ACLU of Kentucky

ACLU of Kentucky Communications Manager Amber G. Duke wrote this op-ed as part of the Louisville Courier Journal 's special coverage of the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. 

Jan. 22, 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. The decision, which legalized abortion nationwide, also set an important precedent: that government should not intrude on private, family matters.

Of course, we don’t all feel the same way about abortion. Conversations about abortion inflame passions and spark debates in all areas of our society from the halls of the statehouse, the pews of our churches and under the dryers in hair salons. However, the facts show these are conversations that we need to be having, especially in the African-American community.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, an independent nonprofit organization that provides nonpartisan information on sexual and reproductive health, African- American women experience unintended pregnancies, abortions and unplanned birth rates at levels much higher than any other racial group in the United States. Experts say the disparities in reproductive health reflect broader social and economic disparities in our society. As civil rights activists work to address the effects of structural racism in our neighborhoods, schools, places of employment and on our access to health care, the sheer number of African-American women deciding to seek abortions requires these same activists devote time and attention specifically to reproductive health issues.

Our elected officials, at all levels of government, have used abortion as a tool to divide us and keep us from having more fruitful conversations. We all may feel differently about abortion, but our real focus should be on finding ways to work together to make it less common.

We should demand that our elected leaders spend time looking at policies that would provide more and better access to reproductive health — especially in underserved communities of color — instead of drafting legislation that would force women to have mandatory ultrasounds, or regulate the conversations they have with their doctors. We need our elected leaders to spend time working on economic policies that would put women on stable financial ground as they make family planning decisions. We need comprehensive sexuality education in our schools to ensure young men and women have the information they need about their bodies.

ACLU of Kentucky RFP Director Derek Selznick wrote this op-ed as part of special Louisville Courier Journal coverage of the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling.

I recently became a father. Last summer, my wife and I welcomed our daughter, our first child, into our lives. I have spent my entire career dedicated to providing reproductive health care and advancing reproductive freedom for all people. I have lobbied for reproductive rights in Colorado, Kentucky and Washington, trained clinicians on serving patients from diverse backgrounds and have testified before our legislature in Frankfort. Yet, I never truly understood the fight for reproductive justice until my wife became pregnant.

My wife and I are truly blessed. We both have full-time employment that provides us with a modest income and health insurance, wonderful doctors, great families and an extended community of friends that offers tremendous support. This pregnancy, a first for both of us, was planned and eagerly anticipated. When my wife told me she was pregnant, I literally fell to the floor laughing.

After that initial burst of overwhelming joy faded, I also became quite anxious. Like most expectant parents, questions filled our heads. What if we miscarry? What if something terrible happens? Thankfully our OB/GYN ushered us through the experience with grace and dignity.

It was during these visits with our doctor that the importance of reproductive freedom truly hit home. As she described the changes that my wife would go through, the likely fetal development of our daughter, and the challenges and landmarks of pregnancy, it occurred to me that some in the Kentucky legislature want to regulate and interfere with these intimate conversations between families and their doctors.

This year, as in years past, members of the Kentucky legislature are attempting to mandate the interactions between doctors and their patients when a person seeks an abortion. Should these politicians have their way, if my wife and I faced the horrifying decision to terminate the pregnancy because it was not viable or my wife’s life was in danger, we would be forced to hear a description of our wanted child against our will before my wife would be able to receive an abortion. Instead of providing individual, compassionate care, our doctor would be required to provide a “script.”

I am proud to say that our physician is one of the few doctors in this state who, in addition to her services of delivering children, also provides terminations. My wife and I took comfort knowing that whatever happened, our doctor would be able to provide comprehensive reproductive health care. Yet, all too often debates on the public policy of abortion or other social issues rest on political pandering to the left or right, without considering the experiences of the families and the doctors they are trying to legislate.

The following is an edited version of comments Dr. Ann T. Allen made in acceptance of the ACLU of Kentucky’s Thomas L. Hogan Award for her contributions to the advancement and preservation of civil liberties. They appeared in the Louisville Courier Journal 1/20/13 as part of a special forum section on the 40th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling.  

The American Civil Liberties Union’s work for reproductive rights continues a tradition that began more than a century ago, when a few radicals outraged respectable public opinion by declaring — in defiance of law, custom and most religious beliefs — that a woman should have the right and the means to control her fertility.

In 1913, 100 years ago, a nurse named Margaret Sanger worked at Henry Street Settlement, on New York’s Lower East Side. She tells us in her autobiography that, one hot summer day, she was called to the apartment of a couple and their three children. The mother, Sadie Sachs, was hemorrhaging from an abortion that she had induced by using some drugs and an “instrument” that she had borrowed from a neighbor. Sanger called in a physician and after much hard work they succeeded in saving Sadie Sachs’ life. But, as the physician informed Sachs, another pregnancy might well be fatal: “another caper like this, young lady, and there will be no need to send for me.” When Sachs asked him how to prevent further pregnancies, he joked that she would have to “tell Jake (her husband) to sleep on the roof.” Sadie Sachs turned to Sanger and begged her for the information, but Sanger had to say that she did not know. A few months later, Sanger was called back to the same apartment, where once again Sachs was bleeding from a botched abortion, and this time Sanger could not save her.

Though Sachs may in fact have been a fictional character based on a composite of several patients, Sanger had obviously seen plenty of women die this way.

She told this story to make a point. Legislators and moralists often condemned birth control — and some still do — as a threat to marriage and the family. On the contrary, the lack of birth control had destroyed the Sachs family, leaving Jake without a wife and their three children without a mother. Sanger devoted the rest of her life to finding and providing contraceptive methods that women could use, and to working to overcome the laws that prohibited the advocacy and distribution of contraceptives. At the end of her life, she sponsored the research that led to the first birth-control pills.

This story, however, does not end happily.

Some of us, to be sure, are luckier than Sanger’s patients — for example, in 1970 I had a safe abortion in a hospital. But women throughout the world continue to die as Sanger’s patients died a century ago.

We must therefore continue our work for reproductive freedom, and I am proud to be part of that work.

Dr. Ann Taylor Allen has served as an ACLU of Kentucky board member for 15 years.