Abortion Speakout

Women rebuffed from speaking at abortion hearings. 

(The New York Times, Friday , February 14, 1969)

On this day in 1969: the Redstockings held an “abortion speakout” to protest restrictive abortion laws

In early 1969 New York state legislators were holding hearings on abortion laws. When the radical feminist group the Redstockings protested that the panel of experts consisted of 14 men and one nun, the hearings were moved behind closed doors. On March 21 the Redstockings began holding a series of abortion speakouts—public consciousness-raising sessions in which women shared their experiences with illegal abortions and giving up children for adoption and their desire to control their own bodies. The action changed the abortion debate from being only about cases of rape, incest, or birth defects to the right of women to control their own bodies.

 



P.S. This is the panel that testified before Congress in hearings held in 2012 on birth control benefits:

Roe v. Wade

 “Our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection.” 

—Justice Blackmun

On this day in 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States legalized a woman’s right to abortion.

In 1973 the Court ruled that

“[the] right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Justice Blackmun, writing the majority opinion, added further:

 “We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One’s philosophy, one’s experiences, one’s exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one’s religious training, one’s attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one’s thinking and conclusions about abortion.

“In addition, population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem.

Our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection.” 


FYI: NPR has a brief overview of abortion rights history here.

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