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For Overturning Roe v. Wade

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The trumpets have sounded; the applause has died down. Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court. Conservatives, including myself, are gearing up for a fight, one that can't be ducked and whose subtext isn't Barrett herself so much as legal abortion. Yet amid all the gut-checking and muscle-flexing, it's worth stepping back and taking a look at the decades-long quest to repeal Roe v. Wade.

Because even with a Justice Barrett, the goal is far from guaranteed.

For perspective, let's travel back to 1987. The Reagan White House was beleaguered. They'd just watched two of their Supreme Court nominations fail, first Robert Bork, who had been slandered by Ted Kennedy and then talked his way to defeat during his confirmation hearings, and then Douglas Ginsburg, withdrawn after he'd admitted to smoking marijuana (saints preserve us!). With an election year looming, the president was eager to put all the judicial jujitsu behind him. And so he tried again, this time nominating Judge Anthony Kennedy, whom he said "seems to be popular with many senators of varying political persuasions."

Today, Kennedy is remembered by conservatives as the biggest Supreme Court disappointment since David Souter, a defender of abortion rights, his legal thinking a cream puff of feel-good liberalism. Yet he wasn't necessarily regarded that way at the time. Kennedy was clearly cautious, lacking the flaming opinions of a Robert Bork. But that didn't stop the president of the American Conservative Union from predicting, "When the dust settles, people will regard this as a good choice." There was also plenty of fire from the opposite direction. According to congressional testimony from Kate Michelman, then the executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League:

Much like Robert Bork, Kennedy aims his criticisms not at social injustice but at modern civil rights law; in his words, "judicial power without rational restraints is simply the exercise of raw will, the arrogance of power." In practice, this rejection of what he calls "judicial activism" has amounted to an abdication of judicial responsibility to protect individual rights. Because for women reproductive freedom is an essential guarantor of all other rights and liberties, the National Abortion Rights Action League finds Anthony Kennedy a deeply disturbing candidate for the United States Supreme Court.

You would have thought Franco had absconded to Sacramento and had a baby with Joe McCarthy.

Again, it is possible to discern these things to a point. Bork was always more likely to blow up Roe than Kennedy was, as is Clarence Thomas for that matter. But the crystal ball is still foggy. The problem is that Roe-and its accompanying right-to-privacy decisions like Griswold v. Connecticut and Lawrence v. Texas -were not judicial rulings so much as legislation, the justices inflicting their own preferences on the country, leaning on a gibberish "penumbra" as rationale. Conservatives counter that their approach is different. They want originalists and textualists who interpret the law as it reads, not through the prism of their own whims. The liberal approach they consistently and accurately denounce as "legislating from the bench."

But if your aim is to repeal legislation, then you need to think legislatively. Thus do we find conservatives assessing judges like Amy Coney Barrett based on her "abortion record," which is to say her previous rulings and opinions and comments. But the circumstances of those rulings and opinions and comments differ case by case, inevitably taking into account other facets of the law: various statutes, the Constitution, stare decisis. It isn't all about abortion qua abortion. Justices may have always been political, as Hunter DeRensis writes today, but they've never been intended to be legislative. Their job is fundamentally different, their thinking both more narrow and more complex. And that's the great frustrating paradox facing pro-lifers: they must think legislatively about justices who themselves think judicially, all to throw out a piece of legislation passed by a judiciary.

I sometimes think Donald Trump could stay in office for the next 35 years, replace all three liberal justices and John Roberts, and abortion would still be upheld six to three. That, of course, is probably too cynical. Again, we can discern these things to a point, and Barrett is more likely to strike down Roe than, say, the perpetually shore-hugging Roberts. Still, we should remember Barrett's own words from 2013: "I think it is very unlikely at this point that the court is going to overturn [ Roe]. ...The fundamental element, that the woman has a right to choose abortion, will probably stand." That isn't some kind of policy statement that should be used against her; it's just a realistic appraisal of how the judiciary works.

Let's fight like hell to get her on the Court. But let's acknowledge, too, the half-court shot nature of it all-and the reason why Roe is such an abomination of law in the first place.

about the author

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Roe v. Wade in the Crosshairs? Not so Fast | The American Conservative

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The trumpets have sounded; the applause has died down. Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court. Conservatives, including myself, are gearing up for a fight, one that can't be ducked and whose subtext isn't Barrett herself so much as legal abortion.

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Neither For or Against Overturning Roe v. Wade

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The vacancy on the Supreme Court by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is expected to lead to a fight over abortion rights. Five justices lean conservative compared to three liberal justices.

NOEL KING, HOST:

All right - now moving on to abortion rights. The Supreme Court now has three liberal justices and five conservative. President Trump would like to make that six. Anti-abortion advocates have been eager to bring a case to the court that would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. NPR's Sarah McCammon has been covering this issue in depth. Good morning, Sarah.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Hi, Noel.

KING: What are abortion rights opponents saying right now?

MCCAMMON: Well, they say this is the moment they've been working toward for decades, since the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. Here's Kristan Hawkins with Students for Life of America.

KRISTAN HAWKINS: We've known for some time that when the next Supreme Court vacancy would be announced, that this would be the moment that we have been waiting for, for that opportunity to take America into a post-Roe nation.

MCCAMMON: And, of course, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been a reliable vote for abortion rights. And replacing her with a conservative justice, as Trump has promised to do, really changes the game.

KING: Yes, it does. So how are abortion rights advocates getting ready?

MCCAMMON: They recognize this will be a contentious nomination fight. We certainly saw that with the confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and there is even more at stake now. Supporters of abortion rights are trying to make the case that Republicans should exhibit some consistency and refuse to confirm a justice this close to an election. As you know, of course, Noel, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings four years ago for President Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, after Justice Antonin Scalia died eight months before the election. This election is just about six weeks away, but McConnell is, of course, pushing forward.

So abortion rights advocates, like NARAL's Ilyse Hogue, are asking Republicans to honor the standard they articulated four years ago.

ILYSE HOGUE: We had so many Republicans in 2016 swear that they would not do this. I think the character and soul of the Republican Party is on the table right now, and I think they're going to hear a lot from voters who want them to come down on the side of letting the people decide.

MCCAMMON: And NARAL and other groups say they're reaching out to voters in key states, trying to put pressure on vulnerable Republican senators to hold off on this confirmation process.

KING: So we don't obviously know what's going to happen with the vacant seat, but how likely, Sarah, is it that the Supreme Court could be faced with a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, like, anytime soon?

MCCAMMON: Well, there are many ways that this issue could come before the court again. Reproductive rights groups tell me they're watching more than 15 cases related to abortion which are at the appellate court level right now and could come before the Supreme Court in the coming months or years. Just one example of those - a Mississippi state law banning abortions after 15 weeks. So far, that one has been blocked by lower courts, but the state of Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to consider it. There are many other cases at stake. And, of course, the outcome of the Affordable Care Act, as we were just hearing, that has implications for reproductive health and reproductive rights.

Longer-term anti-abortion rights groups tell me their goal is to erode Roe to such an extent that states can expect very restrictive abortion laws to be upheld, laws that would not have passed muster before. Think of some of those early first-trimester abortion bans that were passed in the past couple of years. Those groups also would like to see federal legislation prohibiting abortion. And remember, Chief Justice Roberts has been considered the swing vote on this issue recently, but if President Trump succeeds in getting another nominee on the court, abortion rights opponents might not even need Roberts to vote their way in order to dramatically restrict abortion rights.

KING: Oh, that's interesting. NPR's Sarah McCammon covers abortion rights. Sarah, thanks so much.

MCCAMMON: Thank you.

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Ginsburg's Death Sets Up A Pitched Battle Over Abortion Rights

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The vacancy on the Supreme Court by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is expected to lead to a fight over abortion rights. Five justices lean conservative compared to three liberal justices. NOEL KING, HOST: All right - now moving on to abortion rights.

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Against Overturning Roe v. Wade

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Amy B Wang. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/amy-b-wang/

Forde, K. (2018, August 4). Women share what abortion was like before Roe v. Wade: 'I was one of the lucky ones, I survived'. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://abcnews.go.com/US/women-share-abortion-roe-wade-lucky-survived/story?id=56987190

Matt Purple, Author at The American Conservative. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/mattpurple/

McCammon, S. (2020, September 21). Ginsburg's Death Sets Up A Pitched Battle Over Abortion Rights. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/915171204/ginsburgs-death-sets-up-a-pitched-battle-over-abortion-rights

Purple, M. (2020, September 28). Roe v. Wade in the Crosshairs? Not so Fast. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/roe-v-wade-in-the-crosshairs-not-so-fast/

Sarah McCammon. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/people/448294256/sarah-mccammon

Wang, A. (2020, September 25). Supreme Court vacancy spotlights Roe v. Wade. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-roe-wade-abortion/2020/09/24/649a166e-fde2-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html

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Matt Purple, Author at The American Conservative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The American Conservative exists to advance a Main Street conservatism. We cherish local community, the liberties bequeathed us by the Founders, the civilizational foundations of faith and family, and-we are not ashamed to use the word-peace.

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Adele Zimmermann, 75, said she had an abortion in 1965 at the age of 23.

For more than 50 years, Adele Zimmermann never talked about what happened in her apartment that day in 1965.

Blindfolded and scared, Zimmerman, then 23, waited for the man "more mobster than medical," she said, to finish performing the abortion. He had insisted on the blindfold and in speaking in a soft voice so he could not be identified.

She had paid him $100 to end her pregnancy.

Zimmerman was from a Catholic family, she was unmarried and she was about three months pregnant when she didn't want to be. And although she was just across Buffalo from her entire family, Zimmermann told none of them her fears over the next several days that the unstoppable bleeding she was experiencing might kill her.

"It was probably one of the most alone times I've ever had," Zimmermann said, her voice breaking with emotion 53 years later. "Damn, I was scared. The bleeding wouldn't stop. I didn't know how to stop it. I didn't know what would happen. And I was one of the lucky ones, I survived. A lot of women did not survive, or they developed horrible complications, complications that ruined their health."

Zimmermann, now 75, said she is speaking out about her illegal abortion because she fears that the Trump administration is trying to take the country back to those times by overturning or undermining Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion.

Trump has nominated conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, who has expressed his support for the dissenting opinion on Roe and in the case of a teenage girl who sought to end her pregnancy while in a government-run shelter for immigrants in Texas, the Associated Press reported.

In 2006, Kavanaugh told lawmakers he "would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully" as a binding precedent of the court.

"If confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, I would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully," he said in response to a question by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "It's been decided by the Supreme Court.

Trump, for his part, said last month that he hadn't discussed abortion with Kavanaugh, CNN reported.

Still, abortion advocates fear Kavanaugh would work with the court's other conservative justices to overturn it.

"This is the rhetoric from the anti-abortion groups being used by a potential Supreme Court justice, and that really gives us pause," Jacqueline Ayers, the national director of legislative affairs for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the AP.

Even if Roe isn't overturned, it could be weakened to the point that it makes abortion virtually impossible for women in certain states to access, said Elizabeth Nash, the senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group that was initially formed under Planned Parenthood but has been operating separately for years. State-level restrictions in some states are already making that happen, she added.

"For abortion rights, this is a really scary time. Because we could see our ability to access abortion become undercut or completely taken away. And what that would do -- in either case, overturning or undercutting -- it would really exacerbate what we are seeing at the state level," Nash said.

Such restrictions are taking abortion access back to the time before Roe when only some states made abortion legal and only in some instances. Nash said that today, while abortion remains relatively easy to access in the Northeast and on the West Coast, there are regions in the South and middle of the country where clinic closures, mandatory waiting periods and other restrictions have made it very difficult for women.

"If Roe were to be overturned or undercut, that disparity in access would increase," Nash said. "We would see states that are politically hostile to abortion rights move ahead on restrictions and bans, and other states do what they can to maintain abortion access."

Before nominating Kavanaugh in early July, Trump did not rule out the idea that his eventual pick could be instrumental in the future of Roe v. Wade, saying abortion could be something that is decided state by state in the future.

"You never know how that's going to turn out," Trump said. "That's a very complex question. The Roe v. Wade is probably the one that people are talking about in terms of having an effect, but we'll see what happens. But it could very well end up with states at some point."

'Trying to put the genie back in the bottle'

Growing up in the 1950s in a Catholic family and attending Catholic school, Zimmermann said that she never received any sexual education.

"We were taught about how algae reproduced, and that qualified as sex ed," she said.

As a child, she didn't know exactly how people became pregnant, she said, but she knew from an early age that she didn't want to be a mother.

"I decided a long time ago that I didn't want children," Zimmermann said. "When I opened the Dick and Jane reader in first grade and looked at momma's role, I thought, no way. It was different then. It was horrible, at least to someone like me."

"Not many women worked outside the home. Their responsibilities were centered around the home, and of course, men were dominant. It was accepted that women were inferior, and boy did that piss me off," Zimmermann said. "I was a feminist long before the word was ever widely publicized. It isn't that I didn't like being a girl or dressing up or playing with dolls, but I wanted what boys had, too."

That included a job outside the home and the chance to be a scientist. But the message she received at school was very different.

"Girls shouldn't be smart, boys won't like that if you're too smart, and I was smart and I didn't hide it," Zimmermann said.

She graduated from high school and enrolled in a Jesuit college in Syracuse. She dropped out after two years and was living and working in Buffalo when she found out she was pregnant, she said.

"I became sexually active without realizing how easy it was to get pregnant. It was kind of a semi-relationship and even to do the pregnancy test, I used a pseudonym and I went to a doctor I didn't know, I dropped off my urine sample in his office and I got the results by phone," Zimmermann said. "I was terrified. I lived in the same city as my family and my family was Catholic, and with all the outside social pressures on out-of-wedlock children -- there was that to consider -- I panicked. A friend said he knew someone who could help me."

The man came to her apartment to perform the abortion, she said, an environment that was far from sterile and medically safe. When it was over, no one told her what she should expect or how she should care for herself.

"The guy helped me lose the baby but I bled for days and I didn't realize what kind of danger I was in," Zimmermann said, holding back tears. "I was afraid to go to a doctor. I didn't know what the penalty was, I knew abortion was illegal, I didn't know the laws and I didn't want my family to find out. I wasn't completely alone, I had a couple of friends who checked up on me. But it was a horrible time and God, it can't happen like that anymore. It just can't."

To be sure, modern medical technology has also changed how abortions are performed since the 1970s. Early abortions can be performed with medication, lessening the need for surgical abortions. Surgical abortions performed in abortion clinics involve sterile instruments and registered medical professionals, unlike illegal abortions in the past.

Zimmermann, meanwhile, went on to collect the experiences she treasures today: she heard John F. Kennedy speak, she became politically active, she was a beatnik, she moved to New York City and then to New Mexico. She became a computer scientist and worked in the field she loved. She said she would never have shared the story of her abortion while her parents were alive because "it would hurt them and I couldn't do that." But as the rhetoric about overturning Roe heated up, she decided that had to change.

"It's only in the last decade that this assault on our rights has happened," Zimmermann said. "I'm 75, what do I have to lose?"

She wrote an essay for Cosmopolitan last fall and has since had her letters to the editor published in her local paper.

"My theory is that it isn't about respect for fetuses or religion, it's trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and women are the genies," she said. "Because if you can't control your reproduction, what are your career choices? You become dependent on men, which is what they want."

'I was glad that the possibility was there'

Zimmermann isn't the only older woman speaking out about life before Roe v. Wade. At a protest this week, several dozen women of all ages dressed in the robes of "The Handmaid's Tale" to protest the Trump administration's stance on abortion and family separation outside an event where Vice President Mike Pence and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were speaking.

"The Handmaid's Tale," first published by Margaret Atwood in 1985 and made into a Hulu drama in 2017, focuses on the Republic of Gilead, a religious society in which fertile women are forced to bear the children of political leaders after losing their rights to property, money, their bodies and custody of their own children. Tuesday's protest was organized by Refuse Fascism, which staged a similar demonstration in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Marion Marino, 84, was one of the protesters who dressed as handmaids. She said she remembers what it was like when abortion was illegal.

"A very good friend of mine had to have an abortion in this state when it was illegal," Marino said. "She had to go through the mafia, she had to pay a great deal of money to have the abortion. Luckily, she went through an illegal abortion with a legal doctor and was okay afterwards, but it was certainly not something she wanted anyone else to go through."

"In New York state, abortion was a crime. If a woman had an abortion, she went through both emotionally and physically what she needed to go through, and after she had the abortion, she could be arrested," Marino added. "Women were dying, women were trying to create abortions on their own using coat hangers and things like that. Everyone thought it was a terrible thing and it was wrong, but abortion has gone on in every country, all through time. All kinds of things have been done to create abortion. And for this to be taken away from us after all the fighting we have done to get these rights -- it's really important to me."

Lillian Forman, 82, also protested as a handmaid Tuesday.

"I thought I needed an abortion when it was just legalized, as it turned out, I didn't need it. But I was glad that the possibility was there," Forman said. "It would have been catastrophic for me."

Marino said she "never" thought she would be out in the streets in 2018 trying to save Roe v. Wade.

"After the women's movement, Gloria Steinem and all those brave and important and articulate women, I thought that the fight was over," Marino said. "And then we got Trump in office and it's all disappearing now."

Forman agreed, adding that young people must be aware of what they could lose if Roe were to be overturned.

"This is their future, and they have to wake up to what's happening," Forman said.

State-level restrictions have caused abortion clinics to close across the country even before Trump took office, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Iowa, Louisiana, and Arkansas are three states where multiple abortion clinics have closed, and those states have also proposed new laws that would shorten the time frame that women have to seek legal abortions.

Before the Roe v. Wade decision, states had their own abortion laws, making access uneven, Nash said.

"You had 13 states, ranging from California to Kansas, that had made it a little easier to get an abortion. And then you had four states that had really liberalized their abortion laws," Nash said.

New York was among the first states to liberalize its abortion laws in the 1970s, Nash said, and some women who could afford to travel there to have an abortion did.

"That was really a game changer for access because there were a lot of barriers, but a number of people went to New York to get an abortion because it was unavailable in their state," Nash said. "So it wasn't just in 1973 that the Supreme Court that decided that abortion should be legal. There was a longstanding groundswell. But it was uneven progress."

But then, like now, the disparity in who could afford to travel to a clinic existed. Clinic closures and waiting periods often make it harder for poor women and women of color to exert their right to have an abortion, Nash added, making it uneven progress once again.

'I might not be alive now'

Zimmermann said the combination of a lack of control over their fertility and negative attitudes toward single mothers made things "horrible" for women before Roe v. Wade.

"When I had an apartment in downtown Buffalo, down the street was a home for unwed mothers, and they just would slink around the neighborhood," Zimmermann said. "When I was in my 20s, a friend of mine had a baby out of wedlock and the hospital wouldn't even acknowledge that she was there. And 'bastard' was used to describe children born out of wedlock, not the way it's used now, where it's thrown around at anyone you don't like."

Attitudes have changed a lot, she said, and it can be hard for young women today to understand just how limiting things were then. Zimmermann said having an abortion was the right decision for her.

"It's been a good life and I am now comfortable with who I am and how I've lived," she said. "Saddled with an unwanted child at age 23 in a society that did not support that, I might not be alive now. I have suffered off and on with depression most of my life, and I probably would have succumbed to it."

For Zimmermann, sharing the story of her abortion is also about learning more about her own life.

"I needed to unravel my own life, I needed to follow all the strands of my life to figure out how I got here to be who I am and what I am. I needed to be comfortable with who I am now and how I lived my life," she said. "You can't do that without following all the little strands."

For more than 50 years, Adele Zimmermann never talked about what happened in her apartment that day in 1965.

Blindfolded and scared, Zimmerman, then 23, waited for the man "more mobster than medical," she said, to finish performing the abortion. He had insisted on the blindfold and in speaking in a soft voice so he could not be identified.

She had paid him $100 to end her pregnancy.

Zimmerman was from a Catholic family, she was unmarried and she was about three months pregnant when she didn't want to be. And although she was just across Buffalo from her entire family, Zimmermann told none of them her fears over the next several days that the unstoppable bleeding she was experiencing might kill her.

"It was probably one of the most alone times I've ever had," Zimmermann said, her voice breaking with emotion 53 years later. "Damn, I was scared. The bleeding wouldn't stop. I didn't know how to stop it. I didn't know what would happen. And I was one of the lucky ones, I survived. A lot of women did not survive, or they developed horrible complications, complications that ruined their health."

Zimmermann, now 75, said she is speaking out about her illegal abortion because she fears that the Trump administration is trying to take the country back to those times by overturning or undermining Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion.

Trump has nominated conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, who has expressed his support for the dissenting opinion on Roe and in the case of a teenage girl who sought to end her pregnancy while in a government-run shelter for immigrants in Texas, the Associated Press reported.

In 2006, Kavanaugh told lawmakers he "would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully" as a binding precedent of the court.

"If confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, I would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully," he said in response to a question by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "It's been decided by the Supreme Court.

Trump, for his part, said last month that he hadn't discussed abortion with Kavanaugh, CNN reported.

Still, abortion advocates fear Kavanaugh would work with the court's other conservative justices to overturn it.

"This is the rhetoric from the anti-abortion groups being used by a potential Supreme Court justice, and that really gives us pause," Jacqueline Ayers, the national director of legislative affairs for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the AP.

Even if Roe isn't overturned, it could be weakened to the point that it makes abortion virtually impossible for women in certain states to access, said Elizabeth Nash, the senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research group that was initially formed under Planned Parenthood but has been operating separately for years. State-level restrictions in some states are already making that happen, she added.

"For abortion rights, this is a really scary time. Because we could see our ability to access abortion become undercut or completely taken away. And what that would do -- in either case, overturning or undercutting -- it would really exacerbate what we are seeing at the state level," Nash said.

Such restrictions are taking abortion access back to the time before Roe when only some states made abortion legal and only in some instances. Nash said that today, while abortion remains relatively easy to access in the Northeast and on the West Coast, there are regions in the South and middle of the country where clinic closures, mandatory waiting periods and other restrictions have made it very difficult for women.

"If Roe were to be overturned or undercut, that disparity in access would increase," Nash said. "We would see states that are politically hostile to abortion rights move ahead on restrictions and bans, and other states do what they can to maintain abortion access."

Before nominating Kavanaugh in early July, Trump did not rule out the idea that his eventual pick could be instrumental in the future of Roe v. Wade, saying abortion could be something that is decided state by state in the future.

"You never know how that's going to turn out," Trump said. "That's a very complex question. The Roe v. Wade is probably the one that people are talking about in terms of having an effect, but we'll see what happens. But it could very well end up with states at some point."

'Trying to put the genie back in the bottle'

Growing up in the 1950s in a Catholic family and attending Catholic school, Zimmermann said that she never received any sexual education.

"We were taught about how algae reproduced, and that qualified as sex ed," she said.

As a child, she didn't know exactly how people became pregnant, she said, but she knew from an early age that she didn't want to be a mother.

"I decided a long time ago that I didn't want children," Zimmermann said. "When I opened the Dick and Jane reader in first grade and looked at momma's role, I thought, no way. It was different then. It was horrible, at least to someone like me."

"Not many women worked outside the home. Their responsibilities were centered around the home, and of course, men were dominant. It was accepted that women were inferior, and boy did that piss me off," Zimmermann said. "I was a feminist long before the word was ever widely publicized. It isn't that I didn't like being a girl or dressing up or playing with dolls, but I wanted what boys had, too."

That included a job outside the home and the chance to be a scientist. But the message she received at school was very different.

"Girls shouldn't be smart, boys won't like that if you're too smart, and I was smart and I didn't hide it," Zimmermann said.

She graduated from high school and enrolled in a Jesuit college in Syracuse. She dropped out after two years and was living and working in Buffalo when she found out she was pregnant, she said.

"I became sexually active without realizing how easy it was to get pregnant. It was kind of a semi-relationship and even to do the pregnancy test, I used a pseudonym and I went to a doctor I didn't know, I dropped off my urine sample in his office and I got the results by phone," Zimmermann said. "I was terrified. I lived in the same city as my family and my family was Catholic, and with all the outside social pressures on out-of-wedlock children -- there was that to consider -- I panicked. A friend said he knew someone who could help me."

The man came to her apartment to perform the abortion, she said, an environment that was far from sterile and medically safe. When it was over, no one told her what she should expect or how she should care for herself.

"The guy helped me lose the baby but I bled for days and I didn't realize what kind of danger I was in," Zimmermann said, holding back tears. "I was afraid to go to a doctor. I didn't know what the penalty was, I knew abortion was illegal, I didn't know the laws and I didn't want my family to find out. I wasn't completely alone, I had a couple of friends who checked up on me. But it was a horrible time and God, it can't happen like that anymore. It just can't."

To be sure, modern medical technology has also changed how abortions are performed since the 1970s. Early abortions can be performed with medication, lessening the need for surgical abortions. Surgical abortions performed in abortion clinics involve sterile instruments and registered medical professionals, unlike illegal abortions in the past.

Zimmermann, meanwhile, went on to collect the experiences she treasures today: she heard John F. Kennedy speak, she became politically active, she was a beatnik, she moved to New York City and then to New Mexico. She became a computer scientist and worked in the field she loved. She said she would never have shared the story of her abortion while her parents were alive because "it would hurt them and I couldn't do that." But as the rhetoric about overturning Roe heated up, she decided that had to change.

"It's only in the last decade that this assault on our rights has happened," Zimmermann said. "I'm 75, what do I have to lose?"

She wrote an essay for Cosmopolitan last fall and has since had her letters to the editor published in her local paper.

"My theory is that it isn't about respect for fetuses or religion, it's trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and women are the genies," she said. "Because if you can't control your reproduction, what are your career choices? You become dependent on men, which is what they want."

'I was glad that the possibility was there'

Zimmermann isn't the only older woman speaking out about life before Roe v. Wade. At a protest this week, several dozen women of all ages dressed in the robes of "The Handmaid's Tale" to protest the Trump administration's stance on abortion and family separation outside an event where Vice President Mike Pence and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were speaking.

"The Handmaid's Tale," first published by Margaret Atwood in 1985 and made into a Hulu drama in 2017, focuses on the Republic of Gilead, a religious society in which fertile women are forced to bear the children of political leaders after losing their rights to property, money, their bodies and custody of their own children. Tuesday's protest was organized by Refuse Fascism, which staged a similar demonstration in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Marion Marino, 84, was one of the protesters who dressed as handmaids. She said she remembers what it was like when abortion was illegal.

"A very good friend of mine had to have an abortion in this state when it was illegal," Marino said. "She had to go through the mafia, she had to pay a great deal of money to have the abortion. Luckily, she went through an illegal abortion with a legal doctor and was okay afterwards, but it was certainly not something she wanted anyone else to go through."

"In New York state, abortion was a crime. If a woman had an abortion, she went through both emotionally and physically what she needed to go through, and after she had the abortion, she could be arrested," Marino added. "Women were dying, women were trying to create abortions on their own using coat hangers and things like that. Everyone thought it was a terrible thing and it was wrong, but abortion has gone on in every country, all through time. All kinds of things have been done to create abortion. And for this to be taken away from us after all the fighting we have done to get these rights -- it's really important to me."

Lillian Forman, 82, also protested as a handmaid Tuesday.

"I thought I needed an abortion when it was just legalized, as it turned out, I didn't need it. But I was glad that the possibility was there," Forman said. "It would have been catastrophic for me."

Marino said she "never" thought she would be out in the streets in 2018 trying to save Roe v. Wade.

"After the women's movement, Gloria Steinem and all those brave and important and articulate women, I thought that the fight was over," Marino said. "And then we got Trump in office and it's all disappearing now."

Forman agreed, adding that young people must be aware of what they could lose if Roe were to be overturned.

"This is their future, and they have to wake up to what's happening," Forman said.

State-level restrictions have caused abortion clinics to close across the country even before Trump took office, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Iowa, Louisiana, and Arkansas are three states where multiple abortion clinics have closed, and those states have also proposed new laws that would shorten the time frame that women have to seek legal abortions.

Before the Roe v. Wade decision, states had their own abortion laws, making access uneven, Nash said.

"You had 13 states, ranging from California to Kansas, that had made it a little easier to get an abortion. And then you had four states that had really liberalized their abortion laws," Nash said.

New York was among the first states to liberalize its abortion laws in the 1970s, Nash said, and some women who could afford to travel there to have an abortion did.

"That was really a game changer for access because there were a lot of barriers, but a number of people went to New York to get an abortion because it was unavailable in their state," Nash said. "So it wasn't just in 1973 that the Supreme Court that decided that abortion should be legal. There was a longstanding groundswell. But it was uneven progress."

But then, like now, the disparity in who could afford to travel to a clinic existed. Clinic closures and waiting periods often make it harder for poor women and women of color to exert their right to have an abortion, Nash added, making it uneven progress once again.

'I might not be alive now'

Zimmermann said the combination of a lack of control over their fertility and negative attitudes toward single mothers made things "horrible" for women before Roe v. Wade.

"When I had an apartment in downtown Buffalo, down the street was a home for unwed mothers, and they just would slink around the neighborhood," Zimmermann said. "When I was in my 20s, a friend of mine had a baby out of wedlock and the hospital wouldn't even acknowledge that she was there. And 'bastard' was used to describe children born out of wedlock, not the way it's used now, where it's thrown around at anyone you don't like."

Attitudes have changed a lot, she said, and it can be hard for young women today to understand just how limiting things were then. Zimmermann said having an abortion was the right decision for her.

"It's been a good life and I am now comfortable with who I am and how I've lived," she said. "Saddled with an unwanted child at age 23 in a society that did not support that, I might not be alive now. I have suffered off and on with depression most of my life, and I probably would have succumbed to it."

For Zimmermann, sharing the story of her abortion is also about learning more about her own life.

"I needed to unravel my own life, I needed to follow all the strands of my life to figure out how I got here to be who I am and what I am. I needed to be comfortable with who I am now and how I lived my life," she said. "You can't do that without following all the little strands."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women share what abortion was like before Roe v. Wade: 'I was one of the lucky ones, I survived'

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For more than 50 years, Adele Zimmermann never talked about what happened in her apartment that day in 1965. Blindfolded and scared, Zimmerman, then 23, waited for the man "more mobster than medical," she said, to finish performing the abortion. He had insisted on the blindfold and in speaking in a soft voice so he could not be identified.

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Sarah McCammon is a National Correspondent covering the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast for NPR. Her work focuses on political, social and cultural divides in America, including abortion and reproductive rights, and the intersections of politics and religion. She's also a frequent guest host for NPR news magazines, podcasts and special coverage.

During the 2016 election cycle, she was NPR's lead political reporter assigned to the Donald Trump campaign. In that capacity, she was a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast and reported on the GOP primary, the rise of the Trump movement, divisions within the Republican Party over the future of the GOP and the role of religion in those debates.

Prior to joining NPR in 2015, McCammon reported for NPR Member stations in Georgia, Iowa and Nebraska, where she often hosted news magazines and talk shows. She's covered debates over oil pipelines in the Southeast and Midwest, agriculture in Nebraska, the rollout of the Affordable Care Act in Iowa and coastal environmental issues in Georgia.

McCammon began her journalism career as a newspaper reporter. She traces her interest in news back to childhood, when she would watch Sunday-morning political shows - recorded on the VCR during church - with her father on Sunday afternoons. In 1998, she spent a semester serving as a U.S. Senate Page.

She's been honored with numerous regional and national journalism awards, including the Atlanta Press Club's "Excellence in Broadcast Radio Reporting" award in 2015. She was part of a team of NPR journalists that received a first-place National Press Club award in 2019 for their coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack.

McCammon is a native of Kansas City, Mo. She spent a semester studying at Oxford University in the U.K. while completing her undergraduate degree at Trinity College near Chicago.

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Sarah McCammon is a National Correspondent covering the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast for NPR. Her work focuses on political, social and cultural divides in America, including abortion and reproductive rights, and the intersections of politics and religion. She's also a frequent guest host for NPR news magazines, podcasts and special coverage.