Roe, Abortion, And The Assault On Women

 

Wed--Kwei

(This week’s episode of THE BODY IN THE WELL BESIDE ME was preempted by the stunning overturns at the SCOTUS. The series will return in 2 weeks).

America’s chilling retreat to the past

 Woman during the Victorian era
      (Image: DowntownLALife*) 

                                      

Assault on Women: how the Supreme Court joined in

In a 5-4 decision on June 24 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that permitted abortions during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. The regressive decision was courtesy of far-right Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Cavanaugh, all of whom during their confirmation hearings expressed in one way or another that Roe v. Wade was precedent they would not overrule. 

Birth control: as old as history

To understand why this reversal of Roe is so appalling, we need to get reasonably familiar with history’s timeline of birth control. Genesis 38:8-9 tells the story of Onan, who spilled his semen on the ground to avoid impregnating his brother’s wife, a contraceptive maneuver commonly known as coitus interruptus.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322) may have been the first to propose using natural chemicals such as cedar oil, lead ointment or frankincense oil as spermicides.

In his memoirs, Casanova (1725-1798) describes his experimental forms of birth control using the empty rind of half a lemon as a primitive cervical cap.

In 1827, scientists had a major breakthrough as they discovered the existence of the human ovum (egg). Prior to that, scientists had only known that sperm must enter the female body for pregnancy to occur. 

The Comstock Laws

Anthony Comstock was head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, established in 1872 and financed by several wealthy philanthropists. Comstock used the funds to lobby the New York Legislature and Congress for laws against adultery, premarital sex, and other so-called vices. His lobbying worked, and on March 2, 1873, Congress passed the Constock Law, an anti-obscenity act that designated contraceptives as obscene material and outlaws the dissemination of them via the postal service or interstate commerce. 

Sanger and McCormick

The story of Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick is long and somewhat involved, but are summarized here with the highlights, for brevity’s sake.

• Margaret Sanger, was a New York City nurse who, in 1912, wished there was a “magic pill” to prevent pregnancy.
• She ran afoul of the Comstock Laws with the June 1914 issue of her then-radical journal, The Woman Rebel, where she penned the term “birth control."
• Two years after fleeing to England, Sanger returned to New York where authorities dropped her charges. She opened the country’s first birth control clinic, which was promptly raided.
• In 1917, Sanger met Katharine McCormick, a wealthy woman who began to support Sanger’s cause. 
• In the case of People [of New York] v. Margaret Sanger, Judge Frederick Crane ruled that physicians could supply contraceptive materials to married couples, but upheld Sanger’s conviction, as she was not a physician.
• At 72 years old, Sanger met Professor Gregory Pincus who claimed to have suppressed ovulation in rabbits using the hormone progesterone. Sanger convinced him to collaborate with her to develop the “magic pill."
• McCormick personally funded what became The Pill Project.
• Whereas some sang Margaret Sanger’s praises for her work on birth control, she was also connected to the eugenics movement and the elimination of the “dysgenic horror story” of blacks who reproduced “carelessly and disastrously.” In 2020, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed Margaret Sanger’s name from their Manhattan office.

 

Plaque marking previous location of Margaret Sanger’s clinic
(Image: Warren Eisenberg/Shutterstock)

In the 1950s, although the majority of physicians approved of birth control, anti-contraception laws in effect in thirty states still prohibited or restricted the sale and advertisement of contraceptive devices. In Massachusetts, it was a crime to "exhibit, sell, prescribe, provide, or give out information" about contraception. In Connecticut, it was a crime for a couple to use contraception. 

In 1954, Harvard professor and hormone expert Gregory Pincus, whom Sanger had met at a dinner party and persuaded to help create the “magic pill," joined forces with Harvard obstetrician-gynecologist John Rock, who had long been interested in birth control and fertility problems, and together they began the first human trials on a progesterone pill in fifty women. Not a single subject ovulated while on the drug. The new “Pill,” called Enovid by the Searle drug company, began spreading to the general public and drug companies. The FDA approved of Enovid for therapeutic purposes in 1959, and after a trial on 897 women, Searle applied to the FDA to approve use of the drug for contraception. In 1960, that’s exactly what happened.

In 1965, Estelle Griswold, director of the Connecticut Planned Parenthood, and Dr. Lee Buxton, chair of the Ob-Gyn Department at Yale Medical School, were arrested in Connecticut for opening four Planned Parenthood clinics. The case went all the way to SCOTUS, and in 1965, the landmark decision of Griswold v. Connecticut overturned the Comstock Law, finding it unconstitutional to restrict access to birth control, because it interfered with a person’s right to privacy.

The Pill: A blessing or another assault on women?

At a time when women’s consciousness was giving rise to feminism and the women’s liberation movement (derisively called “women’s lib”) in the 1960s, the contraceptive pill gave women a new financial independence and/or the ability to join the work force. On the face of it, the Pill and the women’s movement might have seemed a perfect fit. But there are two sides to the Pill, as it were. Its history is laden with the damage and danger it exposed women to--most prominently blood clots, thrombophlebitis, and pulmonary embolism. For a long time, neither drug companies nor physicians informed their female patients of this major, potentially lethal health hazard. Women who complained of such symptoms as depression, headaches, and muscle cramps while on the contraceptive pill were dismissed out of hand by mostly male doctors. In effect, what was a savior from pregnancy for some, became a medical and physical assault on women for others.

During the 1970 hearings on the birth control pill, not a single woman was present on Senator Gaylord Nelson’s panel, leading to vocal protests during the hearing from women in the audience who were part of the collective DC Women’s Liberation. Their question was: Why were we not told of all these dangers? What resulted from their persistence was a package insert along with the birth control pill warning about the blood clot risk. 

Roe v. Wade

In 1970, 22-year-old Norma McCovey (1947-2017), who became known as “Jane Roe” to protect her identity, sued District Attorney of Dallas County, Texas, for enforcing a state law that prohibited abortion except to save the pregnant woman’s life. Roe claimed the Texas law violated her constitutional right to personal privacy. The question before the court was this: Does the US Constitution recognize a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion? The 7-2 opinion found an absolute right to abortion during the first trimester. At the time, abortion was legal in four states and restricted in sixteen. The ruling nullified abortion bans in the remaining thirty states.

In the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that a Pennsylvania law requiring spousal awareness prior to obtaining an abortion was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment, because it created an undue burden on married women seeking an abortion. The basic framework of Roe was left intact, but the chipping away at it by pro-life activists never ceased. Too many people took Roe for granted and failed to see the ground eroding at their feet. Along came June 24, 2022. Using the decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that sided with Dobbs’s denial of abortion beyond fifteen weeks, SCOTUS held that both Roe and Casey had been wrongly decided, and that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. In one fell swoop, they erased an almost 50-year-old law.

                           Anti-abortion activists square off against pro-choice demonstrators in front of Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Clinic, Manhattan

Male supremacists get their long-awaited assault on women

There is white supremacy, but there is also male supremacy. Together, they are a deadly combination, and they are, to a varying extent, likely operant here. Male supremacy is an ideology advocating the rigid gender roles, and subjugation of women. Reversal of Roe is a male-supremacist move. The idea is to diminish women by showing contempt and removing their once-established right to terminate their own pregnancies. 

Recently, a 10-year-old impregnated girl had to leave Ohio to travel to Indiana for an abortion (and soon Indiana will no longer be an option.) To these cruel pro-life men and women, even if a girl of 10 is raped by her father, she must carry the pregnancy because the fetus is a “precious life.”  In many states, e.g Missouri, there is no exception for rape or incest. Why? Because men are the purveyors of rape and incest. They want to shift the focus away from the offender toward the woman. 

Pro-life activists are also looking to ban the "morning-after pill,” e.g. Plan B, on the claim that it prevents the embryo from implanting itself in the uterus. This is an outright falsehood. The medication is not an abortifacient. It prevents ovulation and therefore fertilization. 

Why is this happening now?

The stars have aligned in a way perfect for the two main types of supremacy to drag the country back to an earlier time--perhaps back to the Comstock Laws?--and inflict maximum possible damage on the lives of women. Don’t worry that there are also many pro-life women--they are not coming from the same place as men, even if they seem to be.

Between 2016 and 2021, the culmination of several events spawned the backlash from white and male supremacists. The Black Lives Matter movement, started in 2013, came into prominence, especially after the murder of George Floyd. The #MeToo movement became red-hot headlines around 2017. Men--some very powerful men, all of whom proved to be cowards--were vilified, and rightfully so, for assaulting and raping women. Then came Covid, a time of uncertainty, intractable division, and frustration. Quarantining at home is a good way for a male supremacist to become progressively angrier. When #45 lost the election, this ire came to boiling point and the male supremacists redirected their fury at their favorite target--women. And up there on the Supreme Court, the male and white supremacists were exactly where and when they were needed.

                                                             ~~~