Laura Kogel

We are all fired up that Roe v Wade will get undone, feeling outrage and upset and ready to march. To make matters worse, states are not only banning abortions but undermining human relations and community – citizens are to turn on each other, to report to the authorities those who even help someone get an out-of-state abortion. That is reminiscent of East Germany, North Korea, where sowing enmity and fear created the conditions for dictatorship. Minority rule is triumphing; we are perilously poised in that same direction.

Why didn’t we all rise up? I have asked that of myself and all of us. There was a moment when the nation, across all identities, did rise up against the murder of George Floyd we watched on our screens. Over the last 50 years the political Right has been steadily undoing the gains of the New Deal world order, replacing it with the Neo Liberal world order: deregulating corporate America, union-busting, tax breaks for the wealthiest, money as speech, and growth of private prisons. Hence the need to incarcerate, especially Black people; 80% of 2 million women jailed yearly are mothers, thereby ruling against the care of families. How hypocritical of “family values”! 

Trickle-up economics creates a billionaire class which made trillions during this pandemic. This new order which began in about 1975 is no longer so new. We are witnessing its breakdown. The new globalism served money elites, the tech industry, the professional class, but it didn’t serve the majority who lost work and hope, and any confidence in the government. In response, Fascism and the Christian White nationalism, devoted to the patriarchal strong tough leader, gain ascendancy as the new political order around the globe. 

Roe v Wade sits in this context as the latest assault. In reviewing all this history, I started remembering back to when I came of age in 1969, when I was a hot-to-trot feminist involved in working towards new equitable and just gender arrangements, and fighting for control over our own bodies. I was attending coalition meetings to work on getting abortion rights on the political public agenda. I am proud to say I was part of the few who brought up the other widespread uterus problem that women of color were experiencing - sterilization abuse. Decently, our coalition voted to join the two different demands: we became CARASA, Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse.

That summer I had my first abortion, before Roe v Wade, hitching cross-country with my then boyfriend, now husband. I threw up continuously from Pennsylvania to Colorado, leaving me in need of hospitalization. Turned out my diaphragm size was no longer correct: I was pregnant. It was 1970, I was 23, and could not even begin to imagine being a parent.

Abortion was illegal. As others put it so aptly, “There is no banning of abortions, only the banning of safe abortions.” I was hospitalized in Colorado, and it wasn’t up to me to decide. I had to see a psychiatrist and it was he who would make the decision. I told him the truth, and seeing the mess I was, he granted me one. Thank goodness.

The second abortion came 11 years later when I was already a mother, as is the case with the majority of women having abortions. Due to my hyperemesis, we decided to wait until our daughter was older, as there was a good likelihood I’d end up dehydrated and in need of hospitalization, as I did twice before. One day I cried for a long time in the shower, really so sad to do this since we were going to have a second. The next day I went off to Planned Parenthood for a legal abortion. I was well treated, respected; I was still sad but I left glad to do what was necessary given my physical reactions to pregnancy. I didn’t feel guilt, remorse, or shame. Yes, I felt real deep sadness, but I also felt I had agency and was able to use that agency to protect me and my family. I felt grateful it was legal and that it was my decision and not a professional’s.

I was no stranger to abortions as I had experience on the provider as well as the consumer side. Before Roe v Wade, I had a job out of the Women’s Center in Manhattan which had a project — The Women’s Health and Abortion Project — WHAP. We picked women up at LaGuardia Airport from all corners of America, mainly the Midwest and the South, and drove them to a doctor’s office in Westchester.

I can’t believe we’ll be going back to picking women up at the airport. I met the women who either had enough money to come, or as was true for the majority, would have to borrow money for the abortion and plane ticket as well. That added up. The stories of what they had to do to borrow money were awful. If the guy wouldn’t or couldn’t help, elaborate schemes to get the money were devised. Women had to come up with ways to get around their parents’ knowledge, find the courage to ask people who were not that close to them, and contend with what they would have to do to pay it back. These were the lucky ones - what happened to all the women who couldn’t find a way to get funds? They were too many: coat hangers or unwanted births. 

During counseling sessions of these mainly young women, I heard their stories. Besides the money difficulties, their complex relationships with partners or the one-night stand or the forced sex, I listened to their problems with their parents and others in their lives. It was so moving to be witness to their experience, to listen and to soothe, that eventually I decided to become a therapist. It was also a deep connection to hold their hand and talk to them through the (simple) abortion procedure. Much relatedness happened in a short day’s time, for them and for me.

They came scared, some terrified, and when I drove them back to the airport, they were feeling so much better than when they arrived. They were often going back to messy situations, for some, terribly hard ongoing circumstances. But for a moment, they had lived through a very scary experience and made a decision best for the circumstances of their own life. For some it was a fairly clear and easy decision, and for others terribly painful. But in my experience, almost all felt they had done what was right for them. We counselors (many feminists in many other facilities) witnessed the pain, the sadness, the heartache, the regrets of other experiences, but we also witnessed the relief, the calming and bravery after we conversed and offered compassion—and information. We explained the procedure, the female body and the use of birth control. 

The frame from the women’s movement was of support and not shaming. Shame lies at the basis of trauma; it makes us hide and depresses our nervous system. So while life back home may have been very difficult, while with us, they were treated with warmth and respect from the start to the finish. We counteracted shame by offering support, acceptance, and recognition of their strengths. We each know what a long way a simple kindness or acceptance goes. As I watched the cultural climate change, and the anti-abortion forces get louder, I saw how shame came in again to haunt women. It changed not only the outer landscape but as we know what follows, it worsened the inner one as well.

Undoing Roe v Wade and voting rights may be but first pit stops. How much further back will they take us? What will go next? The 14th amendment provides equal protection under the law for all citizens, all naturalized citizens, and all formerly enslaved people. Roe v Wade falls under the right to privacy under the 14th Amendment (1868), and is also inferred from Amendments 1, 3, 5, and 9. Most Americans have supported the broader reading of Privacy to include decisions about contraception, sex, procreation, child rearing, marriage, and termination of medical treatment. The originalists on the Court contend these laws are not in the Constitution. Might all these be lost? I bet they would like to get rid of the 14th altogether. 

What to do? The first step is to raise awareness of the implications of the loss of Roe v Wade and all our liberties everywhere we can. As in a therapy treatment, without awareness growing, nothing can happen and change is not possible. When a client says to me, “Ok, but what do I do?” I say “You are doing it. This awareness is a first step. What would it be like to sit with it, to let it in?” Their question itself is often a defensive part that is threatened by the new awareness and works to undo it. Can one accept the reality of the awareness and can one have compassion for oneself in taking it in? So let’s all be talking to our friends, neighbors, families and, where appropriate, with our clients. Let’s ask how and what are they doing about Roe v Wade? Awareness alone is not going to be enough. We have to march, write letters and postcards, to disenfranchised voters and elected officials. We have to make calls, and for those who have extra funds, support progressive candidates and organizations. 

Like many, I feel overwhelmed. However, we have to keep “hope alive” that our efforts collectively will eventually make a difference. Certainly, not doing anything will insure not making a difference. Hope cannot be based on things going right. Hope is a discipline; it means one’s commitment will not cease to make a better, just, and compassionate world. As an ethical being, one upholds the values of compassion and care for all living organisms. Compassion has been shown to neurologically lessen overwhelm, increase coping capacities, prevent shut down, and give us resources to keep our hearts open, as we go forth as citizens of the world.