…BUT WE SHOULD
(Tuesday January 22,
2013) Forty years ago today the United
States Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in the Roe v. Wade case
deciding in a 7 to 2 judgment that the right to privacy and due process extended
to a woman’s right to have an abortion. The
repercussions and reverberations of that epic Court decision are seen and felt
to this very day as abortion remains one of the most polarizing and politically
charged issues. Prior to the Roe
decision abortions were illegal and were performed by a wide range of providers
in a wide range of environments. Roe
took what is actually a medical procedure out of the hands of “back-alley”
abortion providers of diverse, often dubious expertise and ensured that woman seeking
an abortion would not be fated to exist in the shadows and on the fringe of
accepted sanitary, hygienic, and sterile medical practice.
To fully appreciate the
significance of this Supreme Court decision and the persistence and longevity
of the controversy that still infuses it one must consider the context, the
“times” in which it occurred. That is
true of virtually every issue of today.
Nothing happens in a vacuum of time although the present can often be mistaken
as the defining age. History provides
the requisite context to every argument, every issue, debate, and decision
confronting us today. Sadly, for the
majority of Americans under 45 years of age, history consists of all that
transpired in their limited lifetime.
George Santayana the profound
philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist wrote in his Reason in Common
Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1, that "Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana's
quotation, in turn, was a slight modification of statement by the 18th
century British philosopher, Edmund Burke, "Those who don't know history
are destined to repeat it." No
matter the genesis of this phrase it represents an all-important truth while
admonishing all to keep matters in perspective, to view the debates of today
through the prism of their history.
Quotes and adages about the
need and value in having knowledge of history are plentiful. It is absolutely true that in society,
governance and politics “everything old is new again”, “past is prologue”, and,
“to understand the future one must study the past”. These and similar sayings
speak to the necessity of having at least a broad grasp of the history of an
issue to acquire the proper context and perspective by which to access it. A wealth of recent polling and surveys have
shown that the majority of Americans born since 1968 have a terribly inadequate
and generally poor understanding of recent (post WWII) history with that
majority increasing exponentially as those polled or surveyed are younger and
younger. Essentially, young adults who
are in their first year at our nation’s colleges and universities have an
abysmal lack of knowledge of recent American history. This paucity in knowledge is a severe
handicap for us as a country, a society, and a member of the global community.
UNDERSTANDING NOW BY KNOWING THEN
Yesterday President Barack
Obama was publically sworn into office in the 57th Presidential
Inauguration Ceremony. His Inaugural
Address which is receiving high marks for its substantive contents and
historical references is being lauded as the enunciation of a true
“progressive” ideology. Aside from the
lofty oratory and rhetorical flourishes one cannot fully appreciate the words
he spoke, the ideals he set forth as goals, and the scale, scope and weight of
his second-term agenda without familiarity with the history of some off our
most seemingly intractable and divisive problems. The fact that an American President of
African-American ancestry was being sworn in to the highest elected office in
our land on the federal holiday celebrating the life and accomplishments of Dr.
Martin Luther King, was steeped in late 20th century U.S.
history. Many among us of a certain age
had never thought they’d see an African-American President in their
lifetimes.
Until 1965 African-Americans
were denied the right to vote and segregation was endemic in many parts of the
Country. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the southern Minister turned civil
rights activist at the forefront of having our Country, by way of our federal
government, recognize, grant and enact laws to provide equal rights and
non-discriminatory practices for the long oppressed African-American
population. Though the “War Between the
States” had been over for 100 years the vestiges of the Old South and the rabid
bigotry of the day had systemically denied the African-American segment of our
populace equal access to housing, education, jobs and all manner of common
services, rights, privileges and courtesies compared to the predominantly
Caucasian society into the 1960’s. The
Voters Rights Act of 1965 and all the subsequent legislation that followed was
the Nation’s first efforts towards redress and equality for the descendants of
slaves. That was not that long ago yet how many people today have no idea of
the struggles of the not too distant past?
“History” was not necessarily
all that long ago. To better comprehend
and ponder some of the political discourse and discord of today, an
acquaintance with our Country’s history since the end of WWII would provide a
solid foundation for a broader, more stable perspective perch. The ferocity of the arguments and the more
pronounced sources of rancor, anger, and confrontation in Washington DC over
the past dozen years or so can be much better understood by tracing their roots
in our history. The on-going argument
over abortion is one such topic.
ABORTION: SAFE AND LEGAL
TODAY…BUT…
Viewing abortion from the
narrow confines of today, as a bitter battle between the “Right to Life”
hard-core Republican/Conservative/Evangelicals and the “Pro-Choice”
Democratic/Liberal/Progressive/Populists, is to see just a sliver of the larger
whole. Some who champion one side or the
other today behave as if the “abortion question” fell, as is, into the laps and
consciences of Americans out of nowhere.
This could not be further from the truth. To understand the truth about
abortion, the long, sordid, often tragic history of women who sought to
terminate their pregnancies for whatever individual personal, private reasons
prior to the Roe Decision, it is essential to pull the curtain of history and
peek behind it.
Women who desired to terminate
their pregnancy before January 22, 1973, would find a way. There were a wide assortment of kooks and
cranks, medical providers and charlatans, neighborhood nurses and village
midwives, acting as abortion providers. The infamous “coat hanger abortion” was
an act of desperation and isolation where a young woman would use a wire clothes
hangar as an intrauterine probe to expel a nascent fetus or cause her body to
reject the pregnancy. So many of these
women suffered severe septic shock, infections and sustained self-inflicted
damage to their reproductive organs that the chance of any successful pregnancy
in her future was rendered impossible.
Women died and often died alone and estranged from their families and friends;
not too many decades ago the social stigma associated with a pregnancy “outside
of wedlock”, was a cruel, powerful motivation to keep a pregnancy secret or to
have it terminated secretly. One just
needs to do a cursory Google search to read of the horrors of abortion before
it was deemed legal.
As previously noted, the legality of the
“right to have an abortion” was decided by the Supreme Court citing the
Constitutional grounds to a woman’s “right to privacy” insofar as what she did
or did not do with her body and that her right to privacy was an extension of
“due process” as codified in the 14th Amendment. Yet, 40 years out from the “legalization” of
abortion the fights and conflict rage on and the anti-abortion forces have been
involved in all manner of legislative actions to turn back the hands of time
regarding the availability of abortion.
People have been killed over this matter. The most recent murder was of a physician,
Dr. George Tiller, in Wichita Kansas on May 31, 2009. Some states have no abortion providers due to
the aggressive tactics of the abortion opponents. Yes, there is a long history and it continues
to be written today as old debates are re-engaged, reinvigorated by new
zealousness, and actually, one’s views on abortion and its “constitutionality”
have become a political “litmus test” for anyone seeking elected office or
appointment to a higher court as a judge.
This, even though, the last 40 years have established a strong base of
legal precedent and Roe v. Wade has thus far survived the ever escalating
onslaught to repeal or overturn it.
MARKING TIME, MEASURING “PROGRESS”
If nothing else history
provides us with mile markers, points of reference, and a map of the roads that
have led us to the present. Our past contains
all the glaring flaws and faults of yesterday as well as the nuanced more
subtle forces that fueled the fires that burned for change, which refused to be
held at bay by the status quo and moved us all forward. Hindsight, if accurate
and true, permits an unvarnished vision of exactly where we have been and why
we are where we are now. That is what
history is all about. It is not about
knowing significant dates or arcane facts from antiquity. Such are the purview of the academic, the
scholars who sift through the ages seeking answers and understanding. The average American need not be scholarly in
the appreciation and pursuit of historical context. It is vital to the present as are the
particulars and details of all the multitude of variables and vagaries that
constitute the climate we live in today, the landscape we traverse as a People.
TAGS:
ROE V. WADE, 40 YEARS LEGAL ABORTION, SUPREME COURT DECISION 1973, POST WWII
AMERCIAN HISTORY, HISTORICAL CONTEXT, CIVIL RIGHTS, VOTERS RIGHTS ACT 1965,
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SECOND INAUGURATION, DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
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