Abortion Activists Make the Political Personal

Visibly pained over the news that her fetus would almost certainly not survive, Kate Cox made a public plea for an abortion, going on national television and to the courts to get a Texas-banned procedure she said was necessary to save her own fertility and her health.

Amanda Zurawski went before a Senate committee, reporting that she almost died when she was denied an abortion after her water broke 18 weeks into her pregnancy – and that she was granted an emergency procedure only when she went into life-threatening septic shock.

Haley Duvall is grim-faced in a TV ad she made for Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign as she discusses how she became pregnant a decade ago at age 12 after her stepfather raped her – and what an abortion ban means for others forced to carry their rapists’ children.

The previous right to an abortion, established in a now-undone 1973 Supreme Court decision, was rooted in the right to privacy, the idea that a woman could decide whether to continue her pregnancy without interference from government or courts. Even the landmark ruling protected the privacy of the actual plaintiff, with “Jane Roe” standing in for all females seeking abortion.

But since the 2022 Dobbs ruling undoing guaranteed abortion rights, patients directly affected by the ensuing abortion bans are going public – very public, attaching their names and images to the struggle to obtain abortions even as states move to ban or severely restrict the procedure. The feminist mantra of the 1970s – “the personal is political” has been transposed, with women flouting stigmas against abortion and telling their stories, often in raw and painful detail.

“So much of the work of the reproductive rights movement before Dobbs was talking in hypotheticals and making predictions,” which sometimes led to a “credibility gap,” where people simply did not believe women could actually become very sick or die because of the inability to get a legal abortion, says Angela Vasquez Giroux, vice president of communications for Reproductive Freedom for All.

But since then, “there is a marked difference now in how we’re proceeding – and how we’re understood,” she adds. “We were called hysterics and melodramatic” when pro-abortion rights activists warned about dangers to pregnant patients, but “everything came true, and worse – and more,” Giroux says. “Now we don’t have the hypothetical.”

Planned Parenthood is posting personal stories – often with photos – of women who have had abortions, explaining their decisions. And the site does not highlight only those with tragic circumstances, such as learning of a fetal abnormality in a wanted pregnancy or becoming pregnant after being the victim of rape or incest. Some of the women say they weren’t ready to be parents or that they had not been careful with their birth control.

“There are no ‘bad’ reasons to get an abortion,” says the site, under the title “Our Bodies, Our Stories.”

Diamond Crumby, communications director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, says the stories highlight the wide range of people seeking abortions, weakening the argument that women have to “earn” an abortion with a particularly poignant story.

Even those who call themselves “pro-choice” on abortion have attached an undercurrent of shame to it, advocates say. For example, former President Bill Clinton’s admonishment that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” – or pro-abortion rights lawmakers claiming abortion is “the hardest decision a woman will ever have to make” – suggest that those who have abortions are, or should be, ashamed or pained by it.

“Silence goes in line with that stigma,” Crumby says. Those who share their stories on Planned Parenthood’s website” are speaking from their scars, not their wounds,” she adds. “They are able to speak to that experience from a place of healing and also a place of power.”

The website “Shout Your Abortion,” created before the Dobbs ruling, is more in-your-face, saying the abortion stories told there will “normalize” the procedure. The group sells T-shirts that say, “I will aid and abet abortion.”

The public stories of women seeking abortions can result in harassment or worse, advocates warn. Those who helped Cox, for example, could conceivably face civil lawsuits under a Texas law that allows private citizens to file claims against anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

“There’s a big spotlight on her because of the litigation,” El Paso criminal defense attorney Joseph Veith says of Cox. “You wonder whether there will be people interested in [going after] those who enabled her” when Cox left the state for an abortion, he says.

But the personal testimonials can also be powerful campaign tools in an election season when abortion remains a major issue in state and federal races. The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a bid by President Joe Biden’s administration to keep access to mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill. Arizona’s state Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether the state’s centuries-old abortion ban will be reinstated. And Kentucky, where a pro-abortion rights Democrat won reelection last month, is facing a challenge to its near total ban on abortion.

A growing number of states are considering – or have already certified – ballot initiatives related to abortion rights.

In Kentucky, the Beshear campaign was convinced the abortion issue – especially Duvall’s wrenching account of how she became pregnant by her stepfather, then miscarried – helped him win in the deep red state.

“When political messages come in a more vivid form, where we’re seeing specific examples, and people are telling specific stories, sometimes voters respond more enthusiastically to that kind of message,” says Stephen Voss, a University of Kentucky political science professor who specializes in voting behavior.

“Statistics can seem cold and not really engage people’s values or emotion,” says Voss, who adds that he is nonetheless not convinced the abortion ad was as influential as the Beshear campaign believes.

Abortion foes say the wrenching tales of women who are victims of violence or who face losing their wanted pregnancies because of fetal abnormalities won’t shake the resolve of their movement.

“They are being used. They don’t even realize they are being used,” says Judie Brown, president and co-founder of American Life League. “Kate, unfortunately, has become the new poster girl for killing babies,” Brown says of Cox, who traveled to an unknown state when the Texas courts denied her an abortion in the Lone Star State.

“Kate Cox has become a propaganda item. Her own humanity and the humanity of her baby are a side show,” Brown adds. The woman behind the 1973 Roe case, Norma McCorvey, came to oppose abortion later in her life, Brown notes.

Amy O’Donnell, communications director for the Texas Alliance for Life, says Cox’s story exposes the stakes for two people – Kate Cox and the daughter she is carrying.

“I believe that people are moved by Kate Cox’s story. The pro-life side is moved to respond to the value of her unborn child’s life,” O’Donnell says. Even if the fetus were to die soon after birth or survive with a disability, “we believe it’s discriminatory to discriminate against anyone who has a disability,” O’Donnell says. “Kate Cox’s daughter is no exception.”

The reelection campaign of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is seizing on the stories of women like Cox to draw a distinction with Republicans – especially former President Donald Trump, who said during his 2016 campaign that there needed to be some punishment for women who have abortions.

“It shows the reality of what women and health care providers are facing,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said in a conference call with reporters.

And those realities, abortion rights advocates are now ensuring, have faces and names.