Word: webster
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...feared that all she had worked for was in danger when the Supreme Court handed down its Webster decision this past July, permitting states to narrow a woman's access to abortion. Planned Parenthood, the nation's oldest and largest family-planning organization, is also the premier institution providing abortions around the country, and Wattleton is fiercely dedicated to protecting that service. She had visions of Roe v. Wade being overturned, and spoke darkly of a return to the era of back-alley abortions...
...Since Webster," she said to a group of suburban supporters at a fund raiser recently, "we now must fight this battle in 50 states." Cold fire stirs in her voice. "If we can't preserve the privacy of our right to procreate, I can't imagine what rights we will be able to protect. It's a temptation to grow weary with all the battles still to be fought. But it's also an opportunity to show the finest...
...Webster turned out to be just such an opportunity. The decision had the unintended consequence of rousing the moribund pro-choice movement. Wattleton had long maintained that a silent majority of American women did not want anyone tampering with their reproductive freedom. "Now the majority is getting noisy," she says. Witness the recent national Mobilization for Women's Lives and the elections in New Jersey and Virginia in which voters selected pro-choice Governors. Wattleton asserts that she does not want her teenage daughter to be fighting the same battles she is. To that end, this woman who looks like...
...Jersey, a zealous pro-life advocate), planned pro-choice strategy with Representatives Don Edwards of Florida and Pat Schroeder of Colorado (she urged them to introduce a federal pro-choice statute), had a get-acquainted session with Democratic National Committee head Ronald Brown (she told him that Webster backlash will help the Democrats) and then capped off the day by conferring with Republican Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon (she pressed him about a pro-choice constitutional amendment, a dream of hers that other pro- choice groups privately consider a waste of time...
...wonder how the troops could have grown so complacent. Some see hope of rekindling the flames in the resurgent abortion issue. Membership in NOW, which was down to 160,000 last year (from a peak of 220,000 in 1982), jumped almost 100,000 in the aftermath of Webster. Many of the hundreds of thousands who participated in pro-choice demonstrations on Nov. 12, organized by NOW and other groups, were marching for the first time in their lives. Among them was Emily Friedan, 33, a Buffalo pediatrician and Betty Friedan's daughter. "For 25 years I have rarely appeared...