How Far Women Have
Come Since Roe v. Wade
The strides made by
women in New Jersey politics
have recently made
headlines
The following op-ed
appeared in the Bergen Record on January 22, 2008.
It was written by
ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs.
Come election day, abortion will
likely be on voters' minds as candidates pull out the abortion card to cast
aspersions on their opponents or stake claim to a constituency. Some
voters will vote for or against candidates because of their position on the
issue. Few, however, will consider what is really at stake in the abortion
question: women's equality.
Roe v. Wade turns 35 today. With this anniversary we mark not only
35 years of reproductive freedom, but 35 years of impressive gains in the fight
for women's equality.
Granted, these were not perfect years. Not all women have had equal access
to reproductive health care: Poor women, teens and women living in rural
communities have increasingly faced real obstacles because of government
restrictions. Likewise, not all women have benefited equally in the
expansion of women's access to higher education, better paying jobs or other
socioeconomic gains.
And as with the fight for reproductive freedom, the struggle for women's
equality is far from over.
Nevertheless, these decades have witnessed important advances for many women.
The numbers alone tell a significant piece of the story: Thirty-five years
ago, there were 15 women in Congress. Today, 92 women sit in Congress, including
the first Madame Speaker.
In 1973, the number of women who had ever been governor totaled three. As
of today, 26 women have served as governor.
And in the race for president, for the first time in our nation's history, a
woman is one of the leading contenders for the nomination of a major political
party.
Grand progress statewide
The strides made by women in New Jersey politics have recently made headlines,
with the proportion of women in our state Legislature climbing to 15th in the
nation, up from 43rd in 2004. The nine women in the Senate and 25 in the
Assembly elected in November constitute 28 percent of the 120-member
Legislature.
The political arena has not been alone in this transformation. Women make
up 57 percent of college students (up from 42 percent in 1970) and are obtaining
advanced degrees in record numbers. In the mid-Seventies, women made up
only 16 percent of medical school graduates; today they constitute nearly 50
percent. Likewise, women holding science and engineering doctoral degrees
have more than quadrupled since the late Sixties.
The ranks of female Fortune 500 CEOs have grown from one in 1973 to 10 in 2006.
The timing of these advances is not serendipitous. At the core of women's
equality is the ability to control whether and when we have children. The
legalization of contraception in the Sixties and abortion in the Seventies
fostered women's ability to make important life decisions about themselves and
their families.
This fact is not lost on the only two women ever to serve on the Supreme Court.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor co-authored an opinion preserving Roe in 1992
that acknowledged, "The ability of women to participate equally in the economic
and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control
their reproductive lives."
And just last year, in a powerful dissent to a Supreme Court decision upholding
the first-ever federal ban on certain abortion procedures, Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg passionately argued that the core of the right to abortion "center[s]
on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal
citizenship stature."
Connection lost
Yet, as we mark the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the connection
between reproductive rights and gender equality is lost in the political
wrangling over abortion.
It is time to step back and reexamine the role access to birth control and
abortion plays not only in opening up the classrooms, boardrooms and
legislatures to women, but to ensuring women's equality more broadly.
It is time to refocus the conversation on fairness and opportunity so that we
all can make meaningful decisions about whether and when to bear children.
The political, economic and social life of our democracy depends on it.
|
