My Kansas City parents showed me why abortion rights are crucial to women’s well-being
Abortion rights are in my blood.
When I was very young, growing up in Kansas City, my father Andrew McCanse was the coroner of Jackson County for a time. I didn’t exactly know what that was, but I remember one particular night when he came home from work looking discombobulated and worried. He whispered something to my mother. I didn’t find out until years later that the case he had that day was that of a woman who had died of a back alley abortion.
When I was a bit older, my mother Shirley was a board member of Planned Parenthood and my dad was on its medical advisory committee. I didn’t really know what that was either, but Planned Parenthood had great parties with tons of those long balloons that came in little foil wrappers. My sisters and I got to play with those out in the hall during cocktail hour.
And then when I was 12, something happened that both delighted my parents and made my mother cry. They explained to me that the United States Supreme Court had handed down a decision allowing women to have the right to choose a safe abortion. “No more back alleys,” my father told me.
Fast forward 15 years. I was hired as the director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri in Columbia. We were an abortion-providing affiliate. I later became a regional field director and then director of field operations for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. After six years of brutal national politics, I needed a change.
I was recruited to come to Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, the largest affiliate in the country. We had 100,000 patients in 40 clinics around the state, and I was their leader. We also provided abortions, and like at my former affiliate in Columbia, I always took time to serve as a patient advocate, being with and supporting women who came for abortion care all the way through their visit.
Never in my life have I seen a woman be cavalier about this procedure, nor met a woman who used it for birth control. Our opposition seem to think we would give women a punch card with the 10th procedure being free. That is a disgusting representation of our patients who naturally struggled with the decision. Some said it was the hardest one they’d ever made.
For nearly 50 years, the opposition to safe, legal abortion has chipped away at this essential, private and legal right. I worked with thousands of pro-choice champions on the ground while all this was going on — restrictive state legislation or all-out bans, death threats delivered to me and myriad colleagues, clinic bombings and burnings, the murders of abortion providers (one who was a friend and was executed in his church while serving as an usher), and of course the hundreds of thousands of clinic protesters and perpetrators who screamed at women, knocked them down and built human walls to prevent their entrance.
Most people don’t understand that 95% of what Planned Parenthood does is primary reproductive health care. We prevent cancer, cure disease, find breast lumps and provide women with options of contraceptives. Planned Parenthood does more than any organization in the country to prevent unintended pregnancies. But if that happens, and patients need us, we are there for them too, and have been, often under severe conditions, for 50 years.
I have always believed there are three ways in which to view the issue of abortion. One is to focus on the fetus. (Please notice I did not say “baby in the womb” — the hyperbolic language of the anti-choice movement.)
The second is through the eyes of a politician. Beginning on her or his first day in office, the winner’s primary job is to get reelected. Often, as the wind blows and the polls show, she or he will take a position. Others simply put a stake in the ground and keep it there.
And the third — the only one that makes sense to me — is to first consider the woman, whose body is her own. I trust and respect women to make their own choices among the options available to them. And that decision is a right guaranteed to her under the privacy clause of the 14th Amendment, as noted by the Warren Burger Supreme Court in 1973, in the 7-to-2 decision of Roe v. Wade.
Supreme Court discarded precedent
Friday, June 24, 2022, was a a tragic day for our country. The Supreme Court rescinded a landmark precedent, removing a primary right from Americans. Remember stare decisis — meaning to “‘stand by things decided”? This is an historic and long employed doctrine that confirms the rule of precedent. This court threw that out the window.
The court’s action effectively made millions of women simply incubators. Overturning Roe and sending it back to the states was a strategic ploy to effectively ban abortion across the country. It is shocking, misogynist and reprehensible.
Let’s lay this out properly. If women are forced to have children, they will be shut out of the workforce. Without funds to care for themselves or their children, we shamefully increase the already repugnant rate of intergenerational poverty. Remember the Equal Rights Amendment? The ERA has never been codified. Men in Washington, D.C., and across the country have prohibited women from ever having a fair shot. You cannot tell me that women are not already second-class citizens, that women of color are three to four times worse off — roughly the same rate for the LGBTQ population.
In my current home of Milwaukee, we have a 25% poverty rate. For Black women, that figure is 28%. Women who are poor have far fewer resources to be able to obtain an abortion, much less travel across state lines to get one.
Right now, 425,000 children are in the broken foster care system in our country. When they turn 18, there are a few survival resources available to them. Having been director of a temporary shelter for runaway, throwaway and homeless youths, I know many simply live on the streets.
Right now, there are 4.2 million homeless youths and young adults in this country, and 700,000 of those are unaccompanied minors. Overturning Roe adds countless more. Nice job, you six justices.
If abortion really were about babies, we would have universal, quality child care, well funded public education, health care and the other basic rights that many of us enjoy. But this issue is not about babies. It is about control. The so called “pro-life” movement doesn’t care at all about women in dire straits with an unwanted pregnancy. They only want the baby to born — and then they stop caring.
Contraception, gay marriage are next targets
One member of the Supreme Court took the decision to an ultimate extreme. Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, took aim at other primary rights, noting that contraception, gay sex and gay marriage should also be reviewed. We knew that losing Roe went far beyond abortion.
Thomas did not simply open the door to review other cases. He engraved a golden invitation to any state that would like to bring a case opposing those or any other rights. Did you know that the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut legalized contraception only for married couples? Thomas would have a field day with that case. And where are we going to put all these babies?
As a proud lesbian, I am astounded to think that someone may be looking in my bedroom in order to prosecute me for sexual activity. I am guessing that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might be working on that right now.
In my estimation, Thomas should run for Congress, since his leanings prove more legislative than judicial. Interpreting the law based on the Constitution is the job of a justice of the Supreme Court. Publicly advertising his own laundry list of legal rights to abolish is a colossal overstep.
In Roe, Sarah Weddington, lead counsel for plaintiff Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe), had never tried a case before. A few years out of law school, she fought all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court — and won. She was 26 years old. Weddington died six months ago, after a life of commitment to justice and the advancement of women. I can picture the grave in which she is rolling over.
My mother and father are gone, but the Supreme Court has returned us to the days of back alley abortions — women beating their abdomens, using coat hangers or knitting needles, or drinking poison in desperation because they cannot afford or fulfill the needs of another child.
But you know what? Women won’t take this lying down. We are brave, creative, determined, incensed — and we will act. Look out, because abortion is on the ballot in November. And women will not forget.
This story was originally published July 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM.