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April 4, 2003/Nisan 2 5763, Vol. 55, No. 32
One voice, one vote, one story
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Gloria Feldt has a story to tell.
Married at 15, she was a mother three times over by the time she was 20. A college student for the next 12 years, she struggled to complete her education while taking care of her family. She began work in the field of reproductive health in the early 1970s. Today she is the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the oldest and largest voluntary reproductive rights and health care organization in the world.
Hers is an absorbing story, though not a singular one. When Feldt became pregnant with her first child in West Texas in 1957, the United States registered its highest rate of teen pregnancy.
She was not alone.
And that is what makes Feldt's story, chronicled in her new book, "Behind Every Choice There is a Story," written with Carol Trickett Jennings (University of North Texas Press, $19.95, hardcover) such a compelling read. Intertwining her personal journey with stories of scores of other women who have had to make similar decisions about family planning, Feldt artfully makes her case for reproductive choice.
And if there was ever a time to do it, she says, the time is now.
The book was published just weeks after the 30th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made reproductive choice a constitutional right.
And that right is gradually being eroded, warns Feldt, as courts and state legislatures throughout the country take action to limit its purview.
"There is a war on women's reproductive rights," says Feldt bluntly during an interview with Jewish News during a Valley book tour. "This is the first time in our history since Roe that we have a president, a Congress, the majority of federal courts and many state legislatures aligned to take away reproductive rights."
In Arizona, parental consent is now required for abortions for underage women. And currently, legislation to limit late-term abortions - called partial-birth abortions - is being promoted. Feldt calls both measures "bad public policy," noting that most minors do involve their parents in deciding to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the rate of late-term abortion is exceedingly low.
Feldt adds that there is a troubling move not just to limit access to abortion but family planning resources and medically accurate sex information.
She blames a presidential administration that "inserts its ideology and theology over medicine and science."
Pretty tough talk, even from an articulate advocate of women's rights.
Feldt readily compares the social and political landscape pre-Roe with the present reproductive rights minefield. As a teenager she was emblematic of the sexual ignorance and romantic idealism that characterized the era. She recalls in the opening chapter of her book a comment her mother made a few years ago, "You know, I don't think I ever said the word 'sex' to you in my entire life."
But by the early 1970s, when Feldt had begun working in the field of reproductive health, there was an incipient awareness of the need for frank talk, at least about contraception.
"When I started my career in 1974 in West Texas, most of the women who came in already had three or five or seven children and wanted to know how to stop," she says.
That trend has continued today with more and more young women seeking out information on family planning and making conscious decisions about when, and how many, children to have.
That's reflected in a significant decline in teen pregnancy, particularly over the past decade, Feldt reports.
Still, she says, our attitudes toward sex remain mired in the silence and shame of the 1950s.
"Our society is schizo about sex," she says. "We use it to sell everything from toothpaste to cars and yet the typical young person in the country does not get medically accurate information about sex."
She says that only one-third of teens report that their parents have spoken to them adequately about sex; while some two-thirds of parents feel that they have given their children adequate information.
Where is the disconnect?
Feldt blames American puritanical attitudes toward sex for our shyness. So we limit discussion and leave our children in the dark, literally fumbling along with their contemporaries.
Feldt compares the American outlook to that in Europe, noting that the United States has a higher teen pregnancy rate than any other developed country.
In western Europe and Canada, teen pregnancy is viewed as a health problem. Teens are counseled to delay sexual activity but encouraged to use birth control if they decide not to wait.
Here, she laments, we view teen pregnancy as a moral problem. We are concerned that too much information may not be a good thing, and it may lead our children to make worrisome choices.
Still, the amount of sexual activity among teens is not much different in the United States than elsewhere.
Feldt, herself a Jewish mother to her three natural children, three step-children from her second marriage to attorney Alex Barbanell, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild, says that generally Jewish attitudes toward sex are more open.
"(Jewish parents) are usually more straightforward, realistic. There is a greater likelihood that they will use birth control and be pro-choice," she says. She also notes that Jews also have lower rates of unplanned pregnancies and abortions than those of the general population.
Considering parental reticence, Feldt is particularly concerned about the move to limit sex education in the public schools.
She says that no more than 5 to 10 percent of public schools nationally have comprehensive sex education programs, while the federal government is funneling millions of dollars into abstinence programs that prohibit discussion of basic issues of maturation, feelings and contraception.
"It is the carrot and the stick," she says. Federal funding is withheld from more inclusive sex education programs and states are enacting their own regulations to limit the scope.
She notes that in Arizona, where she and her husband maintain a home, as well as in New York, subjects such as abortion, masturbation and homosexuality, all which engender natural curiosity in teenagers, are taboo.
Feldt urges advocates of reproductive health services and education to make their voices heard now.
"We won reproductive choice from the top down last time - now we have to win it from the bottom up," she says.
"The only way to change the social and political process is by being engaged in the process," she says. "We need to use our power, one voice, one vote, one story at a time."
Contact the writer at vicki_cabot@jewishaz.com.
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