The Women Celebrating a Year Without Roe v. Wade
“I’m not sure why some politicians back away from abortion when clearly they have been using abortion as a fund-raising tool for many years,” she said. “They’ve been fund-raising off the backs of babies for decades, and now that Roe is gone they’re going to pretend abortion is not an issue anymore?”
Anti-abortion activists should continue supporting pregnant women and mothers, she said; her own organization was one of the first in the movement to offer paid parental leave to its employees.
But now is not a time for the movement to be overly concerned with “optics,” she said. Unlike some of her fellow activists, especially in the older generation and in mainstream lobbying organizations, she favors prosecuting women for their own abortions in some circumstances. Bans that have passed in conservative states generally do not include criminal penalties for women who have abortions, instead targeting doctors, pill providers and even friends who help a woman secure an abortion. A smaller, more hard-line group of abortion opponents has pushed for laws that include penalties for pregnant women.
“It’s an old talking point that women are victims,” she said. “If we really believe, like the pro-life movement has said for 50 years, that abortion is murder, than I think we have to act like it.”
Onstage the day before, she had warned about the rise of medication abortion, and of the abortion-rights movement’s dedication to “never stop killing babies.”
“We just had this big win,” she told the rapt crowd. “Let’s keep winning.”
Zach Montague contributed reporting from Washington.
Source: The New York Times
