Did the Pro-Choice Movement Save America?

By Rachel Fudge, AlterNet. Posted February 17, 2006.

In her new book, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex (Basic Books), Cristina Page boldly declares that the pro-choice movement is "doing a better job at what the public understands to be the pro-life agenda than the pro-lifers are": that is, not only dramatically reducing the number of abortions in the United States, but also putting forth (and achieving) a truly pro-family, pro-child vision of life in America.

Page, a veteran of the editorial departments of Glamour and Ms. magazines, and the current vice president of the Institute for Reproductive Health Access at NARAL Pro-Choice New York, describes how she had been searching for a pro-life counterpart with whom she could engage in a reasoned, honest search for common ground. She found one: a feminist-identified woman who worked for a Right to Life chapter, and on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 2003, they published a jointly authored op-ed in the New York Times.

"The Right to Agree" laid out a series of shared goals, including pro-family and pro-child policies like affordable child care and support for single mothers, an end to violence and violent language in the abortion debate, and the adoption of legislation mandating that health insurance cover contraceptives. While pro-choicers responded with mild support, pro-lifers were outraged, particularly at the statement of support for broad access to contraception. It was then that Page realized that the anti-contraception pro-lifers were not, as she'd assumed, on the fringe of the movement but rather the ones who set its agenda.

Referring to the book's relatively slim profile (it weighs in at just 236 pages), Page described it as "in many ways a breezy tour through frightening truths," but How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America is tenaciously researched and extensively documented (40 of those pages are endnotes). Digging deep into the evidence, Page unveils the hidden anti-contraception agenda of the pro-life movement and outlines how how close we are to losing not only the constitutional right to abortion provided by Roe but also our rights to safe, accessible contraception.

AlterNet met up with Page at her San Francisco hotel.

Rachel Fudge: You describe your book as an attempt to seek out common ground between the pro-choice and the pro-life movements. What did you find?

Cristina Page: What I tried to do in this book is to say, Let's put on the table that [abortion] is something we don't want to have happen at the frequency that it is, or even at all. Those are the terms with which we'll discuss this. And when that happens, you begin to realize that [the pro-life side] is not interested in that. The greatest irony is that reducing abortion has become problematic for them, and it's because their aim is not pure.

Their aim is not about reducing abortion -- it includes restricting people's access to contraception, it includes transforming our sex lives, it includes transforming our families. That's the goal, and [restricting abortion] is just one vehicle toward that end.

RF: When you talk about the pro-life movement, you're really talking about the leaders of organizations like the American Life League and National Right to Life, who are going further than what many Americans want to see happen. It seems like there's a disjunction between the leadership of the pro-life organizations and the mass of Americans who are deeply ambivalent about abortion -- the ones who in the polls say they think abortion is wrong, but who also say they don't want to lose Roe.

CP: I tried to make a very clear distinction between pro-life Americans -- the [people] who believe that abortion needs to be prevented and [its rate] reduced -- and pro-life organizations, who have political gains outside of this issue. They're very different, in large part because if pro-life Americans actually knew what their handiwork resulted in, they would not be sending donations to these groups. If they knew that the pro-choice movement was doing a better job at what they understand to be pro-life goals than the pro-life movement is, then they would act accordingly.

Recent statistics say that 66 percent of Americans don't want Roe v. Wade overturned, [yet] only 51 percent consider themselves pro-choice. So what we're seeing is an unreported-upon third of the pro-life movement that wants to keep abortion legal but find ways of preventing the need for it, which I think is so important for us to understand at this point.

One thing that I think makes the pro-choice and the pro-life movements very different is that [pro-choicers] believe in science, and we believe in independent self-direction. Pro-lifers believe in a creator, and that everything is predetermined. Those entry points into this issue very much affect the way in which both sides behave. For example, even though we are the designers and creators of all the grassroots tactics -- the marches, the sit-ins, the letter-writing, the ballots and the petitions -- those tools are used much better now by the Christian right than they are by [the left]. When they get marching orders on a daily basis to call their representative, to tell a company that they're boycotting them, to flood radio stations with phone calls, to thank a senator, to stand outside a building with a sign, they do it.

Rachel Fudge is the senior editor of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture and a freelance writer.

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