Roe v. Wade: how did this decision influence you personally?

[Gormy Cuss]

Last edited Thu Jan 24, 2013, 03:02 AM - Edit history (1)

For me, the right to have an abortion was never the central issue. At the time it passed what impressed me most was that women were considered free-will humans. The ERA amendment was languishing and eventually died out but we women did score a significant victory with Roe v. Wade. After Roe, I noticed a slow but steady acceptance of women in authority.

Of course these days we have some pols determined to put us back in our place, but the Roe decision helped lessen the sting of losing the ERA fight.

What about others here?

[Warpy]

1. It allowed me to relax

I have rotten kidneys and a pregnancy would have burned them out completely. If I'd lived through years of dialysis, I'd be on my second or third transplant, with years of waiting on dialysis between them. Roe v. Wade made sure I'd stay alive even if the birth control failed.

It never did, thank goodness. I had many friends who had abortions and a few who wrestled with the decision and kept the pregnancy. In all cases, they made the right decisions for themselves, their health and their lives.

The ones who chose abortion all lived through it, something that didn't happen before Roe. I lost a friend to a back alley abortion and she died a very hard death.

That's what the whole thing is about, allowing women to live.

Antiabortion laws kill women. That's the bottom line and always will be.

[kestrel91316]

2. I got up the courage to have sex three times when I was 17,

before I went off to college and got started on the Pill. (Yes, a condom was used)

[KT2000]

3. Before Roe v Wade

we had a doctor who believed in a woman's right to choose. He conducted abortions in a clean, medical facility. The authorities went after the women they could find that had abortions in his clinic and tried to convince them to testify against him none would. When Roe v Wade became the law of the land I was personally relieved because it meant they would not come after me - though I would never have testified against him.

[mountain grammy]

4. I was in my early 20's with 2 young sons, working in a hospital lab in NY.

The state of NY had legalized abortion before Roe, so it was already a topic of discussion, especially in the lab, where we did lab work for women having a D&C procedure. The small hospital in a small city performed , many procedures partially because we were close the Ct. border, where abortion was illegal. Our pathologist was adamant that this was a privacy issue and she told us we were not to discuss private medical procedures outside the laboratory and to basically keep any objections to ourselves. When one lab tech said she thought abortion was murder, our pathologist said, no, murder is the death of a woman at the hands of some butcher in a back ally abortion. She said she had performed too many autopsies on woman who had died in this horrible manner.
Let me tell you something, my fellow women. Until Roe, women had no rights. Until women had the right to decide what happens to our own bodies, we had nothing.

[Permanut]

5. It was common knowledge in the 1950's in Portland, Oregon..

that a doctor Ruth Barnett was doing abortions every day, and made a lot of money doing it. She did them correctly, and the local police and city administrators mostly looked the other way. There was a tacit understanding that she was saving lives by providing an alternative to the "back alley abortion".

She served time twice in Multnomah County jail, and once for "a stretch" in the women's state prison in Salem, but never lost the conviction that she was providing a necessary service to the women of Oregon.

After Roe v. Wade, the black cloud was at least partially lifted from her and the other abortion providers, and it was apparent to me, even as young as I was then, that Roe v. Wade had not opened the floodgates of abortion; they were happening anyway, and the local women were just fortunate to have Dr. Ruth Barnett to help them using medically sound practices.

Overturning Roe v. Wade would not stop abortions; it would make them more dangerous, because not everyone would have a Dr. Ruth Barnett to turn to.


http://www.oregonlive.com/O/index.ssf/2009/08/early_portland_abortion_provid.html

[REP]

6. I was 8. I remember my mother and grandmother literally cheering when it was announced

It means I've never had to worry about dying from an illegal abortion.