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In my entire life I’ve only had one pregnancy scare.**

In my entire life I’ve only once had sex with a partner with the result that she and I were afraid she was pregnant.**

But then in my entire life I’ve only (knowingly) had unprotected, fertile PIV intercourse to ejaculation twice when pregnancy wasn’t a desired outcome.

The two times were before I was 20.

The first time was before the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, the other was after. One was when my partner and I were still teenagers, still jobless, still living at home, still in high-school. The second time we were both of age, both living on our own, both with good support networks.

Murphy’s Law would demand that the scare happened the first time. And so it did.

There were no morning after pills back then. No pee-on-a-stick pregnancy tests. One could get a pregnancy check but it cost hundreds of early-1970s dollars, had to be conducted in a clinic, involved (literally) killing a rabbit, and took up to a couple of weeks to get the results back… and time back then was a critical factor because…

Abortion was legal in only two places in the United States: Washington, D.C., where it was legal up to 12 weeks, and New York State where it was legal up to 24 weeks.

We lived in the southern Appalachian mountains.

A little more than half a year later Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, and since the anti-abortion movement took years to take hold my partner could have gotten a vacuum extraction, or even a D&C, in a matter of weeks at the local public health department. But when we needed it most… it wasn’t yet there.

Plans were discussed. Tears were shed. Friends were quietly contacted and hit up for favors and loans. Arrangements were made… a cover story about an “overnight camping trip” with friends for her, covert transportation to Washington… if we could make it inside the 12-week limit… backup plans, excuses, more tears — not about the pregnancy so much but what would happen if our parents found out.

Six or seven weeks after her period was due it came. “Late” we called it back then. “Early miscarriage” is what it almost certainly was. A quiet celebration ensued. And we agreed she should probably retire her previous preferred term for her period: “the curse.”

Today is Blog for Choice Day. Thirty-six years ago today the Supreme Court changed all that. And while I never intentionally risked pregnancy with someone again while sober (and only once when not… with someone who was sober and who I could trust when she assured me she was nowhere near ovulating) that has not been the case for millions of couples young and old, prepared and unprepared, careful and heedless, bonded for life or little more than strangers in the night. And for all of those Roe has been there.

It might not always have been.

It’s tempting to say that a twice-taken inauguration oath was the turning of a once-rising tide Roe. Tempting because it might even be true. But…

Funny thing about temptation is… that’s why, that first time, a partner and I nearly needed Roe to be there. And remembering that temptation, and remembering so vividly what heterosexuality was like before Roe… I’m going to say why leave anything to chance?

No woman, young or old, should have to go through what my partner went through thirty six and a half years ago. No man, young or old, should have to go through what I went through.

And while I share, passionately, President Obama’s reaffirmed commitment to avoiding the need for abortion through

“...prevent unintended pregnancies, reduce the need for abortion and support women and families in the choices they make,” Obama said. “To accomplish these goals, we must work to find common ground to expand access to affordable contraception, accurate health information and preventative services.

Source: Associated Press

I’m also grateful for the President’s affirmative declaration that

“On this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work and to have no limits on their dreams.”

Good for him. And good for us for pushing him. And good for us for pushing Congress. And good for us for pushing each other to reach this point.

But if the tide of anti-abortion activism has turned it’s still high. Very high. The Justice who bobbled administering the Presidental oath is young. He controls a close majority of similarly young, anti-choice colleagues. And he still has the power to cause further mischief even if he can’t sustain an outright overthrow of Roe.

And if the tide has of anti-abortion activism has turned it’s still high. Too high in whole time zones in America, whole states, whole regions where a trip to the nearest, still-heavily-guarded clinic may be more hours away than Washington D.C. was from southern Appalachia. Whole counties where peer pressure prohibits pharmacists from exercising authentic conscience and offering emergency contraception… or even non-emergency contraception such as hormonal birth control pills or even condoms. And there are still clinics where disgracefully disingenuous healthcare “professionals” claim they’re only “accidentally” removing women’s IUDs.

So yeah, good to all of us for pushing, sure, and good for the President for committing his administration to that push. But the work’s not done, it’s barely begun. And might still be undone. The more pressure we bring to bear the greater the odds the work will be done well.

Happy anniversary, Roe.

[** A little less than 37 years ago my partner became pregnant when we had intercourse or at least we believed her to be. It was her pregnancy. I was scared for my partner and for myself. This post is not about her pregnancy but a reflection on my experience of it, of it’s consequences, of how the political landscape has changed since then, and about how I feel about those changes. My apologies if I created any other impressions. —fl]

Emily Douglass of RHRealityCheck.org offers a suggestion to anti-choice firebrand Jill Stanek who acknowledges that with an Obama administration making judiciary appointments, not to mention anti-choice amendments failing even in conservative-bastion states like South Dakota, “the holy grail for pro-lifers is now gone.”

...if anti-choicers really do let Roe out of their sights in favor of other projects that actually will reduce instances of unintended pregnancy, there’s an enormous amount of progress people who oppose abortion rights can make alongside those of us who are pro-choice. Medically accurate comprehensive sexuality education, which gives teens the tools to prevent pregnancies? Access to contraception, including emergency contraception, proven to reduce the rate of abortion? A host of prominent pro-life voices have supported Obama’s position on these policy issues, staking out a more productive ground for people who oppose legal abortion than slinging accusations like “barbarian” and “murder” (which also feature in Stanek’s post). No one needs to give up his or her beliefs — but now there’s room for a distinction between private beliefs and public policy.

She makes these recommendations here.

Yup. Another welcome result of the most recent election was the death of the Atwater/Gingrich/Rove/Grover-Norquist “50% plus 1” legislative strategy that called for pushing measures far enough into right-wing territory that no Democrat had the stomach to vote for it. Among other things the strategy was intended to make Democratic irrelevant and therefore depriving them of lobbyist contributions. Another was to amend even critical legislation with intolerable riders so that votes against, say, mom’s apple pie (oh, and, say, a complex, hard to explain procedural amendment that would deauthorize, say, mine safety inspections) that could then be used to beat up “do-nothing” Democrats in subsequent elections.

Since some issues, such as queasiness about the whole issue of reproductive health**, were broadly supported by moderate and conservative Democrats it was sometimes necessary to push things to absolute extremes in order to forestall Democratic votes. Thus we wound up with intractable support for totally irresponsible fruitcake ideas like abstinence-only education and even-preventing-conception-is-abortion “conscience” regulations for pharmacists that were encouraged or pushed not because nominally conservative leaders necessarily believed it but because a 50% plus 1 strategy demanded it.

Ironically after this election lost support from virtually everyone but the kind of low-information types like Stanek who actually believed the shit they’d been shoveled.

Thus… it sure looks like… the end of the Repubican’s K-Street Project mentality (and, incidentally, of the corresponding mentality of their Democratic counterparts like Mark Penn who tied their anchors to the otherwise thoroughly admirable Senator Clinton and, consequently, sank her in the primaries… just as they helped sink her party in 2000 and 2004.)

Which leaves…? The possibility that without the failed all-or-nothing strategies of the previous administration people with very different preferences can work together to reduce not the supply of abortion services but the need for them. Emily Douglass’s list is an excellent and generally perfectly acceptable place to start.

[** Aside: Human/sex trafficking was another such casualty to this kind of Mayberry Machiavellianism. Since the issue actually originated among liberal Democrats like (then first-lady) Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Paul Wellstone they had to basically hijack to the point it ignored everything but routine domestic prostitution before moderates finally began to balk. —fl]

Barron YoungSmith of The Plank says ‘winger warlord Rev “Daddy” James Dobson’s Family Research Council is back off the fence and (while no doubt biting their tongues)

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and FRC Action is taking Obama to task for supporting the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would codify Roe v. Wade, in a large swing-state ad buy. (As Ben Smith notes, the charge is accurate.)
Read the quote in context here.

Perversely this move shows Dobson has relatively high integrity compared to too many of his cohorts: he’s attacking Senator Obama for something he’s actually going to do instead of just pulling something out of his butt and shouting “hi-de-hi.” The Freedom of Choice Act — codifying the principles of Roe vs. Wade by act of Congress and the signature of a newly-inagurated President Obama— also happens to be a darn good, solidly progressive idea… so of course Dobson’s going to oppose it. But! At least he isn’t just making shit up about lapel flags, heir-orist/Ayer-orist/terra-orist Chicago-old-money patricians ghost-writing biographies or false equivalences or some such. Of course should be ashamed of himself for opposing FOCA but at least he has some actual foundation for his disgracefulness.

While researching an article for RHRealityCheck Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon discovered she’d bought the same primary-season fallacies I’d bought. A bit of water under the bridge perhaps (so I’ve obscured some names in the excerpt) but

I also bought the [primary-season —fl] narrative that while Obama is spotlessly pro-choice in every way, he doesn’t consider the issue a priority.  What I found was that’s not true at all.  Obama doesn’t just sign off on pro-choice legislation, but he actively introduces it.  He’s introduced the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act, and was a co-sponsor of the Prevention First Act, which reads like a wish list of pro-choice policy items.

She said it here.

No matter what happens with the elections, no matter what happens with Roe and the Supreme Court and the antics in various throwback states (one hopes the answer is “Roe gets strengthened not hollowed out), and no matter that William Saletan sees it as a reaction to 90-era fear of conservatism, I love that Prevention-First Act philosophy of preventing unplanned, unwanted pregnancy in the first place. I knew Senators Clinton and Reid were cosponsors and big supporters, I didn’t know Obama helped introduce it. Good for him.

Update: Make that a possible unpleasant surprise. According to Ann Bartow, yeeks! Prevention First may become very necessary if the five-vote anti-choice majority in the Supreme Court no longer feels constrained to prop up Bush/McCain administration.

Note: I began anticipating something like this, and the need for something like Prevention First, back in 1996.