The purposefulness of pregnancy among most women in America is evidence of many victories: Contraception was legalized by the U.S. … I once had to get the mayor to intervene when, rather than protecting us, our police chief told us to “close our clinics” if we heard an incursion was planned. When the targets of such vitriol and violence were “just” women, law enforcement was slow to act if at all. White men have always had a legal and moral right to their own lives, but neither the court of law or the court of public opinion has declared unequivocally that women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights after all. In analyzing the events of January 6, 2021, equality advocate Jackson Katz correctly acknowledges “the insurrection was an overt and violent assertion of white male centrality and entitlement.” A look back at the history of reproductive rights and justice clarifies that racism and sexism are joined at the heart of women’s struggle to achieve bodily autonomy. I once had to get the mayor to intervene when, rather than protecting us, our police chief told us to “close our clinics” if we heard an incursion was planned. The burden was placed on Planned Parenthood, and our patients, to protect ourselves the organization spent vast sums of money beefing up security. The brave women and men who served family planning and abortion patients despite this antipathy took on a bunker mentality.

Media reported with false equivalence, akin to Trump’s “good people on both sides” assessment of the 2017 white supremacist, anti-Semitic mob in Charlottesville.

Photos of members of Congress hiding under the benches and the feral clawing at the Capitol windows by a howling mob that was 86 percent male and 93 percent white took me back to my years leading Planned Parenthood at the peak of attacks, up to and including murders, on reproductive health providers. Wade, which represents women’s right to reproductive self-determination, and lack of action to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment-all of which fuel the pervasive gender gap in power, pay and leadership roles. This year, as the media replayed clips from January 6, I wondered why no one was connecting the dots between this insurrection, the probable demise of Roe v. Cue replays of The Handmaid’s Tale.Ī year ago, we watched in horror as a vicious attack on the Capitol threatened to turn America into the authoritarian country my grandparents came here to escape. Then, bingo, it rears its head again, like Groundhog Day. ( Tyler Merbler/ Wikimedia Commons)ĭuring my half-century of working for women’s equality, I’ve often said the violent reaction to women’s progress was simply the last gasp of the patriarchy. Capitol building during the January 6 insurrection.

The War on Choice by Gloria Feldt