On January 22, 1973, Roe
v Wade nationalized the abortion rights many states had already legalized. In
1983, the NY Times published a 10th anniversary interview with
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Roe’s author. In that interview
Blackmun’s emotional candor underscored the rarity of a Justice speaking
directly to us. He recalled hate mail received after Roe – calling him the “Butcher
of Dachau.” He dreamed of retirement.
Then CEO of Planned
Parenthood of RI, I realized we likely had never thanked him. I reached for my letterhead
and penned a note.
I wrote that he was a
savior to women who—for centuries—had suffered under legislated forced
pregnancy. I begged him to, “never retire until the current [Reagan]
administration fades into political oblivion.”
Days later I was stunned
by his response. Justice Blackmun thanked me as “someone on the cutting edge of
this issue.” He wrote, “I am in your debt.”
His letter still hangs
on my bedroom wall.
Forty-five years since
Roe breathed life into gender equity for women, we remember the quiet man who
codified privacy.
Son of modest parents
from America’s heartland, Blackmun brought to the Supreme Court a brilliant
legal mind and the unique healthcare knowhow decades as legal counsel to the
Mayo Clinic provided. Devoted husband and father, he was best man to Chief
Justice Burger who lobbied for Blackmun’s eventual high court appointment. (Lifelong
friendship, notwithstanding, Blackmun avoided Burger’s arch-conservatism.)
One of Blackmun’s three
daughters faced an unintended college pregnancy, and married the father of her
child. That marriage ended in divorce. Blackmun treated with dignity every
human being he met, friend and foe. Younger, uber-conservative William
Rehnquist-- eventual Chief -- was a fan. Rare among Justices, Blackmun drove
his blue VW Beatle to daily breakfasts with his clerks. (In his 1999 funeral procession, a blue Beatle
rode proudly.)
Blackmun took his
responsibility to the law seriously knowing how personally important and
stressful unintended pregnancy decisions are. He researched tirelessly the
historic right to privacy which, though implied in the Bill of Rights, came
into its own in the Griswold decision on contraception argued from the 1940’s
and finally decided in 1965.
This hugely important
validation of the intimate rights of women and the people who love them were
Blackmun’s gift. 45 years later, too many of us still remember pre-Roe women
hemorrhaging and delirious, from fevers and infections after illegal abortions
which sometimes included pre-surgery sexual favors demanded by “doctors” as
partial “payment.”
We recall beloved women
looking 75 at age 35, their health and spirit decimated by raising more
children than they ever wanted or could care for adequately. Attempts to self-abort
involved coat hangers. One metropolitan ER’s more graphic case cited a vacuum
cleaner hose as the cause of death.
Such was the despair of
women before Roe.
Eliminating access to
services women need and want will never suffocate their determination to free
themselves from enslavement by forced pregnancies. We are resolute!
My successor, Planned Parenthood
of Southern New England President and CEO, Amanda Skinner, reminds us, “Opponents
bet we are too tired and demoralized to keep fighting: we continue to prove
them wrong. We will never stop fighting for a woman’s right to access vital
reproductive health services, including safe and legal abortion. Our vision is
a world of equity, where reproductive rights are basic human rights whoever you
are or wherever you live. Together, fighting side-by-side, we shall prevail.”
Justice Blackmun would expect
us to remind today’s Supreme Court-- and all of you-- to stand our hard-fought
ground.
_______END______
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