Intimate Wars (21 page)

Some were reluctant warriors, engaging with the struggle but still unable to own their choice. Others were able to draw strength and courage from the news of pro-choice rallies and actions. Still others marched in the streets, lay down in acts of civil disobedience, wrote checks to pro-choice organizations, or activated students on campuses. Millions more voted only for candidates who expressed the pro-choice position.

We had always had plenty of troops in this battle. They were everywhere, and they were far from outnumbered. They just had to be activated.

 

I DECIDED IT WAS TIME to make a statement that could not be ignored or manipulated by the media, Reagan, or Operation Rescue. We would deliver a message to the cardinal of New York, John J. O'Connor—a proclamation, a Bill of Rights on abortion. Invoking Luther's
95 Theses
at Wittenberg, we would hold our demands for women's moral, legal, and civil rights to reproductive freedom up on the walls of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The PCC quietly spread the word to gather across the street from the cathedral on the morning of Sunday, April 2. We gave no further instructions for fear that Operation Rescue would get wind of the plan and stage an opposing action.
I was very careful not to organize the protest at the time of Mass; we would begin just as the service ended.

When the day arrived, everything was in place. As people began pouring forth from the cathedral, pro-choice activists marched across the street to the concrete steps. Mary Lou Greenberg and Maria Lyons stood in front of the massive bronze doors and unfurled a proclamation:

Cheering exuberantly and waving coat hangers, hundreds of pro-choice supporters who had been waiting across the street surged to the steps of the cathedral. They began chanting slogans in support of our proclamation. William Kunstler, Charlotte Bunch, Phyllis Chesler (and her son Ariel), Sue Davis, Lawrence Lader, Joan Gibbs, Rhonda Copelon, and Esperanza Martell were among the crowd.

I made my way up the church steps with the six-foot hanger I had commissioned for the occasion. It was a symbol of potential terror and aggression against all women, but it was also the symbol of our future. And taking my place in front of the doors to the cathedral, I knew that it was also the ultimate symbol of both defiance and gentle desecration.

As I lifted the hanger above my head, the crowed throbbed and screamed with new energy. Police officers showed up on the scene, pushed our people back across the street, and arrested nine activists for trespassing on church property, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. We marched after them with Norman Siegel of the New York Civil Liberties Union to the precinct to rescue our activists.

The media could not ignore this one. It was our most successful, best publicized action yet, covered in every major newspaper across the United States. The
New York Times
quoted me on the cover of the Metro Section, saying, “Women's rights are in a state of emergency,” and the
Philadelphia
Enquirer
marked the occasion as “an important strategic change in the movement.” It was the first time pro-choice supporters had been arrested. Some of them had planned to be. Others had been caught up in the intense spirit of the moment, ready for a higher level of sacrifice. We had placed our thesis on the great doors of the cathedral, where statues of the saints looked coldly at the passing activity below them. It was a time of radicalism, a moment when the light pointed to the root cause and we addressed it.

—VIRGINIA WOOLF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

B
y the late 1980s I'd had my hand in almost every theater of the war for reproductive rights, including legal, political, medical, academic, media, activist, and personal spheres. As Reagan's conservative reign came to an end, I felt the need to get involved in yet another: electoral politics, one of the most important battlegrounds in our struggle. This arena was all about compromise and strategy; it was time for me to get pragmatic.

As a leader of the pro-choice movement I'd had the chance to see the political scene firsthand. Many politicians who had started their careers as allies with high personal standards were forced to make compromises to stay in the game. Marty would politick at dinners and meetings, and back at home he'd tell me what he really thought of those bastards, warning me to “trust no one,” a lesson I was learning quite well on my own. Though I'd decided not to go into politics myself, I understood the importance of working with politicians. I was constantly attending fundraisers and meeting with pro-choice
supporters, pushing my agenda with my hand always ready to sign a check. Often the best I could do was whatever it took to get the least bad candidate elected and the needed bills vetoed or passed.

At one elegant Upper East Side fundraiser I met Oregon senator Bob Packwood, an early and ardent player in the abortion rights struggle, a staunch and able ally of the pro-choice forces on the Republican side of the Senate. Our connection was so immediate that I solicited and received a piece from him for
On the Issues
, after which he called me to request a meeting at a New York City hotel.

We discussed the existential nature of power, the causes for which we'd be willing to die, those for which we would be willing to send others to die. He seemed to be genuinely moved by the responsibilities of his office and the loneliness of power. Even with the intensity of our conversation and the compliments he interspersed throughout our time together, I did not expect his embrace and attempted French kiss in the middle of Park Avenue as I hailed a cab.

Of course I did not believe that men who did good deeds in the public arena were necessarily good boys in private. Packwood's sexual come-on was just that; the fact that it was more an adolescent groping than a sophisticated seduction was, to me, more of an annoyance than a threat. But as the world later found out, Packwood had been sexually harassing women on his staff since at least 1975. He was eventually forced to resign from office under threat of expulsion. A piece in the
New York Times
described the fire against him by women's groups as being fueled by a sense of betrayal. Was Packwood's early support of abortion rights, it asks, a true expression of avant-garde Republican liberalism, or a form of political opportunism?

Without Packwood's influence the pro-choice position
would have had less representation in the Senate, and I was willing to overlook his indiscretion with me for the sake of my greater cause. Working in the sphere of politics meant interacting with very strange bedfellows; however, I wasn't sorry when he was caught.

As the leader of the PCC, I had political agency, too. Abortion was especially hot the year of the 1989 New York City mayoral race due to the passage of
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
, a Supreme Court ruling allowing states the right to limit access to abortions. New York was still the “abortion capital of the nation,” and the issue was being watched carefully for its impact on this election.

The PCC used our high profile to make abortion one of the defining issues of the race. Before the primaries we sent out a questionnaire to the candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, detailing the nuances of a truly pro-choice position and asking them where they fell on the spectrum. We used their answers to rate them on a scale of one to ten.

The race was a heated one, with Edward Koch defending his seat in the primaries against Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins as well as two other candidates. The winner would run against Rudolph Giuliani. Our ratings of the candidates—seven in all—had the potential to play a big role in the outcome of the election. We planned to hold a press conference a few weeks before the primaries to broadcast our results.

When we analyzed and rated the questionnaires, Dinkins scored slightly higher than Koch, who had made deals with the archdiocese that we felt betrayed the movement. Dinkins was the favorite among the progressives and a majority of the PCC, so publicizing him as our top pick was seen as a given.

On the sweltering summer night before the press conference I received an urgent call from Howard Rubenstein's
office. Someone had gotten wind that the pro-choice coalition would be exhibiting Koch's large photo underneath Dinkins's on the eight-by-twelve-foot “choice chart” we had created for the press. Rubenstein summoned me to his office to let me know in no uncertain terms that if Dinkins were rated higher then Koch (whom Rubenstein was representing) it might cost him the race.

Howard was someone with whom I had worked for many years. I'd strategized the Patient Power campaign with him, and his son had worked with me on all of my political actions. Now here he was, sitting in his glass tower office with a couple of Koch's aides and laying the responsibility of the outcome of the mayoral race on me!

I was receiving my honorary doctorate in compromise. After a practically sleepless night during which I conferred with the PCC, I came up with an answer that I thought I could live with. But that was the point—I was forced to live with myself after bending to the pressure to compromise. I realized then that this would become my life if I allowed myself to become too engaged in electoral politics.

In the end, I gave Dinkins and Koch the same rating. I reasoned that I could not really rate Dinkins higher than Koch, because Dinkins's campaign was just theory at that point; he only had a campaign pledge, and Koch had an actual record. And Koch's record was a pretty good one, if not perfect—and what or who in politics is ever perfect?

We held the press conference on the steps of City Hall to broadcast the results. It was attended by most of the Democratic city politicians. I and a couple of other PCC members held up our choice chart detailing the candidates' ratings for all the world to see: Dinkins, 9.5; Koch, 9.5; Giuliani, 3 . . .

The day after the press conference, newspapers around the region carried an Associated Press report stating that
the PCC had hurt Koch's chances in the mayoral campaign since he had tied with Dinkins. Koch, outraged, called the PCC a “pipsqueak fringe group,” whining, “Protect me from my friends.” This part of politics, the dueling and debating, the responding to attacks, I relished. “I don't think he understands our rating system,” I was quoted as saying. “I don't think he understood we rated him in a positive way.”

Giuliani had a strong reaction to our ratings, too. I enjoyed watching him trying to twist himself into a pretzel to spin an explanation for his stance that would not immediately position him as anti-choice. After saying he would “uphold the right of choice” and “oppose any attempt to make abortions criminal or illegal” he was called out for flip-flopping on the issue, an accusation that ultimately hurt his campaign.

 

I MAY HAVE DECIDED not to become a politician or be actively involved in more elections, but I was a trusted figure within the New York City health community. I worked with City Councilman Bob Dryfoos, Senator Schumer, and Comptroller Hevesi—all pro-choice, and all very strong supporters of mine, as I was of them. After the
Associated Press
published a press release of mine urging women to take control of their health, Dryfoos asked me to speak at a town meeting on the topic of monitoring the struggle for women's reproductive rights and to testify in favor of the Women's Health Equity Act of 1990.
Newsday
interviewed me about a bill limiting the testimony defense lawyers were allowed to solicit from crime victims about their sexual past, and I was invited to be part of a panel of respondents to the “Dear Abby” question of the day, “Do we have a responsibility to limit the size of our families?”

I was becoming one of the go-to experts on the feminist point of view, and I commented on an ever-broader range of
topics. Some American feminists had a tendency to separate our work on women's equality from other equally important social justice issues, hesitating to speak out on race, class, and global women's rights.
²⁰
I believed that we were all bound by our common potential for victimhood. No matter one's race, one's class, or one's nationality, we were targets simply because we were women. Keeping quiet about an issue for fear of crossing into unknown territory was against the spirit of feminism as I saw it.