Abortion Reform in Washington State
On November 3, 1970, Washington voters approved Referendum 20, which legalized abortion in the early months of pregnancy. Fifteen other states had liberalized their abortion laws by that time, but Washington was the first -- and so far the only -- state to do so through a vote of the people. It was a triumphant moment in a campaign that had its genesis in 1967, in the office of Seattle psychologist Samuel Goldenberg (1921-2011), who had been asked to help two patients, one middle-aged and the other a young college student, both desperate for a way to end an unwanted pregnancy.
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https://www.historylink.org/File/5313
I'll say it. Anyone who wants to reduce abortions ought to be promoting birth control and the empowerment of women. My parent's, and my wife's parents came around to that position by having lots of children, as celebrated by their religion. I was changing a younger sibling's diapers when I was ten years old. That's when my "Choose Life" mom (she even had it on the license plate frames of her car) became an advocate for birth control.
My mom always said if we had kids before we were married to bring them home. The thought was so terrifying to me and my siblings, all of us crammed into a three bedroom house with a crazy grandma too, and eating cheap food bought in bulk, eating generic corn flakes drenched in reconstituted instant milk that tasted vaguely of chlorine, that none of us had children until we were living on our own, married, and able to support them. It wasn't just the crowd, there would have been heaps of guilt about our poor choices too.
My wife's family is similar.
I'd rather be that kind of Catholic than a fascist white Catholic, terrified that my "race" would soon be extinct.
My wife and I had a big Catholic wedding that my grandpa boycotted because men in his Wild West family didn't marry, in his words, "Mexican girls." To his credit, he got over it.
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