there's no such link. The pro-life movement hasn't been taken to task for spreading lies and medical inaccuracies, putting them into state laws and forcing them into medical environments. And when you confront them with data? They'll just confront you with false data. It's very easy to lie. It's not easy to tell the truth. The truth takes time, effort, research, proof, multiple studies. Wal-Mart has come under fire for refusing to fill emergency contraception prescriptions. Do you think conscience clauses, where pharmacists can object to providing birth control on moral or religious grounds, are a backdoor birth-control ban? Yes. That's why people need to test Wal-Mart by getting their prescriptions for emergency contraception filled there. And by the way, most Americans should have a prescription for emergency contraception in their medicine cabinet, for themselves or for a friend. If Wal-Mart won't fill it, call the media, call the local newspaper, call the local news station. If the court reverses Roe, will we be on a slippery slope to a contraception ban? Yes, and gay rights. It's a trifecta. Why should we be optimistic? The Christian Right tells us that the family has gone to hell in handbasket. It's not true. We're happier, healthier, wealthier than ever before. We have more opportunities for women and children. Men are better fathers — we've seen a rise of the family man, and I think that's a result of family planning. There's a lot to celebrate about who we've become. The American public cherishes their sex lives. They cherish privacy. Vast majorities would not give that up. I think that if the American public is able to understand clearly what the pro-life movement is up to, they'll act. n°
©2006 Corrie Pikul and Nerve.com.
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